The Swan's Heart

We've moved

2005-10-29T22:20:00.000-05:00

We've moved!
We've had terrible trouble with Blogger. Couldn't get T on here to save us. So we've set up a new blog... It is called The Heron Clan --

www.theheronclan.blogspot.com

I think all the links are there, and all the old posts are there as monthly archives. It isn't as elegant as I'd like but it is up and running as of tonight. Hopefully our friends will be able to find us there... Please...?

swan

Trust

2005-10-27T07:18:00.000-05:00

Is trust something that is felt, or something that is done?

Is it passive, or active?

A given, or a choice?

swan

Master's Tender, Sensitive Side

2005-10-25T20:07:00.000-05:00

Jewels (http://lockandki.blogspot.com) has told us that she worries that people only see one side of Master, and that they have the impression that while He is very bright, He is also evil, and arrogant, and wickedly mean... Well, there is some validity to that. He makes His career out of that bright, arrogant, and (when necessary) wickedly mean personna. A good political advocate and champion doesn't "win" for the people who need Him by being sweet and soft spoken when it comes time to go after what He wants and believes in. The people who depend on the advocacy work that Master does, need that "killer" instinct He brings to bear on their behalf -- and He is damn good at what He does. Make no mistake about it.

On the other hand, He isn't always the "tough guy." Sometimes, even Masters need rescuing.

Take this morning for instance... There was "an incident."

Early this morning, as I was preparing to leave for school, and Master was doing the things that He normally does to facilitate that process -- fixing breakfast and my lunch and moving the cars around, He started to go out our front door.

Except a BIRD had taken refuge on the front porch. You see, it was cold and rainy last night. There was a large, empty flower pot out there on the porch and the BIRD had taken refuge from the storm. Master opened the front door, stepped out, and the BIRD ATTACKED Him... Scared the bloody hell out of Him!!!

You see, Master is deathly afraid of birds... Pretty much all birds. Canary, robin, starling, humming bird, eagle -- doesn't really matter. Birds freak Him out.

He told me the BIRD was about THIS BIG (picture something about the size of a chicken), and that He thought it probably had sharp teeth. He really didn't know what kind of BIRD it was -- only that it was vicious and determined to try and kill Him and that there was no way that He would be able to get next door to see T this morning because, after all, the BIRD was still out there.

Poor Master.

I finished my breakfast. Headed for the front door. Opened it up. Stepped out and shooed the mourning dove off the front porch. Silly creature just wanted to stay out of the rain. I think, however, it had had just about enough rotten, crazy people for one morning.

Poor BIRD.

I'm surprised He keeps a swan around here, if you really want to know...

swan

Do you slow down to look at accidents on the highway?

2005-10-25T13:32:00.000-05:00

Interesting bit of data.

I keep a statistic counter on here. Nothing very fancy, but it tells me about number of page loads, etc. I check it from time to time. Satisfies my curiosity about how many folks are actually looking...

What shows up rather dramatically, is that while all of that twisting and turning was going on here a month or so ago -- while folks were agonizing over the agonizing... The number of hits on this blog hit all time highs. Nearly doubled.

Hmmmm...

The other interesting bit is that, as I've settled down and calmed down and found a quiet place at the center again, all those page loads have dropped away rather dramatically. Seems serenity and calm is boring. Pain and agony is much more interesting to read about.

Taking note of that.

swan

Blessing the Whole Self...

2005-10-25T08:15:00.000-05:00

Sometimes Kids really get it.

I teach in a small Catholic school. Since I am not Catholic, I participate in the religious life of the place with reverence, but at some distance. That sometimes gives me an interesting vantage point.

Every Monday morning we take the munchkins off to mass. From big ones to little ones, the whole gang marches off to church. The two oldest grades are matched up with the littlest kids as "buddies" for this exercise, partly to help maintain order, and partly to help in the educational process of how the whole thing works. So my 7th graders take kindergartners to church each week.

There is one little guy who looks like an angel. If he'd been painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he couldn't be more adorable. With blonde hair and great big, innocent eyes, he is simply as sweet and perfect as a small child can get -- and as clueless about the proceedings as a five year old might be expected to be...

At the beginning of the gospel reading, Catholics go through a ritual blessing of themselves that involves making the sign of the cross, with the thumb of their right hand, on their forehead, lips, and then finally over their hearts. It is a gesture that they all make very automatically and very quickly. This little guy has obviously been taken to church often enough that he has picked up on this move, or perhaps he's been taught it.

At any rate, on Monday, I happened to be watching him as this particular moment arrived. Everyone made the appropriate blessing gesture, including my little angel boy. However, he didn't stop with the requisite forehead, lips, and heart -- he proceeded on down the torso and made the sign of the cross on his penis as well!!!

Heathen that I am, I thought I might lose it right there in the midst of the faithful. It was so utterly pricelessly innocent and perfect. So wonderfully genuinely sweet and so grand. I kept it together, knew no one but me saw it, and sang a song of praise to the god of children and blessed penises...

Glory be!!!

swan

Say What???

2005-10-23T12:19:00.000-05:00

Ever since we did all that Myers-Briggs business, I've been gnawing on this little bit from Master's profile --

"ENFPs...have a strong need to be independent, and resist being controlled or labelled. They need to maintain control over themselves, but they do not believe in controlling others."

Hello?

I got caught in some fairly significant cognitive dissonance with that piece. So did He, to be honest.

There is simply no question about the Dominance under which I live, or where it comes from. So, when the concept of His not liking to control others was thrown out, it was something of a conversation stopper, to say the least. I've been mulling that one over ever since.

Here's where I am with it at this point.

I think it is true. He is not interested in "controlling others." Not even me. Control is mundane and mostly boring. He figures I can do that myself, and I suspect He prefers and expects that I ought to do it. In fact, when I don't do it, He gets annoyed. Much of the problem that blew up a few weeks ago when things spiraled into a crisis around here arose from the reality that my emotions took me to a level where I was no longer doing that.

There are those in the lifestyle who engage in a kind of power exchange that involves minute levels of control of the submissive partner by the Dominant partner. I think that such relationships have, at their core, a payoff of a very high level of "attentiveness." There is the certain surety, on the part of the submissive member of the pair that they are "seen" by the Dominant. Notice is a given in such dynamics. You cannot control at such a level without attending very closely to the details of the submissive's life and daily routines.

The dynamic here is not founded in that sort of exchange. I am owned, and that does not change when He is not looking at me, or focused on me in the moment. My life is service to His wants, needs, and desires. Too, our agreement is founded in an assumption that He will care for me and for my needs. That foundation remains even if there is no clear and immediate direction or communication from Him to me to reinforce it. The ownership is overarching.

Sometimes, life intrudes. There are significant demands that pull his attention and energy away. My role is to remain in place, to serve, to stay still, to hold the center. I know who I am, and to whom I belong. I do not need His control, even if I might sometimes want it.

There is the safety of the place that I curl into curl into when it is time to sleep each night -- pulled tightly under His chin, listening to His heart and His breathing. In that moment, I understand, that I can control, what is given to me to control by the one who owns my heart -- always and all ways.

swan

War On Porn

2005-10-23T10:40:00.000-05:00

When Sunday morning rolls around here, it's time for TV's talking heads. Today, George Stephanopolis and Tim Russert and the gang are all fussing about Harriet's Supreme Court nomination and the impending possibility of indictments from the Special Prosecutor's office -- all important news, but there's another bit of news that is under the radar for most people I guess. Alberto Gonzales, is waging a War on Porn. Backed by the Religious Right, with their enormous influence on this president and his administration, a law which was intended to protect children from the pornography industry, is being turned on those of us who have nothing at all to do with child pornography.

If you read very far on the blogs, you've heard about it as NCSF gets involved, and the highest profile names in the lifestyle begin to pull the plug on their websites. That's because "They" are coming after "Us" simply because they have enough political clout to do it. They've extended the definitions of obscenity to include just about any mention of just about every kink one can imagine, and are determined to apply the law to any an all text and image occurrences of what is, by their definition now, pornography. That's us, friends.

Back in the dark hours after the election last November, I remember feeling fear that the country I'd known and loved my whole life had suddenly become a place that was now scary and unwelcoming -- a place where I was no longer safe. That sensation has now come to fruition. My government is now actively engaged in prosecuting people like me, simply because of how I live and think. The reality is that there is nothing about my lifestyle that is harmful to anyone. I live and work and contribute in my community as a responsible citizen. I do not harm anyone, nor does my lifestyle. The attacks that are being launched by my government are the result of a determination that my "way of life" is unacceptable, even when that way of life is not imposed on or even visible to anyone else (unless they actively choose to look).

I am honestly afraid. I don't know how far these people might go in prosecuting this stuff. I fear they might go as far as they can get away with. I know that, should they choose to take it to the limit, I don't have the means to fight them. They surely could destroy me and mine. How much of a risk should I take? Should we take? Ours isn't the "juiciest" blog out here, but we have surely talked about our BDSM lifestyle. There's plenty here, if someone wants to make an issue. Sigh.

I do like this letter from Carnal Droog's site. I found it compliments of a link from Danae:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/carnal_droog/7365.html
Time to make some decisions I guess...

swan

Why?

2005-10-20T12:18:00.000-05:00

Gabriel's been musing about the ethics of Master/slave relationships over at Once Bitten http://www.keeperandkept.blogspot.com . There is surely food for thought in what he has written. It is worth considering, for those of us who do this, and for those who read about those of us who do this, or care about those of us who do this. The notion that there is (or could be) some ethical / philosophical foundation for our practices is, I believe of value to explore.

However, Gabriel's discussion, and the re-exploration of the Myers Briggs type profiles of these last few days has pushed me off in another direction. Coupled with some sort of low-key murmuring coming from various comments here and there (on our blog and on others as well), I've begun to hear a sort of sound that I suspect asks the question, "why do you do this?" It is really about the wonderings of people who, when they see obvious discomfort, obvious struggle, obvious unhappiness, consider whether the relationship dynamic that I live within, and even the relationship itself might be unhealthy, abusive, or even just plain wrong. There've been intimations that my Master is just an awful, abusive, evil, rotten, worthless, son-of-a-gun, and the general sense from more than one corner is that, if I were in my right mind, I'd be out of here.

So, I've been in a mood to ponder the "why" question of staying in a relationship when that relationtionship is not (at least in the particular moment) one that is an easy fit, or in its present configuration or manifestation making me "happy."

I'm feeling like I can do that today because I'm actually feeling pretty solid, stable, sane, and yes, even happy.

It should go without much explanation, that my relationship and my choices are mine. They fit me, and they work for me. What I have to say here is in no way meant to be prescriptive or descriptive for anyone else. Nor is what I have to say here intended to elicit praise or admiration or sympathy or support from anyone. I am attempting mostly to make things clear for myself.

Ours is a relationship that is grounded in deep and abiding love and affection. It is also firmly founded in an M/s (total power exchange) dynamic which includes SM elements (primarily erotic and disciplinary adult consensual spanking). We believe that we were "meant" to find each other, and that we have quite possibly (likely) shared other lifetimes together. There are many specifics of out power exchange dynamic that would seem very informal, perhaps even casual, to an outside observer. That is what works for us. There is underlying that, an absolute definitive line which we understand which binds us together and which is, for us, not subject to question.

It is that line, when it becomes evident, that I believe brings some to a point of questioning our relationship. Because, when I run up against the line, in places where it actually matters to me, I react. Sometimes sharply and sometimes with a great deal of intensity. To become intensely and immediately and fully aware of the exact place and moment and manner in which one has lost some part of a formerly held bit of personal control can be shocking. It is radically different than to simply contemplate the possibility of that eventuality.

I am a strong-willed, intense, bright, proud woman. Such places give me pause. Sometimes they cause me pain. Sometimes they even frighten me. I react. I struggle. I rage. I curl into a ball of fur and claws and spit and hiss and get downright ugly. I am not an easy slave. I think that Tanos has written about the reality that he refers to as "reactance" within Master/slave relationships. I first read about it on the Internal Enslavement website. It describes the internal resistance that can be experienced when one encounters these moments where what was "mine" becomes suddenly "not mine." When that becomes an actuality beyond just a theory, it can be a real shock and can generate a very visceral reaction.

I honor and envy those for whom the path into slavery is peaceful and serene and calm. I am in awe. It is not the way I seem to go. Each new stretch is a stretch.

I still stretch. For me, this is a learning experience. A path to walk. I chose this, knowing that there would be joyous and glorious moments, shared with a man that I loved, and that I knew loved me. That has remained a core truth. I also knew there would be challenges. Some of what I imagined, what I feared, has never materialized. Some of what I never imagined has come to be my life.

I learn daily.

When I lived inside of a socially sanctioned, completely normal, absolutely vanilla marriage, raising two children, and doing all the regular stuff that my society had taught me I would and should do, I encountered things that stretched my ability to encompass them. I had days that made me terribly unhappy, and I ran through periods of great emotional upheaval and bitterness. I came to view that relationship as a laboratory for learning about life, and more importantly for learning about myself. I came to know the limits of my patience, the depths of my strength, the power of my love. In the end, I came to know fully who I was and was not. I understood that it was better to live free and outcast than to be "accepted" if that meant I had to live a lie of a life. It was because of the crucible of that sad marriage that I garnered the courage to take the steps toward finding the road out into the possibility of my life.

I know that some see my struggles and my sorrows and my anguishing over the hard days, and wonder if I've made a good choice. That is perhaps my failing. I do not sing enough of the sunny songs and the happy days. Still, I know the whys. I know that I am well and strong and deeply loved and cared for in the depths of a family that is good for me. I know that while I may rage and growl and whine and whimper, that the One who holds me WILL hold me (tightly or loosely) as He sees fit. I know that what others see of my life is only what I write here, through the haze of my wonderings. Somedays that is clearer than others. None can be blamed if the words do not paint the picture better, brighter, calmer, sweeter.

swan

Portrait of an ENFP

2005-10-19T11:32:00.000-05:00

And once you get this started, there's no stopping. Here's Master:

Extraverted iNtuitive Feeling Perceiving

The Champion Advocate Inspirer

As an ENFP, your primary mode of living is focused externally, where you take things in primarily via your intuition. Your secondary mode is internal, where you deal with things according to how you feel about them, or how they fit in with your personal value system.

ENFPs are warm, enthusiastic people, typically very bright and full of potential. They live in the world of possibilities, and can become very passionate and excited about things. Their enthusiasm lends them the ability to inspire and motivate others, more so than we see in other types. They can talk their way in or out of anything. They love life, seeing it as a special gift, and strive to make the most out of it.

ENFPs have an unusually broad range of skills and talents. They are good at most things which interest them. Project-oriented, they may go through several different careers during their lifetime. To onlookers, the ENFP may seem directionless and without purpose, but ENFPs are actually quite consistent, in that they have a strong sense of values which they live with throughout their lives. Everything that they do must be in line with their values. An ENFP needs to feel that they are living their lives as their true Self, walking in step with what they believe is right. They see meaning in everything, and are on a continuous quest to adapt their lives and values to achieve inner peace. They're constantly aware and somewhat fearful of losing touch with themselves. Since emotional excitement is usually an important part of the ENFP's life, and because they are focused on keeping "centered", the ENFP is usually an intense individual, with highly evolved values.

An ENFP needs to focus on following through with their projects. This can be a problem area for some of these individuals. Unlike other Extraverted types, ENFPs need time alone to center themselves, and make sure they are moving in a direction which is in sync with their values. ENFPs who remain centered will usually be quite successful at their endeavors. Others may fall into the habit of dropping a project when they become excited about a new possibility, and thus they never achieve the great accomplishments which they are capable of achieving.

Most ENFPs have great people skills. They are genuinely warm and interested in people, and place great importance on their inter-personal relationships. ENFPs almost always have a strong need to be liked. Sometimes, especially at a younger age, an ENFP will tend to be "gushy" and insincere, and generally "overdo" in an effort to win acceptance. However, once an ENFP has learned to balance their need to be true to themselves with their need for acceptance, they excel at bringing out the best in others, and are typically well-liked. They have an exceptional ability to intuitively understand a person after a very short period of time, and use their intuition and flexibility to relate to others on their own level.

Because ENFPs live in the world of exciting possibilities, the details of everyday life are seen as trivial drudgery. They place no importance on detailed, maintenance-type tasks, and will frequently remain oblivous to these types of concerns. When they do have to perform these tasks, they do not enjoy themselves. This is a challenging area of life for most ENFPs, and can be frustrating for ENFP's family members.

An ENFP who has "gone wrong" may be quite manipulative - and very good it. The gift of gab which they are blessed with makes it naturally easy for them to get what they want. Most ENFPs will not abuse their abilities, because that would not jive with their value systems.

ENFPs sometimes make serious errors in judgment. They have an amazing ability to intuitively perceive the truth about a person or situation, but when they apply judgment to their perception, they may jump to the wrong conclusions.

ENFPs who have not learned to follow through may have a difficult time remaining happy in marital relationships. Always seeing the possibilities of what could be, they may become bored with what actually is. The strong sense of values will keep many ENFPs dedicated to their relationships. However, ENFPs like a little excitement in their lives, and are best matched with individuals who are comfortable with change and new experiences.

Having an ENFP parent can be a fun-filled experience, but may be stressful at times for children with strong Sensing or Judging tendancies. Such children may see the ENFP parent as inconsistent and difficult to understand, as the children are pulled along in the whirlwind life of the ENFP. Sometimes the ENFP will want to be their child's best friend, and at other times they will play the parental authoritarian. But ENFPs are always consistent in their value systems, which they will impress on their children above all else, along with a basic joy of living.

ENFPs are basically happy people. They may become unhappy when they are confined to strict schedules or mundane tasks. Consequently, ENFPs work best in situations where they have a lot of flexibility, and where they can work with people and ideas. Many go into business for themselves. They have the ability to be quite productive with little supervision, as long as they are excited about what they're doing.

Because they are so alert and sensitive, constantly scanning their environments, ENFPs often suffer from muscle tension. They have a strong need to be independent, and resist being controlled or labelled. They need to maintain control over themselves, but they do not believe in controlling others. Their dislike of dependence and suppression extends to others as well as to themselves.

ENFPs are charming, ingenuous, risk-taking, sensitive, people-oriented individuals with capabilities ranging across a broad spectrum. They have many gifts which they will use to fulfill themselves and those near them, if they are able to remain centered and master the ability of following through.

I love you, Sir.
swan

Portrait of an INFJ

2005-10-19T09:10:00.000-05:00

Figured jewels put up her Myers Briggs profile. Hadn't thought about mine for awhile. Master and I did ours just before we got together (it shows we are absolutely incompatible as I recall...). Anyway, when she posted hers, I got to wondering about mine again and went and looked. It makes a couple of things clearer again about some of the stuff that goes on with me...

Things like that drive for orderliness, the tendency toward perfectionism, the urge to blame myself, and that business of sensing things about the way things are that I then can't explain to anyone in any coherent fashion... Oh dear...

Here it is --

Portrait of an INFJ - Introverted iNtuitive Feeling Judging

As an INFJ, your primary mode of living is focused internally, where you take things in primarily via intuition. Your secondary mode is external, where you deal with things according to how you feel about them, or how they fit with your personal value system.

INFJs are gentle, caring, complex and highly intuitive individuals. Artistic and creative, they live in a world of hidden meanings and possibilities. Only one percent of the population has an INFJ Personality Type, making it the most rare of all the types.

INFJs place great importance on havings things orderly and systematic in their outer world. They put a lot of energy into identifying the best system for getting things done, and constantly define and re-define the priorities in their lives. On the other hand, INFJs operate within themselves on an intuitive basis which is entirely spontaneous. They know things intuitively, without being able to pinpoint why, and without detailed knowledge of the subject at hand. They are usually right, and they usually know it. Consequently, INFJs put a tremendous amount of faith into their instincts and intuitions. This is something of a conflict between the inner and outer worlds, and may result in the INFJ not being as organized as other Judging types tend to be. Or we may see some signs of disarray in an otherwise orderly tendency, such as a consistently messy desk.

INFJs have uncanny insight into people and situations. They get "feelings" about things and intuitively understand them. As an extreme example, some INFJs report experiences of a psychic nature, such as getting strong feelings about there being a problem with a loved one, and discovering later that they were in a car accident. This is the sort of thing that other types may scorn and scoff at, and the INFJ themself does not really understand their intuition at a level which can be verbalized. Consequently, most INFJs are protective of their inner selves, sharing only what they choose to share when they choose to share it. They are deep, complex individuals, who are quite private and typically difficult to understand. INFJs hold back part of themselves, and can be secretive.

But the INFJ is as genuinely warm as they are complex. INFJs hold a special place in the heart of people who they are close to, who are able to see their special gifts and depth of caring. INFJs are concerned for people's feelings, and try to be gentle to avoid hurting anyone. They are very sensitive to conflict, and cannot tolerate it very well. Situations which are charged with conflict may drive the normally peaceful INFJ into a state of agitation or charged anger. They may tend to internalize conflict into their bodies, and experience health problems when under a lot of stress.

Because the INFJ has such strong intuitive capabilities, they trust their own instincts above all else. This may result in an INFJ stubborness and tendency to ignore other people's opinions. They believe that they're right. On the other hand, INFJ is a perfectionist who doubts that they are living up to their full potential. INFJs are rarely at complete peace with themselves - there's always something else they should be doing to improve themselves and the world around them. They believe in constant growth, and don't often take time to revel in their accomplishments. They have strong value systems, and need to live their lives in accordance with what they feel is right. In deference to the Feeling aspect of their personalities, INFJs are in some ways gentle and easy going. Conversely, they have very high expectations of themselves, and frequently of their families. They don't believe in compromising their ideals.

INFJ is a natural nurturer; patient, devoted and protective. They make loving parents and usually have strong bonds with their offspring. They have high expectations of their children, and push them to be the best that they can be. This can sometimes manifest itself in the INFJ being hard-nosed and stubborn. But generally, children of an INFJ get devoted and sincere parental guidance, combined with deep caring.

In the workplace, the INFJ usually shows up in areas where they can be creative and somewhat independent. They have a natural affinity for art, and many excel in the sciences, where they make use of their intuition. INFJs can also be found in service-oriented professions. They are not good at dealing with minutia or very detailed tasks. The INFJ will either avoid such things, or else go to the other extreme and become enveloped in the details to the extent that they can no longer see the big picture. An INFJ who has gone the route of becoming meticulous about details may be highly critical of other individuals who are not.

The INFJ individual is gifted in ways that other types are not. Life is not necessarily easy for the INFJ, but they are capable of great depth of feeling and personal achievement.

For those who have lived through the swirling with me and struggled to make sense of it all...

That all makes perfect sense I bet

swan

We're living the abomination of abominations,,,,,,,and mostly loving it

2005-10-18T21:48:00.000-05:00

OK, I know that we've been through some emotional times here lately, but we seem to be out the other side of that crisis and doing pretty well once again.........save some pretty outrageous work stress...but it beats not paying the mortgage.

Today I had a rare media experience. I turned on local midday AM talk radio to find a raging discussion ensuing about the issue of gay marriage. The commentator Bill Cunningham WLW 700 in Cincinnati was regaling his basically conservative Republican Catholic audience with his trump card argument. If gay marriage can be sanctioned by society, then next, men will want to be sanctioned to marry two women. It appeared to be the "atomic bomb" of arguments. Even gay marriage activists who phoned in to make their case were struck dumb in the face of this "abomination." They proclaimed they never envisioned anything like "that."

We live and feel mundane and generally happy (yes..that's right we are generally happy despite our internal wranglings you encounter here from the three of us.) We know we are stigmatized by our lifestyle and that we would be economically ruined and likely even socially persecuted if people knew about us, so we are more than discreet.... clandestine. But we don't feel abominable. In fact we generally feel pretty healthy and OK about us.

It is interesting to get a view from the other side of your community and to realize..or more likely to be reminded that it is not just here on the Blogosphere but in the r/t community that your life would be judged as an abomination.

It is so hard to imagine so many people with so little to do that they need to spend energy judging others who's lives have no effect on their own.

We've been so intense here and so melancholy lately, perhaps soon our life will lighten and we can share the happier part of our lives. We are not emotionally masochistic, regardless of what has appeared here recently. We also are not about trying to provide a marketable blog. We provide who we are in our present.

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

Why Would Anyone Want Two Wives?

2005-10-18T11:35:00.000-05:00

One baffled (probably pretty vanilla) commenter awhile back, confronted with some story about the complexities of dealing with our poly household, asked, "Why would anyone want two wives?"

I think we probably just shined it on at the time, or maybe we offered some sort of philosophical discussion...

Then there's a situation that comes up like "The Trauma of the Messy Sports Coat," and it becomes abundantly clear EXACTLY WHY two wives are not only desirable but absolutely vitally necessary...

Himself has a fairly public sort of role, and every now and then it becomes necessary to dress Him up and make Him look presentable. It is simply a reality.

Sadly, another reality is that He is not a tidy or fastidious sort of fellow. In fact, He is a mess on feet.

The last time He wore His nice, navy blue blazer, He dumped some sort of mysterious whitish gunk on it which is absolutely impervious to any sort of effort to clean it with any methods known to mortal females (and the mortal females around here have a significant arsenal of cleaning tricks because, as discussed above, He's a mess...). Now, to be fair, I've known the blazer needed to be taken to the dry cleaners for a good long while -- several weeks at least. However, it has been challenging, because the schedules have been just wild, and the dry cleaning establishments seem bent on maintaining impossibly tight hours for those of us who work for a living. Plus the offending jacket remains in hiding in the closet from hell... So, I've frequently not thought of it except in the middle of the night.

Anyway, a crisis loomed on Sunday afternoon when, out of the blue, He suddenly remembered that He had a major event Monday evening -- and the jacket needed to be cleaned.

OH CRAP!!!

No cleaners open on Sunday afternoon. Need to find a "same day" dry cleaner to do the jacket on Monday. However, I have to be at work before any cleaners are open in the morning, and T has to work later than the time for the meeting to start.

AHHHHHH!!! The glories of having two wives. T, who starts work at 9 AM, hunted around to find the much sought after "same day" dry cleaner, took the messy jacket there, dropped it off, explained that I'd be picking it up, showed them the impossible white, icky stuff, and pre-paid for the whole deal. She then e-mailed me with the location of the cleaner and gave me the information needed to retrieve the precious jacket. I, in turn, bailed out of school early, tore off to the dry cleaner, explained who I was to the mystified dry cleaning lady, and retrieved the now fabulous, freshly cleaned, jacket, and took it home to the once again happy Dominant guy.

So, let's review: Why would anyone want two wives?

swan

October 18

2005-10-18T09:48:00.000-05:00

My brother, Gregg, would have been 45 today.
He would have hated that.
Tall, and handsome. Lithe and beautiful. Gregg was my fabulous, flaming, taffeta-queen, queer brother. He was also my alter ego.
He succumbed to HIV AIDS in November just after his 31st birthday, and I seem to miss him more, not less, as I get older.
There were four of us. Me, and the three younger brothers. The two other boys seemed to align as a pair, and then there were Gregg and I. Somehow, we understood each other. Perhaps it was that "odd" otherness that we shared...
Anyway... I remember giving him a card in the last weeks of his life... Pooh to Piglet -- "I'll never ever forget you, Piglet..."

Happy Birthday, Piglet -- wherever you are.

swan

Power Exchange and Polyamory -- Lessons

2005-10-16T09:08:00.000-05:00

There are somethings that can be theorized about. Serious people can study and talk to those who have some level of knowledge and experience in an area of particular interest, and gather all the information and data that is available and formulate ideas and conjectures about how things "are." That is a worthwhile exercise and practice when you are setting off into relatively unknown territory. It makes sense to learn all you can from people who have been there before you, or who have, at the very least, done some thinking about it.

Until you've actually been there yourself, however, it is all still just speculation -- or even just guesswork. Whistling in the wind.

Somethings are even more complicated than that. I happen to be fascinated by an arcane corner of the mathematical universe that deals with fractal geometry -- self-replicating geometric forms that become infinitely smaller or larger according to specific formulas. In nature, fractals can be found in things like fern fronds and cloud formations; in science, we find them in things like antennae and circulatory systems. Fractals however, are infinitely more complex as they move from layer to layer... Just because you can "get" the pattern in the first iteration, doesn't mean you can hold onto it, conceptually in the next and the next and the next.

Our family "does" polyamory and we also consciously and consensually "do" relational power exchange. We have some knowledge and some experience. We have a functioning, stable household that hums along quite nicely and, usually, calmly balanced between the three of us. Our power exchange dynamic includes a Master, a submissive and a slave. We all know what those dynamics are and we all understand how to relate to and with each other inside that constellation.

That's what we, and mostly I, have written about here for months now.

Then there was a sudden shift; a shift brought about by a new set of relationships added to the mix -- a new layer of complexity. That shift caused, and is causing turbulence. If you've been reading, you've gotten to see some of it, and perhaps have had an inkling of some of the ruckus that has beset our world. For many of our readers, the discomfort has been palpable. For us the learning has been, and continues to be, significant. Not all of it is what I would have expected it to be.

First, it is my belief that there is a great divide between the "poly" world, and the BDSM world. The two co-mingle only peripherally. So those of us who do both are left with very few working models. Secondly, those who do both together the way our household does it are rarer than hens' teeth... We are continually confronted with the necessity of explaining the "heterosexuality" of our household, continually confronted with the dichotomies between T's role and mine in our BDSM relationships with Master, and until now somewhat of an enigma because ours has been a relatively closed triad. So, even inside the "outside" community to which we nominally belong, we were viewed as "odd." Making our own way.

Given that, there were a few "nuggets" that had been sort of the "gold-standard" of conventional wisdom for how poly relationships worked, whatever the other dynamics. We all knew the cliches:

-- Go no faster than the slowest one, and then slower than that.
-- Communication, communication, communication...
-- Everyone's feelings should get heard and honored.

But hey! Love is a funny thing. Love doesn't read the books.

Master falls in love and the books go out the window. Life kicks into high gear and things ratchet up. Hold on to your hats, we are going for a ride. Experience now, process it all as you can. Immediately would be good, but later will work if that's what has to be.

That is the nature of a total power exchange dynamic. He would very much have liked all of us (and me in particular) to have been as thrilled as He was. Would have liked everyone (and me in particular) to move and understand and "get it" at His speed. Would have liked everyone (and me in particular) to be comfortable and secure and calm. Felt badly that that was not the case. Even felt guilty that there was so much pain resulting from His needs, wants, and desires. Saw it, heard it, felt it. Ultimately, however, He is the Master. Those discomforts must give. Catch up. Understand whatever it is that is causing your pain and your fear and your insecurity and handle it.

Finally, He ran out of patience for the fussing, fuming, grousing... Called a halt to plans made. Capitulated to the breakdown, but made it clear that my behavior was unacceptable and outside the boundaries of the agreements a slave makes with a Master. He gave me the space and time that I'd been literally screaming for. It was a very difficult and dark space for the two of us. A break not in our caring for one another, but in our bond to one another as Master and slave. He simply let me go -- unwilling to hold me there in the state I'd gotten into.

I dropped into a silence and stillness within which I simply moved through my life. Functioning outwardly, but shredded at the core. I breathed through the next days. Listening. Trying to sort.

What had so frightened me?

There were the questions that might have been expected, the ones that He kept throwing up at me; questions of jealousy. Jealousy is a real thing and I am not an angel. Some of that, I believe played into this; although I don't think there is as much as He or anyone else believes. Still those issues are things like this --

He might love her better than me.
He might think she's more attractive than me.
He might think she's smarter than me.
He might want to play with her more than me.
He'll find out she's a way better play partner than me.
He'll think she's a better person than me.
She'll be better sexually than me.
He'll spend more time with her and less time with me.
He'll want to leave me and go to her.

That list goes on and on. Once you get it started, it has a life of its own. AND, I can handle almost all of those because I know the physical and emotional realities of my life. So I can talk to the silly, irrational person that does that kind of talk and calm that stuff down pretty easily. Even though Master believes that I don't share well in that realm, I really have found through all of this, that most of that is not an issue. I do have major insecurities about my abilities as a masochist, but also know, logically that when it comes down to it, in reality, that I can and do go there... So...

The much more difficult set of issues for me, were ones that I never anticipated. They were the questions that arose out of the power exchange dynamic itself. I think I had always assumed that, should there be additions to our family, they would be other women who would be submissive to Master, and therefore, peers with me. It very quickly became evident that this new relationship would have some other sort of footing. There would be some sort of power play involved, but clearly, this lady was not going to be part of the clan as a submissive, much less a slave. Furthemore, because, from a pure personality perspective, she's an almost identical twin to Master, Himself, it seemed likely that I was going to get not a sister submissive, but an adjunct dominant. WHOA!!!!

That's a twist I hadn't bargained for. No one set that up. No one intends that to be a negative. No one can do anything about that. There's no way to control or mitigate that circumstance. It simply is. The nature of the interaction is such that it will occur. Not actively probably. Not intentionally. As if by osmosis, almost certainly.

It doesn't change anything. It changes everything. It scares me witless. I don't know, now, who I am dealing with entirely. Still, I am committed and that has not changed. There are new possibilities and new challenges, surely. Now I understand, consciously, what some of those may be. Deep breath.

The nature of a total power exchange is that control is given to the One who holds it. In making that choice, there is the potential for circumstances to change, perhaps radically, in some unforeseen future. That has occured. I did not give consent to His ownership with the caveat that nothing would ever change. Nor did I ever promise Him that I'd be an easy one to control or manage.

In these weeks, change has come and I've been a handful. We've both learned.

I'm back in His collar and under His protection. The future will come and will be full and rich and interesting.

swan

Where my heart has been...

2005-10-15T19:32:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, I get overwhelmed. Too much noise. Too much input. Too many voices.

I am, by nature, a quiet sort; inclined to ponder and consider for long, silent hours.

Life has been rushing at me at a feverish pace. For many long months now. Intense and demanding. Challenges around every turn.

There's been no time to simply find the place or time to settle in and be. Quiet.

And then there were new relationship dynamics added to the mix. New friends. New feelings. New dynamics. And I had no reserves left to deal with it all...

And so many voices from outside found their way into my head. So many ideas and so many judgements and so many arguments and clamorings...

I'd have gone here. If I could have gotten here.

Here is Valley View Hot Springs. San Luis Valley. Colorado. Just a week or so ago. Glorious, isn't it? Where my heart has been... Calming itself. Finding its center.

I'm better again.

swan

Reassurance

2005-10-14T16:50:00.000-05:00

I am working at finding my way out of the dark. Please be calm and patient. It is really all right.

I've been terribly afraid. Fear is not all bad. It can sometimes instruct, and sometimes it can save us.

Those of you who want to reach out and comfort -- I appreciate it, and I know you mean to do a good thing...

Right now, I need the quiet. I need to hear my voice and my heart and my own trembling. I need to find my path and put my feet back on the way.

Soon.

swan

Sorrow

2005-10-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

I've failed in just about every way one can imagine.
Disappointed Him and hurt people in the process.
I have been allowed to remain in His service.
It is a gift greater than I deserve at this point.
I can only say I am sorry.
The world seems very gray.
I can't think of anything else to say.

swan

Swan in the Far Corner

2005-10-08T14:24:00.000-05:00

I belong to the One who is best for me.
He is good and strong and caring and wise.

Lots of things have happened here really fast.
Change is change.
It takes adjustment.
Some have observed some of that and chosen to stick all sorts of labels and weights on that.
Understood.
Rejected for me and my life.

I still belong to Him.
He will make the path that we will follow, and I will go the way He chooses to take us.
I don't expect it to be easy every single day.
Some things present challenges and opportunities for learning and growth.
He will support and guide me as that occurs.

What gets shared here about my life; about our lives, will continue to be as honest as I can make it.
I will make no apologies for any of it.
Nor will I attempt to comfort those who are made uncomfortable by what they may read here.
If what you read resonates in you somewhere, then, by all means, take what you find of value.
If that does not happen for you, journey on in good health.
I'll not "slave" for anyone but Him.
If you want a "match" or a "mirror" for your style or your particular path, or if you are looking for an easy and chatty sort of "girlfriend," you will likely want to seek another place to read.

swan

When there is Evil Afoot

2005-10-06T09:45:00.000-05:00

Years ago. The family and I spent time at a "quaint Quaker boarding school." Kids there were supposedly gifted, but the fact is they were damaged goods, and it was cheaper for their parents to dump them there and pay the tuition than to send them to treatment facilities. In a matter of less than 3 months, my then 12 year old daughter was having sex in the living rooms and parking lots with a nearly 20 year old student, and my then spouse was inappropriately propositioning a nearly 20 year old student anywhere he could get her alone...

All hell broke loose.

I made arrangements. Packed what I could salvage of my life, and hauled my family home to Colorado.

I went to my Quaker meeting there in Denver, seeking guidance and support as I tried to work through the many issues. There's a process in Friends meetings, called "Clearness" in which trusted Friends sit with members in distress and try to work out such heavy issues. The process is supposed to be in strictest confidence. This one broke out all over the whole place, and a witch hunt ensued. Gossip ran rampant and we were eventually run off... I looked true evil in the face right in the heart of what I believed to be my truest faith community and home.

I learned through those months that there is such a thing as evil. That it works in the person of human creatures. That it cannot be "fought" by good people using good tactics. That it will eat good people. That if you are good and intend to remain good, you should turn tail and run when you encounter true evil. Fight it from a safe distance.

swan

Back to Basics

2005-10-06T09:34:00.000-05:00

His.
His Household.
His Vision.
His Wants, Needs, Desires.

Too many other voices, thoughts, judgements, demands, manipulations have intruded on my energies, and time and thinking of late. I've become distracted and unsettled and fragmented in my focus.

I need to get back to basics and to first principles. He will guide me as he sees fit. I will do as He commands. It is enough. What I would choose is not a matter for discussion except between He and I. Should He feel some element of how I feel about that needs to be further explored here, I will do so as He directs.

My loyalty, my obedience, my trust all belong to Him. All other claims on my heart are secondary to that one, and to the degree that He gives me to control them, of my choosing.

swan

What's it Worth When it's a Command?

2005-10-04T07:58:00.000-05:00

I've been caught in an interesting sort of mental twist in terms of how things can be valued (or devalued) when I do them BECAUSE I am commanded to do them.

It seems a long time ago now that I read somewhere, in my early thirst for understanding of this life choice, that "when one sees a man and His slave, one truly sees only one man." I'm not sure where I found that, or I'd give proper credit. I remember thinking at the time that it was remarkable and profound to consider a unity of thinking and action between two people that might achieve such a level.

There are many things that I do, in my day to day living, that I would not necessarily choose to do, or initiate if it were left up to my own option. It is not. I am not my own person. I am His. When He commands, I do. I do not always like the things He commands. I do them anyway. Further, I do not announce which things that I do are of my volition and which are from Him. I simply do, to the best of my ability, and with as much integrity and faithfulfulness as I can.

This blog is like that. It is not of my choosing. It is from Him. Mostly. Especially when what comes up here is heavy, dark and deep. If it were my choice, such would never see the light of day. He commands me to share, to write, to expose and seek the companionship of others. That I do not preface every such piece with a disclaimer that says, "I am being told to write this..." does not make the communication less real or less honest or less me... witness the angst generated by my wallowing here a few weeks back.

Slavery is hard to explain when it is like this... What you see is only partly what you get. I cannot tell you exactly where the lines are; where what you are seeing is "me" and where what you are seeing is Him. I am shaped and formed and driven by what He would have me be. In ways large and small. Not brain-washed or beaten or incompetent as some would pose it, but owned and commanded. That may, in fact, devalue the truth of relating with and touching my life. You cannot have "me" without in some way having my slavery. You will be impacted by the FACT that I may be commanded to behave in a particular fashion, and that I may not specify the parameters of that behavior. If that feels less than genuine, less than real, less than valid...

I do not know how to reconcile that. I thought about that as I talked with the pharmacist last night on the phone (like a good girl). He didn't know I was calling him because I had to...

Sigh... How often does it happen? Everyday? I can't even think about it...

swan

Football scores

2005-10-03T06:21:00.000-05:00

The Cincinnati Bengals are 4-0. They beat the Houston Texans yesterday. The score was 16-10, if you are keeping track of such things.

swan

My "kids"

2005-10-02T17:25:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, when you teach, you have to laugh. They are just so darned amazingly funny.

I teach junior high kids -- 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. There are people who avoid that age group, find them difficult and horrible to deal with. I think they are fascinating as their minds wake up and begin to question and wonder how it is they know what it is that they know... But, the other side of the coin is that, developmentally, around the 7th grade, the functioning of the human mind is not a smooth thing. Thinking is not at all dependable. There are moments when the 7th grade brain is something like a bowl of oatmeal... It can be endearing if you don't take it too seriously. Like this...

I recently handed out a new computer project. I try to tie these things to the rest of the curriculum, and then use them to teach computer skills. So this project was a practice in Internet research, publisher document creation, word processing, and presentation software use, wrapped around a social studies "curriculum" goal. The 7th graders were given the assignment of choosing a first lady to research and prepare a variety of "products" for both a computer grade and a social studies grade. There were no limitations placed on their choice of first lady, although I did encourage them to resist the urge to choose the "obvious" names we all are familiar with and look at some more "interesting" possibilities.

Immediately, without even a few minutes to contemplate the possible issues with such an assignment, hands shot into the air with questions. Here are the first three questions out of the mouths of my darlings. I swear I've done no editing...

Question -- "Can we do Mrs. Kerry?"
Answer -- "No. She is not married to a president, and is not, therefore, a first lady."

Question -- "Can we do Laura Bush?"
Answer -- "Yes. She is married to a president, and is, therefore, a first lady."

Question -- "Can we do Bill Clinton?"
Answer -- "Did you just ask me that question?"

Room dissolves into hysterical laughter...

Did I mention I love junior high kids because their minds are just waking up and they are starting to wonder how it is they know what they know?

swan

Mermaids and taxes and train wrecks and personal battles...

2005-10-01T19:45:00.000-05:00

On a bitterly cold January morning, in Casper, Wyoming, I gave birth to a lovely, strawberry-haired, violet-eyed baby girl after only about an hour and a half of labor. We barely made it to the hospital across the snow bound streets of that bitter winter morning, and my little daughter came screaming furiously into the world, ready to fight.

By five o'clock that afternoon, she was rolling over in my hospital bed -- front to back, back to front -- like a barrel down the length of the bed. It wasn't the first sign that this child was different, there'd been indications while she was still in utero that something was unique about my little one... but I knew that night that I was in for a wild ride.

She never slept for more than 20 minutes at a time until she was 5 years old. Refused to be held close. Couldn't tolerate most clothing. Walked at 8 months. Climbed everything. Talked in full sentences before her first birthday. Was absolutely fearless. At about the age of 5 she became fascinated with snakes -- an obsession that continues to this day.

Then, around the time she was 6 or 7, she began to have anxiety attacks. She would begin to gasp and wheeze and experience a sensation that she couldn't breathe. The first time it happened, we were at home and I didn't know what to do. I checked and found her not feverish or delirious. I ran through a quick series of questions with her and ascertained that she was not choking, hadn't swallowed anything, was not injured. Still she was clearly in distress. I scooped her into my arms, carried her to the bathtub, ran the water at just slightly warmer than room temperature and gently laid her in the tub. Desperately, I told my little girl that I thought, perhaps she might be a mermaid who'd gotten lost from the ocean and just needed to have some time in the water. Splashing gently, I let the water run over her legs and arms and shoulders and belly, crooning to her about the ocean and mermaids and how much I loved her and how it would be alright and how glad I was that she had chosen to be with us. Slowly, her breathing eased and she relaxed as she watched my face and listened to the story I wove for her out of my desperate need for her to be alright...

It was a game she and I played many times after that night... whenever the mermaid in her got to feeling overwhelmed by the demands of living among mere mortals.

By the time she was in the 4th grade, she had read the complete, unabridged works of Shakespeare and was wanting to discuss the Sonnets over dinner. She was also beginning to have trouble in school and with her peers. She would con her classmates and perfect strangers on the street or at the store out of their spare change. By 5th grade, she was beginning to get into fights on the playground and I was getting calls at work about the inappropriate pranks she was pulling at school. In 6th grade it escalated to vandalism.

Then she turned 13 and all hell broke loose. She started running away from home. She started drinking and taking illegal drugs of every kind. Started having sex with everything with a penis. Started hustling pool (she's a very good pool shark). My mermaid turned into the street tough "Rambo." She never finished 7th grade.

Life for me turned into a constant search for my child. I'd go to work at 6:15 each morning. Finish work, come home, eat dinner, sleep until about 9 or 10 PM, get up and go prowl the bars and pool halls and head shops and brothels, passing her picture, asking if anyone had seen her. At 2 or 3 in the morning, we'd drag home and try to sleep a couple more hours before dragging ourselves out to go back to work. Then do it all again.

If we found her, or if the police would call and have her in custody, we'd go pick her up, drag her home and start the whole thing again. Usually, we'd be lucky if we could hold onto her for 4 or 5 days. Eventually, she attacked me physically and I called 911. They took her off in handcuffs. It was a dark day. The juvenile justice system is an interesting world that I would not wish anyone to have to try to navigate. I spent hours advocating with judges, social workers, probation officers, psychologists and district attorneys to attempt to find appropriate placements and services for my daughter. NOTE: I was not arguing that she was innocent. I was arguing that she needed to be held in an appropriate setting for her own safety and for the safety and well being of others (including the rest of our family). The reality was that, in the state of Colorado at that time, there was very little available in the way of appropriate placements for kids like my daughter.

You see, the mermaid wasn't just a BAD kid. She has Asperger's (part of the Autistic spectrum) and she has Bipolar illness. She's incredibly bright, but she doesn't get relationship cues and she has mental illness. She's beautiful and wonderful and charming when she's in a good place. But when she's not in a good place, she's not good -- and there was no good place for her when she most needed it, when we most needed it.

Years ago, the state of Colorado was overtaken by a movement that was billed as "The Tax Payer's Bill of Rights" (TABOR.) TABOR limits the state (and every governmental entity within the state) to a rate of tax growth equal to the rate of inflation, by constitutional amendment. Any windfall income that a governmental body might come by has to be returned to the taxpayers. It was easy to sell: "Forces governments to live within their means. Forces them to balance the budget. No more tax and spend." When times are good and there is growth, it goes along pretty well. But anykind of downturn or any kind of unexpected negative or catastrophic event turns TABOR into a calamity. Today, the State of Colorado has an education system, a health care system, a mental health system, and an infrastructure that is in tatters. There is simply no money and no way to raise any money. Even Colorado's very conservative governor, who was a staunch advocate for TABOR when it was passed, is campaigning to lift its draconian limitations so that the state can implement some much needed work on so many projects. TABOR was a disaster... for me and for my kid... For so many other kids and families...

AND now, it has followed me. Here. In Ohio. The rumblings are starting. Amid those who would convince the unwitting that limiting government's ability to use tax adjustments as a way to answer the community's need for services seemingly makes sense (just as it did to so many taxpayers in Colorado years ago) -- TABOR is being talked about. And there are folks who are nodding their heads and saying, "well, yes, we want services for our kids, but we do need to be responsible about budgets..." And I want to grab them by the throat and scream, "are you crazy? We need to take this thing while it is still just an idea, and drive a stake through it's heart!!!"

If I can keep it from happening here, I will have finally managed to do something for the rest of the mermaids... Because, oh... I remember all those dark and scary and desperate and hopeless days and nights.

swan

Football Season

2005-09-28T16:38:00.000-05:00

It seems likely that there might be households where autumn weekend afternoons are not entirely taken up with football. However, here in the Heron Clan, once we've made it through the inevitable disappointments that come with the realities that set in as our Cincinnati Reds drag us through yet another dreary summer of barely so-so baseball (which can, BTW, be listened to on the radio while enjoying the delights of the patio and the pond), and kind of bumbled through the football pre-season which really doesn't mean anything much anyway, there comes that glorious day when REAL FOOTBALL starts. "Real" football, incidentally, is played here in the great Midwest, at both the college level (Ohio State), and by the heretofore hapless Cincinnati Bengals, with their (no way around it) silly tiger costumes (errrr I mean uniforms, Sir).

Suffice it to say that once 1:00 in the afternoon rolls around on Sunday, there is nothing much going on around here that does not include appropriate football oriented snack food, and yelling and cheering and shouting at the television as great hulking fellows chase the football up and down the gridiron while trying to squash each other.

Except that, of course, there is a significant modification to the "rules" of football here...

Master paddles for points scored. Any and all points scored. By anybody. Using that Hanson Paddle Werks paddle you see pictured up top there... and yes, sports fans, it is every bit as wicked as you are thinking it is.

I get to ask for my paddling(s) at any point during the game. Whenever I choose. The only trick is that if I haven't redeemed all the paddle strokes for all the points scored by the end of the game, any remaining points -- double.

The score for Sunday's game between the Bengals and the Chicago Bears -- 24 -7. Cincinnati won. In case you were wondering.

He actually let me off easy. I'd had a pretty good session early in the morning, and we had 30 points to make up from a game earlier in the season -- so... He forgave the last two touchdowns. It is early in the season.

swan

Tired of the Bullshit

2005-09-26T16:00:00.000-05:00

Temptation put up a really fine bit of writing about face slapping a few days ago: http://temptation-unleashed.blogspot.com/. Made some sense about the topic in a dispassionate, sort of "technical" sense, which is a welcome relief in the midst of all the emotional heat that's been generated here about the subject.

Then, as with everywhere else this has come up, the 'cussin and disscussin' began. It seems to drag in people who've, up until now, had no acquaintance or even remote interest in "US." Everybody is seemingly fascinated by the slap heard 'round the world and what it might imply about the state of my mental well-being and the nature of our polyamorous relationship in general. I can't quite figure out what the draw is, but I'm beginning to be curious, frankly.

Here's a comment on Temptation's blog, by someone named Amber. I went and looked to figure out who she is and what her interest might have been. She claims she's submissive, but when I read her blog, it seems that her family is really more in the wine business. No harm, no foul. That's interesting and really pretty neat, actually... Still... Makes a person go, "hmmmm...."

"Amber said (in part)...
Being the gossip whore that I am, I went and read the blogs of everyone involved and my take on it isn't that everyone was freaked out so much by the slap itself, but Swan's feelings going up to and surrounding the slap. Although her Dom slapped her to calm her down... I believe what offended some people was ...what APPEARED to be a blatant disregard for Swan's feelings leading up to that moment. By all parties involved.The sadness and jealousy Swan felt when she posted that entry was palpable. She wrote of feeling worthless and not anywhere near as valuable to Tom as the new woman Jewels was...I can't claim to understand poly relationships very well. My first introduction to them was through the novels of Heinlein. In Heinlein's world, everyone was loved equally and everyone seemed to be happy with the multi-family situation. Share and share alike and no one was jealous...Swan was hurt, though she is striving to try and work through this. And this is her choice...She's choosing to stay with her eyes open. She's the second woman in the relationship already, coming in on the heels of Tom's wife. So she knew what was coming...

Well, Gosh! Don't I feel special. Everyone, everywhere is all over my poor little tender feelings. So much so that they are all making sure to include in every single conversation at least one caveat that makes it clear that I am, after all the "SECOND WOMAN IN THE RELATIONSHIP ALREADY, COMING IN ON THE HEELS OF TOM'S WIFE. SO I KNEW WHAT WAS COMING..." What the bloody fuck did I expect after all!?!?!?!?! Right?

I'm getting pretty much over this crap at this point ladies and gents. I've explained all nice and polite like, and answered direct questions, asked in a civil fashion as best I can. However, I am certain of one thing -- Amber, whoever she is, has labeled this bit correctly: GOSSIP.

I don't read Heinlein. Never have. I know that there are plenty of people who know what little bit they think they know about poly from what they've read about it in that science fiction drivel. What I live is not science fiction. It isn't any kind of fiction. What I write about it here isn't fiction either. When you start scratching and clawing, you are scratching and clawing at real people, even if you can't actually see us or touch us. We're pretty tough but we are not without hearts or souls. So while you are yammering on about our feelings, pull your damn claws in.

Polyamory can be wonderfully enriching for those who live it. More love does make more love. It is also remarkably complex. Human beings are not simple creatures and human relationships are dynamic and intensely fluid systems. Look around you at your own relationships and at those of the people you know well. How many of them are happy, stable, and healthy? If those relationships are comprised of coupled pairs (as is the "norm" in our society), consider how much effort goes into maintaining those coupled relationships in that state of happy, stable, and healthy relatedness. Acknowledge honestly that there are times when even the best paired relationships experience periods of uncertainty and insecurity and conflict. Now, consider what might be the added levels of complexity if even the most successful pair you know were to attempt to incorporate a third member, or a fourth or a fifth... The demands on time, energy, communication, sharing all the resources of relatedness become multiplied not just once but many, many times over. There ARE feelings of all sorts to be dealt with. Even if the addition of that new partner is an occasion for great joy and happiness on the part of all or most of the members of the family there will be stresses and strains and feelings. It isn't all simple and easy and without bumps. Feelings are not BAD. They are simply feelings.

When we came to be a poly family in the first place, there were plenty of feelings and not all of them were happy. T was hurt and jealous and stunned. She's written about that here. So, yeah, for those of you that figure I'm getting what I had coming, I guess you are right. That Scarlett Letter must fit somewhere... She and I regularly run through the litany: "Cunt, Slut, Bitch, Whore!" It is our joke that we bring out when she reminds me that she is likely to successfully make the transit through menopause ahead of me and that I'll continue to bleed for both of us until I am 97... We can laugh with each other, knowing that those are epithets that the world hurls at us on a regular basis. Still there is sting there. We laugh so that we don't have to cry.

As for the whispers that are out there that I (or perhaps "we") are mistreated... It is simply not so. Master is a man. Not a "god." He has faults and flaws. We call Him on them. He gets tired and worried and frustrated and sometimes even fearful. Sometimes He reacts in ways that He later regrets. He learns and grows. We all do. There is this impossible standard held up that Dominants and Masters must be perfect, must be unerring, must never falter in their judgements or in their actions, or in their decisions. Bullshit. I want no part of the man who cannot fail, who cannot admit failure or error.

Those of you who are judging that there have been things done here that were "wrong," be very careful. Make very sure that you are always, always right. That you have never betrayed a trust, never misjudged, never lost your temper in the heat of the moment. It is easy to look on from afar and KNOW that you would do it better. Far, far harder to actually live it when it is real.

swan

The Slap

2005-09-25T15:50:00.000-05:00

Alright. It is time to see if I can answer some of the questions that have been raised in the minds of those who read here about "The Slap." Some of you have been straightforward and honest with us, and simply said, "That part of all of this has caused me to wonder, or made me uncomfortable." Others have made comments of a less open, and sometimes less friendly sounding nature, often not directed to us.

I am clear that I don't owe anyone an explanation of that event/sequence of events. It is, as all of this has been, intensely intimately private. Of course, so has all the rest of this been... You've been looking all along, haven't you? This isn't about what is owed. It isn't about private or public. It is about the power of my words to somehow bring my life to some higher place for me, for us all. It is a discipline that I engage in because it heals me and teaches me and grows my love.

So, now, a week after our weekend with Loki and jewels, when I am calmer and stronger, whenMaster and I have had a chance to process a bit of what transpired, let me see if I can talk (from my perspective -- He would perhaps view it differently) about "the Slap."

I wrote in that first agonized post about the weekend--
I was useless and worthless and helpless and unpleasant and just a mess. It wasn't my intention but it is the simple fact. By Saturday night, He was so furious with me, that He ended the evening, finally so frustrated and angry that, when I was so clumsy as to spill a can of orange soda in the bedroom and then tried to clean up the mess, frantically pitching a bottle of advil onto the bed to get them out of the way, and hitting Him with them, He smacked me across the face and told me to get my ass to bed. As I stood quivering and in shock, I had a moment of utter confusion as my mind refused to process anymore. The orange soda ran everywhere and I finally just gave it up. I went to bed and remained still and rigid most of the night, afraid to move or sleep.

I've been determined, as I've written about all of this to offer no excuses, to simply report on events as they occured and to not try and explain my behaviors. I am coming to see though that without any background explanations, there are no contexts for any of it and it all seems just bizzare. So, without trying to excuse any of it, I am going to attempt to place some of what occured that Saturday evening between Master and I into a better context.

First of all, some have construed my statement that I was "useless and worthless and helpless and unpleasant and just a mess" to represent my general view of my self (an overarching self-esteem issue). This is simply not the case. I am capable and bright and strong and determined in most settings. However, in this instance, I was way below par -- not functioning at my best, for a lot of reasons. I knew it and it exaccerbated my difficulties with the weekend.

Our household comprises three working adults who keep demanding schedules. Entertaining for a weekend means that what we normally do on the weekend to prepare for the week ahead must somehow get subsumed into the evenings ahead of that weekend in order to make the space. We'd worked like wild to prepare for the coming of company. All of us were worn to a frazzle. That included Master, who had taken a day out of His already intense schedule to stay home and spot clean carpets on His hands and knees (so that I wouldn't have to), knowing that I was making myself nuts over all that needed to be done to get ready -- "Master becomes servant." For me, the work of preparing for the coming teaching week (planning and grading) had to also be squashed up into the previous week -- no small undertaking.

To further complicate things, I got slammed by an evil flu-like virus on the preceeding Sunday afternoon. It made it impossible for me to eat anything from Sunday until sometime on Wednesday. Teachers don't just call in sick like other folks do. If you are going to not show up, it means making plans for a substitute and all the rest of the crap, so I dragged myself in and taught in an old building without air conditioning in the late summer Cincinnati heat. I was dragging my ass... but dragging ass or not there was stuff that needed doing.

I am SHY. Not just a little bit shy. Really, certifiably shy. I have an MMPI (Minnesota Multi-phasic Index) that is dead-flat level normal on every scale until you get to the axis that measures shyness. Then the sucker spikes to the top of the charts. I live with a Dominant that loves to meet people -- a true and for real extrovert. T is an introvert as well, but she copes by doing the social thing. So she cooks and makes neat hor d' ouerves and good stuff. I can't do it. I sweat bullets when I have to meet new people. I need to watch from the edge. I'll walk around a store forever to avoid approaching a sales person. The first day of school always makes me nervous as a cat just because there are always new kids. I am just not good at the new people thing... It wires me up.

Of course, there is always for me at least the looming uncertainty of peri-menopausal erratic cycles. Why the heck not? Let's throw that one into the mix too. Can't have too much fun, can we. Raging hormonal imbalance is neat.

By Friday night, when the plane was due to land, the houses were looking good, but I was a wreck. I was exhausted. I had a migraine brewing. I take topamax daily to prevent migraines. It gets about 90-95% of them. When one breaks through, I can take a medication called Amerge. Amerge makes me feel like I am living inside my freezer compartment and it also makes me hideously sleepy. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to try and stay awake and try and look sociable and welcoming. I managed to hang on until about midnight.

When I finally excused myself Friday night, I had an awful headache and I was dealing with a pretty high level of confusion. I wasn't sure what was going to go on that night, but I knew I hadn't been as sociable as I should have been. I knew Master and jewels were going to probably play but I just couldn't think about it. I wasn't sure if I should go to "our" bed, or where I should go to sleep, and I didn't know if it was appropriate to go and ask. I was simply tired and unsure.

Saturday started off too early for me. Everything kicked off before there was time for Master and I to play or make love or get connected -- no time for me to check in or get "anchored."

He was so wrapped up in jewels. So infatuated, and who could blame Him? They had just a few precious hours. I knew we were planning to play that night, and I was all at sea. For a "high-end" player, I am remarkably un-self assured. I never believe I can actually do it, and I live in great fear of embarassing myself and Master in the event. If you've not played heavily in public, you perhaps cannot understand. Anyway, I worried myself into a tizzy. Handled the stress badly -- got drunk over it. I am not a very good drunk. Mostly because I do it so rarely. Drunk, my emotions got even messier. The rest of the crew consulted and decided that playing with me in such a state was not a good plan and so called the whole thing off. That disappointed me, since by then, I was inebriated enough I figured I could handle whatever was coming just fine. There's a reason why playing drunk is not a good idea... The evening went from bad to worse.

Moon gazing. Something that would never have happened at my suggestion.

Eventually it was time to call it a night. Time to head for bed. I was pretty well deflated and defeated and drunk and disorderly. By the time I got to the bed, I managed to convince myself that I had knocked my reading glasses on the floor. I looked and looked and looked and could not find them. They weren't there it turns out. I was simply nuts by now. Running in circles. Out of my head. Making no sense. Not able to make sense and not able to be calmed down.

I don't know what it was that made me go to the other side of the bed and try to turn on the light. Maybe I was trying to find the flashlight that He keeps over on His side so that I could keep searching for those silly glasses. Whatever it was, I knocked His can of soda over and spilled it. The stuff stains terribly. Now I'd made a mess in a literal sense. And I couldn't think straight about how to clean it up. I scampered to get a towel. Started moving stuff out of the way. Picked up a bottle of Advil to move it off the night table and tossed it onto the bed. It did hit Him although I wasn't throwing it at Him... I think He thought I was.

It was finally enough, though. I think He saw the spiral for what it was. For two days, no for a week of days, maybe more, I'd been screwing myself into the ground with fear and panic and upset and illness and anger and confusion and questions without answers and exhaustion and all the rest of it. He'd tried to help and tried to explain and tried to support and tried to reassure. I was having none of it. I was headed for a break down. I believe that He believed that on Saturday night. I think He stopped my spinning out of control in the quickest and most straightforward and effective way He had available to Him -- He slapped me. Once. Sharp and swift. It stopped the action and ended the escalation of my hysteria.

I didn't like it. I was hurt and angry and resentful as hell. My first impulse was to tell Him to go fuck Himself. I absolutely wanted to get my ass in my car and drive. I didn't do that. I'm glad I didn't.

We don't just spank to spice up our sex life. I didn't introduce Him to spanking and ask Him to do this. He doesn't spank me the way I like to be spanked. We are Master and slave. He loves me and wants me to be happy and fulfilled. However, I am His always and all ways. I am obligated to obey Him. He is not obligated to make me happy. When He asks me for something, He expects that I will give it. When that obedience is not forthcoming, He is generally tolerant to a very great degree, but He will have my Obedience finally...

It is not a life that many will understand. Not a life that many would choose or embrace. It is mine. I am not abused. I am loved and cherished, even when the limits on my choices are very tight.

swan

BDSM, Polyamory, Security, Love, Choices, and What it all Looks Like...

2005-09-24T17:33:00.000-05:00

There's apparently (well and obviously) been some anxiety among some who read here in the last days that what I've written indicates that I am insecure and, perhaps, less well loved or cared for than I ought to be within my family and my relationship than I ought to be, or than I deserve. I understand how it is entirely possible for people, looking in from outside, with limited ability to see the broad picture, and without much history, to take the heavy stuff that sometimes flows across the screen here and leap to conclusions that make absolute sense... Except that they really don't in this context. Because my life IS alternative, by choice, by design, and maybe by something bigger than any of that...

Those of you who have noted a tendency in me toward personal insecurity are not far off the mark. I'm strong and talented and bright and capable. I have a career of which I am extremely proud, and within which I feel remarkably accomplished. However I have a history that has left scars and it is possible to trigger abandonment issues in me without a whole lot of energy. That goes back a very long way...

I have a brother who is 16 months younger than me. He was born 3 months prematurely, in 1956, weighing 2 pounds-6 ounces. He was one very sick baby, and not expected to live. In fact, it was a wonder my mother survived his birth. Today, he stands well over 6' tall and weighs in at something over 200 lbs. In the beginning, though, he spent 6 months in the hospital. My beleaguerd parents were simply overwhelmed. They essentially handed me over to some neighbors so that they could spend their time with my brother. I understand that in intellectual terms -- it makes perfect sense to me from this distance. I don't think I was harmed or abused by that arrangement in any physical sense. However I do know that I am aware of how easy it is to be "sent away." My sense of having a place to belong is, to this day, very tenuous. It is simply not possible to talk rationally to that baby.

When I told that story to jewels, she commented that she was surprised that I would choose a life path that would so challenge that fear... I suppose that there are "safer" paths. The fact is that I tried the "secure" route of traditional marriage and family. It meant I lived a life that left me "dead" inside. The life I live today sometimes pushes me, sometimes challenges me, sometimes even scares the willies out of me -- not because of real threats, but because of imaginings that are built out of shadows. I choose to walk with those challenges rather than live a life that is numb and lifeless. My insecurities are earned and true. Like the other scars I've earned from being alive, they mean I'm human. I'm not ashamed of them. I have no intention of letting them keep me from living fully or loving fully. I'll be scared if that's what it takes. I believe that, when I'm really scared, there will be someone who loves me to hold me until the fear subsides.

Other people seem to think that maybe I'm not well loved, that I might even be abused within this relationship.

I think it is very hard to see BDSM practice described in graphic terms when that reaches a level where it may not be simply "fun" anymore. Many people play with BDSM for bedroom "spice." It has gotten to be quite stylish. That is not what we do.

Ours is a relationship that is about power exchange. There is a very high end SM component to that which is primarily about impact play. Other people engage in other kinds of SM play, but that is our primary mode. I am a masochist, but I am not the sort of masochist who tends to eroticize pain in a classic sense. I don't get much sexual pleasure from pain -- it doesn't make me cum, generally. I will crave it, sexually, if it doesn't happen in a fairly regular pattern, but it doesn't turn me on. What draws me is the loss of control that pain brings. I don't have to enjoy it for that to happen. Our play is at His pleasure. He defines the when, the where, the how. If I enjoy, then that is a bonus, but not His concern, or His responsibility. I understand that and I consent to that. I will struggle with it and I will sometimes fight it, even resent it. It is not easy to give up ever greater levels of personal power, especially when it is about things that go deep. However, it is what I came to ask for, expected when I came into this relationship, sought out here, wanted. It is different than D/s or DD in that way. And it is not abusive.

I do understand abuse. I am a card carrying feminist. Literally. I've advised many women on when and how to leave abusive relationships. Taken some out of just such relationships. I know the drill. I am not alone here either. I have a sister and a partner in T. When I am most uncertain, most shocked, most upset, she sees me, asks me, demands to know what's up. She'll take us to task and check it out. She'd never stand for anything that was over the line. But she is experienced in the lifestyle, too. She understands how different it is inside the life. It is not possible to apply vanilla standards to lifestyle realities. You can look at this but you have to be careful to not assume you know what it is you are looking at. We are different. I am different.

I am ferociously loved. Sometimes literally. And I love just as ferociously.

I chose. Once. Choosing, I laid my choices at His feet. There are no other options now. Where He takes me now, I will go. Easily if I can, or dragged by the hair. Sometimes the one, sometimes the other.

You will see the joy and elation of the one by times, and then, again, the sturm and drang of the other. If you find the unsettledness of that turmoil disturbing, there are more civilized, and probably sexier places to read.

swan

ENDORSEMENTS

2005-09-23T18:13:00.000-05:00

Recently on Lock and Ki, J from the Blog "Unwrapping the Layers" explained that she had removed links on her Blog to Lock and Ki, and to this Blog, because she so disapproved of what had been revealed about our lives over the last week. She went on to say, "I have often gotten the idea from Swan's writings that her place in her poly family is not as secure as perhaps it should be, or that she was as cared for as she deserved to be." She also said in discussing why she removed her Blog links: "....the simple fact is that a link on my Blog is a personal endorsement from me."

I don't know when I've encountered a more amazing display of arrogance and condescension. I cannot imagine anyone feeling that, based upon what they read from people sharing their feelings and experiences on Blogs, they somehow have the wisdom to be able to judge whether they are secure enough and loved enough in their family.

The concept that it is a "fact" that a Blog link constitutes a personal endorsement of that person's life is so unbelievably false it was amazing to contemplate. I read it over 4 or 5 times thinkng that obvioulsy, in my early morning sleepiness, I was misreading what was before me.

I link to people becaue I enjoy what they write as does swan. Often they are people who seem to have similar interests, and for whom commenting on each other's writing is interesting. It has nothing to do with ENDORSEMENT.

I/we do not need endorsement for my/our lives. We have not asked for any nor will we. If we were to seek endorsement it certainly would be from someone far more experienced in the practice of BDSM polyamory, not someone who's been invovled in the the life monogamously for a couple or three years and who has little community experience except via the Blogosphere.

If anyone who has links here feels that somehow they are endorsing our lives please remove your link. We do not want endorsement. We want readership. We want community. We want discussion, debate, education, sharing concerns, fears and joys. We want to reciprocate in that way with you. We do not want to be judged nor will we tolerate that.

If anyone with whom we are linked thinks that somehow we are endorsing, and therefore "putting our stamp of approval" on your life, please be advised we are not. We care about our friends and correspondents and share with them but we do not judge them whether favorably as in an "endorsement" or negatively as in a "disendorsement." What you do is not our business. It is something we care about to the extent you are open to it. That is all. If you feel we are endorsing you plesse let us know. We will unlink.

I feel we are pretty experienced as lifestyle practitioners go. There is always someone more knowledgeable and more skilled. There are a great many who are less than we are. I have developed some skills and learned a few things. One of those few concepts is that I know what is right for me and my family. I have no idea what is right for anyone else who is not part of us.

J, I have told swan to remove our link to your BLOG. We are in for another intensely busy weekend and it may be Sunday before she has time to do so. Please don't comment here. We have no need to hear from folks who feel they are so wise as to be able to judge if we are secure enough and cared for enough in our family or who feel that they somehow are wise enough to "endorse" us or disendorse us.

I would suggest in the interest of what ethics you may have that you contact those whom you have linked with and inform them that their having your link on their Blog constitutes a personal endorsement by you of their life and that if they live outside your limits you will sadly be forced to remove your link and endorsement. They should know that you feel this "endorsement" is an undeniable fact of their having your link on their Blog.

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

Slave Thoughts

2005-09-22T13:44:00.000-05:00

Along with all the rest of the emotion that is being stirred up these last days, I've been doing some heavy thinking. Part of that is because the reactions to these events have polarized people's reactions, causing them to judge what has happened through filters that, to a very large degree, discount the foundational fact that I live as a consensual slave. Those are not, for us, simply words. They define a reality that runs deep, and, while we do not practice elaborate rituals and protocols for the most part, we do live that reality at the core of our relationship. It is who we are with one another.

It is easy to equate consensual slavery with something fictionalized and sort of sexy in a kinky sense. Always at Master's command for a quick spanking and a fuck or whatever. I think it might have been Gabriel from Once Bitten who called it "Butt Sex and Blow Jobs" or some such... If it were that simple, all the cyber wannabes who lay claim to the Master/slave title would go out and buy themselves a collar and a bit of leather or a chain or a leash and life would be good.

Actual power exchange gets a whole lot more complicated when it comes down to taking away true control from one intelligent and multi-faceted and determined human being by another. Especially when you get to the layers of control that actually matter and that mean something.

I remember fantasizing about having control taken from me when I was yet pre-adolescent. All my most erotic dreams have focused in that direction in some way. As have all my most potent fears and terrors. When I first began to explore power exchange in earnest, reading and searching on line, I found, very quickly, that the places where I felt I would likely feel myself pushing boundaries were areas where I would have large bits of personal control pulled away from me. Not SM play... Control...

Slavery goes to that place.

It is common, in the lifestyle, for one to hear how a Master ought to treasure and honor a slave. Anonymous commented to that effect recently here, noting that I am mistreated and abused rather than treasured as I ought to be. In reality, I am both treasured and enslaved. There are times when I soar at His pleasure. However, there are times when He nails me with the flaws and failings He sees in my character, development and service; when He notes the places where I fail to bend to His will as I ought. He is not slow to make it clear that such flaws and failings are inappropriate and unacceptable. I am His, and He will have from me my best -- not my best effort -- my best.

This passage has been a stretch. Promises to be a stretch. I am finding I am lacking in trust. It is shocking to me. I ought to be better. I'm not. But I will be. I am sure. I will grow. I ought to be more secure. I'm not but I will be. I ought to be more generous and more open. I will learn. Our family is His to shape as He sees fit. He will steer us well. I need to see His vision.

Slavery can be joyous, sexy, thrilling. For me, it is often easy and light and fun. We are a well matched pair and the yoke I wear is usually light. But I am a slave and I do have a Master who owns me. When He calls me to obey, it is His right to do so, and there is no question as to the how or why at that point. I do not judge that. The filters that apply to other relationships do not apply to ours. It is a difficult distinction in some ways. I may quiver and I do struggle. It is what I choose. Ultimately, it is what I am and how I am best.

swan

Time Out!

2005-09-21T21:03:00.000-05:00

Ok… I have spent the past few days processing. I also didn’t read anything that either Swan or Jewels had written nor any of the responses until I got home from work this evening. I have a bunch of things to say. Some will read my writing and say “Golly, she sure as hell is no Swan.” And that is fine. We are 2 different people. We share a life. We sometimes share a brain. We do not always agree. And I certainly do not write as eloquently as Swan. I am the “silly” one. I am the one who tries to keep things light. I tend to avoid conflict when humanly possible. This is her blog. These are her thoughts. The place for her to share her heart and to work out things, hopefully with the support of a caring community of friends. I am the planner. I organize. They call me the “social director”. It is what I do and how I handle things.

I knew this past weekend was going to be difficult. Tom has been positively giddy over Jewels. I have been thru’ this before. I remember the nights I was in bed alone while Tom sat for hours online or on the phone with Swan. I remember being dragged along. I remember wishing I could be happier that he was happy. I remember being hurt, angry, frustrated and mostly scared. Swan mentioned somewhere that she feels less secure that me. I knew she would. She shouldn’t, but I knew she would. I know that I have the “law” on my side. But she has the larger chunk of his heart on hers. When things get tough, Swan will stand toe-to-toe and talk things out with Tom…. me? .... I want to go to the “Storage Condo” and crawl under the blankies. But because his heart was so entwined in this, and she has been so scared, they have talked less. There have been more passive-aggressive behaviors on both of their parts. I should know….I have done it, too. Oh, I have heard Tom telling both of us that we have nothing to be worried about. That he loves us with his entire being and I KNOW he means it. But the next breath is “Jewels….” Or then, as with this weekend, something he never did with Swan, he did with Jewels. It is more important to SHOW your love than speak your words. My head will always know that I am important and special and well loved. But if my heart doesn’t get the message, then it is all lost.

Now a little something for all of YOU…. I was here that weekend. I was around the night before “the slap”. I learned of it the following morning from Swan. I listened. I immediately had a 1-on-1 talk with Tom. I explained my concerns. He heard me. And I think that should be that from all of you. If I felt that Swan was being abused, I would be the first one to pack her bags and max a credit card to get her out of town. That was not the situation. And when I do practice discipline, it will not be because someone who hasn’t a clue what my family’s life is like, tells me I should “tag team Tom while he sleeps”! BDSM revolves around SSC and beating someone when they are asleep is a pretty sucky suggestion from a supposed “friend”. And back off of Jewels. She didn't ask for all of you "Holier-Than-Thou" types to treat her like crap. She is a lovely person. She has a heart just like the rest of us. She doesn't deserve your abuse. My Dad always said "Put your mind in gear before you put your mouth in motion. It's not what you say, but how you say it." Well, watch what you say, everyone is fragile right now. Your concern is appreciated. Your ABUSE is not.

We will all work thru’ this in our own ways. We will all be stronger. We will continue to share our lives with those around us that mean the most to all of us. And yes, Jewels and Loki, that means YOU. Tom and Swan used to say that our Clan would move no faster than the slowest member, and then move slower even still. Well, today, we shall more as slow as Swan…..tomorrow it may be as slow as me…. We shall see. But we shall see together. As a Clan with new friends. And anyhoo….I have new recipes!

T

Let me fight my own battles folks!

2005-09-21T20:34:00.000-05:00

Alright. Now wait just one gosh darn minute here.

Loki posted this comment over at Lock and Ki --

"Someone just posted an anonymous coward comment. It was addressed to jewels. I deleted it. The next anonymous coward who wants to do so, address your comments to me, Loki. Then you will see what happens when a coward meets a dominant. You will be dispatched and dismissed for the troll you are. You should go do some serious research on Loki. People mistake the popular mythology on him as either evil or a trickster. In real Norse mythology, he was neither. He was the conscience of Asgard, and when that band of barbaric egos failed to live up to their own ideals, he cut them down and burned the place to the ground, sacrificing himself in the process. Get a clue."

I'm going to assume that there was some jackass who decided it was appropriate to go after jewels on some grounds because of what has evolved between our Heron clan and House Lock and Ki...

Then tonight, when the Heretic arrived home, He told me that some number of yahoos who had, until now been linked to Loki and jewels' blog, had dropped their links!

Good grief, children!

What the heck is this? Kiddies on the playground choosing sides, childish games?

Now you are messing with me and mine. Make no mistake. I may be all a mess. I may be all turned inside out and quivery and insecure and not at all sure where my head is, but that is MY FUCKING DAMNED MESS TO WORK OUT!!!!!

Jewels is now part of this clan. So is Loki. Leave them alone. They are ours. Ours. They didn't harm me or us. They were our guests. Invited into our lives and our home. Honored and welcomed. Treat them with disrespect and you dishonor us and our friendship. Do that and just take a hike. You aren't welcome here. Got it?

No matter how rocky or ugly or scary this looks or sounds, it is simply real people, working out real stuff in real life. Grow up. Watch and learn.

swan...

Oh, and jewels....
btw. That thing about this family not just about to become 5 -- you are, I think confused about who you just hooked onto. If you are really not wanting that to happen -- I'd suggest you consider the Federal Witness protection program... Just a thought.

Raw is Potential

2005-09-21T12:27:00.000-05:00

Reading here over the next while is likely to not be for the faint of heart.

I had simply gone silent, knowing that the turmoil inside was not pretty, and opting to keep it inside rather than spew it all over here. There is no eloquence to me when my thoughts and feelings boil like they are now. I am simply raw and the words that express that rawness are not fine and polished. They spill everywhere without much to hold them back and without much finesse. I began to write again because I was commanded to. Commands are commands.

Jewels, please... We are friends. Were and are. The tenderness right now is palpable. I am sorry for that. Stay with me. I know that is a lot to ask. Thank you for the patience you are bringing to this. I am not meaning to hurt you. And I really know you meant no harm at all. I told you not to take responsibility for what is not yours. I meant it then and I mean it now.

Searabbit, your question about T is perfectly on target. She is what I hope to be someday when I grow up. She laid a path that I hope to learn to walk. She made space for me simply because I made Tom happy. I am sure it didn't necessarily make her ecstatic. She figured it out somehow. Jewels thrills Tom on so many levels. I will find this path if I have to move along it on my belly. T left me enough markers.

Jewels talked about the consensual side of things and the slapping that did, in fact, occur Saturday night. And anonymous calls it abuse... Even jack, who is a friend who has been with us for a lot of years suggests that it is perhaps time for me to walk away... The reality is that there is something in that moment that is riveting and difficult and painful and shocking. It is so elemental that it shifts the conversation and the tone. For me. For us. For everyone who thinks or knows about it. It is the quintessential act of ownership and control, when one person removes from another the possibility of believing they have a choice or an equal standing in the power exchange. I consented to His right to handle that moment in that way long ago. It didn't feel fair and it didn't feel just and it didn't feel reasonable to me in that instant. Still doesn't. I felt outraged and hurt and betrayed and humiliated, and it was His absolute right to choose to end the escalation of my behavior as He saw fit. We will, as we work through all the emotions around all of this, come to "the slap" perhaps. When we do, we'll work with whatever is attached to it. We've dealt with much bigger stuff. We know we can do that as well. He stopped a spiral that needed to be stopped. He took control. I ask Him for that. Expect it. That it infuriates and scares me sometimes is my personal internal battle.

I am raw. I am all nerves. I am frightened. I am also growing and learning. Hang on for a wild ride. I have no idea where this is going. What I know for absolute certainty is that, short of His releasing me, I'll be the slave of the Heretic when the whirling stops.

swan

Swan's Confession

2005-09-20T19:02:00.000-05:00

Master has fallen in love. Deeply. Passionately. At a level that no one anticipated, that no one expected, or went looking for, or sought. It came about because of connections made here at "The Swan's Heart," and it is intense, and it is undeniable. He and jewels are as twins, almost literally -- ask her. She can do the astrological chart stuff that proves it, but if you spend time with them, you don't need the charts. They are twins -- He and she. It is scary. The first face to face meeting of a two month whirlwind on line and phone escalation happened this past weekend when Loki and jewels (of Lock and ki) came to us here in Cincinnati and graced us with their presence and their charm and their incredible love and generosity. You can read the coherent version of the time we spent together here: http://lockandki.blogspot.com/2005/09/dotted-lines.html

They were spectacular. Together and as individuals. Amazing.

My sister-heart was stunning. Planned menus that were simply awesome in their complexity and warmth and variety. She cooked and served an array of meals and snacks that had us all reeling from the sumptuousness of the flavors. As always, she was the consummate hostess.

I was useless and worthless and helpless and unpleasant and just a mess. It wasn't my intention but it is the simple fact. By Saturday night, He was so furious with me, that He ended the evening, finally so frustrated and angry that, when I was so clumsy as to spill a can of orange soda in the bedroom and then tried to clean up the mess, frantically pitching a bottle of advil onto the bed to get them out of the way, and hitting Him with them, He smacked me across the face and told me to get my ass to bed. As I stood quivering and in shock, I had a moment of utter confusion as my mind refused to process anymore. The orange soda ran everywhere and I finally just gave it up. I went to bed and remained still and rigid most of the night, afraid to move or sleep. Dawn came finally and somehow I made it through the rest of the weekend. He made it clear to me that I'd ruined the whole weekend for everyone and so added to my utter and complete shame.

I live as part of a poly household and a poly family and it is comfortable. I never meant to be poly. It is not something I chose. It turned out that way. I've never sought to expand this arrangement. Never wanted any other partner beyond Master. I've known He spanked others when He found me. Known He has always wanted other spanking partners. There have been other possibilities. There was Jacquie at one point. She and her partner were visitors at one point, but the interest soon dissipated. We've had other contacts along the way, but nothing serious. Sort of social. That didn't extend to LOVE. I knew it was out there, but I've tried not to look. Denial worked for me. I'm selfish. I want the time that we three have. I want the simplicity of our little stable world. I want to know that when it is time to snuggle in at night, that's it -- no tricks, no surprises, no guessing. I am just bad. I understand my T, and she understands me. We have our rhythms. We know who does what and how and when.

Part of me knew that when He did find someone that clicked, He would love her, and there would be none of that silly nonsense about going as slow as the slowest one. It just wasn't going to happen that way. He gets what He wants. Always.

Enter jewels. He loves her. Totally. Loves her in ways He will never, ever love me. He knows her. She's like Him. No silly Aquarian weirdness for Him to try and decipher, none of that airy, fairy watery bullshit. Solid and straightforward. He gets it. It makes sense. He'll go places with her, that He'll never ever think about for me. See things with her I can never get Him to see. Understand intuitively for her, what I can never make Him comprehend if I talk until I'm blue in the face. Damn!

And she's perfect. Perfect size for everything. She fits on the spanking bench. Fits in the stocks. No struggle anywhere. None of the contortions that are just part of life with my tall gangly awkwardness. Back to geekiness...

They'll play, when they play, on a level that will be more equal than I'll ever get to. She'll bottom for Him intuitively and never have to wonder. She'll know what I'll never know.

So... I have someone new in my life that I don't know and don't really understand yet and I am totally freaked out. Because He loves her, my charge is to love her, too. He wants me to do that, and He sees my slowness to do that as recalcitrance, stubbornness, manipulativeness, controlling, even bitchiness. It doesn't feel that way to me, but maybe it is. He says it is. If He sees it that way, then that is the simple fact. I'm inside of this, spinning around in a whirl of emotions and stuff.

If I were going to try and make a connection and an eventual friendship, left to myself, I'd indulge in long, slow conversations, about whatever there was that we could find to talk about, whatever we had in common. I'd watch faces and eyes and listen to the sounds I heard and the silences that fell in between. I don't have that luxury. I have to make a friendship out of whole cloth. I honestly don't know how to do that, and yet that is what I must do -- not try to do. Do.

I figure now I'll really lose my mountains. There is gravity to New England now. I'd held onto the possibility but now... Time to let that go too.

And power on that side of the equation that wasn't there before. Input being fed into the system that changes the balance.

Oh well.

Give. Masters own slaves. And love as they will.

I've struggled with the hierarchy before. T has more latitude than I do. And in some ways she could exercise power over me. I've never had the sense that she does that. I know she could. Now I'm more vulnerable. No choice. No options. I don't feel good about that just now.

I'm angry and I'm afraid and it doesn't feel like something I bargained for. I know that isn't right exactly, but I still want to go out and kick things and yell and scream and rage just for a little while. There's no safe place to do that. So. So.

I'm being less than graceful about this. In the really ugly and dark times, it gets really ugly and dark. I can't go into that. I need to hold onto the light and ride this out. I need to trust that this will be OK. That it will be good.

So I've been trying to gather all my spiritual lifesavers around me and hang on.

I'm not coherent and I'm not nice and I'm not good.

Mostly I'm just almost mute.

swan

Hosting Ghosts

2005-09-10T16:41:00.000-05:00

For those of you of a certain age...
You are now entering The Twilight Zone...
We've all been watching the news reports from the Gulf Coast with a mixture of shock and horror and dismay and anger. That is as it should be. I don't want any of what I am going to say here to diminish that in any way, and I fear that there is likely to be some sense that this may make light of all of the very real human suffering that is occurring, and is going to continue to occur all through the Gulf Region. That is not my intention at all. I have been and continue to be simply appalled at the depth of the tragedy that we have witnessed these last two weeks in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and then "Hurricane Bureaucracy."

With that disclaimer, here's the reality that I've been experiencing the last night or two.

It seems that the destruction displaced not only the living but also the dead. I have a Gulf Coast ghost.

Some of you, if you've read here a bit, may know that I seem to attract ghosts. They like me for whatever reason. I am not sure what brings them in, but I do appear to have whatever that special something is, and am vulnerable to "ghost attachment" on a fairly regular basis.

I just hadn't been prepared for the likelihood that Katrina would stir up a whole raft of them and set them traveling, although when I think about it, it makes sense. The Gulf Coast is an area of our country with a long and rich history. The French, the Spanish, the English, The Acadians, all had their time there along with the Indigenous peoples of the area and the Africans who were brought in, brutally, and against their will, as slaves... It is that mix that gives the region its amazing and unique culture.

Anyway, I think my "ghost" seems to be Spanish, strong and healthy, and none too happy. He's not particularly aggressive, but he is a bit scary. He's dark haired and dark eyed, dressed in some sort of buckskin-like clothing. He does not seem to be armed, but I have the impression that he is comfortable with weapons. He's appearing in my sleep, but I am quite clear that this is not a dream/nightmare sort of encounter. I am doing my usual "ghost" talk with him -- "we are not going to harm you, but there is nothing here for you. You need to go on from here to whereever it is you were headed. we wish you peace and rest." I am feeling the need, with this one to fend him off physically, which is rare. Master has awakened me at least once while I was physically involved with my ghost, and He could see me wrestling with it. Interestingly, when He touched me, the ghost left. That is unusual, because generally, they are aware enough of others that the intervention of another person doesn't really change the interaction all that much. It is, however, not sending him away entirely. At least not yet.

Hopefully, I'll find the energy to settle the ghost enough to let him find his way to wherever he needs to be. I do find these visits very disquieting. I simply wasn't thinking in this particular direction, or I'd have been more careful about the likelihood that there'd be spirits everywhere just now...

swan

Pathways

2005-09-07T15:06:00.000-05:00

There are probably as many different reasons why people do BDSM, as there are people who DO it.

Let a few people get together and get started talking about this, either in person, or in some sort of cyber modality, and you will find that the whys are widely divergent. We surprise each other sometimes and then you get that sort of baffled, almost shocked sound that Jack made in a comment here, a few days back, when he realized that the basis for his thinking and feeling about what he was into was sort of different than maybe mine was...

It is easy to get to sounding that way, especially if you are just going along, doing your thing, not really talking much to other folks. Let's face it, unless you are lucky enough to be wrapped up in a great big, vibrant, healthy and thriving kink community in one of the major metropolitan areas somewhere, odds are that you are pretty much on your own with this stuff -- except if maybe, like us, you might have a few correspondents out here in the blogosphere, or perhaps you write and read on some listservs or the like...

So, what are your reasons for doing what you do? Where did you come from and where does it take you? Where are you headed?

For us there are so many levels, so much history, so much connection, and so much passion.

We surely found each other because of BDSM and Domestic Discipline (DD). Without it, we might never have found each other at all, and the cosmic connection, the karmic connection that we believe has tied us across lifetimes might have not been made -- we might have missed each other this time around. That's a scary thought.

Our M/s forms a structural framework that simplifies and solidifies and defines so much of our life together. In someways, it makes life for us easy and straightforward. There are some things that we just don't have to think about or struggle with. The questions are already answered and the dilemmas just don't come up. He is the Master. I am the slave. When it comes to a point of difference, His wants and desires are the deciding factor.

There is surely the charge that comes from the power exchange; the give and take and balance that we get from playing on the edge of sadomasochistic erotocism. In this, we are well matched. He likes to see me suffer in the ways that He can bring me to hurt, and I can find my own gratification in the loss of control that a descent into pain brings. It is not the pain I crave, but the surrender to His power that He forces me to in the acceptance of that pain... Mine is a convoluted sort of masochism that works for us both in its difficult sort of way.

There is a purely hedonistic sexiness to it all for us. Simply put, there is a lushness to the range of sensations that can be evoked for us in all of the spanking and caning and strapping and tickling and fisting and scratching and paddling and whipping. It is sweaty and sticky and often bloody and downright messy, but there is no doubt at the end of it all that we've truly connected with one another -- no way to remain distant and uninvolved, uncommitted from the act.

I think the other big part of this is that it opens up spirit paths. Leaves us both vulnerable to the larger universe in very real ways. When we play, we are so wild, so elemental, so completely trusting and so open that whatever is going on with us and around us is utterly exposed. We bring all of who we are out of ourselves and lay it bare, for each other. In doing that, we make it available in the world. A good session is empowering, enriching, energizing. We've come off of high-end sessions and soared for days, having transformed ourselves, our surroundings and everything we've seen and touched. The power generated in that reality can truly be amazing. However, the converse can also be true. We really try not to play when we're not good, not strong and well and healthy. We try not to play sick or angry or exhausted. We try not to play impaired mentally or physically. We don't, as a rule, use our SM play as therapy (although we've occasionally used it as a cure for a headache with some success). The fact is that playing at the level we do is simply too much of a soul/spirit risk. It leaves us too raw and too vulnerable. If there are gaps, wounds, leaks, entry points, they are breaches in the spirit. I am entirely too sensitive to ghosts, spirit mischief makers, and any manner of bogeys to leave myself open to their intrusion in that fashion. I don't play with bad juju...

Not everyone is as attuned as we are. Not everyone plays like we do. Not everyone lives the same sort of relationship that we do. Lots of pathways. Lots of ways to do this. Lots of levels. This is some of what makes us the way we are...

swan

More of Our Favorite Things

2005-09-05T13:17:00.000-05:00

I sessioned swan today with the single tail she gave me (foolish girl:) while restrained in the stocks she gave me as well. Since we have been sharing pictures of some of our favorite items I thought some of you might enjoy seeing these. Here are our stocks decorated with our Snakepit Leatherworks single tail and our Hanson ash paddle.

Here is swan already for "take off." I know that at this point she is thinking she needs her head examined for her bizarre generosity to her Master. Of course usually the target this depicts would not be clothed, and we are not shy about nudity, but thought in light of all the new regulations about posting the unclothed human form on the Internet, we would be "discreet" this time.

Here is a side angle view of the anxioulsy waiting swan. She actually whined today from the time she was placed in the stocks even before the single tail began to "sway." We are going to be working on becoming more relaxed both in the stocks and with being whipped in the weeks ahead. Life is almost meaningless without goals to look forward to. I know swan will be looking forward (as she appears to be here:)

I hope everyone is enjoying their Labor Day holiday. You can see we are:)

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

A Few of Our Favorite Things

2005-09-04T18:33:00.000-05:00

We are, as our Blog header says, a family that practices BDSM. It lies at the heart of who we are together. He's a sadist. I'm a masochist. We love and laugh and work and play, and if you ran into us on the street, or at the grocery store, odds are you would never guess there was anything at all kinky about us, but at home, in private, in our most intimate sexual expression with one another, pain becomes the currency for our connection and our erotic interplay.

We've been at it for years. Between us, there is plenty of experience, and a deep understanding of who and what we are to each other and within the lifestyle. We've long since passed the point of spanking with kitchen utensils, or with the cheaply made but massively over priced stuff that one purchases at the local adult bookstore.

We've got a serious collection of professional implements that run the gamut of impact play "toys." The range that is possible from our toybag is wide and varied. So, given that we've been into some heavy "political" content here, not to mention some intense sturm and drang on a personal level, I thought maybe it might be of interest to give our readers a look at our favorite toys. There are other goodies that we don't pull out as often, but these are the ones we keep close at hand -- the ones that are likely to come out at whim, whenever the mood strikes...

Paddles (mostly evil wooden ones, one nice leather one, and several nasty lexan ones)...

And straps ...

Whips, quirts, and canes (single tail is smack in the middle)...

And all those lovely, wonderful floggers...

Just a quickie sampling. I didn't get out all the restraints, or oddball, weird stuff, or take pictures of all the furniture type items. But I figure that those who wonder if we ever were going to talk about BDSM again deserved at least a bit of gratification...

swan

THINNING THE HERD: ETHNIC CLEANSING ON THE UNITED STATES GULF COAST

2005-09-04T12:26:00.000-05:00

Everyone should be appalled and outraged as the ever mounting death toll rises in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The assets of our federal government, FEMA and Homeland Security did not respond for days. BBC interviews of US military leaders have revealed that thousands of troops who were staged and ready to move into immediate action the day after the storm ended, remained inactive. In order for our military to take action within our borders a specific Presidential empowerment is required. None occurred for days. There was an aircraft carrier sailing behind the hurricane that was ready to sail to New Orleans right after the storm with airborn assets to assist in mass rescues and relief. It remained at sea. There were no orders from our President for them to move to provide domestic assistance.

In 2003 Louisianna State University housed and facilitated a disaster simulation bringing together FEMA, The office of the President of the U. S., Homeland Security, and private non-profit assets like The American Red Cross, The Salvation Army, etc. to plan for catastrophic eventualities in the Gulf and particularly New Orleans. They predicated their plans on a level 4 hurricane hitting the area. They predicted the effects and impact with great accuracy (a hypothetical storm they labeled PAM). They planned for immediate and massive rescue and relief to those who were unable to evacuate the region. It was predicted that most loss of life could be avoided if there were 30,000 rescues per day for 10 days immediately following the storm. The LSU Professor who hosted the planning simulation was enraged when the day after the storm the sky was not filled with waves of helicopters removing stranded victims from the area hit. They had predicted that evacuees would be housed immediately in tent cities out of the area where there would be food and medical care and sanitation. Ironically the reaction of the Office of The President's representative to the tent city idea was that U. S. citizens don't live in tents. Obvioulsy, they live in football stadiums and convention centers without food, water, sanitation, health care, or security. The Forces were staged and mustered for rescue and relief to occur. Our President chose to not activate them.

The typical incompetence of the Bush administration, the Preisident's own charactersitic dullardliness, and the leadership of his FEMA and Homeland Security Departments by men who have no previous experience in disaster management, or homeland security prior to assuming their posts, could seduce one to imagine the lack of response was simply the typical Bush administration's lack of leadership and confusion. The contradictory reports of what relief will occur, and when, seemed like typical Bush administration dishonesty, the same as the continual cacophony of lies that has issued forth about IRAQ since the earliest days of the administration.

FEMA continues to say they had no idea how the area would be effected by a level 4 hurricane and that no one could have predicted the breech of the levis at New Orleans. This is clearly false and is either a lie or gross incompetence. There were military forces ready and asking to move immediately after the storm. They were held in check for days while victims died.

This is not a result of inaction or inability. The delays in rescue and relief in the Gulf Coast were intentional. That intention was the President's and that of his top level advisors. Those area residents who had resources, education, valued job skills, and able bodies evacuated the Gulf Coast under their own power and at their own expense. They will rebuild or relcoate and go on with their lives. They are mostly representative of the Business Class--Bush's folks. Those who could not, you know those others who are not quite white and polite, those who are disabled, poor, weak, dependent, ignorant, unskilled, aged, and sick, remained. These are the bane of the Bush administration. They cost money. The existence of each one will result in huge future expense through programs like medicaid, social security, welfare, public health, etc. and their presence will complicate the recovery and rebuilding effort and will add to its cost. BTW, these are not folks who vote Republican if they vote at all.

It was clear what the effects of this storm would be. It was clear the additional deaths that would result from delaying rescue and relief services.

Now that most folks who survived the delayed rescue and absence of relief, have been plucked from the area a week after the storm, the effects of the delays in their rescue will continue. It is predicted by public health experts that a large segment of those who have been rescued in the last 3 days will likely die from myriad diseases that they will have contracted during their ordeals in the aftermath of the storm.

So now the administration can claim, "See we did it, it was just such a big storm it took a while." They won't count the dead that ensue after the fact, just as they don't count as Iraq War dead those who die in hospital in Germany.

We can all go to bed tonight knowing that our herd is slimmed. We are leaner and meaner and will become more so as the weeks and months ensue. There will be less need for support of the impoverished in the Gulf coast region. And we all know who to thank.

Folks have commented on how, when they land in the airport near Crawford, Texas their are signs everywhere saying "THIS IS BUSH COUNTRY." I thinks signs should be erected on the New Orleans Convention Center and the Superdome saying "THIS IS BUSH COUNTRY." Let's give the devil his due.

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

About my Living Room

2005-09-03T20:31:00.000-05:00

If you've read here from the beginning, you know that blogging wasn't my idea. I blog because Master believed writing would be good for me, and that writing where others would read what I would write would be better. It wasn't something I was eager to do or especially happy about in the beginning.

For the longest time, I struggled with how to write what it is that I write here at "The Swan's Heart." I couldn't define what the purpose was. Was this supposed to be a diary that was for my own internal clarity, or was I to write to somehow communicate more effectively with Master, or was I to write something for some group of nameless, faceless strangers that would read whatever wisdom I'd impart?

It didn't matter, He told me. Just write. So I've written. About whatever was going on in my life, our lives, my head, my heart.

Blogs, I think, become many things depending on who writes them. They serve many purposes. This one has become a sort of cyber living room. It's way more open than most living rooms, but except for that, the reality is that people come into what has become a sort of "front room" for our life and our family. Pretty much, all and sundry are welcome to wander in and take part in the conversations here. We try to maintain a cordial and open venue for reasonable discussion. Considering that ours is a lifestyle and a family configuration that some unsuspecting visitors might find a little bit of a stretch, most folks behave like one would expect guests to behave. It is rare to find someone that comes in and behaves in a manner that betrays a total lack of breeding or class.

When that happens it is always tempting to respond in kind. For me it is hard to resist the urge to act with outrage when someone comes into my "living room" and acts like a hooligan. I have to remind myself that I am my Master's slave, and that my responses and my actions reflect not only on me but on Him.

So The Swan's Heart will remain a place where you'll read what is in my mind and my heart. You'll hear about what is happening in my life and our lives. You'll get my honest joy, my honest fears, my honest confusions, worries, and yes, my honest anger and outrage if that is the truth. You are welcome to come on in and join the conversation anytime you like. If you are a friend and we know your name, we'll always be glad to see you again. If you are someone new that we've yet to meet, I hope you'll introduce yourself and let us get to know you. If you want to act like an ill-mannered oaf, expect us to ignore you like a bug...

swan

Words... At the end of a Week

2005-09-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

Let me be clear.
Our family is well. Living in the midwest, we are dry, safe, secure. We've watched and listened to the reports from the Gulf coast with ever growing horror and disbelief and fury. How can such misery go on and on in a major US city -- unchecked? How can our so-called "leadership" allow the appalling lack of any sort of response to even the most basic needs for relief continue? We are in the hands of madmen. In the hands of fools so far removed from reality that it is utterly frightening. I sincerely wonder if the tremors set off by the devastation of Katrina may not rock us all in ways as yet unforseen. We've no one with any clue about how to steer this boat...

Tuesday night was the appointed night for my face-off with those who were gunning for me in the parent community at school. After weeks of preparation, I made a one-hour presentation to explain the junior high mathematics program in it's entirety -- its basis in terms of the graded course of study, its foundation in terms of theoretical research and NCTM standards, its compliance with state and district standards, and the accommodations that I make to meet the needs of students of different learning styles and needs. Every family was supplied with a 39-page packet of informational materials. I took questions from the group for as long as anyone wanted to ask. The group of people who have been passing rumors and spreading gossip; those who have been most vociferous in their complaints, did not bother to attend. However, the larger percentage of my students' parents, who did come that night seemed pleased with what they heard, and were supportive. Now we'll see if the rabble rousers will go back to their caves...

Cleo, the wonder cat -- my old lady feline companion, who is about 14-1/2 years old, is terribly ill. I suspect that she is likely suffering from kidney failure. She's basically quit eating anything except a bit of turkey. Not drinking anything. Mostly just sleeping. I was there the morning she was born. She's been companion in my world for a lot of years. I know that a vet would likely force fluids, perhaps suggest dialysis, charge a lot of money, scare her half out of her wits, and make her utterly miserable. At this point, my sense is that she is not uncomfortable, she is peaceful, she feels safe and loved. Mostly, she is sleeping. I am feeling sad, but hoping, that if it is time for her to go on her way, that she finds her way easily...

There was an anonymous commenter to my last post that said that I might be letting my mind write checks my butt couldn't cash. Suggesting that perhaps a bandaid over the damaged spot on my butt would be prudent. If it were that simple, we'd have done that. Duh. We've shredded bandaids by the score trying to protect that spot. Tried covering it in a variety of ways. I've tried to support that skin with any number of creams and potions, purchased at every sort of pharmacy and health food store. Some scene folks talk about a condition called "leather butt." It implies, to some, a condition where the skin becomes tough and insensitive. Others consider it to be more like what I have experienced, a sort of thinning or brittleness that makes for an area of particular weakness. One solution that works to some degree is to spank over clothing... That can reduce the chances of that skin breaking, but has other drawbacks -- He can't see what He's hitting, and that has risks too. In reality, the fact that it bleeds isn't particularly painful from my perspective. It is "messy." It requires a level of aftercare. It is a reality that we deal with.

And then there was Loki, suggesting that He was surprised that I hadn't already known that ... What? I'm not exactly sure what it is I might already have known. I suspect that what I ought to have known was that I should have told Master of my need, sooner, more clearly, more definitively. Not let it get to the place where I was feeling so lost, so cut off, so adrift... That it was my responsibility to make that situation clear, not wait for it to become known somehow...
It is a reasonable suggestion. A reasonable expectation. An expectation that Master, Himself has of me.
There is a delicate balance that one who is slave maintains, and I think it is complicated to explain, even complicated to understand for the one who attempts to keep the balance. I know that my needs are important to Master, that He wants to know what they are. At the same time, I understand that it is not my place to make demands, to drive our play or our D/s. The pacing, the style, the nature and enactment of that is His to define and determine. With the levels of stress that were so much a part of our lives in the months leading up to the knee surgery, it was easy to let the active D/s become more and more quiessent, and chalk it up to stress, or take the blame for the fall off because of my own emotional volatility. It was easy to tell myself that it was being put on hold until things were more "normal." I told myself that He knew what my needs were and that to reiterate that to Him was to "nag" in a way that was inappropriate for a slave. So, Loki, it wasn't really that I didn't "know" so much as that I put what I knew in abeyance for the time being because it simply couldn't be made to make sense...

We've got three glorious days off. A soccer game tomorrow for the lone remaining "kid," but other than that, a relatively light schedule. Perhaps there will be time for some sincere hedonistic stuff. That would be just good for us all...

swan

The Care and Feeding of...

2005-08-28T18:58:00.000-05:00

It's been complicated. I don't think there are any simple or clear answers as to how we got into the tangle we've found ourselves in.

Some background --

If you read the header here, you know that ours is a polyamorous family -- fMf; practicing erotic power exchange (BDSM), specifically erotic and disciplinary adult consensual spanking. That upper case "M" connotes a naturally dominant, sadist at the center of our lives and our family. T and I are both collared to Him, she as His submissive and wife, and I as His slave.

What may not be quite as clear, unless you've been reading right along is that we are all of a certain age... That means that there are "issues" (like peri-menopause). Hormonal hurricanes (erratic and unpredictable) sweep through our household at roughly twice the frequency that might be considered normal in most homes, and I have the not so charming good fortune to bleed prodigiously for about 11 or 12 days out of every month. It's a party happening. We should have invested in feminine hygiene product stock when we formed this alliance... might have secured a nice retirement for the bunch of us.

Other health challenges have beset us, one after the other, for most of the last two years it seems: cataracts, migraines, glaucoma, worsening arthritis leading to a total knee replacement, hernias, appendicitis, uterine fibroids, more prescription medicines than you can shake a stick at, ever tightening dietary restrictions, and a host of medical scares that have necessitated a variety of sometimes invasive and frightening tests and procedures. Getting older has sucked -- and they call these "The Golden Years!" GAH!

I am a masochistic bottom. To be sure, there are other things that can be said about who and what I am, but elementally, essentially, irreducibly, I am a masochistic bottom. In relationship, sexually, that is as much a part of the expression of myself as my voice, my smile, my thinking, or any of the other responses that one might elicit from me emotionally, intellectually, or physically. It took me most of my adult life to come to terms with that aspect of who I am. I spent years hiding it, ashamed of it. Now, I claim it, own it, know it as mine. When it is withheld, a very real part of my sexuality withers and dies.

My masochism is not expressed classically in an ability to transmute pain to erotic pleasure. I hurt. For me, pain is pain. Too, I am not satisfied with "easy" pain -- the little hurts that simply spice things up a little. I am easily bored by the sort of slap and tickle that merely titillates. It is, in part, why Master and I are so perfectly matched. He is a sadist who enjoys hurting me, who does not particularly enjoy the role of "service Top" -- hurting me the way I "want" to be hurt. For the first year of so after we came together, we played intensely, and I howled in pain under His hand, and I bore the marks.

Then, things began to change. I came to have places on my ass where the skin routinely broke and bled during each session. Deep bruises and welts became the norm when we played and I seemed to take longer and longer to heal. Our sessions would bring up anger and rage, and He would take the brunt of my emotions. It is the burden of the Dominant. In scene, He takes it all on. It is His, all of it. He worried. About my health -- mental and physical. Add to that the very real health issues that were not related to our "play," and He began to make decisions that it simply wasn't safe to play with me anymore...

At first, it seemed that the sessions were just scaled back, or put on hold for health crises, or spread out -- weekly instead of daily. But it was a spiral. Less and less and less and less.

It was the most loving of decisions. He wanted me well and healthy and happy.

But it felt like rejection and banishment and exile. It felt as if, at a time when all the other parts of my sexuality were up in the air and questionable, that too was in jeopardy. If anything, I wanted to be pulled in tighter, bound more stringently, hurt worse. I wanted to know that, at least there, I was still the woman who felt something...

Finally, today, this morning, the damn burst. I found the words to say it so that He could hear it and understand it -- not as criticism, not as demand, not as bitchiness, not as fantasy that could not reasonably be made real safely, but as real need that, left unmet was really hurting me emotionally. Hearing it, He was able to tell me how much He'd missed spanking me the way He likes to.

So today, we've retraced our steps. Brought out the rubber paddle and the rubber strap and instituted hourly strappings. Today, I've been back in the stocks -- a place where I've not been in months and months. Tonight I'm sore and welted, and yes I've had that silly place on my butt break open and bleed repeatedly. But I'm feeling safe and held and seen and back where I belong again.

swan

Feelings

2005-08-25T17:07:00.000-05:00

It is back to school for me.
And it feels too soon. I'm really not ready. Oh, I'll do OK in terms of the course material, but I'm emotionally drained, and that is not a good thing when there are 50 adolescents walking through your door every morning at 7:30 AM. It isn't something that a person can fake. You've got to love them, and you've got to have the energy to take whatever they bring you of their lives and their hearts and give what you have to give them -- wholly and fully or it just isn't good enough. I am just so tired.
And I am acutely aware that I am a stranger in this community. It is so provincial. So conservative. So wary of me -- of my wildness, my "foreign-ness." These are people who have lived their whole lives in this neighborhood, who all live within a few blocks of their parents and cousins and aunts and uncles. Many of them have never traveled out of the neighborhood, much less the city... I've left my home, my family, divorced my husband... I'm living here, miles from my home, rootless and with no discernible reason for being here. To them, I am a gypsy, and therefore a dangerous and mysterious woman. I threaten everything they value and believe in. They mistrust me at very deep levels. I am a subject of gossip and open dislike for many of them. The weird rumors that swirl around me are almost funny if they weren't so downright mean... I'd leave if I didn't need the gig. If there weren't the kids... I just love the days that I spend in the classroom working with the magical kids...

And I am finding myself feeling shy -- Noticing my shyness again. We're connecting to some new friends again. Making new connections. Opening up and forming relationships. It is good. Makes for the potential of less loneliness and less isolation. This is a positive. But it exposes me to strangers. People I don't know. Master gets all wound up and excited and jazzed. I find I want to back into a corner and watch for awhile. Listen and hear and watch and observe and just get the feel for it all. It scares me. Makes me nervous. I'm not a person who makes friends easily. Not a cocktail party sort. Let me just go slowly... I'm the sincere introvert in the triad. So, I'm feeling socially overwhelmed.

And there is energy flowing every which way... Eeek.... Like an electrical storm gone wild. I can't control it. Can't channel it. Can't make it be nice. Can't make it be tidy. All I can do is try to hold on to the currents and direct them. I am the one who reflects, deflects, vibrates, overloads, and ultimately just short-circuits with all the various frequencies in the family. Crispy critter...

Did I say fragile?

swan

Violet Wand

2005-08-21T14:34:00.000-05:00

One of our most esoteric toys -- the violet wand -- almost got lost in my divorce.

For those of you who don't know, a violet wand is an electrical toy. It generates static electricity, and is based on a Tesla coil. They are the descendents of quack medical devices, popular in the 1930's, when they were thought to cure darn near everything...

This one is a newly manufactured device (many on the market today are re-manufactured, older models). It has numerous attachments, most of them glass, capable of delivering a variety of electrical shocks (of varying intensity) to the body of the "victim." Using it takes some care, although it is not a particularly risky sort of play.

T and I are both great fans of the wand. Master is not particularly fond of the critter. He finds the sensations it delivers to be "creepy."

Purchasing such an item is not a small investment. I think that when the former husband and I bought this thing, we paid nearly $400 for it. I have kicked myself for letting it slip out of my grasp, especially since I was quite sure he was not likely to use it. In fact, when I got up my nerve and asked for it back, he put up no fuss at all, and relinquished it quite easily.

Now, we have it. We just have to figure out who and how and when we're going to play with it. May be us girls will just have to break the beastie out... Ya think?

swan

One way to get my feathers ruffled...

2005-08-21T14:22:00.000-05:00

It always surprises me when it happens. Maybe because it is rare in our fairly small social circle.

When we are out among "scene" folk, the likelihood is that everyone we encounter understands the protocol that says "don't mess with what doesn't belong to you," so it is almost never an issue there.

So I get surprised and taken aback, and then just a little bent when the assumption is made...

I'm submissive and I'm female. Those simple facts do not, however, have any significance in any universal sense. I do not find it necessary to respond submissively to anyone who comes within my sphere of awareness. Assuming that I will do so is bound to create a clash of wills. My submission is specific and selective. It is given to Master, and is His to command. For Him, the answers are all, essentially variants of "yes, Sir." That is not true, in any way, shape, or form for anyone else on the planet.

Every now and then, I run into someone who seems to think that encountering a submissive female (it doesn't appear to me that submissive males evoke this response) is a lot like finding someone else's child out in public unsupervised and behaving inappropriately -- they just can't resist the urge to try and "do something about it." These types, knowing that I am submissive, while otherwise decent folks, tend for whatever inexplicable reason, to fall into patterns of interactions, however subtle, that just assume that I will answer to them just as I answer to Master. That, with them, as with Him, there is no polite "No, thank you," within our conversational lexicon. Inevitably, I end up having to get pushy or even GROWLY before we come to understand one another.

Sheesh!

Oh, yeah! Want to see a swan in full, ruffled up, ugly bird mode?

swan

Thinking about Subspace

2005-08-16T17:08:00.000-05:00

Malcolm asked about subspace --

"I wonder what is on the other side of that space? Do you ever feel like going there - if there is a "there"?"

I think it is terribly difficult to talk definitively about subspace. Those who have tried to describe the experience seem to have such widely divergent personal visceral reactions to it. I've read accounts by many, and wondered if we'd shared anything that was even remotely similar...

I've also heard the physiology and biochemistry explained in terms of adrenaline and endorphines and a whole cocktail of naturally occurring compounds that the body can generate in response to pain, stress, anxiety, fear, etc. I'm sure that physiology is, in part, responsible for the sensations that people report feeling as "subspace," but I am also convinced that there is more. If it were simply a matter of triggering the physiological response, then I'd have not experienced this long dry spell. Surely, we've played at intensity levels that were more than adequate to trigger the biochemistry.

Malcolm's question about "there," and "beyond there" intrigued me, because, although I use language that speaks of subspace as a place, that is really imprecise.

For me, at least, entering into subspace isn't about changing location in any sense. It is more about shifting perception. I don't leave or go *anywhere.* In fact, the subspace shift, really allows me, to "stay in a scene or session" in a way that is significant.

What changes, when I enter subspace is the way in which I perceive the sensation of pain, the sounds I hear, the temperature of the room, textures, distances, the passage of time... Surprisingly, it is not that my tolerance levels are increased, or that difficult sensations are lessened, so much as that my "mental distance" feels like it increases. Everything slows down and spreads out, brightens and sparkles more, is more shimmering and more lovely -- so that I can appreciate it, take it in, and process it more easily. It is as if my brain steps up to a level of functioning that keeps it from getting overwhelmed and swept away in the whirl of sensation and panic that can send it spinning out of control without the glow of subspace.

I am, suspecting, this week (as I think about it) that what has kept me from subspace for so long may have been another kind of perceptual shift -- or inability to make a perceptual shift.

I think that subspace puts one into a place of particular vulnerability, softened, quieted, observant but disinclined to take oneself out of the way of what is occurring. It comes when there is a willingness to trust, to be completely without any defenses. I don't think that perceptual shift is easily made when there is fear or anger. It may be that I have been holding out -- holding on to fear and anger that should have been put aside long ago. It hasn't been fair. Hasn't been conscious. Has hurt us both.

swan

Coming Together Again

2005-08-14T17:13:00.000-05:00

We are Master and slave. Always, and all ways. It is not something that we do. It is something that we are.

When we first came together, to live with one another full-time, we resisted adopting that language. It seemed too torrid, too lurid, too laden with the overtones from overblown fiction that were simply no part of our lives. Reality eventually convinced us that we belonged to each other in this way, and we came to use this descriptive language to designate the truth of what it is we are with one another.

This passage of time has tested our understandings and our perceptions of how that works. The power that we hold between us has been balanced most delicately in these weeks when Master's physical strength and personal wellness has been compromised and gravely challenged; when it has fallen to me to support, manage, guide, cheerlead, and sometimes even push...

We've had to reign in our natural proclivities and essential personae to a degree that has been fairly significant. Once or twice we've danced at the edge of snapping at each other -- and pulled back, knowing the stresses with which we were each dealing and understanding what was at stake. Too, we've believed fervently in the day when all would ultimately be restored to its rightful place, when health and healing would be achieved and we could each pick up our own mantle again and resume our positions in the dance...

Five weeks doesn't seem like a long time. Really. Except when it seems like an eternity. Dominance and submission is a delicate thing. Patterns laid down on top of patterns -- carefully and consistently, over weeks and months and years. Built into memory and reflex and habit. Our patterns have been -- not broken exactly, but set aside because they simply could not serve our reality in these weeks. The slave, in serving, had to put aside the former demands and requirements of the collar for the duration...

And the duration was without any specified boundary or limit. Nebulous. When He was well, then... Indeterminate.

I've found myself edgy just lately. Balancing on the razor edge. Unable to relax. Jittery, jumpy, depressed. Knowing it would not be always like this, but not "knowing."

So...

One night this last week, as we headed for bed yet again. Late. As I prepared the coffee for the next day. Locked the doors and put out the lights. Hunted down the cell phones to get them onto chargers. Turned down the bed. Found the pillow for under His knee. Retrieved the pillows that He uses on the therapy table and brought them back to the bedroom. Got ready to take the compression stockings off and wash them out -- ready for tomorrow... He looked at me suddenly and asked, "Where is your collar?" I told Him, and He said, "Get it and put it on." I did as I was told. Almost grumpy. Almost pouty. He took me by the hand and took me out the door and to the car, putting me, not in the driver's seat where I've been now for weeks, but in the passenger seat. I was speechless. We drove into the night with Him at the wheel -- a scary proposition, but I remained collared and quiet. He took me to a local pub and marched me inside to explore the possibilities for a beer I might like since my favorite Thai beer is no longer available locally. We sat and talked and drank and enjoyed the company of the young bar tender for perhaps an hour or 45 minutes. Then home and to bed, calmer and relaxed than I've felt for weeks...

Yesterday, as we awoke, He decided to indulge me in a session with the leather floggers that I so love, and which we hardly ever use. We began with me displayed over a pillow, and I struggled not with the implements but because of muscle spasms in my back. Still, I wanted to manage it because it was so unique to have leather and not wood as the implement. Even so, the intensity built quickly and I was soon crying frantically. One of the "tricks" of lying on the bed for "play" is that I can only hear if I turn my head so my good ear is up. That generally means I cannot see what He is doing and what implement He is using, so I did not know what it was that had reduced me to such upset. He took a few minutes to talk with me. Asking me who's I was, and for how long, and... It is our standard litany, and serves to center me and calm me in most cases...

When I'd settled down a bit, He started back in with the latigo flogger. It is the heaviest and meanest flogger in the arsenal. If I'd seen it coming I might have fussed, but I didn't. Instead, I felt only the heaviness and the depth of the thud. And then, I felt myself slide over the cliff into subspace...

I've not been to space in well over a year. Have believed I'd not go there ever again. Have thought I'd lost the "knack." Or that perhaps our sort of "play" precluded that for me. Yesterday I went there and stayed there for (apparently) a good long while. It seems He took full advantage of the situation to up the ante even further, bringing on some even more extreme toys, a knife or two, and, yes, even one of His beloved paddles... I simply floated happily along humming and cooing at the end of the string He held.

I eventually found my way back in and was sufficiently coherent to manage the "stupid, spacey, dizzy one" fucks...

I think we're coming together in our proper places again...

swan

The Heretic's Quirks

2005-08-14T11:47:00.000-05:00

First of all, I want to concur with t. Searabbit definitely needs a good spanking and noting how cute she is, I'd love to volunteer to do the honors:)

Categorizing my idiosyncracies could take some time were I to become at all comprehensive about it. I have a number coming to mind, some of which are minor and others more far reaching.

I tend to eat one food item at a time on my plate and then to go onto another and when that is consumed yet another. I'm not a eat a bit of this, and then a bite of that, kind of guy.

I create chaos. Everywhere I am I leave piles of stuff in my wake. I am just not capable of creating environmental order. If I find myself in the environment of some truly obsessive person who has everythig neatly put away and organized I will likley find a way to mess it up.

I've always believed that I was in charge of things and that the world was to conform to my wishes. It made for a lot of shall we say "interesting" encounters with parents and authority figues as a boy. It is really no wonder I have a thing about spanking:)

I am an inherently political animal. I cut my teeth throwing rocks at cops in the 60's and 70's fighting to end the Viet Nam War. I was not a pacifist. I was a fighter. I've never been pacifist about anything in my life. I eventually learned that there were better ways to effect change than throwing rocks in the street (although there are days I'd give anything to have just one good riot again:) I'm a poliitacl activist in my public life. I spend early Sunday mornings listening to Sunday morning news programs. I'm in love with Air America Radio and some of the other new "progressive talk" radio formats that have sprung up. I think possibly Cindy Sheehan could be the spark that ignites the movement to take us out of Iraq at long last.

I love knives. I find them sensual, and when I can I usually carry several. I handle them and pracitce with them and incorporate them into my sensual play. I have a collection of hundreds of them.

It will come as no surpirse to folks who read here that I love to spank women and am obsessed with collecting spanking implements, furniture, restraints, etc. I have likely never met a woman under the age of 75 I haven't wanted to spank. Spanking is my primary expression of connection, excitment, fun, erotic arousal, and sensuality. I awoke this morning fantasizing that someone was referring groups of three and four young women to me for spankings which they were required to accept. I was then having them strip and placing them in my stocks for blisterings with my rubber punishment strap. Shortly thereafter sue and I were fucking like teenagers:)

Oh yeah, I know one, I'm a confirmed drinker. My current favorite is Jameson's Irish Whiskey. I also drink an occasional vodka, as well as dry white and red wines with dinner. I'm not much of a beer fan. I'm pretty dedicated to controlling carbs in my diet and beer gets in the way.

I am a type 2 diabetic and am the poster child of diabetes control dealing with diet, exercise, and oral medication. It is not uncommon for me to be asked by physicians if I really have been diagnosed as diabetic when they see the numbers resulting from my glucose and hemogolbin A1c tests.

I'm ADHD. I won't be taking stratera. ADHD enables me to think about numerous things simultaneously. Thirty percent of U. S. corporate CEO's have ADHD. I'm one.

That exhausts my cataloging of quirks for the moment.

All the best:)

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

More Idiosyncracies -- T's List

2005-08-14T08:38:00.000-05:00

::: singing ::: "T thinks searabbit needs a spanking"...

ok here goes..

1. I am a reader. I read everything. I read online. I read all types of books. I read labels. I read catalogs. Tom is fond of saying that I am the only person he knows who reads cookbooks for pleasure! "BT"....before Tom.... I used to read 5-7 books weekly. But since it "Takes a village to raise a Dominant", I read about 3 a week now.

2. I am a fusser. If there is something on my plate I will worry it to pieces until it is done. If we have someone coming over, I will stay up late getting things cleaned up and organized and prepped so I don't have to work hard before they arrive or while they are here. I have also become a list maker and that just makes me sick to my stomach....guess I am growing old, but invariably I will leave for the store for a few necessary items and come home with everything but the 1 item I needed most....so now I "list"....grrrrrr

3. I like to get out and do something atleast 1 weekend a month. Swan & Tom would be tickled to death to stay home every weekend, hunkered in the condos, but I am the "social director". I am always on the lookout for new and interesting events or trips for the clan to make. Lately because of the bionic knee, we have been hampered. And Tom hates the heat and Swan hates the crowds. But I am going to get them out and about again soon, or I will just have to start traveling alone ...or maybe I will find me a sweet young thing...someone just dirty enough to play with who is strong enough to carry my bags...LOLOLOL!!!

4. Swan misses her Mountains and I miss my trees and camping. I used to backpack. I have always been a "fluffy" gal. But used to be more physical. I am doing all the prep for a gastric bypass surgery. When the surgery is done, and I am healthy, I want to pack again. I want to camp and see real trees. Not ones a nursery shoved in the ground. Ones Mother Earth birthed Herself. Yep, looking forward to that. Camping to Himself is the Red Roof Inn instead of the Marriott. I want to sleep under the stars on a trail again before I am too old to appreciate it.

5. I am a shopper. That is not to say that I have to buy to be happy. I am perfectly content to go to a store and just shop. It relaxes me. Swan hates shopping, so I do most of the grocery shopping and 95% of the Christmas shopping. And that is fine with me. I like getting out in the stores. I LOVE finding a great bargain. I like quirky stores. I like flea markets. When I was very little my dad would dress me in jeans and tennies and haul me along to junk yards, looking for parts for a car he was restoring.. I like to think of Dad when I find that special something.. I know it tickles him to see me carrying on tradition.

Your turn Tom!

T

Triumphal Knee News

2005-08-11T15:39:00.000-05:00

We saw the surgeon today.
Tomorrow, the "bionic knee" will be 5 weeks old.
Master's recovery and progress is simply remarkable.
He is walking on His own two feet without assistance of any kind -- carrying a cane with Him in case He should need it, but generally, not using it.
He has bent knee flexion of 122 degrees (with a prosthesis which we were told would probably only go to 120 degrees mind you) and can now straighten his leg to within 2 degrees of perfectly straight.
He has not taken any pain medication except some occasional Ibuprofen for about 2 weeks.
He and I walked about a half mile over the weekend.
He is riding the exercise bike each day and is over 10 minutes now -- increasing His time daily.
He is learning to balance on His right leg, bearing all of His weight on the new knee.
He now says His arthritic left knee hurts more than His new right knee...
He has some stiffness and swelling, but not much pain.
His physical endurance improves each day.

To each of you who sent Him and us, postive thoughts and healing energy, you cannot know what that meant to us all. Thank you, thank you, thank you. He has come so far, so quickly and you, all of you, were a very real part of supporting Him and our family through that...

swan

Idiosyncrasies -- Me?

2005-08-10T11:27:00.000-05:00

Searabbit tagged the three of us. Wondering about idiosyncrasies in the Heron clan (like that isn't strange enough for all of you). It is ramping up to sincerely busy here and I expect the writing is going to get sparser pretty soon, but let me see if I can take a stab at the "swan" idiosyncrasies (or at least some of them):

1. I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime. Get me warm. Leave me quiet. Helps if I'm flat, but isn't a requirement. I sleep just fine sitting up. Once I'm out, there's no way to wake me up gently either -- stand back when you wake this one up because I'm going to come up with a start and probably swinging...

2. I'm cold. All the time. Need warm socks, warm sweat shirts, warm jammies, warm blankies... And of course I live with folks who are hot all the time -- who keep the air conditioning turned up and the heat turned down, and who kick the covers off or sleep on top of the blankets. I am doomed to freeze. It is the one serious, major, huge incompatibility in our relationship.

3. I drink expensive beer. My favorite is a Thai malt liquor called Sing Ha. It runs about $11.00 or $12.00 a six pack (more by the single bottle -- as in a restaurant) if you can get it. The supply is not very reliable. The good news is that I don't drink much. I'm likely to drink maybe one or maybe two a month... Not a cheap beer girl, but still a relatively cheap date...

4. I hate Christmas and all the stuff that goes with it. All the trimming. All the singing and present shopping and all the surprises and all the gatherings and parties and general happy happy stuff. It makes me nervous and jittery and jumpy and crabby. I become the Grinch. Makes me want to find a sunny beach somewhere and hang out and have a nice cabana boy bring me expensive beers... Of course, I live with Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus. Bah! Humbug!

5. I find I don't like rivers. Having spent most of my life in the Colorado Rockies where there are streams, that rush and leap over rocks and that are often narrow enough that a person can jump across them -- that are crystal clear and icy cold, I get creeped out by these big, wide, murky, slow moving, muddy, flat-land rivers. They scare me with their propensity for flooding from storms that happen hundreds of miles away. They seem to harbor ghosts in their swampy bottom lands and their swampy bottom ghosts seem to like to catch onto my spirit and tag along with me just for fun. Ick!!!

I'm sure the spice could list dozens of other "endearing" qualities that they think are weird and quirky... but that's probably enough for now...

Will leave this open for Master and T to finish up their lists...

swan

Changes and Following

2005-08-08T14:04:00.000-05:00

When we first came together to live as fulltime M/s partners three years ago, we shared enormous hungers that had been long denied in each of us....

He'd not had a really viable spanking partner that He could count on day to day. T's illness and attendant surgeries, had taken her out of that role, and the occasional friends that had come and gone as casual play partners had not filled the void.

I'd long suppressed my needs and desires for a Dominant spanking partner who would not view that part of my persona as deviant, sick, or wrong. My husband of over 25 years had tried to meet my spanking wants, but was very much NOT into it and left me more unsatisfied than if we'd never explored at all...

Finding each other and having the opportunity to meet our so long suppressed needs with one another unleashed a tidal wave of SM energy that swept us away in the first year of our time together. We spanked with an intensity and abandon that was Titanic (and probably not prudent). We literally whipped the hide off my ass. It set a bar that probably should not be the one against which I mentally measure myself nowadays -- but I do and always will remember those wild months.

He, (older and wiser, perhaps?) assures me that we simply must bow to the fact that we are not 20 and 26 years old, but rather 50 and 56 -- that there are physiological realities that accompany this chronological fact. Boy does that suck, Sir! He tells me that He is more than satisfied with me, but no longer driven by that same hunger and deprivation that fueled that wild orgy of three years ago. We'll still spank, and as He heals, the intensity level will come back -- fear not... Still, there will be a need to allow me to go through post session healing and it simply takes the time it takes. Fact and reality. Age is what it is.

And He wonders if I'll follow where He'll take me? I don't know what that might mean. I don't know, where besides this place, far across a continent, He intends to take me next. I've followed as well as I know how, thus far. I'm sure there are further journeys for me and us to make. I will do what I can to follow as best I can...

swan

SM Confusion

2005-08-06T21:17:00.000-05:00

I bleed, I blister, I bruise, I welt, I cry and rage and sometimes break... When we play the way He likes to play, the way He fantasizes about playing, it marks me physically and emotionally. He worries about damaging me; harming me. So He backs way off; giving me time to recover and heal.

It feels, to me, like being cut lose. Like I have failed the test. Until today, we haven't talked about it.

I think it is making us both sad and confused -- not sure how to go forward from here. Love makes SM way more complex sometimes.

swan

Telling this story once and for all

2005-08-04T15:09:00.000-05:00

It's time to tell this story once and for all. I'm done.

I am the oldest of four children and I am the only daughter. My brothers were 16 months younger (born 3 months prematurely), 5 years, and then 10 years, younger than I was. My mother was 27 and my father was 34 years old when I was born. I was the product of an unplanned pregnancy, and the wedding occurred after I was conceived. I don't really know how my father felt about that, but my mother was a party girl, and I am quite sure that becoming a wife and a mother did not fit with her plan for her life at that time.

Those who observed us from the outside saw us as the perfect 1950's / 1960's family. What I notice, when I look back at the many photos taken of us in those years is that I was a child who did not smile. Not ever. No matter what the occasion. I cared for my younger brothers, shepherded them to be quiet and kept them well away from behaviors that might irritate, aggravate or agitate my extremely volatile mother. I was a worrier.

I have been asked many times, over the years, if I was abused. I've never been able to recall anything specific, although I can point to a number of parental behaviors that would qualify as "emotional" neglect if not abuse.

Somewhere along the line, I figured it didn't matter much -- what mattered is what I did with my life. The best revenge was living well -- right?

Then Master and I started playing intensely and I started having fairly frequent odd lapses into panicky places where I'd find myself sobbing and sweating and shaking, begging not to be sent to "the dark place," not to "be left alone," promising to be good -- "please, please, please!!!" It really never made any sense in context with what we were doing at the time. We usually didn't use blindfolds and so the darkness reaction was way out there and He never leaves me alone in session. Sometimes, when it would come up, we'd end the session, othertimes, He'd work with the panic, but continue the session until I'd calm down and get it back in control. Eventually the number and frequency of these episodes diminished, but an interesting thing happened for me. I began to form a coherent image:

-- an underground storage space like a cellar or a crawlspace with a wooden door that lifted up in order to enter it
-- a sturdy, hand-made ladder that led down into the space which had a dirt floor except for a concrete pad at the base of the ladder
-- some automobile tires stored in the far back corner of the space
-- wooden shelves that ran down the left hand side of the space where there were gallon paint cans and cardboard storage boxes and canning jars and assorted other household items stored
-- dust in the air
-- wooden floor joists overhead
-- being carried, as a small child, down the ladder and deposited roughly on the concrete floor and then left there in the dark

It might be that none of it ever happened. The images seem very clear to me... and very detailed... and absolutely wordless... I never had any sense that any of that was there (in accessible memory) before I began playing at extremely intense levels sadomasochistically with Master. I now believe that the images represent pre-verbal memories of actual events that happened to me. I believe that my mother actually carried me, as a very small child (before I was talking) into the crawlspace of the home we lived in at the time, and left me there in the dark. I don't know what reason she might have had for doing that. I also believe that it stopped at the point that I became verbal enough to say anything about it that might have tipped off my father.

To this day, I've never been able to connect with the woman who bore me. She is, for those who know her socially, bright and charming and the life of the party. With me, she is rude, insensitive, uncaring, unkind, distant, self-absorbed, disrespectful, and just downright mean and nasty. I've spent a lifetime trying to figure her out and bridge the gap. Now she is 78 years old and I'm 50. There aren't that many years left. Where does one decide that "filial duty" ends? Even 1200 miles away, she can destroy my peace and stability with a simple phone call, leaving me agitated and jittery for days. Nowadays, her "reason" for being ugly to me (as if she ever actually needed one) has to do with her disapproval of my poly lifestyle. Of course, when I was living in the most vanilla of monogamous marriages, her rationale for being nasty was that she hated the man I was married to...

I don't think I hate her. I don't even think I'm angry anymore. I've wanted her desperately along the way. Wanted my mom at lots of points in my life -- wanted A MOM. Wondered, sometimes if I would have done a better job of parenting my own kids if I'd known more about "being mom" in anything other than the "negative" sense -- what I didn't want to do... Now though, I just want to stop expending energy in fending off her energy.

I'm done. If she is going to come into my life, it needs to be on my terms or not at all: polite and respectful and gentle. That's it. No more destruction and no more dumping me into the darkness. I won't go there for her anymore. I'm big enough and strong enough that she can't take me down that ladder anymore.

swan

All Our Starts Are Good Starts

2005-08-02T17:54:00.000-05:00

I'd thought about responding to swan's previous blog post "Tough Start" here, but had eschewed the idea, feeling I had responded in person. It seems to me, as I read further here, that I've failed to communicate. I feel like I've been caught up in a critical scene from "Cool Hand Luke:)."

sue you have cared for me to an exceptional degree of excellence for the last three and a half weeks. This began prior to my surgery with your helping me deal through my terrors as this surgery which I'd dreaded, and delayed, for a decade approached. Your care included helping with T to hold pans under me as I puked repaetedly in reaction to the morphine I needed to get through the immediate post-surgical pain. It included (you and T taking turns) punching my morphine button on my PCA unit every 6 mintues as I commanded you to despite harassment from my nurses. It included holding my urinal at night when I got home and my knee was too stiff and painful to make it to the bathroom, and adding new ice all night to my "cooling system" (a perverse sort of thermal bondage system we finally figutred out was an insurance scam the orthopedic medical community has bought into hook, line, and sinker:(.

You helped me do my initial, horrific PT sessions; as you help me continue them today. When my leg not only hurt terribly, but I freaked out because it would not respond and acted like it was paralyzed, you held me while I cried and comforted me and told me it would get better. You were right. You can't know how much that means.

You have fetched my back scratcher a thousand times I think, and gotten my so many pops and coffees and pain pills and sandwiches and towels and...........

You have pushed my leg up into flexion when I've needed it no matter how it hurt (you and me both). You've then supported me through the healing.

You've rejoiced as they've told me routinely that we are 2 weeks ahead of schedule in my rehab. Part of that is certainly my willingness to work and to hurt and go on. Much of it I could never do If it wasn't for you holding me, and not over reacting when I do hurt, and then smothering me with support when I break down........which I have not done often.......but which I have done.

I could have had no better slave. You have been supported by your sister, T who has done all she could for us both, but who, too, had to go back to work to maintain our economic reality.

We are struggling now to return to sexual, D/s, and SM reality. I have no trouble returning to active Dominance with you. I am your Master and while that role has been dormant for the last three and a half weeks, I have never left that role in my soul. You are mine and you have been mine without fail throughout this time.

I love you. I cherish you. You are MINE. You will recover your orientation as a bottom (which has not been without struggle for sometime anyway.)

sue, if you are not spanked for two weeks you are frustrated. If then you are spanked two days in a row you are traumatized. This is not a fault in your orientation as a masochist or slave. It is the result that our play is extreme and hurts.

I love it when we play and you love it. I love it too when you struggle. I love it too when you suffer.

There never has been a Master more well served!

I will not tolerate your denigrating yourself. You may share your feelings honestly and openly. You may tell me you don't feel sexy or attractive and we will deal with it. You may not tell me you are not sexy or attractive. You may tell me you feel you are not a good slave. You will not tell me you are not a good slave.........or if so, I bet you will not do it more than once. More importantly you will not tell yourself that.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

Thank you is inadequate to express my gratitude.

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined,

Tough start...

2005-08-01T21:50:00.000-05:00

Not a good start this morning.
I fussed all night.
He'd talked about putting me in the stocks and using the whip -- and I saw Him falling and me not being able to get lose and not being able to help Him. It scared me terribly. I couldn't sleep.
And I've not been feeling attractive, sexy, pretty. I'm working hard. I'm caring a lot. I'm tender and I'm worried and I'm wanting so much for this to go well. But I'm not feeling much else...
And then the paddling started this morning, and I broke. Sobbing. Struggling. Not able to hold it. Wailing that I wanted to be away from here in this place where I am so foreign...
It was a terrible start to the day...
Sigh...
Then it was time to get breakfast and get cleaned up and get the &)*^&&%^))* compression socks on and get Him to PT. Life goes on even if I am a sucky slave sometimes...

swan

Spanked -- Rehab Progresses

2005-07-31T21:31:00.000-05:00

The knee replacement was three weeks old on Friday. Progress has been good -- everyone we talk with remarks at how very well He is doing; how quickly He is gaining strength and flexibility and mobility. All we could have hoped for and more.

We resumed regular, vanilla sexual activity (with remarkable success and very little difficulty) days less than two weeks after the surgery. Hooray for us! Way better than we expected.

But the knee is stiff and sore and achy and the muscles don't always respond the way He wants them to. He gets tired easily. Nothing is the way it was before, and it certainly isn't "better" yet than it was before the surgery. It will get to that eventually, but it isn't there yet. It has been a damper on His spirit. To make a long story short, we've fucked, but we haven't spanked. He hasn't been up to it -- hasn't been interested, or at least hasn't been interested enough to initiate anything much.

I understand intellectually. Healing and wellness and full recovery takes time. To gain strength from such a major surgery requires more than the simple healing of the visible wound. The required rehabilitation of this knee is grueling and exhausting and, beyond that, emotionally devastating. I know. I am aware and the part of me that is logical and rational and sane and sensible is perfectly clear that it is just going to take time.

But there is the other part of who I am. The part of me that is truly a masochist. That relates through the submission and connection of pain received at the hand of this One... That part of me has waited and held my breath and listened intently for the return of the voice that calls me to be there. To come to Him and be held close and be hurt and allow and accept the hurting. The longer it has been, the harder it has been to feel the connection, to feel wanted, to feel real and alive and here. What I know and what I feel begin to move apart in the absence of this connecting. And knowing that it makes no sense doesn't change the reaction.

So when the time came this morning for a spanking, I was almost afraid to believe it was really real. Not sure He was serious. Tender from feeling alone and lost and cut lose for this span of time... I piled up the pillows and went over them, still with questioning in my eyes and in my heart. Felt the collar and the cuffs... and then the tears and sobs began -- not because I was afraid (although I was, some), but because I'd been so long "alone" without His hand on me in this way that I so need...

He stopped, wondering what brought my tears. I almost couldn't tell Him. The emotion was so deep and so wordless. I'd been so lost without Him. No blame -- just the reality of this passage.

When He knew I was alright and just awash in my feelings, He went after me with intent and intensity. He surely did not spare me because it had been so long. There were paddles and the cane and the leather strap -- welts and blisters and blood drawn and groans and grunts and sweat and cries and sobs. I begged and thanked Him and writhed under His hand. When it was over we made love and I curled into Him, sated and exhausted and home again.

Thank you for my spanking, Sir.

swan

Forever...

2005-07-29T15:05:00.000-05:00

In response to Master's declaration of His ownership of me in our post about the cutting, Malcolm commented:

"I think about the assertion that anyone can belong to someone else exclusively for ever ... I could never make such an assertion; nor could I agree that one person can "own" another. Bodies, personalities, yes; but souls aren't in the business of owning and being owned. Free of this 3-D universe, time and forever have no meaning. Tom and sue both may have other tasks in separate times and places in other lives, separate allegiances and responsibilities - who knows? It's nice to dream of "mine forever", but that dream, like every other dream, like every attachment, must be relinquished eventually. We cannot "enter the kingdom of heaven" without relinquishing all our attachments. That's how I feel about the matter.

This is not to say that sue and Tom's attachment is not a great and wonderful thing, here and now. But sooner or later, love will demand a letting go, as it always must."

The notion and language of consensual erotic slavery is difficult to explain to those who do not practice it, who do not live it, who do not experience it as a reality. There is, to be sure, much fiction "literature" about the subject, but it is largely useless in terms of any factual discussion of the topic. Even within the lifestyle community, it is nearly impossible to convene a sensible conversation on the topic -- there are so few genuine practitioners of the art with any real experience from which to offer much input.

Among those who do live this life, definitions of what it is vary widely, as do reasons for doing it, and drives toward it as a way of expressing relatedness. I'd no more presume to speak for other Master/slave pairs than I'd think to explain what it was that led them to choose their place of residence or their careers or their child-rearing methodologies or...

I can speak, at least from my perspective, about how we came to our understanding of M/s, and our relationship.

We became acquainted as participants on an online listserv discussing Domestic Discipline. From very early on, something in our interactions connected. It was as if, out of a list of 2000 members, the two of us (with our very divergent experience and backgrounds) saw each other and just "knew" each other. Don't be confused here. It wasn't that we actually "liked" each other right away. That took awhile. We circled. We danced around. We tested. We dodged and wove. Still, we couldn't stay away from each other. We just kept coming back...

It didn't stay that way of course. By the time we decided to meet in person, things had progressed way beyond our cautious testing the waters. We were meeting as teacher and pupil, but with an eagerness that went far beyond the "first day of school." The energy that drew me across the continent for that first meeting was not simply curiosity. I tore across what is generally thought of as "fly-over" territory with a good deal of anticipation and trepidation, but also with a singing in my heart that I didn't understand then, but now know was a "going to meet" the One to whom I've always belonged -- a true going home. That very first day, in the hotel, wandering the halls, before even actually meeting, we passed each other. I remember thinking, "I bet that's them..." Later, when we actually did meet, it turned out that I'd been right.

As we came, over time to become friends and then lovers, we grew into a deeper and deeper power exchange dynamic as well. It wasn't something that we pursued consciously. It simply was the most natural expression of who we were with one another. For a very long time, we resisted the Master/slave language. It seemed "odd" to us in some sense. Too much lurid fiction... In the end, we came to use the description of Owner and owned, not because it was fashionable; not because it was sexy; not because it was stylish or edgy. We took that description for ourselves because it was the truth. It is. It has ever been the fact for us.

I'm not sure, Malcolm, about "entering the kingdom of heaven." I am sure that we've been around together before this. I am sure that we'll come around together again after this. Perhaps the relationships will shift, but I am certain that we've found each other through many many lifetimes and will again and again. Spirits link to one another in many interesting ways. I am clear that my children came to me quite specifically because they needed me (especially my dear "mermaid" daughter who never has been entirely comfortable in her land-bound skin). I am sure there have been those I've met here and there along the way that I was supposed to meet because they belonged to me in other lifetimes (you perhaps?) and they are precious every one.

Ownership and being owned is not a bad thing... Not when the owning and the being owned are touched with the possibility of transforming things into great treasures...

swan

The Cutting -- A Significant Date for Us

2005-07-27T16:33:00.000-05:00

Three years ago today sue and I cemented our M/s relationship with a ceremonial ritual cutting of my initials into her back. At a gathering of our family, and a few friends, I announced that the confluence of life flow that had coalesced to form our family culminated in my releasing from sue’s flesh the marks of my ownership that already existed on her soul. In freeing them to surface on her flesh, we made them visible and known to all. We made it known and visible to all, that she is mine and mine alone, in body, mind, and soul, and that she will be mine for all time, as she always had been until we found each other and recognized our connection which she and I are certain transcends the meager boundaries of this life.

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.

Today, July 27th marks the 3rd anniversary of the night that Master did me the honor of placing His initials on my left shoulder blade in a ritual cutting. It was an event that had deep resonance for us all at the time, and one that has continued to be a meaningful link and symbol in our family these years later. Honestly, I remember very little of the actual words He spoke to me that night. I remember His voice reaching something deep in my heart, and I remember holding on to the sound of it with all my strength. I remember my dear sister and friend, T, right there through the intense burning and cutting -- holding my hand and stroking me and crooning soft words to me -- holding me and supporting me, as she has through so many other moments. And I remember shining with joy and wonder and peace and softness, when it was over and He lifted me from the table and held me close.

Cutting is at the edge in terms of BDSM sado/masochistic "play," and there is certainly that element to this cutting. It was, at the time, a stretch of limits and boundaries for me -- a reach that I wanted to make because I was excited to finally be here with Master, and something that I knew He had learned how to do in workshops at BDSM conferences, but hadn't had the opportunity to do "for real" with anyone. I wanted to go there with Him even though, up until that point, one of my limits had been that I wanted to not bleed...

Cutting is also particularly intimate. It breaks the very personal boundary of the skin. It crosses over the line and breaks through to the inside of the person who dwells inside the body. It deals in blood and pain rather than just pain.

For us, this cutting had the additional intention of creating deliberate scarring. I wear the marks that resulted from our ritual that night as most slaves wear their collars. Not all cutting has that as a goal. Sometimes, those who cut mean for the cuts to heal leaving no visible, permanent marks, but we wanted scarring. That desire meant that our venture into cutting was a commitment to increased pain and lengthy discomfort as well as the long-term body modification that would result. Within 24 hours after the cutting was finished, we began a daily routine of scrubbing the cuts with a soft toothbrush and anti-bacterial soap. This irritated the wounds and kept them from healing for much longer than would have otherwise been the case, forcing the keloid scars that we desired. Even after the scars formed, I resisted using the ointments and creams that might have eased the hellish itching that ensued, because most of them would have reduced the scarring along with the itching. The healing scars itched for most of the first year and a half. Even today, if the weather is just right, the cutting can "wake up" and itch wildly -- a reminder that it is still there.

Obviously, such vivid and noticeable marks elicit responses from those that see them. I am cautious about keeping the cutting under wraps in social settings where displaying it would compromise our well-being. There are situations where having Master's initials on display on my back would simply be politically foolish. Some people, upon seeing it are openly curious. Some are horrified (my dermatologist is among this number). A few, especially within the lifestyle are quite taken with it. Generally, if people ask what it is, I simply explain that it is from a ritual cutting. Few ever ask more than that. Scene people, of course understand more clearly...

We made impressions on silk on the night that we made the cuts. Using good quality silk handkerchiefs laid on the fresh wounds, we were able to preserve three imprints of the actual cutting from the very first moments. These we had professionally matted and framed. The finished piece hangs as a treasured memento and deeply meaningful work of art in our bedroom.

So, tonight, in the midst of a quiet place in our lives -- as we recover and recuperate from the much more intense, much less sexy cutting of July 8th, I remember and celebrate the wonder that is this life I am given. I am so very grateful for this day and for this love. Thank you, Sir...

swan

Favorite Toys -- Temptation's Tag

2005-07-27T07:46:00.000-05:00

Temptation tagged me with the question: "What 5 toys would you keep if you had to give up everything else? Which ones are your favorites?" There are so many, it is tough to say which ones are really "favorites." They fill different places in our lives and our play and our relationship, and many of them have stories to tell. Still, the question is there, so here goes...

I would, given my choice, almost always choose --

The buffalo flogger. It is heavy and thuddy without a lot of sting. Buffalo hide has a texture that is not rough and scratchy like suede; much more sensual even though it is heavier.

The red, braided, llama-hide cat. This one is light but stingy without being horribly wicked. Besides, it is just a lovely piece of work, and one of the few whips from Snakepit Leather that I still have from the several that were acquired by my ex-husband and I.

The long, narrow leather strap that came as a "throw-in" freebie from Hanson paddle. It stings like mad and leaves welts and makes me catch my breath, but there is something about it that I really like better than the much heavier straps that we own. It doesn't feel like it will break skin (or bones) in the same way that the heavier beasties do.

The rattan cane. I am not a fan of canes generally, but when it comes time for caning, I like that one way better than the synthetic cousins...

The single tail. This is a love-hate pick. I really hate and fear the whip. It scares me to death and I never willingly choose the whip. It is always His to command and the entire time that I spend under the whip is an effort and an agony and an ordeal. That said, I know that the whip was and is my gift to Him, and making it through a session with the whip brings me a sense of triumph that is hard to describe.

swan

The Ugly Duckling

2005-07-22T10:21:00.000-05:00

I've spent some of my time this spring and summer re-reading "Women Who Run With the Wolves," by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I first read it many years ago when I was a young wife and mother, trying to survive and trying to make sense of who I was in that context. What I took from it then helped me in many ways, but it spoke to me differently then, and gave me different lessons. No surprise.

I've been particularly fascinated this time around by her rendering of the story of The Ugly Duckling. She begins with the classic Hans Christian Anderson tale (and some regional variants) and then weaves meaning in and around the "children's story."

Throughout, she explores what happens when we are born into families to whom we don't "belong." They don't understand us and we don't understand them -- no one's fault; it is simply the nature of our disparate realities. That has always seemed to be my experience, and my frustration with my family. They are good people, they really are, but they have always seemed as foreign to me as I am sure I have seemed to them. No amount of reaching has ever seemed to bridge the gap that has ever spanned between us. That remains true even now -- perhaps even more sincerely and supremely now.

What Estes elucidates is that the ugly duckling does not transform into the swan. The ugly duckling IS a swan. It is not about becoming something different and "better." It is about becoming who and what one really is. For those of us who are born into families to whom we do not really belong, that becomes a lifelong quest and a journey. We are lost and alone in the world, doomed to flail and flounder until we find those with whom we really belong, and the difficulty and the danger is that we likely will believe that we ARE ducks.

For me, it has been ironic, this journey to becoming the swan. I was, when my Master and my T found me, truly an ugly duckling -- hiding behind frumpy clothes and granny glasses and dowdy hair. It was as if I did not know any other way to be or look. I really was trying to be the duck that I thought I was.

When Master first began seeing the swan in me, I thought that it was something that He'd done. I realize now that the "transformation" was that He saw me. Knew me. Gave me the home I'd never had. In coming to Him and to T, I finally found the place that I belonged.

swan

Was that a dream?

2005-07-21T16:53:00.000-05:00

We've worked so hard. Physical therapy and ice packs on the hour day after day... Nights when sleep is interrupted over and over to change the ice in the "ice bondage" machine, and when even the effort to walk to the bathroom seems too much of an effort.

Just getting through the rounds of appointments and exercises and meals and getting a shower and a walk each day sucks up all our time and energy. Just monitoring the medications and the blood tests and making sure that the towels and the sheets and the clothes get washed keeps us tired to the bone. All the lifting and hauling has muscles and joints aching and stiff.

Even being able to roll over in bed to hug has been a distant dream that seemed like it might never come again.

But leaps forward happen suddenly with this. We've learned that, too. All at once, Master can lift His own leg. Within the last two days, He's begun to make the transition from the walker to a cane. Within the last twenty-four hours, His use of pain medication has decreased by half...

Then, last night, in the middle of the night, He was there, wrapped around me, holding me tight and hard... Really? Can we do this? "We'll never know if we don't try," He told me with some sense of urgency.

No need to tell me twice!

With great trepidation and extreme care and caution I climbed on top of Him -- so aware of that knee and that "oh my gosh" incision that just Monday had the staples removed... No shrieking happened, and so I began the rhythm we know so well. Holding my breath -- watching His face for any sign that things were amiss. It seemed OK, and ohhhhh...it was so good!!!

We loved each other there in the darkness -- not, perhaps, with complete abandon. We were cautious but it worked!! Whoohooo! We made it and it was joyous and glorious, and damn! On day 12, I think it was down right prodigious! Left me laughing and crying for joy, and He didn't seem unhappy either ;-)

We both fell asleep again fairly quickly. It was sometime later, when I woke up and wondered -- was that a dream???

swan

Right now...

2005-07-18T16:18:00.000-05:00

The road to submission/slavery takes many different curves. Everyone follows their own way and ends up in the place that suits them and those to whom they belong and serve. Along the way, changes happen and growth comes and life brings its own lessons. Through the years that I've done this, I've struggled and hurt and soared and despaired; thought I knew it all and figured I'd never get it figured out at all...

Right now I am involved and consumed in changing ice packs. In helping with physical therapy twice a day. In assisting with showering and middle of the night toileting. In figuring out how the in blazes one puts those blasted compression stockings on without causing even more pain. In keeping track of medications. In helping to manage all the many little day to day tasks that negotiating life with a walker makes almost impossible. I rub His head and scratch His feet with His beloved knives and soothe Him when He is tired and frustrated.

Submission, for now, is expressing itself in a sense of calm, a sense of peace, an intent focus on the work that needs to be done for my Master's well-being and healing. I am aware of the banking of my sexual drives at this moment, even as His are in abeyance -- there will be time for us to find that place again together, but that time is not now. Now, I am feeling easy and sweet and simply here in the rhythm of these days, working to bring Him to wellness and strength.

Not sexy reading I know... But here is my heart this day.

swan

More To Anonymous on The Origins of Modern Monogamy

2005-07-16T18:30:00.000-05:00

Anonymous said...

What about Adam and Eve? Or the concept of duality? What you write is interesting, but I do think there is a basis for duality in marriage. I don't necessarily see polygamy as a bad thing. Gay rights activists seem to hate it as much as they think their opponents hate them. The analysis I would like to see. What would the US look like if the determinant religions was purely secularism, spirtitual christianity, buddhism. I believe polygamy arises from desires for variety. Is it wrong in the above contexts? I think same sex arises from incarnational puzzles that have vague boundaries when measured against their intensity. Genes and enviroment are mutable to the mind, and the mind is mutable to the other two. Now that last statement you can see it's form plastered all over the major minds processes of the past.

8:34 PM

This post is in response to the above comment which was made by an anonymous respndent to my earlier post regarding the origins of monogamy. I have no idea if this "anonymous" is the same as the "anonymous" my earlier post on this topic was
written in response to or not. In any case, I find it interesting that the more orthodox Christian prespectives offered in this discussion seem to come from authors unwilling to identify themselves even via an Internet pseudonymn.

The debate over contempory marriage in America centers around two variables: numerosity or how many partners may simultaneoulsy live in a publically sanctioned union, and gender or what mix of genders may be party to a publically sanctioned union. I am discussing publically and not religiously sanctioned unions. I assume that the governemnt cannot and should not tell religions what they must believe or accept as a marriage, and that likewise religion has no business dictating what secular law should or must be. If we get to the point that that assumption is invalid then we need to have a larger discussion about the fact we are no longer a democracy but have become a theocracy.

Admittedly the myth of Adam and Eve is about a couple, a man and a woman, who are depicted as the two first human beings. Admittedly all human procreation occurs out of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman (other than in the Christian scripture as revised by the Council of Nicea to incorporate the ancient Roman Pagan tradition that the Saviour of all men was born of a virgin birth). It is the hugest of leaps in logic however to infer from that myth that the only ethical or even optimal family structure is monogamy.

The story of Adam and Eve is at the very beginning of Old Testament Scripture. Presumably all the earliest Hebrew Fathers and Prophets were privy to it. Presumably Moses being visited by God via the burning bush was aware of the story of Adam and Eve. Somehow the prescription that the duality of Adam and Eve meaning that men and women were to live monogamously escaped not only Moses, but David and Abraham, and well, everyone for the supposed 405 centuries from the date some attribute to Adam and Eve until when The Pope suddenly came to understand the entire Judeo-Christian world had until that time been living in sin, and needed to become monogamous. Co-incidentally at the same time it became law that the assets of anyone dying intestate would innure to the Church.

If the story of Adam and Eve is prescriptive of the optimal numerosity of marriage why should not the Holy Trinity not also be a basis? Our family is a triad.....a threesome.....a trinity. Perhaps we are the optimal number of marriage partners. There were twelve lost tribes of Israel and twelve disciples could the optimal number in a marrraige be twelve partners?

Numerosity aside, there is the issue of gender mix in marriage. What would beome of us if homosexual unions were permitted? What would become of us indeed? The primary role marriage plays in modern society is to create legal responsibility for child support (although umarried parents can be held as legally responsible for child support as married ones can), and to prescribe the distribution of assets at the time of divorce/dissolution, as is the case in the end of the vast majority of marriages. This latter role for marriage seems remarkably consistent with the role marriage was created to perform by the Church 2000 years ago. I would asume that if same sex marriage had been permitted historically that in the rare cases where a same sex couple had adopted children they would have been held financially responsible for child support and that their marital assets would have been distributed according to divorce law if their union ended before the death of either partner, and according to probate law if one/or both partner(s) died.

You question what it would be like if there were some differet mix of "determinant religions" in America. This question assumes a falacy. For many Americans and certainly for a majority of America's founders there was no determinant religion. There are many many peoplw who do not live their lives based upon some superstitious myth and the belief in an all knowing all powerful invisible giant or force in the sky. The majority of the most inflential American founding fathers were not Christian, but were Deists whose philosophy was primarily rationalist coming out of the industial revolution. America is the result of "determinant religion" to only a minor degree. The reason for the frenetic assaults on secualr freedom today by Christianity is their own recognition that their influence, which was never as great as it was in their own minds, is likely to be non-existant within a couple generations.

How would America be different if there had been less or differeent mixtures of "determinant relgions?' I suspect there would not have been witch trials and burnings, or the genocide of native Americans, or lynchings of blacks or a huge plethora of social evils which while they generally seem to fly in the face of Christian precepts also always seem to occur based upon Christian rationalization.

I've tried to decide how to resond to the last two sentences about genes, and mutablility, and the mind etc. I've read and reread them several times. I am just not smart enough to understand what they mean so I am not going to respond.

Your comments, Anonymous, have kicked off quite a discussion here. I hope if you want to continue this that you will attach some identity to your posts or comments, so that we can at least know if we are responding to the same individual or various different writers.

All the best:)

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

Thinking About Power

2005-07-15T14:03:00.000-05:00

These are interesting times.

We sat up late the night before the surgery, sitting on the patio, talking about many things -- not really talking about other things.

Master reminisced about His time in the streets, protesting the Vietnam War. He talked about being a young man, believing passionately in what He was doing, and knowing the first taste of His own power and control as cops would quail and turn away in the face of His certainty and determination. He told me that He has never doubted His Dominance since that time...

We've been a week now since His surgery... It has been a week that has had Him almost entirely dependent on T and I for most of His care. Most would assume that those circumstances would reduce the sense of power and Dominance that would be manifest in our household and in our relationships. To believe that would miss the deepest realities.

It is true that the physical needs are tended to by T and I; that the schedules are set and kept by us; that there are limits and requirements for compliance with routines that we are imposing at this juncture. However all of it is in absolute service to Him and His recovery, His well-being, and His comfort.

Last night, in a for now rare moment of levity, I joked that I might decide to run wild and be out of control -- act wild and have a fit and throw things and behave badly. He simply looked at me and said (very quietly), "you would never behave that way."

His tone was so sure and so reassuring that it calmed whatever unsettledness and sense of being strung out that I was feeling, and I immediately replied, "No, Sir." I curled in next to Him. He patted my head. Order returned to the universe.

swan

The New Knee

2005-07-13T18:44:00.000-05:00

We've been very busy and not here much. We got Master and His new knee home from the hospital on Monday afternoon, and it has been a whirl of activity ever since: nurses and therapists and just the business of getting Him up and down and taken care of has kept us occupied through just about every waking hour. Add to that the fact that we are all just worn to a frazzle...

With that all said, the good news is that He is doing spectacularly well, making excellent progress in terms of His general well-being and His therapy. The goals set by the physical therapy team were that He be able to flex the knee to 90 degrees by the end of the first week post-surgically. Today, on day five, He achieved 96 degrees of flexion. He is regaining strength and control and flexibility at a remarkable pace. We are all thrilled. Today for the first time since the surgery, His temperature is near normal. Swelling continues to be an issue, but we are working on that. Each day is better. Give us some time and we'll hopefully be back here posting about our more mundane M/s life again.

Here's a picture of the actual critter if you are "into" staple play. The incision is just under 6" which is significantly less than it would have been with the more traditional knee replacement surgery...

swan

Surgery Update

2005-07-10T11:52:00.000-05:00

Master's knee replacement went very well on Friday. There was, according to the surgeon, tremendous arthritis in the joint. No surprise there. According to the operative reports that we've been able to get nurses to look at, it does seem that the joint and patella were replaced. He is as of today (just over 48 hours post surgically) off the IV and off the morphine, using percocet as needed for pain, off the catheter, doing exceptionally well with His therapy (recovering strength and range of motion), and has been up and to the shower. There is some redness around the incision (which is about 5 inches long) and He has run a low grade fever. Neither of those things are causing a great deal of concern at this point and are fairly typical at this point, although they are watching them of course. We are relieved and happy, although quite tired. Our expectation is that we will all be home tomorrow. Now I'm off for a nap.

Thanks for all your good thoughts and healing energies...

swan

Tickled!

2005-07-06T08:52:00.000-05:00

Sometimes things turn up silly.

We were snuggled in early this morning -- me all pulled in close under His chin and curled into His embrace while He rubbed against my knee. It is a favorite trick of His. Often, I lie there and enjoy the sleepy, dreamy motion of it and just drift in the warmth and cozy safety of His arms. It is a place where I am particularly likely to be vulnerable and open...

Generally, I am not ticklish.

This morning however, He drifted His hand down the curve of my hip bone along my belly and toward my pussy and suddenly I was a giggly mess. He was instantly alert to my response, wondering what that was all about, and I was amazed enough to simply tell Him that it "tickled." Well that was IT. We were off to the races. With my legs pinned under His, He proceeded to tickle me gently, eliciting squirms, giggles, and squeals as I buried my face in His chest and held on for dear life. The offer to trade tickling for paddling, I politely declined...

We tickled until He heard my squeals turn to purrs and we both were ready for an early morning fuck...

Both of us were tickled...

swan

Being Owned

2005-07-05T10:59:00.000-05:00

His ownership has settled somewhere deep inside of me.

These have been challenging days. Our energies, and our attentions are pretty intently focused on getting ready for the upcoming ordeal of total knee replacement surgery and the subsequent rehabilitation. It is a looming reality that we have chosen with care and deliberation and much study -- and it is still significantly intimidating for each one of us. The effort to approach it with some measure of calm doesn't leave a lot of energy for "other" things.

I think that Master has worried, as we've approached this, about how we, and specifically He, will maintain the M/s dynamic in our relationship when He cannot physically or emotionally exercise His dominance actively. I know it is something I have thought about.

But then there have been these last two weeks...

The recovery from Master's biopsies has not been simple or straight forward. He turned up with some sort of infection that nearly hospitalized Him, and laid Him low for days. Somewhere in all the many medical appointments that have been required to prepare for this surgery, He picked up a virus that left Him feverish and feeling just crummy. In getting ready to undergo the surgery, He's had to lay off of His arthritis medication, and many of the herbal supplements and vitamins that keep Him feeling strong and vibrant and relatively comfortable. Suffice it to say, in these last few days, He hasn't been feeling at the top of His game. He's slept. A lot. When He's been awake, He's been listless and lacked the energy to do much of anything beyond getting rubbed and scratched and petted.

There was a time, early in my coming to terms with my submissive and masochistic nature, when I needed, and more truthfully, WANTED to feel that long-denied side of me affirmed and reinforced on a frequent and regular basis. It was such a sexual and emotional turn on and gave me so much attention that I craved it like chocolate. It seemed that I couldn't get enough of it and to have it denied for very long put me into a funk and a pout that was not pretty. I wanted spankings and I wanted rules and I wanted the constant attentiveness of my "Dominant." If I didn't get those things, I began to wonder if there was serious crumbling at the foundation of the D/s itself -- if maybe there was some real lack in the Dominant... I think I am not unique in that sort of thinking. Most submissives go through some variation on that theme I suspect. The duration and intensity of that stage depends on a lot of different factors.

What I am noticing now is that I am deeply and calmly owned. There is no doubt of that. We've not spanked much in these intense and busy and scary days. The energy for it is just not there. We are looking down the barrel of a long space of time where the likelihood is that His physical capacity to dominate me in that sense will obviously be diminished. It matters not at all to me. I am sure that I am His. He will need me in ways far more significant and more intensely intimate than He ever has up until this moment. T and I will be more surely bound in our will to serve His recovery. We are His, even as He is ours.

Ownership comes quietly and dwells in the spaces of the heart and the mind. We, all of us, will miss the rollicking and randy spanking and fucking that are the hallmarks of robust good health. We'll look forward to the happy day when Master can bounce up on His new bionic knee and run me to ground if I should decide to make a race of it with Him. Until then, I am utterly owned -- His always and all ways.

swan

The Origins of Modern Monogamy

2005-07-04T20:47:00.000-05:00

This post is written in response to an attack levied against a post written here over the weekend by an anonymous "Christian." It is not going to deal with the usual thematic content of this Blog. If you are here looking for our usual discussions of how our polyamorous family deals with life, or some more lurid descriptions of BDSM practice, or our usual discourse, you may want to not read this but go on to some of our earlier posts or to browse our archives. There is a lot there.

This is a continuation of the discussion of the definition of polyamory and the attempts by the predominate activist Christian movement in the United States to recreate the United States into a theocratic imperialist state.

"Anonymous said...

It's not just Christians or some modern silliness. Through out time and through out all cultures marriage has always been seen as a union between man and woman. So drop the foul act against Christians. It was the same 2000 years ago in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia-- practically everywhere, the same 1000 years ago, 500.. and so on. Everywhere you look, all over the world, in most every culture, through out time that is how it has been. "

Response:
Factually, Christianity grew out of Judaism. Jewish society, both pre-and post Christ, was polygamous. The great prophets of the Old Testament had dozens and in some cases hundreds of wives not to mention many concubines and slaves whom they "knew." Christ was born into a polygamous society. He died in a polygamous society. The first five centuries C. E. the early Christians, true to their heritage and teaching, practiced polygamy if they chose to. Generally, polygamy was socially preferred and was certainly economically efficacious.

In 325 A. D. the Roman Emperor Constantine, faced with an empire coming apart at the seams because of infighting between Christian and more traditional believers in the Roman Pagan State religion, convened the Council of Nicea. The Council was tasked to create a new hybrid Roman State religion that would bring the warring factions into one common worship and preserve the Empire. They revised and created the first State sanctioned scripture, creating numerous theological constructs out of political necessity, which lack any basis in history or documented religious teaching. These included the teachings that Jesus was the son of god, that he was born to a virgin, and that he was killed and rose from the dead, and that he considered himself a savior. The Council created the first State operated "Christian" Church. They created the first paid clergy.

At the end of their process they codified their new religion in a statement of belief, "The Nicene Creed." All Christians were required to accept this creed. It is passed down to us today verbatim and is chanted each Sunday in nearly every Christian Church with those, who bother to think what its words mean, having no idea that there is no basis for its theological precepts, other than the need to resolve a political crisis in the fourth century Roman Empire. Those who adopted the Nicene Creed became Christians. Those who refused, wanting to adhere to the teachings of Christ and the disciples, were called "those who chose....choice makers." The Latin for Choice maker is hereticus (plural heretici). They were heretici the first "heretics." Heretics were proclaimed enemies of God and the state. The Romans and the newly reborn Christians then banded together to persecute their formerly Christian brethren with a ferocity that made the persecution of the early Christians by Rome seem benign. Nicene Creed Christians have been true to that "faith" ever since.

The important aspects of history to the Council of Nicea discussion is that a Central Holy Roman Church was created that paralleled the Roman Imperial Government. The new Church had aspirations to gather wealth and power over all the world rivaling the government. It was challenged though. It could not levy taxes. It could not make war. It could not usurp property. It negotiated a dispensation. It was legislated that the assets of anyone who died without heirs would inure to The Church. This could be most helpful but there was a problem. Society was still polygamous. If you had many wives and dozens or even hundreds of offspring there always was an heir standing in line in front of The Church to inherit assets unless very exceptional circumstances occurred. While The Church could not levy taxes it could define religion.

It was decreed by the Holy Roman Church in the fifth Century that marriage could only be between one man and one woman. The Church had no previous theology upon which to base this. It was a step that would create huge intestacy and ergo wealth for the Church. Over the two subsequent centuries it enriched the Church beyond the Roman Empire or any previous political, social, or religious institution.

Monogamy is a much cherished concept within Christianity. It's basis is economic. It has no theologically historical basis in our culture. Additionally review by objective Bible scholars can find no Biblical texts that speak to the number of men and women able to enter into marriage. Neither of course, does the Talmud. Interestingly the Koran does address this but it permits both monogamy and polygamy and counsels the relative merits of each type of marriage.

The statement that, "Throughout time and throughout all cultures marriage has always been seen as a union between one man and one woman," is a lie. It is not the Judeo Christian tradition prior to the 600's and thereafter only to create intestacy to fatten the coffers of the Holy Roman Church. It is not even spoken to in the inherently corrupt post-Nicene Council Christian scripture. It is not the practice of the Moslem world and has not been for thousands of years as well. Very basic sociological research will easily reveal that adherence to monogamy is a social aberration throughout world culture, not a norm. Anyone looking back upon our society in centuries hence will certainly look upon our "monogamous society and legal system" with over half of all marriages ending in divorce to be followed with one or two or three or four subsequent marriages and statistical trends towards non-married cohabiting households appearing to tend towards likely eclipsing married co-habiting households in the decades ahead, as an exercise in denial and hypocrisy.

So anonymous Christian if you are still about, I've given you a small portion of the basis of debunking the lies you've expressed here, and are too cowardly to even sign. What basis do you have? I agree there are "foul attacks" made on Christianity. I've made none. I've explained historical facts........truths. The most foul attacks on Christianity occur weekly from pulpits, and in legislatures and Congress, and in posts like yours.

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

Happy Birthday America

2005-07-02T12:20:00.000-05:00

As the Fourth of July commemoration of the U. S. Declaration of Independence approaches, I'd like to express a message of great sadness as the civil rights of most Americans are being actively eroded, we bankrupt our nation's econocmy, and look like inept bufoons to the rest of the world, for prosecuting an unprovoked war of agression against a pathetic enemy who is likely to beat us eventually as badly as did the Viet Namese.

At the Fourth of July this year, as increasingly a state religion appears to likley become the basis of U. S. law, social policy, and foreign policy I look with pride to my heritage and my friends from Canada who have just enacted Federal law legalizing same sex marriage throughout their democracy. I wonder when Americans will be able to define their families as they choose rather than in line with an ancient mythos.

I hope if we fight and hang together and speak up and vote we can again someday be proud to live in a nation where people are free to choose their destiny regardless of religious precepts, and not as the nation that is the "Bully of Baghdad."

At the Fourth of July I sing, "Oh Canada, We Stand on Guard for Thee." You Canooks had better start beefing up your military though. As the Christian Right Wing Neo-cons continue to sweep our government, when they hear of your precipitous action and unbridled liberty, they may feel that to be far greater provocation than Iraq ever made against their religious doctrine.

Sadly,

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

Polyamory -- our way

2005-07-02T11:12:00.000-05:00

That last post generated some questions about polyamory. Some of them we made efforts to answer in responses in the comments window, but maybe it is time to be a little more explanatory here.

We practice polyamory. It is a word coined to connote "many loves." It is not polygamy, polygyny, or polyandry -- all words that describe marriages between multiple spouses in various combinations (and all illegal in the US). Often too, polyamory is equated with "swinging" which is a more casual and social practice of engaging in deliberate sexual relating between multiple partners. There are frequent "debates" and discussions in the polyamory community about whether swinging is a "legitimate" form of polyamory. I think whatever consenting adults do that enhances their lives and the lives of their families, is "legitimate." We are not swingers. If others are then I honor their choice.

Polyamory is about honest, loving relationships between multiple, consenting partners who understand that the religious and social limits that insist that there must be only one love for each person is not a TRUTH that has to define the reality for all of us. Polyamorous relationships may be found in many different forms, and those who participate in them describe those relationships in many different ways. In poly circles, there are relationships that call themselves triads, quads, clans, tribes, families, webs, nets, etc. Some groups talk about primary, secondary and tertiary relationships. Some poly relationships involve bisexuality, some are gay/lesbian, and others are heterosexual. There are wide variations in the kinds of living arrangements that groups create for themselves. Some poly relationships are very fluid and others are stable over many many years. There are poly relationships that include parents who are raising young children and adolescents, others are made up of adults and do not involve children. There are no "typical" polyamorous relationships. Obviously, there is no legal or social recognition for what it is that we do. We live in a society that misunderstands, and often, is openly hostile to our life choice.

Our family is a fMf, heterosexual, fidelitous, BDSM, intentional family, triad-V, with Master as the "hinge." T and I interact "sexually" with Him and not with each other (we just aren't wired that way). Master and T are "legally" married. I am not married to Master. We use the term "wife," when we apply it to me, loosely. More often T and I refer to each other as "spice" (the plural of mouse is mice therefore the plural of spouse is.....:) We maintain two separate addresses with separate mortgages, separate bank accounts, pay our taxes separately, have our own car loans, etc. In all the "legal" ways, we are "not married," and understand that we cannot and will not be. That is not our wish, not our desire -- it is the law and the constraint put upon us by the culture and the society. We live within the limits of the law. However, inside our homes, behind our closed doors, and more importantly within our hearts where the law cannot reach... love makes more love.

swan

What do you say?

2005-06-30T09:26:00.000-05:00

Master had His pre-surgical hospital visit yesterday. So I went along. Mostly to be a second set of ears, but also to schlepp all His stuff. The man does not travel lightly: there is His planner (which weighs a ton), and there is the fanny pack (where He stashes the gazillion knives that He would normally carry in His pockets but...).

Anyway, we met first with a nurse who took a medical history and did blood tests and urine sample and got an x-ray done and ran an EKG and... Of course part of all of that is getting the information about who will be able to get information about His medical condition during and after the surgery. That would be: T, of course, and me.

Nurse person is dutifully writing notes, and asks, "T is ?"

Master answers, "she is my wife." At which point the nurse person looks at me and says, "and you are?"

"Family member." I answer. She never blinks. Just calmly records the information on her form. Life goes on.

We get all the stuff done and proceed on to the 3rd floor to meet with the therapy folks. Same song, second verse: first we meet with the occupational therapy lady, who is very cool. Once again we go through the "T is the wife, this is the family member" deal. No sweat. Like most medical professionals, she doesn't care. Doesn't become something that she needs to know.

And then we meet Jennifer, the physical therapist... "T is my wife and this is a "family member." Jennifer (young and intense and bright) looks me up and down quizzically and then peers at me intently and says, "what sort of family member are you?"

Well, what do you say? There just aren't any answers that are going to make real sense given what is likely to transpire once we all get to the hospital in a week and a half. I could say cousin or sister, but the reality is that I don't ACT like a cousin or a sister, so that is just not going to fly.

I looked at the curious Jennifer and said, "I am the other wife."

"OH!'' she said.

End of conversation.

After that, she stuck to knee exercises.

swan

Responsibility

2005-06-29T06:56:00.000-05:00

In recent days I've dreamed several heated confrontations between my ex-husband and myself. Conversations that turn accusatory and crescendo in angry shouts and waving fists.

I know enough "dream theory" to understand that dreams are about "me," and so I am betting that this recent spate of somnolent struggles are about internal stuff that I'm still hanging onto.

Let me see if I can do this definitively --

I left my marriage. I took the actions that led to that outcome. I made the choices and made the decisions and took the turns that brought me inexorably to that point, and I was not unaware of what I was doing.

It was not that I did not hope I could save the marriage somehow, but I knew, with reasonable certainty, that the likelihood was that I would end up losing it along the way. The fact was that I'd come to a point where I'd decided that I would no longer live in denial of who I most deeply was; would no longer live in a marriage that did not meet my most basic needs; would no longer live as "parent" rather than "wife" and "lover."

Through the years leading up to the final move to be with Master and T, I spent much of my free time IM'ing and on the phone with Master and very little of it with my husband. I avoided him if I could. Our life together grew less and less intimate, and much of that was my fault. I simply drew away from him and toward what I wanted. I knew what I was doing was harmful to our relationship, but after years of denying my own needs, I hadn't the character to resist it anymore. I chose for myself.

It is true that in the final year or two of our marriage, he became increasingly "strange," but it is also true that I pushed him away from me and isolated him -- cut him off. A man who spent his adult lifetime depending on me suddenly found that I was no longer "there." No wonder he turned up looking "strange." The increasing weirdness was, to some large degree, probably driven by my withdrawal.

I don't regret the choices. Would make them again. Needed to make them for myself. However, until now, I've not owned the simple fact that I had a marriage that I chose to leave, and that in doing that, I hurt a good and tender man. That is also a reality.

swan

Biopsy Results

2005-06-28T07:12:00.000-05:00

No Cancer!

Nothing.

Clean and Clear...

How many of these have we dodged this year???

We were so busy, we barely had the opportunity to even notice or celebrate or think much about it, but this is such great news and such a relief.

swan

I'm not Submissive?

2005-06-26T12:45:00.000-05:00

Date: Sun Feb 27, 2000 4:11 pm Subject: I'm not really submissive!I've got to confess. I'm not submissive. I'm feisty, opinionated,temperamental, moody, and generally a real handful. I'm also a died-in-the-wool feminist; carried petitions for the ERA back in the days when. Still keep the wallet card with the complete text, and nurture the hope that someday my daughter and grand-daughters will have the same rights that their male counterparts are assured by virtue of being born with a mismatched set of chromosomes!!! Submission is something I do. It's a choice. It's also an act of will and a decision for me every single time. Maybe someday it will get to be a habit and a way of life. Until then, I'll just keep practicing...

That was me. Almost five and one half years ago. Struggling. I didn't come to terms with any of this easily. I fought, and flailed, and ran around in circles, looking desperately for some other "label" for what it was that I was. BECAUSE -- I knew that the WHAT of what I was contradicted and undermined and undercut everything I believed in, and had fought for all my adult life -- everything I had taught my children to be, everything I was.

There is more than stridency in that short bit, written on a listserv that focused on Domestic Discipline (the sanitized and "vanilla-cized" brand of BDSM that I first talked the husband into trying with me early on), there is real fear and panic and a deep knowledge that the path I'd set my feet on would lead to an ultimate clash between the two halves of my "self" that seemed so diametrically opposed. In those early days, I hoped that the mere declaration of the negative could keep the secret locked safely away. I had no real understanding of the dragons I'd unleashed.

Of course, that piece of brave rhetoric was utter bullshit. I was surely submissive. I knew it somewhere in the depths of my heart and soul, else why protest so sincerely? Note that, even then, I never used the more casual, more easily managed, more pedestrian shortening: "sub." For me, it has always been the idea of "submission," and later, "slavery," that drew me and fired my imagination -- and I've always adhered to the formal language even when it scared the willies out of me.

Denying that I was submissive, I nevertheless, studied what "submission" meant. It is simply the way I am about things in general. I tend to want to know what things mean and how things are done, and so I read widely and asked questions and tried to learn how "submission" is done. I came to understand that, while it is true that there were sexual implications and SM implications to the term, there was much more -- that submission implied, at its deepest levels, a desire, and indeed a dedication to serving all the wants of the Dominant One, whatever those might be -- a submissive learned, over time to understand and anticipate and serve with joy and grace and skill in all areas of life, and to elevate that service to the level of "art." I was intrigued and further ensnared and enchanted. Each new bit of information drew me deeper, and there was so much information to be had.

Reading widely, interacting in many different places, I encountered a variety of viewpoints and a wealth of information -- some of it incredibly wise, some of it utterly foolish, much of it somewhere in between. Then, as now, if one typed "spank" or "bondage" or "sadism" or "masochism" or "BDSM" into a search engine on the Internet, the range of information that was likely to come up was highly variable. Not every hit was "reliable" and much sifting and sorting had to be done. Even on the more stable and sane listservs, things could get pretty wild sometimes and there were times when it was downright ugly, especially if one didn't fit the mold -- and quite often, I didn't.

I had one interesting misadventure (or not, depending on your point of view) on a private list owned by Jon Jacobs. Jon is dead now, but he is best known for co-authoring Different Loving. If you talk with anyone "in the life" who knows of Jon, you are likely to elicit an interesting response. Folks seldom reacted "neutrally" to him. He was a BIG personality. Anyway, when I encountered him, he was running a list and chatroom for submissive women called "Submissive Women Speak." I don't think it is in operation anymore -- it fell into some disrepute, largely because many felt they were "betrayed" by the practices used there. I got myself into some trouble there because I was unwilling to follow the "Jon Jacobs says:" party line and was a bit too aggressive in my somewhat vocal dissent... It didn't take me long to get myself thrown out of the place, so I can't speak to the charges that some have leveled against the place. Anyway, I wasn't there too long before information that I'd shared about the nature of my relationship with my husband and the things I wished for and needed led JJ to declare that I was a deeply submissive woman and that my husband was clearly not a Dominant. He told me in no uncertain terms that someday a Dominant man would find me and would take me and that I would leave my husband to go with the Dominant to whom I belonged. That whole exchange scared me half to death and made me furious. I went after the guy with extreme venom and made his life a living hell for the short time I was allowed to remain on the list. It didn't take long for them to eject me from the place...

Our association ended badly, but the prophetic nature of our exchange has stayed in my mind ever since. Now, it is possible that Jacobs used essentially that line with most of the women who came to his site. I don't really know. The fact is that for me, it turned out to be true. I have ever after felt that one of the things that we (experienced lifestylers) do badly for new people coming into "the life" with questions and a desire to explore, is warn them of the potential for major upheaval and change because of the doors that they will open... I have long thought that somehow we need to find a way to post metaphorical signs for visitors to these realms: "THIS WAY THERE BE DRAGONS."

Not that dragons aren't wondrous and magical and mystical beasties... They are all of that and more, and I've enjoyed getting to know mine (most of the time), but a relationship with a dragon can be a costly one. It can mean that you might have to leave the village where you've lived your whole life and give up a whole bunch of comfy stuff that you thought you would always have in your life. Dragons have demanding tastes and interesting lifestyles that don't always accommodate the mundane.

We ought to be more clear about that I think...

swan

Another Scare

2005-06-25T12:34:00.000-05:00

Tuesday I had a bladder and prostate biopsy. I'd had a urological exam that appeared suspicious enough that they felt this was necessary and we wanted to get it in before my knee replacement.

It's a pretty simple outpatient surgery. You do get general anesthetic (thank god......you aren't doing this to me with me awake and survive:) You go home an hour later and sleep the rest of the day.....so no big deal....well not usually.

I slept just about around the clock from Tuesday after the procedure until Wednesday morning. I was scheduled to speak at a local conference that morning. I got up early that morning and wrote my speech, cleaned up and was ready to go. I knew I wasn't feeling that great, but what the heck, I imagined it was just lingering after effects of my anesthesia still working its way out of my system. I arrived at the conference center and found myself with an overwhelmingly urgent need to urinate. I tried to make it inside and as I entered the rest room, I lost full bladder control and completely wet myself. The walk back to the car was humiliating. Thank god I encountered no one I knew and the few folks who were in the hall not in sessions acted as though they didn't notice, although you could not have seen me and not known. I went home, showered, and changed. Fortunately the conference host, a Vice President of my Board, whom I certainly didn't want to disappoint, was flexible and worked me into the afternoon schedule and folks seemed to value my presentation. So all was well, except I was exhausted and continued to feel not vibrant. I assumed if I got through the rest of this challenging week I'd rest up this weekend and all would be well. I was having no more continence issues.....likely just some sort of bladder inflamation from the procedure.

The next morning I was supposed to be back at the conference at 8:00. I tried to get up but I couldn't. I was just tired and had no energy. I slept in and finally dragged myself out of bed and went in. The afternoon activity there was an experiential exercise that I really didn't need to participate in, and I felt horribly tired. My Board was meeting at 7:00 that night. I came home about 2:00 and went to sleep for a couple of hours before getting up to eat and get ready to go for the Board meeting. I felt some better after my nap but still was feeling funky. I drove into the meeting with sue. The meeting lasted until 10:00. By the time it was over I felt dreadfully ill. Finally the Board members left. Sue drove me home. I didn't feel well enough to drive. We stopped to pick up some snacks to eat with T on the way home and, watiing for them to be ready to go, I drank about fifty ounces of diet pop and water. I was ravenously thirsty and it seemed like no matter how much I drank I couldn't get satisfied and now I was not needing to urinate. We ate and I collapsed into bed. As the night passed I felt worse and worse. I felt so weak that rolling over in bed felt like a monumental feat. Sue took my temperature in the middle of the night. It was 101.9. She remembered the post-operative directions that if I spiked a temp of over 101 we needed to call them immediately. She did, but it took them 3 hours to respond. She was afraid. I just slept fitfully and from what she tells me whined and fussed. It dawned on us. MY GOD I HAD A POST-OPERATIVE INFECTION.

We spent much of yesterday in a nearby hospital emergency room. They ran tests and give me IV fluids and antibiotics and sent us home finally late last night with oral antibiotics telling us that that should take care of it, but that if I became that ill again to return and they would admit me.

Today I am not entirely well, but I am probably 90% better than I was twenty-four hours ago.

At one point they were imagining hanging me with a diagnosis of toxic septi-semia. We were very worried, knowing that if that had occurred two weeks before a knee replacement, they'd never be able to perform the procedure. Hopefully this is just a blip on radar screen and a further example of the way the gods have chosen to tease and play with us all this year to make our life "interesting."

I promise this Blog is not going to disintegrate into a chronicle of middle-aged health problems. If on the other hand you are reading here with a less than informed or experienced history of BDSM life, you can see that it is not all whips and restraints. We have the same challenges as anyone else.

Thanks again for all the support people have been giving us.

Tom
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

Full Moon and Fear and Asking

2005-06-23T11:16:00.000-05:00

We sat, late last night, on the patio and watched the full moon rise, golden and glowing. It came up late, probably about 10:30 or 10:45, long past the time when we'd wondered where the heck it was since the sky was clear and sprinkled with stars.

It had been a lovely evening, warm but not terribly humid, which is a rare thing here in Cincy in the summer. We had dinner out on the patio and enjoyed grilling chicken and just the opportunity to sit and visit and talk over the day's goings on with one another.

It is always a surprise to us that, with as many neighbors as we have here in this condominium complex, we are most often the only ones out on the patio in the evenings... we saw a few "walkers," but no one just sitting taking in the sounds of the pond and the frogs and the birds. In one visually poetic moment, just as the twilight faded to black, we watched a young couple walking together with their dog and their "just-walking" young child. They wandered along at that pace that is dictated by having someone in your world who is still consciously learning how to manage the battle with gravity, and we were enchanted watching them. Master commented on how absolutely joyous their life must be, and I wondered if they knew or if they were too busy "doing" it to notice...

We stayed there, mostly just holding one another's hands, watching that moon rise slowly against the bowl of the sky. Master had a bit of His Jameson's -- and then a bit more. Suddenly, what has been unspoken and looming between us, came pouring out: He is afraid of this upcoming surgery. Afraid for Himself, and afraid for us.

We've spoken only of positive and good outcomes until now. To do otherwise is like tempting the fates. He is strong and determined and (as He frequently boasts) not easy to kill. But, we all know that this is a brutal and difficult procedure...being done at a hospital that is not our first choice. Sigh.

On my knees, at His feet, with my arms wrapped around Him, I held my Master, and rocked and stroked and crooned the soft nothings that a woman learns/remembers when they first put a newborn infant in your arms moments after it's birth.

I have no words for this -- no answers -- no guarantees. I know that there is nowhere in my awareness any sense that I am about to suffer great and devastating loss. I am afraid, but I believe it is the fear that one feels for a loved one who is about to face a difficult ordeal. I might be in denial (although I am generally not prone to that) but I do not believe that I've finished this passage yet. I know that I will work and fight for His well-being and healing with every ounce of strength, and I know that T will be right there beside me. Together, we will make sure that He is cared for, responded to, and attended to in every possible way. All that He needs to bring to the table is His indomitable will. Of that I have no lack of confidence. So, if the surgeon has sufficient wisdom and skill and grace, all WILL BE GOOD.

From now until July 8, that is my sincere and humble and continual "ask" to the universe.

swan

Lurid Fantasies

2005-06-21T18:47:00.000-05:00

I am prone to lurid fantasies that are way beyond what I know I can or ever could tolerate should they ever come to be acted out in real life. So when such phantasms begin to inhabit the pathways in my mind, they frighten me. I am inclined to not give voice to them. However, sentencing them to the darkness and the silence does not make them go away -- it feeds them and strengthens them... Until I am helpless with the sheer power of them.

This one has been riding my dreams for a bit now...

"Get up. Go. Find the nipple clamps and come kneel at the side of the bed here next to me." The voice that drives my whole life, drags me, this day from a sound sleep. It is hours before dawn.

I shiver. He knows how I despise the cold. Naked, I obey. I crawl from the warmth of the blankets, away from the comfort of His embrace and search through the drawer where the "toys" are kept. Soon, I find the nipple clamps and return, as commanded, kneel beside Him at the side of the bed, offering the clamps to Him in silence.

Wordlessly, He begins to knead my breasts, cupping them in His hands and squeezing roughly. He pulls and pinches my nipples, twisting and turning them, eliciting gasps as I close my eyes and try to calm my breathing. "Hands behind your head," He tells me. "Eyes on me." I open my eyes and focus on His face, as He continues to torment my already tender nipples. He watches me intently, seeing my passion, and my submission grow. When He judges I've come far enough, He stops and reaches for the clips. First one, then the other, He snaps them into place with a sudden and breathtaking intensity on my throbbing nipples. My hands never move and my eyes stay fixed on His.

"Stand up."

I rise to my feet in front of Him, and He reaches between my legs to feel the heat rising in my sex. Pushing my legs apart, He begins to smack my cunt with sharp, hard swats of his open hand. I gasp in surprise and jump to protect myself. "What are you doing?" The question cuts into my consciousness. "Get back in position," He commands.

I whimper in fear, but know there are no alternatives. He will have what He will have from me. Controlling the urge to deny Him, I return to the position He requires and the spanking resumes. Steady and sharp, the smacks land on my tender pussy lips. Not softly. Not gently. Not building easily. These are the blows of one who owns and intends to make that ownership felt and deeply known.

I grunt and moan and sob. Ultimately, I beg, pleading for it to stop -- please, please, please...

And then it is over. For just a moment. He cradles my shaking, sobbing, utterly spent frame in His strong arms...

And guides me...

Into the stocks. Locking me in place. Head and hands and feet. Stroking my back and butt and thighs and neck. Crooning His love and pleasure and delight in me. Telling me how proud He is of me... just before the cane falls and falls and falls again.

swan

BDSM & Blood Donation???

2005-06-20T15:05:00.000-05:00

Master's knee replacement surgery is approaching, and the recommendation from His surgeon was that He do an autologous blood donation for Himself. That was scheduled for this morning, and I accompanied Him to the center so that, should there be any difficulty at all, I could drive home or whatever. Once we got there, we noted signs all over the place saying, "Bring a friend, have them donate too... blah, blah, blah." We hadn't actually considered that possibility, but since I was there, we decided, "what the heck, I might as well go ahead and donate too..."

Well... not that easy.

Seems I have these little, tiny, wiggly veins, AND blood that does exactly what blood is supposed to do -- it CLOTS readily and rapidly. Just try getting blood out of me. Just try!!!

Now, I should mention here that, while I am an avowed and confirmed masochist, I DO NOT DO NEEDLE PLAY. I've never understood this particular kink. Disclaimer duly given. You are forewarned. Those of you who might be squeamish about such things may want to click "next blog" now...

I filled out all the appropriate forms. Answered all the necessary questions. Got the little finger stick. So far, so good. Vital statistics, all fine... Cleared for take-off. Went on back to the little, comfy, nifty reclining blood-donor chair. They put Master in one close by and get Him started. Phlebotomist #1 steps right up and starts perusing the arms for likely looking veins. He scans the left arm carefully, then zips around to the right side and peers intently at that arm for awhile. Finally, after careful consideration, he settles on the best available vein and wraps my arm up in the worlds' tightest tourniquet. I go to town squeezing on the little ball thingy, and he stabs me with the FIRST needle (while I look the other way -- over toward Master who is happily filling His bag with nice, dark, red blood). I hear my guy go, "Hmmmmm...." This is not the sound you want to hear from the person who has just jabbed a needle into your arm, because in any language on the planet that particular "Hmmmmm" translates as "AHHH FUCK, I just missed the damn vein and now I'm gonna hurt this fool while I dig around in here looking to see if by any chance I might accidentally hit it..." Which is exactly what my guy proceeded to do for a good long while before he gave up and called for help: "Joyce, you wanna come pick this up for me?"

Phlebotomist #2 (Joyce I assume) comes scurrying over and picks up where the first yahoo left off, still poking around inside my arm. I am beginning to not have a lot of fun. Somewhere along the line, one of them asks if I've ever donated blood before, to which I reply, "yes-- lots of times." It occurs to me to ask if any of them have ever drawn blood before, but I don't ask it out loud. Eventually, Joyce declares that the vein in question is just not working and pulls the plug, much to my relief. She suggests, somewhat tentatively, that she could try the other arm and see if she could do any better over there. Like a damn fool, I say, "OK -- sure." We shift sides and do the dance again. Problem is that now she is working on my deaf side. And I am shaken. And I am beginning to fall back onto tricks learned in years of SM play to manage the pain and discomfort -- but of course they don't know any of that. It doesn't go a whole lot better on arm number two. We still don't hit it on the first try. We still have to dig around for what seems like forever to get in the vein. She still hurts me A LOT, but we finally do manage to actually get blood to flow from my veins at long last. I almost cry from the relief. Now, I think, all I have to do is lie here and squeeze the ball every five seconds or so, and fill the bag.

Easy -- right? Wrong.

When we finally get the bag full, and that is no easy trick because my blood wants to clot and plug the tubing -- they have to keep messing with the needle; pushing and prodding and twisting to keep things flowing, we still need at least 3 vials of blood for the required tests. Otherwise the donated blood will be unusable. And damn -- the minute they pulled the bag, that was it. No more blood coming down the pike. Twist and turn all you want. That's it. I was in agony with their darn needle in my arm by now. And increasingly, using what I know to do in order to drop into subspace. Unfortunately, subspace does not look "good" to your average garden variety blood bank staff. Add to that the fact that my left side deafness means that I am likely to be unresponsive to many spoken commands anyway and I had them scared shitless at this point.

Imagine my annoyance when all of a sudden 4 or 5 of them descended on my intensely focused hold on subspace to make me "cough" and breath deeply and wiggle my feet and open my eyes and on and on and on... Good grief!!! How's a girl supposed to put up with all of this stuff you are doing without shrieking if you won't let her concentrate???

They got me "back." Damn and double damn. Sadists everywhere! And went after veins in the backs of my hands. Same song, second verse. First one flattened out as soon as they stuck a needle in it. No blood there. Breathe, focus, deeper, deeper, away... Other hand, another try, another vein, more digging, more pain -- are we hurting you? DUH!!!! Finally!!! Enough blood to do whatever they were going to do. All the cuffs off, all the tubes pulled. Bandages everywhere. Master said it looked like a crucifixion.

I figure they will mark my donor record -- "NOT WORTH THE TROUBLE." Not sure how to chalk this one up -- needle play, non-consensual play with unsuspecting "vanilla's?", blood play...

Hmmmm...

swan

Sunday

2005-06-19T20:47:00.000-05:00

I can be a difficult and moody slave sometimes. I try not to go there, but I have not found the key, in all the books I have read, and not on all the lists, and not in any of the blogs either to derailing the little demon moods that come upon me when I am tired and feeling scared and lost and alone in my thoughts. Originally, this blog was to be the place where I was supposed to write and work out a lot of that nonsense, but I get tired of writing it and I can't imagine that it isn't awfully dull to read. Then, too, sometimes, I can go for weeks and months without slipping into a full blown case of the murky icks...

Sunday seems to be the one day of the week when I am most likely to fall into the emotional quicksand. This week, maybe more so than some lately, I was poised for a difficult day. Master and I'd been away for a couple of days at an out of town meeting which had been particularly intense and politically depressing. Getting Him ready to go had been hard work (He does not ever travel lightly), and I was exhausted before we ever left). The first night out of town I slept very badly and only a very few hours, so when it was all over and done with, I arrived home exhausted and worn out.

From the SM side of things, I'd been out in the far edges, feeling alienated and angry. It isn't anything that is easy to explain. These things almost never are. For me, the things that set me off with "bad" SM are almost never what an outside observer might expect or anticipate. They are often seemingly small, innocuous incidents or details that become laden with emotional freight. In this case, I've been all wrapped up over a new paddle. It is really a little bit of a thing -- probably would be inconsequential under any other circumstances, except that it was purchased on-line from a vendor who took damn near forever to deliver the item (and way more than a reasonable number of emails many of which went unanswered -- how rude is that?), then shipped what I think is a substandard piece of crap -- and when it is going to land on my ass, I take the production of substandard crap personally!!! Add this to the fact that this vendor is associated with someone who was wicked to my Dear Master in the past and the whole thing just pisses the hell out of me... From the minute the first crack of that miserable, piece of shit paddle sounded on my butt, I was furious and I haven't calmed down about it yet. I KNOW it is nuts and I can't seem to get over it -- knowing you are nuts does not make for an effective cure generally... This is the sort of female reasoning that just causes Master to shake His head, btw...

So Sunday comes around and everybody here has stuff they like to do... T likes to cook breakfast so we have French toast and stuff like that (but I'd rather have cheeseburgers...), and they both like to watch the Sunday morning TV news shows, so we do that while I scratch and rub Master's back..., and then Master gets on the computer to surf and read and bounce from place to place... During the school year, this would be the time when I would wander off to grade papers and plan and do our laundry... but I don't have any school work to do now. I end up feeling like a third wheel. T has a place to be -- watching her cooking shows and stuff and Master has His stuff to do on-line, and I end up feeling like I just need to do chores as invisibly as I possibly can and not bother anyone because there really seems to be no place where I fit into the routine.

Eventually, Master got around to me this afternoon, and we did have a good session with the vibrator and some low end toys that we haven't played with for a long time: the quirt and a narrow leather strap and a rubber flogger and a braided llama cat and even that evil new paddle at the end. It ended well, with us both reaching orgasm together -- not something that occurs all that often for us.

So smiles were restored.

Slaves and Masters... Sometimes I wonder who has the harder job...

swan

Oh WOW!

2005-06-16T14:39:00.000-05:00

Just got a call from The Heretic, all excited -- seems we've hit "THE BIG TIME!"

http://www.spankingblog.com/2005/06/15/loving-the-whip/

Thank you, SpankBoss...

swan

Echoes from another life...

2005-06-14T21:07:00.000-05:00

I have felt awkward contacting you since the new changes in your life because I really don't understand. I am very glad for you that you are happier now but find it difficult to grasp how that can be. I know it is not my business, but rather, your own personal choices and I accept that… Please tell me something about your life now and be patient with me as I try to understand.

Each time I get a message like this from someone that I knew before I made the decision to come and live with Master and T, I am faced with a dilemma and a set of choices.

These are echoes from a life that I left behind me. I made that choice with full knowledge that the break was likely permanent. I knew that there were so many who were dear to me in my former “vanilla” life, who simply would never, ever be able to comprehend the decisions I was making:

Jeopardizing the marriage I’d lived in for nearly 28 years to create an incomprehensible relationship called “polyamory” with a couple who were themselves married.
Involving myself in BDSM where I would willingly allow myself to get hit and otherwise hurt – isn’t that just abuse?
Submission / slavery – what the heck is that all about? I’m a card-carrying feminist for Pete’s sake!
Leaving friends and family behind to travel halfway across the country to live in a Godforsaken place like Cincinnati…
Giving up a perfectly lovely home that I worked years to fix up and landscape and for what?
Quitting a good job with no promise of another in the place where I was headed…

All of those decisions were made almost three years ago and most of the fallout has fallen. I’ve seen the results of the choices I made and settled, for the most part, into my new life here.

Still, every now and then, I’ll get one of these puzzled queries from someone from the past. They come from friends, from former in-laws, from people I once worked with – all folks I have lost touch with one way or another. Somehow, every so often, one of them will surface and ask the questions that must have been gnawing at them all this time – what and how and why?

I am always a bit taken aback. What is it, exactly that these people want to know now? Do I give them some sort of happy chatter that says something like, “I’m good and healthy and happy and well and hope you are too,” or do I take a deep breath and give them some fairly straightforward rendition of the facts? The truth is, I haven’t had a relationship with these people for all these many months. If I give them some sort of glossed over pabulum, they won’t be shocked, but we will still have no relationship, and whatever impetus led them to ask in the first place will be derailed (maybe forever). On the other hand, if I tell them the simple truth, maybe they will turn tail and run – or maybe not. With the facts laid out plainly and openly, my correspondent could maybe decide to take a deep breath, and ask another question or maybe two or three…

I might just gain a friendship renewed.

Sigh…

swan

A swan and 5 Peacocks

2005-06-14T10:08:00.000-05:00

We won't be attending any leather events this year. And that fact has us nostalgic for times past, like last year when Master and I were at Thunder in the Mountains (the big leather event held annually in Denver) http://www.thunderinthemountains.com/

I know that many imagine these events and picture the dungeons, and surely that is a big part of the attraction for us. But a weekend at something like Thunder is much more than the play party. It is a chance to be immersed in a culture where kinky people are THE dominant culture, and the vanilla culture, where we normally spend our days, fades away for the duration. Unless you have actually had that experience, it is hard to imagine.

When we all get together in a place where we don't have to be afraid, defended, or defensive -- in an environment where we can simply BE, it is truly magical and joyous.

One of the shiny moments from Thunder last year happened as we were preparing for the evening's doings. Thunder took over the entire six floor hotel, so there was no need to look "normal" anywhere one went in the place, and we all reveled in that freedom. Our room was on the 5th floor, and it seemed that I was continually on the way to the car to fetch something that Master needed and that had not yet been schlepped into the room on any of the previous 857,936 trips that I'd made to our vehicle...

I was all dolled up in fetish gear that left very little to the imagination. Under normal circumstances, I might have been nervous about wandering around by myself, but at Thunder, I knew I was about as safe as I could be. Clearly I belonged to someone, so no one was going to mess with me. I waited for the elevator and when the door opened it was empty. I got in and pushed the button for the ground floor.

At the next floor, the car stopped and the door opened. Five absolutely glorious gay guys decked out in the most outrageous leather got on and the doors closed again. They all looked at me, and I looked at them, and for a minute we all just stood, non-plussed... Then the car burst out into uproarious laughter as we all rejoiced in the simply marvelous wonder of it all -- a swan among so many peacocks...

swan

Age-Related Musings

2005-06-13T11:38:00.000-05:00

Seems I’m running into this a lot these last few days. Living and writing in the blogosphere might have something to do with that, especially if you hang out in the kinkier neighborhoods – feels like everyone is younger than me; than us. Now, I just know that isn’t true, but, my goodness, I’m talking sex to people who are years younger than my children!!! And if that isn’t bad enough, these same folks are wondering if people “their parents’ ages are comfortable talking about/thinking about sex!” Ummmmm… excuse me? Am I in the room here?

Then, just last Saturday night, we went, the three of us, to a local comedy club. You see, T, who acts as the social director for our family, seeing to it that The Heretic and I get dragged out into public once in awhile for an “airing out,” had won us some tickets. Now, if there is a single activity on the face of the planet that is guaranteed to make you feel like an “olager” if you are over the age of 30, it is walking into a comedy club. EEEEKKKK.

We dressed up in what Master calls our Poly “bowling club” shirts – polo style shirts with logos that indicate, if you look closely, that the three of us consider ourselves “married.” Arriving at the door of the place, we stood in line with a lively bunch of youngsters, Master leaning on His cane, and shuffled toward the front, where a sign warned ominously that everyone must HAVE THEIR ID READY… Master wasn’t entirely sure when He’d seen His last, and joked that He’d had to surrender it when He’d received His “Golden Buckeye Pass” (the card that the state of Ohio issues to senior citizens to allow them free admission to state parks). Of course, when we arrived at the head of the line, the young fellow checking ID’s just laughed and waved us on in. Sigh… You can’t fool Mother Nature.

Now, for grins, if you want to put a twist in people’s shorts, sit down in the midst of a bunch of too-cool-for-school 20 and 30 something’s as a poly triad family in your late 40’s and 50’s and start holding hands and kissing on each other and make not-so-subtle references to your relationship – just sit back and watch the ripples begin to spread. It wasn’t too long before the tables around us were beginning to do some sincere head scratching… Take that, young whippersnappers!!! Hehehehehehe. Anyway, I digress…

Jokes were about getting along with your parents (or not), the stresses of work and school, dating and getting laid (or not), being newly married and having babies (been there done that)… At least what’s funny at a certain age in life hasn’t changed much.

Anyway, all of this has me thinking about the route I’ve traveled to HERE. Here is a time and a place in my life where I proudly claim the title of submissive and slave, masochist, and poly wife and sister-heart.

I grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s. I am a product of the women’s liberation movement of that era. We fought our mothers to be able to wear bras and then took a page from our brothers’ books and burned the damn things!

I attended the Colorado School of Mines, studying mining engineering, where I was one of 25 women in a class of 400. I remember, as a freshman purchasing the required uniform for the required physical education class. It included a jock strap. I stood, indignantly, in the middle of the teeming field house at registration, holding the offending item aloft, demanding to know what the hell I was supposed to do with this thing, and making it clear to anyone within ear shot, that I had no intention of paying for something for which I had no earthly use. The cost of the ATHLETIC SUPPORTER was duly subtracted from my bill. And, yes, while I was there at Mines, I learned to blow things up, use a rock hammer, use a surveyor’s level, and program a PDP 11 computer (in Fortran IV – look it up historians).

In the workplace, I did civil engineering drafting, mining engineering mapping, uranium mining and oil and gas land lease work, and a fair amount of survey crew work. I was often the only woman in the office besides the secretary. I got a spanking one time in front of the whole office, by a geologist in his 40’s who just thought it would be fun to see if he could get away with it. The boss’s office was only 20 feet away and his door was wide open. I fought like a wild cat, but stopped short of cold-cocking the bastard… to my everlasting regret. Another time, the marketing guy at a civil engineering firm where I was part of a 7 person drafting/surveying crew walked right past the two secretaries, with a client in tow, and shouted across the drafting room at me, “Hey, Suzie(no one but my Dad has ever called me Suzie – not even Master goes there), bring us some coffee, would ya?” I was livid and blind with rage, but I got up from the plan I was working on and went to get the coffee pot and two mugs. I set the mug down in front of the client, poured his coffee, put the other mug down on the marketing prick’s desk and emptied the pot in his lap. Then I turned around walked out of his office and got my stuff and went home. I figured I’d need a new job, but no one ever said a word and I came back the next day and went right on as if nothing had ever happened. The secretaries got the coffee from then on.

In my generation of women, we paid attention to words. We worked hard to take back the language, to the point of silliness sometimes. Waitress became “waitperson” and we sometimes joked that the person who delivered the letters we got from our parents when we were away at college should maybe be referred to as the “person-person.” When it came time to marry, the debate over whether or not to take our new husband’s names led to all sorts of naming contortions and hyphenation-hideousness. That discussion often led to the musing over whether keeping the name you got at birth was really any better because, after all, that was just the name your mother got from your father when she married him – how far back did a woman have to go to get an “authentic” name? Sigh. We were so awfully serious. And then we had our own sons and daughters and the whole naming issue came up again. With first names and last names… No silly girl names for us – oh no. No Sallies or Suzie’s or Betty’s… Our girls were going to have good solid, serious, sensible names that no one was going to screw with. Good grief!

Raised on Steinhem and the like, I hid the dark dreamings of submissive and masochistic fantasies for years and years. Imagine my chagrin when I began to come to grips publicly with the first inklings of my submissive nature. I struggled mightily to accommodate the very idea of submission as part of who I am. Master still delights in teasing me about those early days as I twisted and turned trying to alternately shake it off like a cobweb one day, and then somehow, squeeze into it and see if it fit the next. Quite a dance it was. I did that dance first and then we tackled the bit about masochism. Too much to take on all at once…

I’ve left behind an awful lot of friends and folks who once were part of my life. They couldn’t see me through the transitions. A bra burner and petition carrier who wears a collar and cuffs just can’t be reconciled in some people’s cosmologies. There are folks who cannot connect those dots.

I’ve gotten older along the path. It takes time to walk the distance. To learn all the lessons and meet all the teachers and fellow travelers. Some days, I get exasperated with young folks who just think it has always been as free and easy as it seems today -- who can’t imagine that there was a time when there were no Internet places, no birth control options, no easy career choices for women, no real decisions to be made about the path of marriage and family and sexuality if you were female… I want to scream at everyone who looks at the conservative takeover happening nowadays, and shrugs as if it doesn’t matter: that there is so much to lose and that going back is really, really, really a bad thing… But then I realize that doing that would just make me sound, well, “old…”

swan

Making the Transition -- part 2

2005-06-11T16:52:00.000-05:00

Living a school teacher's life means that my world divides, every year, into two distinct parts -- school time and summer time. Those two parts of the year are as different as can be from one another in terms of the demands on my energies, my time, my focus, my emotions, ... At so many levels, the shift from school to summer means a major shift of gears.

I've struggled this last week with making that shift.

One radical change that occurs at this time of the year is that my focus becomes incredibly much closer to home. Much more "internal" to our family and our own personal set of relationships. While, during the school year, I spend some significant part of my days, as "master" of my world, that ends abruptly when the school year ends.

Here at home, I am owned. I am slave. I belong to The Heretic. That is NOT a bad thing, but it is a major mental shift when it becomes the whole of one's days and nights suddenly. I find I want to be eased into it, reassured about it, touched and "handled" on my way back into it. The emotions that go with making the shift from busy, "in-charge" teacher, to home-body, chief cook and homemaker seem to make me want to curl into a ball and seek out some sort of help in redefining my sense of value and worth. All of the sudden, I find myself feeling uncertain and unsure, not clear how I feel or what I need or what is OK to even ask for...

Has been a difficult few days.

Getting settled down now(got "handled" some this morning), and it will be OK, but oh slaves are tricky critters...

swan

How I Became RAHeretic

2005-06-11T10:57:00.001-05:00

Gabriel's recent post, "Pigeonholes are for Pigeons" at www.keeperandkept.blogspot.com reminded me of the genesis of my name RAHeretic.

Early on in my meanderings around in the realm of DD Listservs I found myself on a Listserv which was where I first encountered my swan. It was a rather prolific Listserv, and very heavily moderated by a very domineering moderator, who tended to censor the opinions expressed there and to be very prescriptive and dogmatic about what constituted the "correct" practice of Domestic Discipline. There was only one truly correct way to practice DD and that was the way the Moderator said to.......and BTW she based this expertise on two years of experience with her husband. The list was populated mostly by rank newbies who were feeling rather insecure in their newly found lifestyle. They were comforted by the Moderator's assurance that DD had nothing to do with BDSM.

Part of the Moderator's cyclically pontificating the true and correct practice of DD included a certain style of relating couples must engage in and that spankings could only be for discipline, they were not to be enjoyed or eroticized, and that a really good punishment session might entail 8 swats through jeans. She derided those who did not live their lives as she'd decreed to be the "correct and true" path as "Red-Assed DD-ers."

I entertained this concept for a few weeks with amazement but it wasn't too long before I rebelled. I decided to embrace the term red-assed DD and to vociferously proclaim my Heresy.

I lampooned her as the chief inquisitor of the Inquisition of DD lifetylers whose role was to seek out and banish those whose practice of DD was characterised by having far too much crimson in their nether regions.

I developed the chant of the red-assed DD-ers as they merrily marched off to the inquisition:
"Two, four, six, eight we love to spank and not relate! Eight, six, four, two We're really going to like it too!"

I was branded and of course banished. I was a Heretic. I was, worse yet, a Red-Assed Heretic.

I've proudly been RAHeretic ever since:)

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.

Making the Transition

2005-06-09T18:04:00.000-05:00

There is a wry bit of humor that goes around in teacher circles. It says that the three best things about teaching are June, July, and August.

I suppose there is something to that. The school year is wearing in many ways: long days that begin at 5:00 AM, and often don't end until 5:00 PM or 6 or 7 or 8 or even later... Weekends that are filled with planning and grading and phone calls to parents. The endless schlepping back and forth of the ubiquitous, heavy teacher bags and boxes full of "stuff." The emotion laden work of wondering how to do the best one can for all the youngsters that come into one's care each year. The mysterious and often incomprehensible snakepit of school politics. Any teacher worth the name ends the school year tattered and frayed, in my experience. June, July, and August are not simply nice benefits -- they are necessities for the sake of health and sanity.

Still, I come to the end of a year, and the children leave, and the grades get figured, and the record cards get filled out, and the room gets (finally) cleaned up and closed up -- and I drag my weary body home at last, and I am left for a few days with a heavy sense of loss and grief that is hard to explain to those who do not do this work... So I hope you will all forgive me, but I need to mourn for the kiddos I spent this year with and who I now need to release to the summer and the teacher who will have them next. I have loved them and they have been "mine" in a very deep and special way. Only teaching has this annual cycle of getting started anew and coming to love intensely and then having to let them go so suddenly over and over. Though I have done it for over a decade, I never ever seem to get the hang of keeping my heart out of harm's way...

I teach junior high age students -- 6th, 7th, and 8th graders. My teaching assignment has me instructing mathematics and computer classes, and I am responsible for a 7th grade homeroom class. It is that homeroom group that gets particularly to feel like "mine." In addition to all the zillion "housekeeping" details of any given day (attendance, and lunch count and the general stuff of a school), anything that they might "get into" around the place comes quickly back into my lap to deal with. They are "my kids" while they are at school.

This year's 7th graders were an "interesting" bunch: a pretty wild group with a number of difficult family situations and some less than charming social behaviors. Many of them were not what you would call "well parented" and they had a "reputation" that preceded them. Ours is a small school and this bunch had driven every teacher crazy from the time they were kindergarteners.

I've always figured that, as a teacher, my first job is to fall in love with every student. If I can find a way to do that, genuinely and honestly, I can almost always seduce them into learning darn near anything -- but these were wild children and I had my doubts. Still... I was determined to convince them that they were good and decent people with the potential to do great things. From the very first, I told them that I liked them and respected them and that I knew they would make me proud of them. I told them that I wanted to be able to brag about them to everyone in the school. We laughed together and were silly at every opportunity. They tried to gnaw my arms off... It was a monumental struggle, but, while I am submissive at home, I am absolutely dominant in my classroom. My wild children snapped and snarled but they began to be gentler with each other and with me by slow degrees.

One day, in mid-winter, we were out on the playground at recess and many of them were playing near the woods. Suddenly there was a micro-burst of wind and I heard the trees begin to pop ominously. I howled at the top of my lungs, "TO ME! TO ME!!!" My kids never hesitated for an instant. They came flying to me as fast as they could run -- as the giant trees crashed onto the playground only a few feet from where they had been playing moments before... Breathless, they huddled around me in a tight pack, and I felt just like a mother wolf, wanting to lick them all and make sure they were all OK... From that day on, I referred to them as "my wolves." (although not to their faces... they would not have understood what a great pack they had become and how much affection that appellation held for me).

The year went on and my wolves grew in knowledge and grace. I began to have people tell me what a nice group they were. I would simply smile and say, "thank you." It is amazing what happens when you tell people that they are good and strong and bright and decent.

Ours is a Catholic school. Each morning we open with prayer in the classroom. I have students lead this practice and exert very little control over it (since I am not myself a Catholic). I do insist that it be respectful, but I allow them to stand or recline around the edges in whatever groupings they choose, and the student leading sets the tone as she or he sees fit. On the last morning, as the youngster leading prayer got it all started by asking the group to stand up to pray, one of the other students looked around the room and said, "Hey! This is our last morning in the 7th grade, here in OUR room... Everybody, make a circle!" To my absolute shock, they said not a word -- simply moved quietly, together and gathered in a group together, and finished their morning prayers as a class. I was in tears before it was over... Amazing.

Later that same day, as it came time to clean out desks and wash desks and stack them all up, I had the group for a very short period of time. Other teachers had claims on them. I listed what we needed to do: take down bulletin boards, clean chalk boards, empty and clean the desks (using my old stand by -- shaving cream), and stack them against a blank wall. We had about 30 minutes time. My kids looked at that list, looked at each other, and went to town. Barely a word was spoken. They filled buckets and pulled staples and moved furniture like pros. It was the most amazing sight. I swear they were communicating by telepathy. In short order the room was down and cleaned and orderly and the floor was swept, too!!! Somewhere someone came up with a deck of cards and a set of poker chips and the whole gang flopped in a circle to play cards. What a great pack they have become.

Have a great summer, kiddos. Be good. Have fun. I will miss you.

Next year there will be new ones to love. Who knows what I will learn from them?

For now I am just awfully tired and awfully proud and still a little sad.

swan

Pussy Whacking

2005-06-08T11:30:00.000-05:00

There are days when I feel like just a butt. He spanks and He spanks and then, He spanks some more. It’s not really like that, but well, gosh. Other parts of me sometimes long for a little stimulation.

Dreams to the rescue again. That early morning sleepy dozing, happy, horny kind of erotic dream that can get shared so easily when you are snuggled up against the furry chest of the One who keeps you pulled in safe and protected. That’s how I came to tell my Love about pussy whacking, and how it has come to be a regular part of our erotic play together.

When I first dreamed it there were rules to pussy whacking. It required that I stand in front of Him while He sat on the side of the bed. I would have to spread my legs wide apart and put my hands behind my neck. He would then spank my pussy, between my legs. I would be required to hold still while the spanking went on. If I moved or broke position, there would be a regular paddling as a penalty, and then the pussy whacking would resume. We’ve done that a couple of times and discovered that the biggest issue is that I tend to reach orgasm, fairly quickly. Other times, we do it with me lying on my back.

Always, this is a game that is a wild mix between SM and pure erotic stimuli; between M/s power exchange dynamics and silly love play. It is lighter in some ways than some of the games we play. Maybe, it is the sunny clearing that one finds in the very center of the densest part of the forest of BDSM power exchange dynamics.

swan

Learning to eroticize the Dressage whip

2005-06-08T11:27:00.000-05:00

Did I mention that I belong to a sadist? I’m sure that the dressage whip, like lots of other implements, can be used lightly and sensuously to create a range of delightfully erotic stimuli. Anything is possible. My experience with it however had been that it simply hurt like Hell, and, as with so many other of our toy bag goodies, I’d come to hate and fear sessions with the evil dressage whip.

Slaves, however, don’t get to vote on what the toy of the moment is going to be, and the dressage whip would come up on a regular basis. I wanted desperately to find a way to cope with some sort of poise at least.

Then one night, I had this dream: a dream about being whipped with the dressage whip while using my vibrator. Actually, in the dream the whole point of the exercise was that I was required to use the vibrator while being whipped so that I would equate the whipping with erotic pleasure. So, I told my Master about it. I felt very awkward about it, but also felt very turned on by the dream, and very strange about not telling Him. It took Him no time at all to get right to it. There was nothing for it but that we would try this out in real life.

So there I go, face down over some pillows, with my hand-held electric vibrator in place against my clit and my butt high in the air, while my Master used that whip on my ass. Slowly and lightly at first, while the orgasms built, He whipped me. I knew I would be whipped hard when the waves crashed and it scared me terribly and it added to my excitement. I rode that vibrator and He rode me with that whip. I moaned and groaned and whimpered and then crashed over the edge, screaming my pleasure and my fear and my joy. The whip rose and fell over and over and over again until I collapsed in exhaustion unable to even twitch anymore.

Oh Dear. I wonder if this constitutes poise?

swan

In the Dungeon at OLF

2005-06-08T11:24:00.000-05:00

Ohio Leather Fest (OLF) is the place where we first met, real-time and, for us it is a place that holds special significance. Too, it is a place for us to play in a “public” setting; a place to be among others who are “like” us. Public play has a special intensity and a special magic. To take what we do for much of the year in private and do it in the company of others gives it a presence and authenticity and validity which transforms it into something deeply and powerfully spiritual for us.

In August of 2003, the OLF dungeon was to be the site where The Heretic and I would play for the first time publicly as declared Master and slave. We’d weathered much together to be able to stand together in that place and we were looking forward to the event with much anticipation.

Then disaster struck. As we loaded our car, preparing to leave to drive to Columbus for the event, the phone rang. Event organizers were calling to tell us that the hotel had cancelled the event’s booking and that they were scrambling to find a place for it to be held. We would have to rebook our rooms in another hotel and they would let us know where the various workshops and play parties would occur -- all this less than twelve hours from the scheduled start of a major leather conference event. We were dumbstruck and heartsick. Still, it was OLF…the event that we look forward to every year, and we’d paid our money. So, we loaded the car and drove to Columbus.

When we arrived, we found that the workshops and play parties were to be held in a musty, rain-soaked, waterlogged, hot, humid, dismal warehouse. Nothing could have been further from the setting we’d envisioned for the debut of our public coming out as Master and slave, but here we were. For years we’d preached that SM was “religion” that, when done right, had the power to transform and transcend time and place. If ever there was a moment when it needed to do that, this was it.

We walked into the dungeon that Friday night with one purpose between us; to play together, and in playing, to come together as one for all to see. It was to bond to one another that we were there that night. He led me to a cross, pulled me to Him, and told me that He would have me and that He would make me burn for Him. I held to Him and knew it would be the most intense night I’d ever spent with Him. I also knew that I would be absolutely safe in His care. He put my cuffs on and fastened me to the cross and then He told me that, tonight, I was free to make as much noise as I liked. For us, this is a rare luxury, as our living circumstances dictate that our play must be somewhat quiet most of the time. He went after me with paddles and straps and that single tail whip of His. I bucked and shrieked and walked that cross all over that dungeon. He brought forth not just marks and tears, but blood and sweat. When, finally, we’d both reached the point of collapse, and He’d taken me down; when we’d cleaned up the area and packed up the toys, we took a bit of a walk around the dungeon – I in just my Heels and my cuffs. I’ve never felt such fierce joy or pride. The crowd parted around us in awe, and I have to say there were no newbies lined up waiting to play with my Master that night…

swan

Paddling Day After Day After Day

2005-06-08T11:20:00.000-05:00

I’m a slave who belongs to a sadist. He loves me, but He takes His primary erotic pleasure out of hurting me. It is a simple fact.

He loves paddles.

I hate paddles. Wood paddles are the worst of all. They burn and sting and bruise. I’m a masochist, but I haven’t enough masochistic capital that He can’t trump me. No matter how high I want to push the stakes, He can always go higher – always. That was surely the case with paddling. When we first came together as full time partners, we played everyday, sometimes, two or three times a day, going higher and higher day after day, until finally, I couldn’t go any higher – especially not with those blasted paddles of His. Eventually, I started to balk at the idea of paddling. Started to whine and fuss and wheedle and whine at the very idea of paddling; started to bail out of sessions prematurely and precipitously and often with a good deal of rage.

He was not amused, not at all, and so a new regimen came to be. Each day, I was required to bring Him one of the paddles that I hated worst of all and ask for a paddling: “Please Sir, would you paddle me?” To which He would reply, “I’d be glad to.” I would then be treated to a session of paddling and whipping, administered without any warm-up, that typically involved 4 sets of 25 strokes: paddling, whipping, paddling, whipping. At the end of all of that, I was required to kiss the paddle and thank Him for my spanking.

This regimen went on day after day after day for a period of about 3 months. Although, I had absolute control over the time of day that the paddling occurred each day, I could not duck it altogether and I came to fear it utterly. Each morning, when my eyes would pop open, the first thought that would come into my awareness would be of the impending paddling. It was never far from my consciousness. I struggled and struggled like a wild animal caught in a trap. My mind just would not stop smashing up against the edges of the daily paddlings. Then I broke, gave up and gave in. Maybe I surrendered or maybe I just broke down. Then again, maybe I just wore myself out and ran out of energy to fight it anymore. Whatever it was, I crumbled. It wasn’t pretty and I’m not sure if it was the response He was seeking but from that point on the daily paddlings were scaled back. We still paddle, but on a smaller scale and with less frequency. I now accept them with better grace. I’ll never “like” them I guess, but I understand that they are part of the commitment I’ve made to submit. On the other hand, it seems to me, He supports me differently through them now. Why I’m not sure, but somehow it is as if He sees my brokenness around them and loves it better than He did the rage that went before it.

swan

The Single Tail that I gave Him

2005-06-08T11:15:00.000-05:00

It is a powerfully evocative implement…the single tail whip. In the hands of one who knows how to use it well, the single tail can bring forth every sensation from delight to agony, and watching one who uses it with mastery is like seeing the most elegant of ballets.

I knew my Master dreamed of and lusted after owning a fine single tail whip. He’d purchased relatively inexpensive single tail “wannabe” and substitutes, and He’d taken part in a number of workshops with a well-known expert. He was so ready for a real, fine, quality whip of His own, and, of course, someone to use it on…

So I started on a quest to find the whip that would make that dream a reality for Him, so that I might give Him the whip He wanted for His birthday. I called the expert that had given the workshops where my Owner had trained. He gave me the name of a whip maker that he liked, but that person never returned my phone calls -- back to the drawing board. Finally, I tracked down a maker of fine leather toys that I knew and trusted because, well, I’d had personal contact with his handiwork. He didn’t steer me wrong. He spent a lot of time talking to me about what I was looking for, and about my Master – His size and strength and play style. Eventually he made a recommendation and helped me select a whip. It wasn’t inexpensive, but then I knew where the end of that whip was going to be landing, and it didn’t seem prudent to me to go cheap in this instance.

The whip arrived a few weeks before the birthday during what turned out to be some very difficult days for our family. My Master was in a fog of depression and despair. I wasn’t at all sure that by the time the day came to be giving the gift, any of us would care. Maybe I’d spent a lot of money and time all for nothing, but custom made whips are not returnable items and you can’t just give them to your mom for Christmas, so…

I wrapped it up and we sang the happy birthday song and He opened it up and guess what? The fog lifted and the whip was unfurled and – guess who got a birthday whipping?

swan

Switching at Spring Break

2005-06-08T11:10:00.000-05:00

Time passed. In time we came to know that our friendship was far more than friendship. One special night in September, 2001, The Heretic and I looked at each other and finally acknowledged the truth – between us there was love.

That earth shaking news created some work to do. Two couples had a lot of shifting to do. As we worked through the issues and emotions of becoming a polyamorous quad, and of moving half of us 1200 miles across the country so we could all live real-time together, we also worked to find ways to spend as much time as possible together in whatever configurations we could manage. One of those efforts led to me spending one joyous spring vacation with The Heretic and T. For The Heretic and I, it became a sort of honeymoon. It also became the occasion for my first, and so far only, switching.

The Heretic has very definite ideas about switching, and a good deal of technical knowledge and expertise. I knew of His passion for this particular esoteric realm of SM play, and I wanted to please Him. Still, as terrified as I’d been of the cane, switches were in a whole other realm of terror.

He took some pity on me. I didn’t have to hunt for my switches by myself. He went with me and helped me select them. We took them home together and He helped me scrub them clean and soak them in warm water in the bathtub. I watched Him as He relished my growing anxiety as the day wore on. Eventually, He took me to Him, undressed me, took me over His knee and gave me a warm up spanking which stunned me in its severity. My butt was on fire and we had not even “begun.” If that was the warm up, how would I ever survive the main event? As He fastened me onto His spanking bench I fought back my panic. I don’t really fit well on the spanking bench to start with – I’m too tall, actually. It is built for little, petite ladies and I’m much too tall. Switching, however, requires restraint, so onto the bench I went.

And it began. White fire. Shriek and run. Impossible! Get away! Anyway you can… Every stroke was pure agony and absolute terror and misery. I begged. I sobbed. I fought like a wild thing against the bonds and the bench and the floor and gravity. He just kept on. I lifted the bench from the floor and set it down on my hand. Eventually I ripped the leather straps loose from their fastenings into the wood. They’ve never been the same. I didn’t get loose, actually, but I tried mightily, with every fiber of my being. There was not one ounce of me that wanted to stay there; that would have stayed there if I could have done otherwise. I have no idea how long it lasted; no idea how it ended; no idea how He felt about it or what He thought of me after it was over. I don’t think He ever told me any of that and I’ve never asked. On a few occasions since, I’ve faced the threat of a switching and it has never failed to reduce me to complete, abject, utter terror. I don’t doubt that someday I will have to go back to the bench for another encounter with a switch. No doubt at all.

swan

Caning Sue

2005-06-08T11:05:00.000-05:00

First times are important. When I first came to be spanked by the man who is my Owner and Master, my soul mate and my Love, I was married to another. I’d come, by a long, and not all that unusual route (for those who share this kind of kink), to know my masochistic and submissive side. Like so many women, who find their truth in this life “later” rather than “sooner,” I had commitments and ties that would eventually need to be broken and unbound. But that future was still ahead.

When I found my way onto the Internet, found the world of other spankers and other BDSM’ers, it was as if I’d landed in some magical place I’d never ever dared to imagine. It was in this cyber wonderland that I first met the couple that would eventually turn into the family that now forms the center of my life – The Heretic and T, but again, that future was hidden in the unseen mists of a time still ahead. Lots of across the country emails and IM chatting led to a friendship that eventually led to cross-country traveling to meet at a BDSM conference where we played, did some “technical” training on the use of floggers and other implements, and got our first introduction to a public dungeon. There was some crossover playing between the two couples, but it was pretty limited and at the end of the weekend I was headed home again, still firmly attached to the man I married. But the die was cast. I was snared. We traveled again in the spring and spent a few more days together.

Then the time came for Thunder in the Mountains, a major BDSM event held annually in Denver, Colorado. Several couples made plans to travel and meet there, staying in our home. As the plans began to form, a conversation started, slowly at first, about including, as part of the festivities of the event, The Heretic caning me.

I’d been flogged. I’d been paddled. I was not a total novice by any stretch, but caning just scared the willies out of me, and He knew it. He loved knowing it, and played my fears to a fever pitch. For weeks He teased and tormented me and worried me like a cat plays a mouse. I sweated it and tried to behave with some sort of grace. I tried not to wheedle, whine, or beg, although at one point, He actually made it clear to me that He wished I would.

Eventually, of course, as these things do, the day arrived and the group gathered and the appointed hour arrived. I was all aquiver. The evening progressed and our bunch played and laughed and socialized and nothing at all happened for what seemed like forever. I thought I might just pass out. Or pout myself into a total snit. Finally, He remembered, or maybe He just got around to me, or maybe He figured He’d strung me along long enough. Came and found me and took me to the flogging frame – yes, we had one of those in our home…another long story, and began the long awaited caning. And…

It was the sweetest, gentlest, softest, and most sensuous of sessions. He never once crossed my lines. Never pushed my limits. Never forced me to a place I didn’t want to go. Cared for me and coddled me and babied me through the kindest session I’d ever had.

I was horribly disappointed. All that build up and all that anxiety and all that fear. And He took me as gently as a lover…the first time.

swan

Stories ...

2005-06-08T10:59:00.000-05:00

If you grew up, like I did, in the 1950s and 1960s, it was the ubiquitous question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Girls answered within a pretty narrow range of acceptable choices like nurse and teacher… Rarely, some radical might venture that she wanted to be a doctor or even president, and in those days, there was a dawning tolerance for such audacity.

The question left me mute as far back as I can remember. Oh I understood the career implication, but at some far deeper level, I knew there were other depths to what I wanted to be that had nothing at all to do with what I wanted to do to earn a living. I knew there was something about who and what I was that I could never ever tell anyone else; something that had to do with belonging to someone in a very different and significant way. I knew that the very real answer to the question for me could not be given or understood. I doubted very much that it ever would be.

Today, at 50, I am grown up. A woman with a full history: wife and ex-wife, mother, former corporate executive, spiritual seeker, teacher, volunteer, sometimes political organizer, and dyed-in-wool-wool feminist. I am one of those who know that “ERA” does not just stand for earned run average. I am also, finally, able to proudly say that I am a BDSM masochist and slave and, happily part of a poly triad. It has been a long road with lots learned along the way. I’ve gained and lost, grown and changed.

Probably, I’ve been through hundreds, maybe thousands of spankings in the last two or three years. Every path gets walked step by step but we mark our way by the landmarks. These short essays are the stories of signposts by which my slavery has evolved and grown and come to be known in my heart and mind and body. I’ll put these up in sequence. They really follow each other in time, over some period of time actually… I won’t make you wait. I’ll just stick them up one right after the other. Master put the one called “Finally into Subspace” up already. That one was the last one of the bunch. All of these came ahead of it… So… sit back, if you are reading this thing, stories coming --

swan

Anniversary

2005-06-07T21:05:00.000-05:00

Three years ago, the 1200 mile trek from Denver was made for the last time, as we pulled in here -- HOME to begin our lives together at last. All the months of planning and longing and waiting and working came to an end that night as we came together as a family for the first time with flowers and hugs and happy dancing. We celebrate a number of other "anniversaries" throughout the year, but each year, as the first week of June draws to a close, we stop to remember and wonder at the fact that we actually did it -- took the leap into the void, and made a family for ourselves, of ourselves... More love has, indeed, made more love.

swan

Howling

2005-06-05T14:00:00.000-05:00

We sort of snuck up on it yesterday.

I was suffering from a bit of "end of the school year" drop I think -- feeling a little moody and sort of blue.

We'd spanked some in the early morning, although not a lot. I wasn't really "into it," and I let Him know that, although, of course, I submitted to what He chose to give me. I think He was pretty gentle with me, knowing I was struggling, although not certain what the struggle was exactly. I tend to show the emotions even when I don't verbalize them. Paddling simply brings them to the surface and causes them to be shown physically, and while I won't act on the angers and frustrations that can bubble out, I will manifest those feelings in physical ways that He has learned to read.

When that was done, we got ready for sex, which for us, necessitates the installation of the "evil" diaphragm. The doctor that fitted me for the damn thing was quite amused actually. He was pretty darn sure that the odds were that I would not be getting "preggers" at my ADVANCED age. However, neither of us are willing to risk taking a chance on our chances that we won't "get lucky" at this age. So we are conscientious about our birth control practice. Still, getting it ready and in place is not what one can consider a romantic interlude, and following the already difficult SM session ahead of it, I was hardly feeling "sexy" or romantic when we started in... Then to top it all off, this was one of those times when Himself had "trouble," to put it delicately. I rode Him for what seemed like an hour -- it might well have been nearly that long for all I know. I do know that when He finally came (explosively and happily at last), I was drenched in sweat, panting, and exhausted. I told Him later that I was beginning to think that, if He didn't cum soon, I was going to have to just put a pillow over His face, and explain it to the coroner later... Way too tired at that point to do anything about me... And besides we were both starving for breakfast -- time to start the coffee.

Later in the afternoon, we decided to see if we couldn't rectify the imbalance. We've pretty well given up on the hope of vaginal fisting. It just seems too difficult anymore. Hormonal shifts seem to have taken away the lubrication and tissue elasticity that is needed. So we've resigned ourselves to some pretty intense and high-end digital penetration and I've waved good-bye in the rear-view mirror to those glorious, mind-bending orgasms... We poured out a bucket full of lubricant and went after things, starting out slowly. We are trying to learn our way around this whole new body and it is a mystery to us both. Taking a lot more communication. I am having to stay with it a lot more and remember to tell Him what is good and what is not, and He's having to learn to read my responses and listen to what I'm telling Him way more. It is slow going, but we're determined to weather this perimenopause trip together.

So we rocked away and stroked and swam in a sea of lube... Wasn't long and I was humming and moving to a rhythm that He established with every thrust. Soon enough, I was crying for more... more... Uncertain at first, Master asked if I wanted Him to try and push all the way in?

Yes, I told Him. He tried to push past the inner ring of muscle, but encountered resistance and backed off. He told me it was too tight and that He was afraid He'd hurt me. We went back to the primal rhythms we'd found earlier. I was beginning to roar with the tides. And then, I think He felt the change. Maybe something opened. I don't know, but He moved and suddenly He was there. Past the barrier and all the way inside me.

I howled in surprise and fury and terror and joy. We stopped together at the top of the summit, poised for the drop into the roller coaster ride that is fisting. Once the initial shock of full insertion is over, the amazement starts.

I don't usually remember a lot of the details, and that is true about yesterday. I remember Him quieting me several times. I think that I howled or growled or roared with the wild sensations He was causing. Mostly, I gripped Him and rode. Mostly I rejoiced in the pure animal ecstasy of it... Until I couldn't do it anymore. Until I asked Him to let me go, slowly -- please...

And then sobbed and laughed and hugged Him in utter joy...

swan

How we all met

2005-06-03T10:44:00.000-05:00

Hailee asked, a little while back, how we all met. These last few days have been just packed, and I haven't had time to sit and put coherent words together to tell that story. Now though, there seem to be a few quiet moments, so maybe I'll find some time to do that --

Our family came together by "chance" seemingly (if you believe in chance). I don't think any of us really think it was that, looking back now, but at the time, that is what it seemed to be. We were many hundreds of miles apart, and had no knowledge of one another at all.

I lived in Denver, Colorado at the time we first "met." At that time, I'd been married for about 25 years or so to the man who was the father of my two children, and the only man I'd ever been sexually intimate with.

He and I had both been raised Catholic with the usual sort of sexually repressive upbringing, and when our natural adolescent urges met up with the Church injunction against artificial birth control, we found ourselves pregnant and married (in that order) very young. I was just 21 when our son was born, and almost 23 when our daughter followed. I knew very little about who I was when I married, and even less about him. It didn't take me long to figure out that I had sexual appetites that ranged toward what I thought of, at the time, as the "dark" side. It also became very clear, very quickly, that my young husband was not very sexually inventive or adventurous, or actually even "hungry." Over the years, I tried on many occasions to interest him in various kinky fantasies of mine but such overtures always played out badly, and I always ended up feeling dirty and humiliated in the end. Mostly, I just tried to ignore my urges. I had two young children to raise after all, and, as it turned out, my husband was not a terribly effective or reliable wage earner. So I went to college and got my degree, and worked my tail off in the oil and gas and minerals industry. Eventually, all that repressed sexual energy got converted into hard work and paid off in some pretty high powered corporate exectutive positions. But late at night, I'd still lie awake and wish that I had someone to whom I belonged, with whom I could be safe...

And then, one day, I sat down at my new home computer and typed "spanking" into the search engine. One of the things I found were websites and listserves dealing with something called "Domestic Discipline." I timidly showed those to my husband, and he didn't seem quite as weirded out by that idea as he had been with the kinkier stuff. Domestic Discipline was more "acceptable," more "sanitized" than the more garden variety SM I'd always fantasized about... He was willing to sort of accommodate it, although, to tell the truth, I was still doing most of the "driving." We began to participate in a list called 1Household Discipline (which has since gone inactive although the archives remain). I did most of the posting for us both. Later, we also posted at another list -- 1 Domestic Discipline.

Far away, Master was dealing with His own difficult and unhappy marriage. I'll let Him tell what He chooses to about those years, but suffice it to say that His lovely children are the best thing to come out of nearly 30 years of loneliness and frustration with someone who could not seem to love Him at even the most elemental level. Eventually, He went through a painful and devastating divorce which left Him depressed and on the verge of suicide. He has shared some of the story of His adventures with what He calls the "sport fucking" phase of post-divorce life, but eventually, a mutual friend introduced Him to T. That "blind date" turned out to be a gift for us all. They met, talked, and fell quite utterly in love.

Maybe, if we can talk her into it, T will tell some of her history leading to that moment. She'd banged around a lot. Spent time on the old Prodigy BDSM Global list. She'd been around and knew who and what she was and what she would and would not put up with. She had no illusions. She had just about given up on finding "the man of her dreams," and then there was Himself. He was a sad case when she found Him, but T is a bright soul and she soon had Him dragged back from the brink of despair.

And then she got sick. Terribly sick. Horribly, awfully, life-threateningly sick. The earliest inkling that I had of the two of them were occasional posts on the listserve from this terribly frightened and desperate sounding man. He would come home from the hospital late at night and write heart-wrenching posts about this lady that He loved. It would be so clear that the lady was desperately ill, and that there was very little hope for a recovery. I'd read the posts and feel helpless and wordless in the face of His terror and grief. All the usual outpourings of sympathy and support just seemed -- trivial and trite, and so I said nothing.

But, miraculously, one day, the news was better and so was she. Slowly, there was improvement and renewed health and healing. Where there had been no hope, there was dawning joy. His love moved from intensive care and then, finally, came home from the hospital, and got slowly better. Still, I mostly just read what He wrote without comment. He was so taken with another, much more experienced writer on the list, and I was so green and so new, and so overawed with it all.

One day, He posted something about His lady being His collared submissive. That touched off a flurry of stuff on the list. I read, fascinated, but couldn't glean the one basic piece of information that I lacked... Finally, I got up the courage to post the question that I feared would brand me as too naive to be taken seriously be anyone: "would you please explain to me what does it mean: collared submissive?" That simple question was the first direct communication between The Heretic and I. He was most gracious, and I think, delighted to be able to explain. From that moment on, we were wrapped up in ongoing conversation about all sorts of things. I was a willing pupil, and He was an eager teacher.

Eventually, as my husband and I decided to venture further into the realm of BDSM, it was natural to turn to The Heretic and T for guidance and mentoring. We wrote to them off list, asking if they would undertake to advise us. We had in mind that they might offer us a list of reading perhaps, or maybe some good websites we could visit, maybe even a local conference we could attend. Imagine our surprise when they suggested that we come join them for Ohio Leather Fest! EEEEKKKK! It was a 1200 mile drive on the weekend before school started. We said, "yes." I worked to get my classroom ready, piled into the car, drove all night, arrive about noon, slept for a couple hours, and then prepared to meet these "friends" from the Internet for our first ever BDSM conference, our first ever dungeon experience, MY first ever spanking by someone who wasn't my husband -- I was an absolute wild bundle of nerves.

We met them and we loved them. The conversation that started that weekend just never ever ended. We spent a very few, very wild hours at the conference. Too soon, we had to hit the road and drive home to Denver to be ready for the first day of school on Monday morning, but the die was cast. None of us could have guessed that it would lead to our polyamory, although we did talk about poly (in general terms) that weekend.

Soon we were in communication by email and IM and phone whenever we could be. We traveled to visit each other as often as our finances would allow. Talk, talk, talk... Our attachment grew, but Master and I avoided the admission to our deepening affection. We simply did not "go there."

He and T married in the summer of 2001. They planned a reception for September. We decided to travel to be there. And then 9/11 happened and grounded all the planes. Our plans looked like they would be cancelled, but by 9/21, we were together and celebrating with our friends. Late at night, after all the partiers had gone to bed or headed home, He and I sat up on the living room sofa still talking into the wee hours of the morning... Suddenly He looked at me from the far end of the couch and declared, "I love you." My heart stood still in that moment... They were words I thought I would never hear and I was in heaven. He claims I lit up like a Christmas tree. I only know that I was thrilled and overjoyed and absolutely without a clue as to what we would do next. We were, after all, both married... Sigh...

My husband claimed that he was thrilled and happy with it all, had seen it coming and knew it would all be wonderful... that we would just become one big, happy family and it would surely work out...

T was stunned and hurt and angry and well... You name it and she was it...

We had a lot of stuff to work out and wait out and figure out. The feelings we had for each other were not going to simply go away. And neither of us wanted to hurt T any further. We hadn't meant to cause hurt but weren't willing to say "no" to "us" either. We decided to wait.

In November, The Heretic and T moved from one apartment to another. And I was 1200 miles away and no help at all. What could I do? Finally, I hit upon the idea of calling a local caterer and ordering a meal sent to them. Not a "fast food" dinner, but a real homecooked meal... So I got on line and found a local caterer who made roast beef and mashed potatoes and green beans and dessert and salad and rolls... the whole deal... They delivered it to them on the last day of the weekend after they'd been moving all weekend and living on pizza and burgers. When they called me, T was practically in tears. That simple act, of sending real food, made such an impact... and turned the tide. I'd touched my sister's heart in a very real way. T started to say that she thought this whole idea of us becoming one family could maybe work. I've joked ever since that if I'd known, I'd have sent roast beef a whole lot sooner.

Meanwhile, my husband continued to claim that all was well...

We planned to get together at New Year's to make plans. At that time, sitting in the apartment in Cincinnati, we decided we'd move together and try and become a family. And so the decision was made. Still, we hadn't set a date. We got on the plane and headed back to Denver once more, this time, with lots and lots of work ahead of us.

Not long after that, I was IM'ing with The Heretic, explaining how much there was to do before we could actually make the move -- a house to be sold, household goods to be sorted through, and jobs to be given up on one end and found on the other, and so much planning to do. I suggested that perhaps we could be in Cincinnati in two years. The heat coming through my screen was palpable... "Do you think we will live forever? Get here this summer!" He commanded. It was my first real taste of how things would be between us. There would be no hesitation on His part with me. He knew what and who I was in His life and He would have no foolishness about it. And so it came about that the house went on the market in March and was sold and we quit jobs and said goodbye and moved, arriving here in June, one day after school finished in Denver. Master, indeed.

There were ups and downs and adjustments in our first year or so. Coming together as a family was joyous and tumultuous. My husband, it turned out, was not entirely honest in his support for the whole "poly" thing. In fact, through all of our lives together, dishonesty had been a hallmark of his relational style. Not his fault, really -- there are "issues," but in our new, high-intensity, poly household, the stresses became intense and he "cracked." Eventually, in spite of a lot of effort, we couldn't hold on to him. There is some poly community wisdom that says that poly math often means that 2+2=3. For us that turned out to be true. So we are a triad and not a quad. It could be said that was a result of the poly, but I don't really believe that. I think that the poly made the necessity of that clear. It probably should have happened sooner, but we do what we can when the time becomes right.

I'm not sure it that answers the question asked. It is the best I can do this day I think.

swan

OK OK.... So I was Tagged too

2005-06-02T13:43:00.000-05:00

Just so sue doesn't think she's one ahead of me:)

Here are my tag responses:)

Have you ever?
snuck out of the house ... It was routine for me my senior year of high school.

gotten lost in your city ... at least once a week. I am the world's most severe directional dyslexic.

seen a shooting star ... yes.

been to any other countries besides Canada ... nope.

had a serious surgery ... yes. There are no minor surgeries if you're the patient.

gone out in public in your pajamas ... yup:)

kissed a stranger... yes.

hugged a stranger...yes.

been in a fist fight... several.

been arrested... no.

laughed and had milk/coke come out of your nose... yes.

pushed all the buttons on an elevator...yes.

swore at your parents... yes.

been in love... yes. so very much......enough for three:)

been close to love...yes.

been to a casino... hell, I got bounced out of one in Las Vegas when I was 13:)

been skydiving... no.

skinny dipped... Last summer Sue took me to Valley View hot springs -- a clothing optional, rustic spot in Colorado's San Luis Valley. We did everything naked for two days including swimming:)

been skinny...when I was 18.

skipped school...yes.

seen a therapist... yes, as well as having a graduate degree to be one:)

done the splits... God no!

played spin the bottle... yes.

gotten stitches... several times.

drank a whole gallon of milk in one hour...yes.

bitten someone ... yup:)

been to Niagara Falls... yes.

gotten the chicken pox... yes.

kissed a member of the opposite sex... yes.

crashed into a friend's car...yes.

been to Japan... no.

ridden in a taxi... yes.

been dumped... yes.

shoplifted... yes.

been fired... yes.

had a crush on someone of the same sex... no.

had feelings for someone who didn't have them back... yes.

gone on a blind date... yes and the last one landed me my T:)

lied to a friend... yes.

had a crush on a teacher... yes.

celebrated Mardi-Gras in new Orleans... no.

been to Europe... no.

slept with a co-worker... well we massaged and spanked and we did actually sleep, we never had intercourse....but it was way close.

been married... yes.

gotten divorced... yes.

had children... yes.

seen someone die... yes.

had a close friend die... yes.

been to Africa... no.

driven over 400 miles in one day... yes -- to spank someone :)

been to US... Yes.

been to Mexico... no.

been to India... no.

been on a plane... yes.

seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show... yes.

thrown up in a bar... yes.

purposely set a part of myself on fire... I've had fireplay performed on me...that's as close as I've come.

eaten sushi... yes, and once was enough.

been skiing/snowboarding... once.

met someone in person from the internet... too many times to count, and spanked lots of them too:) And then there was the Internet catch of all times....my beautiful swan:)

lost a child... no, thank god.

gone to college/university... yes.

graduated college/university... yes....twice:)

fired a gun... yes.

purposely hurt yourself... hmmmmm.......I've spanked myself to see what toys felt like..does that count?

taken painkillers... yes.

been intimate with someone of the same gender... I spanked a guy recently. I wanted to see how different it was for me than spanking women. I met this guy through an online spanking match making program. He came over met us all and I spanked him. I really disliked it and have no intention of going there again.

All the best:)

Tom

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.