Just a Butt...

And as if there isn't plenty else going on, I am struggling with the SM. Getting through it, but not well and not happily. No joy. And it is not because Himself is not trying to accommodate me. He's made adjustments, gone easy, tried to slow things down, lighten up, do it nicer, make it good for us both. Still...

I so often enter into the beginnings of a spanking in fear and dread.

My mind in a dark whirl.

Even when the setting is playful. Even when the intent is for our mutual pleasure, for foreplay, when the idea is entirely erotic...spank and fuck.

Where I used to ride through on simple breathing, and then on the mantra of "Yours always and all ways;" now I'm hearing the frantic voice in my head that keeps saying "it isn't me it's just a butt," OR "you're the butt."

And somewhere in the middle of it all, I so often get scared or angry or both. Not good.

What do I do? How do I find my way back? I know that I am the one who needs to make the adjustments. Every change that He's made so far has been genuinely kind and well meaning and sweet, and I still feel exactly like I do -- mostly alone and on my own in the midst of the pain and fear of a session.

It is, I think, the feeling of "aloneness" that makes it all so hard for me. I get spanked BECAUSE I want to BELONG to Him. Yet during the actual event, He is in His own space mostly.

I think that might be it for me at least.

Our session this morning was typical. AFTER it was all over, He talked about how neat it was to watch me squirm under the cane, how He enjoyed watching my butt turn pink. He asked if I knew how much that turned Him on and if I realized how "cute" that was. I told Him that I don't know anything about how it looks or how I look during a spanking -- no one tells me any of that and I have no way of knowing anything that is going on or anything that is going to happen. He was surprised and a little hurt. I think He thinks He talks to me a lot during a session, and He does tend to tell me that He loves me, and He expects and looks for the expected "I love you, Sir" in return. What doesn't happen is the kind of talk that would let me feel His ownership of me, His joy in that, His approval of my attempt to do what I do during a session because it pleases Him... Those are things that my submissive heart would feast on and soar into the ether on.

I'm just not sure that that sort of talk is really realistic to expect. I think that what fuels the spanking play between us is internal fantasizing for Him and I sometimes doubt that what is going on in His head (that makes it work for Him) lends itself to "talking" with me in the moment. The reality might actually be that I'm "alone" and that I really am "just a butt."

I sort of think that it is probably simple to handle this in "slave" terms. I just need to get the "poor me" part of it over with. Understand that there is nothing mean spirited going on and get myself in line with serving my Master.

Focus the right direction.

swan

Million Dollar Baby

We went to see "Million Dollar Baby" on Saturday night. It was the first time in many months that we'd been out to see any movie at all. There simply hasn't been anything at the theaters that has drawn us sufficiently to get us there...

We talked about going to see "Kinsey." Wanted to support the idea of it really. Especially because here, in this place it drew much criticism and backlash, but energy failed us during the very brief run it had in the "art" theater here in town. It was during one of those stretches of time that found me confined close to home physically and practically. So we didn't make it.

I know we talked some about "Hotel Rwanda" too, but again... we just didn't make it.

Why we got it together this time, I'm not sure, but we did.

Himself had been all day in the state capitol getting primed for some of the early rounds of what promises to be a huge battle for the state biennium budget. Political realities being what they are, there are moves afoot to cut deeply into services and supports that are simply vital to the survival of the disability community for which He advocates. This isn't about the niceties of life, or self-determination about which we've been advocating mostly since I arrived here in Ohio. Now we are talking about life and death. If these cuts stand, people will die. It is that simple and that stark. And we are not talking about a few. Hundreds. Thousands. Not maybe. Certainly. The most fragile and the most vulnerable and the most unable to speak for themselves... These are "His people." Malcolm asked what are the burdens on His shoulders... There is the beginning of it. There is the place where He will go to warrior mode, where He will fight and win (or die trying).
Along with all of that (which is in full swing now and bound to continue through until the budget is settled in July) His elderly parents are being forced by circumstances to relocate their living arrangements. They are both in their mid 90's, and His mother is in the early stages of dementia. Unfortunately, the continuing care community which they moved to several years ago (and invested a significant portion of their savings in) was not all it billed itself to be. As it turns out, now that His mother needs significant supports, the only way that the facility will provide those is if she leaves her home and moves into a hospital style room, away from her husband of 62 years. Her physical well-being may be maintained, but her/their mental and emotional health will be destroyed. Seems that is not a concern for this outfit. Nevermind the outrageous sums that have been collected for "continuing care" for the last several years. Bah!!! So Master and His Dad have had to scramble around and find new living arrangements for the two of them to forestall enforced separation at this stage of their lives. And arrange for some major household downsizing and a late-life move.

And then there is just the day to day stuff of work and kids and the sucky business of health and life when none of us are as young as we used to be.

So... "Million Dollar Baby"... If you haven't seen it, or don't know about how it ends, and don't want it spoiled, don't read any further... Stop here.

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...

It is a well done film. Well cast and entertaining and engaging. You can't help but get carried into the story and into the lives of the people. Caught up in the sheer power of the determination and the joy of Maggie Fitzgerald's dream.

And so her crash is even more devastating. Or at least it was to me.

It was, for me, a metaphor for the futility of battling and striving and trying to do it all "right." It came down to a sense, in the end, that none of it matters... that we are specks... that it is all a matter of random chance... that the bad guys win at least as often as the good guys do, maybe more often because they are willing to cheat, and that there is really, truly nothig at all that cares or gives a shit. In the end, we are all alone and nothing and no one can help us or hold us or save us. I was destroyed and devastated and heart broken by the whole thing. It was the most depressing, sad, terrible movie. I cried alone in the dark off and on all night. For me it triggered a terrible, dark, existential crisis.

Have I battled and struggled to define some "mythic" vision for my life, to create meaning, all for nothing? I suspect that the truth is that there is no meaning... And that sucks and really pisses me off. Mostly, I am afraid to end up being the one left behind with no one left to help me out at the end. Because, increasingly, I'm convinced, there's nothing else out here except the few we connect with here. There's no "there" there.

swan

Pondering Exile

I've been quiet here.

Partly that's been because life has been utterly busy. Overwhelmingly so. There has been so much and so much of it has seemed so big that words just seem to refuse to wrap around it. I've tried to put my oar in with the rest of the household and keep our small boat pointed downstream so that we don't get swamped. That's how it feels.

I know that The Master is simply staggered by the weight of all that is on His shoulders. There seems little I can do to lighten the load except support and shore up the edges and make sure that things run smoothly here and try to be as light as I can be.

So that is our practical reality for the present and for the foreseeable future. It is not good or bad. It simply is. Work and aging parents and family issues beyond our doors and political realities and the health concerns that seem to be an inevitable fact of being this age and not 30-something. There does not seem to be a break in the "weather" on the horizon, so we must learn to lean into the wind it would appear. And we shall. I am confident we shall.

Inside my head, the conversation with myself has turned on the notion of exile. For awhile now.

And I'm starting to peel away the layers of what it means inside of me.

Some of that derives from the simple fact of the geographic reality of me "here" in Ohio and not "there" in Colorado any longer. An actual geographic uprooting and so, in a physical sense, a removal from my rooted place and a transplanting to a place that feels strange in a thousand odd little ways everyday. And the passage of time has helped some on the surface, but not in the deep waters of my soul. I am a westerner in my bones and this is not that place. I will forever yearn for the dry lands and the long vistas and the high peaks.

Too, in this increasingly strident, and conservative environment, I find myself most often intellectually and spiritually exiled. One who believes in a spirit world that is not inherently Christian and not easily described with the language of the "faith" which seems to imbue our national discourse is doomed to be viewed askance in today's America. I often wonder what the founders would have thought, those men who believed in "nature and nature's god..." They, I suspect would have been more comfortable with me than with our president. Perhaps they and I would have found a place to have a quiet chat somewhere while all the Bible thumpers roared on...

Deeper though is the understanding that I've always been an exile. I was born into a family that did not understand me. Could not "know" me. I was too wild for them. Too independent. Too skeptical. They maybe wanted to love me and embrace me and take me in, but I was an alien in their nest right from the start. It is not by accident that I've taken on (been given) the name of "swan" -- the story of the ugly duckling is my growing up story. Born to a duck family, I tried desperately to fit in: to walk like a duck and to sound like a duck and to think like a duck. But I was a miserable failure and a disappointment and an enigma to them from my earliest childhood and the attempt to squeeze my ungainly swan frame into duck mold was doomed from the start. My whole life was a torment until I finally escaped that world and fled to find those with whom I belonged.

Now, I've found my swan wings and swan eyes and swan self. But being a swan has its risks. The world is not ready for swan people. And swans are not safe these days. There'll be no equal rights for swans in America. It would tear at the fabric of the family and society and we just can't have that. And swan spirituality is just too intellectual and not comfortable enough for those who profess a personal relationship with God and a savior. And even in the scene, swans and their Masters don't often do it "right."

Exile is an interesting life process about finding who you are and to whom you belong. About starting from scratch without the things you began with. About creating your life without constraint. About not looking for love and friendship in the wrong places. About not keeping the wrong company. About not settling for too little.

It is also sometimes lonely and scary and exhausting.

swan

Back again

We've finally gotten back to spanking after the hiatus imposed by my procedure and recovery and the time leading up to that (when we didn't spank because we generally avoid such activity for fear of leaving marks a doctor might see and feel compelled to report to authorities...). It has been a long while it seems. Much as I can dread and fuss about spanking when it occurs, it is the thing that connects us physically. When it doesn't happen, it leaves us apart in ways that are wide and pervasive. We touch but the touching is dry and desperate and ultimately unsatisfactory -- like cousins kissing through a screen door.

But I did get a birthday spanking. Light and gentle and a little tentative. Not the usual thing, but a good sort of welcome back and enough to rekindle the flame in us both. And since then we are working our way back to a level that will work. I haven't seen the doctor yet, so there is still some sense of caution and will be. Until Thursday at least. Then, perhaps, an all clear will be given and we'll see. Life remains intense, but we are finding solace and shelter here in one another's arms and in our home.

And in the simple physical connection that grounds us in solid reality.

swan

Round

Saturday night I dreamt I was held cradled in His arms, all rolled up in the tiniest of balls, like an infant, snug and secure. It seemed to me that I was wrapped in something soft and warm, perhaps like fur or soft wool, with only my face showing, and I have the image of myself smiling and asleep in that place, looking simply calm and contented and utterly peaceful.

That is for me the image of what M/s is and becomes at its best and finest...quiet and serene and without any struggle at all.

swan

And this is What I'm Talking About --

If you are following any of this, you've read my whining and fussing about THE UTERUS and its many woes and trials. Surely that saga continues. Five days after the truncated "procedure" (which seems to be what we are calling whatever happened a week ago), I started bleeding heavily again. That was last Tuesday morning. I hadn't anticipated that. Hadn't been warned about it by the doctor. Didn't expect it, and it scared me half to death. I was teaching and felt there was something odd going on, but of course, couldn't get away to really check on it until lunch time (maybe someday I'll do the riff on how teacher's never have time to pee). When I did finally get to the restroom, I was just flabbergasted -- and then panicked. Called home for the phone number for the doctor's office and called them sounding, I'm sure, just thin-voiced and frazzled: that sound that we make when we're barely holding it together. The nurse put me on hold while she went to talk with the doctor. When she came back on the line, I got the whole song and dance -- "you are still going to have periods and bleeding because Dr. 'Soandso' wasn't able to do the ablation, but she's going to prescribe Ponstel for you to take every 6 hours while the bleeding is going on and that should help." Ponstel, it turns out, is a MONSTER non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, and it does seem to help some -- why, I have no idea. Of course, just one more issue to address when we meet next week and begin the discussion of where we go from here. And I am just so wound up about what the options are. There have to be options... there just have to be.

I dreamed one night over the weekend that I died. That's how this feels to me. I want to print "SAVE THE UTERUS" bumper stickers. I feel like I need to arm myself and go to battle to protect my poor little defenseless organ from the marauding uteri snatchers...

I remember when I got that nifty package that they used to give us girls when we reached the menarche... "Now You are a Woman." All slick and shiny and sort of mysterious, it was packed with the secrets of becoming a female adult -- or so it promised: the keys to the kingdom were inside that magic box. Of course, for me, and for most of my friends the truth was something a lot less glamorous: cramps and ickiness and days banned from the swimming pool and shameful secretiveness about our bodies.

Then there was the right of passage to internal feminine hygine products... All those carefully written explanations and descriptions with their clever little diagrams and drawings. You have to wonder who spends their working lives designing all those package inserts for those products, and the kinds of serious meetings tha go on around that -- hmmmmm... But then with all of that careful consideration, why is it that no one ever thinks to tell you (especially when you are young and just getting started) about removing the cardboard tampon tube insertion thingys? Are they trying to kill us all off?

I lived through the early days of my nascent sexual explorations and the nerves that went with the fact that my reproductive system was less than well behaved in those days. The calendar was never my friend. Late? Again? What did it mean? Worry and fuss and worry and ... Of course, because I was raised the way I was, it never occured to me that maybe using birth control would make some sort of sense. Duh!

I bore two children and reveled in those pregnancies. Two very different gravid journeys. The boy child stood up the whole time, or so it seemed to me -- a tall pregnancy that pressed against my diaphragm and left me continually short of breath. Then, he moved, stately from the womb in calm and steady waves that finally broke in a tidal crescendo that left me exhausted on the shore of motherhood. His sister rode like a ripening melon, low and full and heavy. She kept me ever mindful that I was "carrying" her in the hammock of my body, and then she came storming out of my body in a rush that barely left me time to get to the hospital and into the hands of those who were prepared to catch her in her haste to be born.

No more cradling of babies these days. Now it just rocks me. At the height of my orgasms the waves still roll and break and sweep me away. The tides still ebb and flow. We've traveled a long road together. A lifetime. History written in blood and memory and joy and pain. I'm sentimental and I'm furious and I'm heartbroken and I'm unwilling to say take it when the choices remain. Not now. Not yet. No.

Then ---

While I'm fussing with that, which is enough to keep me completely wrapped up all by itself, there's more.

The Heretic has BIG stuff going on potentially too. A few weeks ago, He started complaining about soreness in His balls. Well, we didn't think too much about it at first, but it didn't go away, and eventually He was convinced to see the doctor. The first diagnosis was Epididymisisis or something like that. An infection of some tubes that wrap themselves around the inner workings of the testicles. So we began dosing Him with antibiotics and waited for things to improve and they did. Some. But not clear. Now then -- consult with a urologist who finds an enlarged and hardened prostate (although a recent PSA test was normal). CT scan and various scopes have been scheduled of the prostate and the bladder... The good news is that preliminary screening shows no cancer cells in the urine. The bad news is that this doctor prescribed an antibiotic that caused an allergic reaction and now we have The Heretic in a terrible shade of boiled lobster red.

And that doesn't even take into account the knee replacement surgery that is on the horizon in July. We can't even begin to think about that yet. Except to try and plan all this other stuff around it, schedule wise.

T is busy with her own medical things. She is trying to plan for and schedule major stomach bypass surgery like Al Roker had. She thought she had it set up, and was all set for the initial workups to start today and then discovered that while the surgery itself would be covered, none of the ancillary services are. Talk about crazy making. So she had to scramble around and start looking for a new surgeon. The wonder is, that she DID find someone, and he seems really good and well qualified and neat, and everything is covered and all under one roof and closer to our home than it would have been.

So we're coping. I think. But what a week it has been. And we are holding on to each other. Or trying to. Holding on and smiling and trying to remember that we love and so life is good.

swan

Turning Fifty

Saturday will be my birthday. Fifty years spent, and hopefully I've learned something and grown and done some good.

This one is supposed to be a big turning point. There are parts of it that feel that way I guess. Unavoidably, there is the fact that more of my years are behind me than lie ahead. I am simply unlikely to reach the age of 100 years. So. I've crossed a threshold. Should I have any doubts about that, the body reminds me with various aches and pains and creaks and cracks and pops. It surely sucks to get old. Although, I often remember that my Dad would say, "consider the alternative..." Then too, I can look in the mirror and note that, whatever magic potions I might apply to the skin morning, noon, and night, there are still the well-earned worry lines, and, YES, wrinkles that testify to the territory I've traveled across for all these 50 years. Oh well...

I've done what I've done up until now, and it will just have to be what it is. I think there is this inclination to pile it all up and then stand back and try and turn the pile into some sort of pre-legacy legacy. I'm not ready to start writing my epitaph just yet. The kids will have to see to that when I'm actually gone. The fact is that some of what I've done has turned out OK. Other choices, well... DAMN! I could have done a lot better a lot sooner -- If I hadn't been so naive, or stubborn, or foolish, or just plain determined to do it wrong! And the fact is that sometimes the "wrong" outcome was just plain and simple bad luck. Oh well. It got me what it got me and I learned what I learned and even the times that turned into messes led me to this point eventually. For that, I am grateful.

I do think that it all means something. I'm not convinced anymore that I have a clue what that is. I'm pretty sure that I'm not very important in the grand scheme of things. I am convinced that I'm supposed to be here, right where I am. That this connection was made before we knew about it consciously. The fact that we took so long to get it together goes back to that stuff about naive, stubborn, foolish, etc.

I think loving each other is good. I think listening and growing and touching the core of self is good. I think being truthful about who and what you are is good even when the world thinks that is weird and crazy. I think that there are times when you just have to take what comes and go on with life anyway. Sometimes we get so caught up waiting for things to "get better" or "settle down" or "normalize" that we miss out on the life that is happening now. Whatever is coming at us right now is the life we are given now. It is the normal life for this moment however wild and odd it might seem to us. If we put on hold all the good and simple joys of our days for the more "normal" life we imagine is coming someday, we will miss out on a million opportunities for smiles and hugs and laughter and warm human happinesses.

At least that's what I think today, on this side of the fifty year mark.

swan