Stories ...

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