Feeling super bitchy today

Apr. 22nd, 2006 at 11:28 AM

Last night we went to the Gathering. It was basically the same scenario as every other time K is around.

I was already having a bad day...taking too much to heart small corrections and criticisms throughout the day...so I was in no mood for the attention-seeking SAM behavior in the first place.

When every other word out of J's mouth is K, I find myself cringing and finding ways to become invisible. Watching him "reward" her bratty behavior makes me want to smack them both. It doesn't matter if he makes her cry by sticking a needle in her breast for having broken the "no profanity" protocol, she still thrives on it. She bragged about it in the alt chatroom when she got home, so it couldn't have been that bad.

Then I'm finally getting a chance to talk to him, to let him reassure me that even when I'm invisible, he notices, and who comes along and plops her happy ass down on the sofa across from us? I always leave them alone when I see they're talking. I always try to stay out of the way to give them time together without me interfering. This one time when I was obviously upset and talking to J and she can't give me the courtesy of leaving us alone for five fucking minutes.

Then I find out that instead of traveling with us (and maybe even helping while we travel) when we go to Phoenix in May, she's leaving a day early to "spend time" with some woman there she's been dying to play with for ages. So, no help, and a big opportunity to embarrass the hell out of us by misbehaving before we even get there.

Today she tells me for the fifth time that we MUST remember some toys for this woman in Phoenix. I told her to ask the person who has them for the toys and pack then. I get this snotty attitude that she wasn't asking me to remember or pack them, just telling someone so she'll remember. Bullshit. She's hoping I'll ask the person who has them and pack them so she won't have to remember any more.

She's on the staff for the Gathering. She barely helped set up and left before it was over so guess who had to help clean up? I'm NOT on the damned staff.

Fuckit...I'm just bitching now.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my last entry. I was feeling better by mid afternoon on Sunday, but I really had to vent to get that far.

I'm human and when I feel threatened or excluded, I get resentful and lash out. I't obviously better for me to lash out in writing here than on J at home (which was a near thing by Sunday morning...I get the feeling he knew that because he backed off a few times).

I need to work on an essay regarding these issues...something on how to handle one's emotions when the time is not right to talk about them. I then need to do that because I was not behaving well Saturday night or Sunday morning.

Feeling bitchy

Mar. 19th, 2006 at 12:11 AM

Right now I'm pissed off and resentful as hell. I HATE being the workhorse...the only one doing anything of consequence.

For crying out fucking loud...all i wanted to do was have a little bit of relaxation today because i knew what sunday was going to be like. But no, i had to freaking waste the day editing a video we won't even be using because that's what he wanted.

Then we filmed the fucking replacement video and rather than relax and socialize with K, I had to fucking start editing that...which I did until D showed up. Then it was hurry up and get ready to film some more. Then run to walmart because the background sucked and needed to be wider. Then film. Then when everyone else in the fucking house is playing, what am I doing? I'm fucking caputuring the goddammed video.

He's barely come near me since the Drs appt last Friday. He spends hours on the fucking computer "training" women from god knows where and inviting them to come here (and offering to "help" with their plane tickets). He doesn't have a motherfucking job...so guess whose money he's offering?

I'm so pissed off right now I don't even know what to do.

I'm not even entirely sure where to start this today. J and I were talking in the car last night and when he asked me "What are you?" I simply couldn't get the word slave past my lips. That led to a correction where he chastized me for allowing my own personal hang-ups to interfere with his orders. Because I hesitated in answering, he couldn't continue the discussion.

He also chastized me for allowing prior experiences in my life to color my interactions with him. My fear of surrender stems so much from my fear of abandonment and betrayal...something reinforced with every relationship I've ever had with a man...beginning with my father and ending with T.

Fear of loss has always been my worst enemy. I find myself in a relationship where I'm generally happy and comfortable and because I am happy and comfortable, I begin to fear it will be taken from me. That fear builds when the other person in the relationship looks for others outside the relationship who could replace me. While I can generally deal with those issues and the jealousy which comes up, sometimes I simply need to hear the words, "It's ok. I'm not going anywhere and I'm not looking for a replacement for you," but I don't know how to ask for these words and not have them be forced.

I am ok in poly relationships but I am personally monogomous at my own core. I'm not interested in playing with, having sex with, or serving anyone else by my own personal choices. I will do these things if told to, but my choice would not be to go outside the relationship for these things.

Honestly I guess everything here and everything which came up last night can be boiled down to one thing...fear. I'm afraid I'm being used. I'm afraid I'm going to be hurt. I'm afraid I'm going to be left alone. I'm afriad to trust that what is happening is real and will last.

J is so different from the men I've previously had D/s relationships with and yet in some ways he's very similar to them. He demands and accepts my surrender in a way no one else has--that is the main difference and benefit to this relationship over past relationships. His quest for others and my feelings of inadequacy because he quests is what is similar. And I fully realize he doesn't make me feel inadequate...I make me feel inadequate. But at the same time, it is behavior familiar to me which triggers that fear I spoke of earlier.

This isn't helping, so I'm going to stop now.

No, the problem isn't safety, sanity or consent. The problem comes in mistaking a description for a prescription. Before anyone said the phrase Safe Sane Consensual SM—decades, even centuries before—bottoms were safe enough to survive and beg for more, couples were sane enough to recognize a good thing and protect their possibilities for continuing to do it, and consent was clearly and obviously known to be essential. That’s why the SM of earlier times was eventually described in the late 1980s as "Safe Sane Consensual." No problem.

It becomes a problem with contemporary efforts to sell that description as a requirement, apply it as a prescription, and to judge one another on the basis of various understandings of what that prescriptive phrase looks or feels like in action. Granted, some of the institutions are gone that were once relied upon to make SM safe, to provide community-wide feedback on the sanity of the members and to double check that consent was being respected. Still, taking a phrase that described the SM world as it once operated and repeating that phrase endlessly will not make SM SSC. Embroidering the phrase on patches, even painting it on 30-foot-wide banners will not save a single scene from becoming unsafe, stop an insane man from doing SM or monitor the necessities of consent.

- Joseph W. Bean, The SSC Mistake

SSC is often touted throughout our community as a measure of how “right” or “wrong” a player may be. Honestly, however, how much of WIITWD can ever be considered safe? Is it safe to hit someone else? Is it safe to allow someone to cut your skin, pierce it, or drop hot wax on it? And as for sanity, that’s definitely relative. What is “sane” for member of our community is often considered deviant or insane by those outside the SM community.

As someone who plays with a “heavy edge player” I get the worried looks from friends, the phone calls or IMs the day after an event which ask, “Are you really okay?” The answer is yes and the reason is simple. Of the three issues—Safe, Sane, and Consensual, I believe the “C” is the most important. I have given the man I serve my consent to use me in the manner which best meets his needs at the time. I also trust him not to permanently break his property. He has proven to me, time and time again that he values me and breaking me would be counter to that valuation.

I’m not a masochist. I don’t like pain. I don’t process it into pleasure and I don’t fly (enter subspace). I serve. Is what I do with the man I serve safe? Not really. Getting hit can do damage. Being cut can leave scars or do other damage. Is it sane? Who knows. My friends seem to think I’ve been a little touched to get involved with someone whose taste in SM activities is so far from what mine have always been. Is it consensual? Absolutely…and that is really all that matters.

The next time you watch a scene and you think to yourself, “Gee, that’s not safe,” consider this: The players are adults. They have agreed to engage in the activity you are viewing and to engage in it where you are permitted to view it. Instead of focusing on your own perceptions and concepts of SSC, remember that the “C” part has been met and the rest is really inconsequential. If you don’t like what you see, walk away and don’t watch. Or stay and learn something about the players and maybe about yourself.

I had an unexpected problem on Monday night that bothered me on several levels. I left for work around 4:15 and came back at about quarter to 8. I immediately made dinner. Bear in mind that at this point, K has been in my home as a guest since Saturday afternoon when she arrived and other than helping me carry things in from the car did little to help get the house ready for the party.

As dinner was cooking I walked through the house and put a few things away…I found J’s belt in the bedroom so I assumed they had played while I was gone. I was a little annoyed because hey, someone might have done the dishes or something while I was at work, but whatever.

Right after dinner, however, I saw something that made me cry. That horribly heavy collar I’d made several years ago to T’s design…the one I wore with him and from which hung an ownership tag…was on the couch.

I saw leather and metal sticking out of a blanket, so I went over to see if it was cuffs (J doesn’t seem to like cuffs much but I was hoping). I’m fairly certain J saw me do this. Then I went into the bathroom and cried. I hadn’t expected it to bother me. I’d offered to loan the collar to R. I didn’t care if clients wore it. But that moment of thinking J had put it on K really hurt me.

When I stopped crying, I took the dog for a walk because I wasn’t ready to deal with the issue yet and didn’t want to do it in front of K at all. When I got back from walking the dog, K was leaving and J and I talked.

I told him I hadn’t expected it to bother me and that was why I hadn’t brought up the origin of that collar. He explained he hadn’t thought for a moment I would have worn something that bulky or heavy. He also told me he’d only used it to hold a blanket over K’s head as a hood, that there’d been no symbolism. Then he told me he’d leave that collar alone…not use it for anything. I’d mentioned taking it apart…destroying it…and he said it would be a waste to do that, but that he’d never use it again.

I’m trying very hard to keep the jealousy monster at bay. I get so much more time with him. I get a much more rounded relationship with him. But sometimes I get resentful of being the only one doing the domestic work, the business work, the work in general when K is here.

I also try not to feel jealous when J plays with K. Our relationship is different…He tells me I don’t feed his demons in the same ways (not that the sadistic side isn’t fed with me, just that they don’t need feeding as often when he’s with me). But I admit to feeling it sometimes.

I also admit to annoyance with K yesterday as she’s telling J about a cutting she wants him to do for her…she’s designed it and wants his initial in it (J, not s2n). The “one-upmanship” kind of stuff like that annoys the daylights out of me. J is trying very hard to be fair about his time and interaction with the two of us when K is around. On Saturday, he did pressure point play with K and teased and played with her on and off all evening while I was playing Suzie Hostess to the other twenty people in the house. Then he did the scene with Joyful. My cutting was not planned but was his way of connecting with me and spending some one-on-one time with me without having to beat on me.

Now, despite the play on Saturday, the constant fighting on Sunday and whatever play they had on Monday while I went to WORK, K feels it’s necessary to ask for a cutting from him.

I know part of this is my own issue with asking for what I want, but at the same time can I not just enjoy what J has done for me without her immediately needing the same from him? Can she not just leave it be? Let me have what I have from him as I let her have what she has with him?

This was something I always hated about the addition of step-sisters to my life when I was 11. Suddenly there was the issue of what would be fair and generally I was the one who was shorted because I wouldn’t complain about it.

I know I’m just whining now so I better stop. This is counter productive anyway. J will do what he wants and anything I say on this particular issue is going to sound harpy-ish and jealous.

Cross another off the list

Feb. 12th, 2006 at 7:42 PM


02112006-cutting
Originally uploaded by shareinnc. of "Never been done..."

This is my first cutting. J cut this flower and his scene name into my left shoulder blade last night.

It HURT...it still hurts...but at the same time it was an amazing experience.

He talked to me as he was getting ready to do this. He talked about the intimate connection between him and me when he put a scalpel in my skin. Then he told me how hard it suddenly was to begin cutting me...how much he cared about me...I think I'm still processing, but I wanted to post this. I'll write more later.


Ok…time to write about the cutting…still feeling like I’m processing, so I have to write it out.

I asked him about it today…asked if it was planned and he said no. It was a way to connect to me, to scene with me and me alone…and ostensibly to mark me as his, I suppose.

Originally he took me up to the play room, laid me down and was rubbing my back a bit…talking to me about things. He asked if I watched the scene he’d done earlier and I told him no. I explained I had been feeling disconnected and could not watch him be that violent when I felt that way. We talked about why I felt disconnected and I think it was then that he decided to do the cutting. He told me to get a blanket and pillows and music and to make sure my back was available to him.

I did so and lay down to wait. He came back up and laid the scalpel and alcohol rub next to me, then went back downstairs. I spent a long time staring at that scalpel. I kept thinking “Freaking out won’t stop this or make it any better…be calm and it will be ok. Trust him.”

He came back eventually with the rest of the stuff needed and then talked to me…asked me if I wanted this…asked me if I wanted to be able to see him (I did) while he worked. He positioned me and then told me not to move, no matter what.

He lay down next to me then and held the scalpel. He looked at me and the transfer and then told me how hard it was to start cutting me. He told me how important I was to him. How much he cared about me. It helped to ease me down a bit to hear these things.

The cutting burned as he pulled the scalpel through my skin. Sometimes it hurt a lot, sometimes it didn’t really hurt at all. A few people came up and watched a moment or two, but soon after he began, J and I were alone. It was almost surreal as J moved around my body, talked to me a little…letting me know when the longer cuts would happen. He held me down sometimes, told me not to move, but mostly I remember him being close to me, feeling his skin against mine, knowing this cutting was important to him…he wanted it to be pretty for me.

The worst of the pain came when after cleaning off the transfer ink J slapped the cutting to bring up the blood to check for missed spots. That was when I cried.

By Monday, the cutting no longer hurt. It’s burned on and off a few times, but no more pain. I’ve found myself touching it from time to time, just to feel how it’s shaped…almost a touch-stone.