New Toys!!!

I own toys.

Really. Real ones.

Yesterday I went to Twisted Toyland, a local event attended by kinky people and vendors of fun stuff. Fun stuff like floggers, and rope.

Yep, I bought two floggers: a buffalo-hide warmup and a heavier leather beast that feels like it could actually hurt. *giggle* A very good Domme friend was kind enough to hit me a few times with each (plus one she bought) but nothing hard. I'm looking forward to a chance to use it... or have it used on me... or something.

I also bought two 30-foot and one 40-foot lengths of blue-dyed jute. It's beautiful just laying there.

It is odd owning Implements of Destruction like these. ;) But I'm enjoying the idea. I have a toy bag in mind that would fit my personality: a tool bag; black or grey and strong enough to carry ANYTHING. Mwahahahaha.

Now I need to find hands that fit handles, arms that can swing, and hearts that can love while the strikes land.

QL

Finally

It took months of knowing her, talking with her, checking on her through those who knew her play and her greater life before I was ready to enter the play space with her. I'm keeping the details of the play private, between the two of us. I'm still madly processing it all, and I am going through quite the arc of emotions.

I left a relationship because I thought I needed something on the sexual side that I would never get there. My worry was that I would get to the reality of it and not really enjoy it in the way I did in fantasy. I was correct that fantasy and reality are very different. But I wasn't prepared to have my identity shifted over the course of an hour or so, to find out that more than my fantasy-filled mind is wrapped up in bondage, submission, and masochism. My heart is, too.

I'm kinky. I'm submissive. It's in my bones and in my heart, and I can never deny it again.

So now that my lens on the world has been swapped out for something far more clear, I'm trying to figure out what to do next. The spark has touched and the smoldering has begun, but what to do with the heat? How long do I have before it gets unbearable?

The sounds of the flogger striking my skin echo in my ears at work when I'm trying to be productive. The little rectangular bruise she intentionally left on my butt cheek makes me smile as I get dressed in the morning. I can feel her hand slapping me, probing my musculature possessively, smacking my ass. I can hear the growl that came out of me from I-don't-know-where when she increased the pace and intensity of her flogger strokes. I can hear her commands, the "Yes, Ma'am" that came joyfully from the deepest parts of my submissive mind in response.

I need to go back there. Not want to... need to.

And far from being ashamed, I'm proud. I can be proud because she didn't do anything to me, we shared it together. We fed off of each other and made each other whole for a while.

"Is your heart happy?" she asked oh-so-gently after curling me on a blanket and laying beside me, my hand in hers.

"Yes," I said, squeezing her hand. "My heart is happy."

Quietlisten
Submissive Sadomasochist

Waking Up

When I started dating a vanilla woman last year, several kinky ladies made what I thought at the time were over-the-top predictions of my future. "You're kinky, don't try to pretend otherwise," was the general sentiment. "But good luck, anyway." Yes, they are my friends and I appreciate the concern.

I'm drifting from that relationship now, mostly due to kink. I'm submissive. I need that in my relationship. I need to be accepted for who I am, including my cross-dressing and my need to serve and my fetishy nature. Vanilla just isn't going to cut it for me; I need a really interesting woman in my life or no one at all.

These revelations have lead me to the local "scene," finally stepping out the front door with my kink after over forty years of holding it in. I'm no "player," having only attended one function so far, but I'm slowly letting go of fears and barriers to happiness. We all have to do it some time. I am learning so much and finding such supportive people. Not sure at this point what my "style" is, and I have not yet begun to play, but I have a desire to learn and may have found someone to try playing with at some point when we are both ready.

That's a huge arc to have traveled in a year, and I'm happy to still be in flight. I hope there are many comments to make here as I continue to learn and understand more every day.

And to those who were so vehement about what you thought would make me happy, thank you for caring. I wasn't ignoring you, I just needed something at that moment that over-rode my thinking brain. Be well, everyone.

QL

Blowing a Gasket

I'll be the first to admit that I'm sensitive to grammar and spelling. Words have meanings, and punctuation has function. Why do people believe that the time it takes them to write correctly one time is more valuable than the effort it takes every reader thereafter to translate their crap into coherent thought? It says very loudly: "As a lazy bastard/bitch, I expect you to be so enthralled with my stunning thought that you will plow through my laziness/stupidity/illiteracy endlessly."

Stop it.

Question: Does a woman who is writing about respecting women really deserve an ounce of respect if she repeatedly spells the singular "woman" as "women?" To me she is countering with evidence what she thinks she is arguing. It is more common than unusual, I'm afraid.

Apostrophe-S is never used to make something plural. Ever. EVER. It is used to show possession and contraction. That is all. Period.

If those two errors were corrected most of the time, then the readability of the kinky internet would improve dramatically. The tone would change from lazy Neanderthal to actually human.

Okay, I'm applying a new gasket in place of the one blown. Please have a wonderful day, and show a little respect to your fellow bloggers.

Thank You!
QL

Life Rocks

There's a race today and I'm not in it. Three in a row, each four weeks from the last meant twelve weeks of intense training, often twice a day. That's a pretty good chunk of the spring and summer spent in pursuit of a few numbers on a results sheet. I think what broke the pattern was the time it took to recover from the last race, almost a full week. I'm not twenty years old any more, and I can't expect my body to do the things it could do then. I'm okay with that; I'm doing extremely well. So now I'm digging into other pursuits with gusto, though some involve sitting my butt in a chair and typing.

Recent relationship changes -- my ex-girlfriend and I are "taking a break" from each other -- have me re-thinking possibilities. I received amazing comments from dear friends here in response to the growth of that relationship and the trade-offs it seemed to imply. At the time, though, I wasn't giving up anything in any immediate sense since I was living a pretty vanilla life outside of The Blogosphere. That may be changing a bit, though.

Some questions raised by minor health issues -- no danger, don't worry! -- late last year prompted me to action on several fronts. This lead me to a therapist who is quite kink friendly, and I've been able to openly discuss Quietlisten (and all the issues that side of me raises) with her. We've made many huge strides, but the largest may be yet to come.

Thanks so much to the friends who have posted comments, universally supportive and positive, by the way. I'm fortunate to have people out there who genuinely care about me and want to see the "whole me" succeed... kinky and vanilla together. I never really went away, but I was distracted for a time. This happens sometimes when I'm out taking in life in great gulps and pours. I will certainly let everyone know how I'm progressing and if anything further changes as I go through this learning process.

Quietlisten

Are Some Things Forever?

I've been in a relationship for a number of months, and that's part of my absence from the blogosphere. Quietlisten is the part of me that is made up of a laundry list of fetishes, interests, and ideas, as well as the hopes and fears that follow from that list. So as I have built trust and gotten to know this other person, I've put all that "stuff" into the metaphorical closet and hung a metaphorical sign reading "Greasy Car Parts and Dirty Jock Straps; Please Open For Cleaning." Shocker; to date it has been completely passed by. After some time, though, Quietlisten has started jiggling the doorknob, testing the hinges, and is about ready to kick the door into splinters.

All of this makes me wonder about the wisdom of developing fetishes that may not be well accepted by a more traditional partner. I'm not talking about the typical fetishes such as corsets (*whimper*), high-heeled thigh boots (*groan*), and basic BDSM gear. Having a little tie-up with sex is pretty passe these days. But when your fetishes are more relationship-focused it gets a bit dicey to interweave any of those -- let alone all of them -- with a healthy, loving relationship with an unsuspecting partner.

Take, for example, control. I dream about being controlled, about being vulnerable to someone I care about and meeting her expectations, putting myself second to her wishes. But I need to have a deep level of trust and committment to want someone to control me. "I'm a Domme, get on your knees" would make me break into fits of laughter unless I genuinely respected and trusted the woman saying it. And the deeper the committment to each other, the deeper and more expansive I'd enjoy the control because I'd trust that our full lives were incorporated into the tapestry, not just the fetish.

I also love cross-dressing, though I have found that it's almost universally despised by men and women alike. Provide me with a list of blogs written about the joys and wonders of feminizing a man, whittle those down to the ones claiming to be written by women, and I would guess that better than 90% of the time it's really a cross-dressing man looking for an audience for his fantasies. Nothing wrong with that (besides being deceptive, but this is the internet) but the point is that there are almost no real-world non-pro-Domme women who genuinely LIKE that fetish. That's a huge shame, because if done right it can shine a bright light into parts of a man's mind and soul that cannot be revealed in other ways. Yes, many cross-dressers do a horrendous job of using cross-dressing to connect and understand, but there are a few of us who actually see it that way.

So why all of this talk about fetish and acceptance? Well, I'm approaching the point in the relationship where I'll have to push hard to convert the initial hints I've been dropping -- constructively and well-timed, by the way -- into a better picture of who I am. I have to do it in a way that doesn't leave me driving around town late at night in the rain wondering how I could have messed up this great opportunity with this amazing person. There's a clock ticking... go too fast and I'm a pervert; go too slow and I've been lying through omission.

I'm tempted to do triage to simplify the problem, to just ignore the fetishes and desires and thoughts and the huge and wonderful world I have built inside my head. I could probably survive for quite a while going through the missionary motions while wondering what I gave up. That's not healthy. Neither is losing this relationship.

Ideally, we'd plumb the depths of our respective sexualities and become closer through them. Maybe she would enjoy having her home cleaned by a guy in a simple maid's dress who wants desperately for her to be happy. Maybe she would love to send me off to work with the key to my chastity device in her purse, giggling to herself through the day that she has that kind of power and control over me... and my loving every minute of it. Perhaps she wants to know what it's like to be the penetrator and would find the idea of playing with a strap-on to be fun, empowering, liberating.

Any of those scenarios is possible, but a realistic look at the chances tells me that I should not set my expectations around them. I do care for her desperately and want to represent myself as honestly as I can without losing her. Decades of allowing my mind to roam freely and develop layers of fetishes is working against me now. I have to find the right balance to consider myself whole while not wrecking what she and I have built. It's a hell of a tightrope, and I hate that I am so bad at these things.

The real question mark is that I don't even know if any of these fetishes CAN be undone. I'm sitting here right now with my chastity cage on, enjoying it thoroughly. I disposed of the bulk of my femme wardrobe out of fear that it would be found and raise questions I was not prepared to answer; but I'm craving the feeling of a pair of heels, thigh hose, miniskirt, bra, and top, long nails, and earrings.

There is no easy way to introduce those things or to make her understand the layers behind them: vulnerability, supression of ego, focus on pleasing, being controlled, used, enjoyed. How strong is the door on that closet? How much can it hold? Can I let a little bit out at a time without having all those "greasy car parts and dirty jock straps" come tumbling out? Can I be honest with her about who I am, claim that I'm being open and transparent, but please pay no attention to the pounding noises and flying paint chips from that door over there. Maybe the door will hold, and maybe it won't make any difference. Maybe that's the choice I'm left with: partial truth with her or wide-open fetish holiday alone. Neither is ideal.

Which will I chose?

What is for forever?

Good luck to everyone in finding happiness. I'm continuing to try.

Quietlisten