Hospitable kindness

I had an enormous dinner with a number of people that do what I do at different centers all over the country to finish up a continuing education week.  The guy who was organizing it asked us each to pitch in $100, which shocked me.  I paid it, but I was really, really upset and felt coerced.

Here's the thing though--it might have been worth it.  It changed how I viewed the last week, made me enjoy the people, may have cemented a few friendships and was just so much fun.  I ate raw salmon, tongue, salmon tartar, duck salad, daikon salad, pickled mushrooms, pickled tomatoes (who knew?), caviar, mushrooms five different ways, veal (which I've never had before, and probably never will again) and everything else they put in front of me (except the foie gras--honestly, I wouldn't have had the veal if I'd known what it was, but I found out after the fact).  I drank much, much too much. The guy I was frustrated with for spending too much money didn't even eat.  He was watching all of us the entire time.  The moment my glass was full, he had another one for me.  (And this was a restaurant--he just didn't think the staff was quite attentive enough.) At one point, when I had discreetly (or not so discreetly) poured some vodka into some fruit juice, he joked "I think your vodka got spilled--let me get pour you some" so that even though he was pouring me more than others, no one except he and me knew it.  

I'm clearly much more of a teetotaler for the reasons of costs and taste than calories and morality.  Give me free girlie drinks all night long and I will keep up with the best.

But I was really surprised at what a lovely, lovely, lovely evening it was.  I went in feeling a little entitled because it was so expensive.  And I'd never spend that kind of money myself.  But I felt very taken care of and sort of held.  And several people and I sang songs, and others joined in and it made me smile.

Usually in those situations, I feel more comfortable trying to take care of other people.  I'm not used to feeling like I can just relax.  I think the fact that it was so expensive took any obligation off of me to prove myself or take care of other people.  I just sat back, drank and ate what they put in front of me.  It was a lovely change.

Godot

I have this work event almost an hour from home this week, and due to a SNAFU, I have a hotel room.  I told them I’d go home, but they’d already booked it and couldn’t cancel it, so I have it.  The first two nights, I drove home, but tonight the work stuff went till almost 10 and I didn’t feel like driving home for an hour, only to leave 8 hours later for another drive back, so I stayed at the hotel.

For the first time, I think ever, I saw no romance.  There was no thrill of a life that could be different.  No siren call of possibilities.  No projection onto the generic luxuries that a hotel room holds.  I have a nice view from my bed, a very good view in fact.  But I’d rather have my sheets and my home and my life.   I have a TV with cable, but with no new episodes of Mad Men or Downton Abbey, why would I bother?  I’d prefer my home to the hotel and my life to a generic cipher.

I think that is important,  Part of it is, I’m sure, because when Maxearnest was coming, I did all the things I’ve meant to do for years.  Honestly, I was in the process of moving when John died, and while I’d put aside a month to get my new house in order, all I ended up doing during that time was the bare minimum necessary to get my stuff out of the old house, and cry.  Slowly, I’d gotten some things put ways, but I’d been living out of a few cardboard boxes for two and a half years!  I got all the simple repairs done in anticipation of his visit.  Maxearnest helped me put up curtains.  My home feels lovely.

But something else has shifted also.  Intellectually, I know that the future with Maxearnest is uncertain,  but I feel more capable of facing that future, even if I end up alone.  I don’t feel defined by a void, the way I have in the past.  I hope I won’t end up alone, but if I do, I don’t feel like it will be all-defining.  I hope Maxearnest and I find some way to bridge the pond.  But I will do my best to let the future take care of itself.  Meanwhile, I am content.

Communication

Maxearnest has been gone for a couple of weeks, and I had a huge work event I do each year, and then relatives missing.  One more week for work and then I'm off to see him, to which I'm really looking forward.

It's funny.  I miss blogging, but I haven't really had much to blog about, and I even forgot where I log-in to write!  (I also have been so busy.  That old axiom "Time flies when you're having fun" seems to hold far more true with Maxearnest than I've ever felt with anyone.  I feel like I have less time with him than I've ever had, and it is a very new feeling for me.  I've never been with someone that wants to spend so much time with me, and it is lovely much of the time, but sometimes it was hard.  I miss time feeling slower, but, for me, that involves more free time.  Maybe I will try meditating and see if it can slow time down again. )

When things are good with MaxEarnest, they're just fabulous.  And when things are rough, I don't always know how to write about it well.  I think I really hurt his feelings with the last blog entry and it is making me feel like words are such blunt instruments. I used to think I had good communication, but lately I'm feeling less and less confident about my ability to communicate anything.

There was an interesting piece in Salon.com this weekend about kink and Fifty Shades of Grey (which, being a good girl, I haven't read because Maxearnest doesn't want me reading erotica, and that's a limit I'm fine with).  

The wide-eyed virgin Anastasia didn’t seek out a shadowy subculture to test the limits of her own desire; she stumbled into it, and she just happened to hook up with a hot and mysterious millionaire who knew exactly how to turn her on. The book seems to confirm the infuriating failure of modern women to find sexual pleasure on their own, and its wild popularity has also thrust an underground world of kink into the mainstream.

I'm certainly not a wide-eyed virgin, and, in fact, I have sought out the shadowy subculture, but I too have an infuriating failure at communicating my desires.  Or, honestly, even knowing them.  Even if I were to make Freud's question more specific, and try to answer only "What does Connie want?"  I don't know.  Surrender.  What does 'surrender' mean, exactly? Even spanking, which I usually love, and frankly crave and need, only works when it works.  I need all the stuff that goes with it.  I need to feel that this is the same man that, at moment when I woke up from a nap in his arms, was just looking at me with delight.  I need tone, narrative and adoration.

How can I communicate "tone?"  Right now, I"m into what Maxearnest likes.  When I play with myself, I think about what he likes--corsets and high heels and bondage and all electricity and suction.  I don't even know what electricity will be like (although I expect I'll find out in the next few weeks), and I expect I will learn to engage with it. But John was into floggers and ships and I eroticized them when I was with him. I've never understood those checklists of endless activities.  "How" and "Who" is so much more important than what.

I'm also bad at communicating almost-limits.  I've had a hard time with corsets in real life (as opposed to fantasy, where they are just sexy).  I start to get nauseous, and I sweat and my hands and feet get all tingly.  And when it gets to that point, I just tell him I can't do it.  We've talked some about how I think I can handle it more (mostly not tying it so tight to start with and helping me slow my breathing--it is counter-intuitive, but I think I'm hyperventilating because intellectually, I feel like I can't breathe, so I think I'm breathing too quickly to make up for it), but I can't do that when I'm in a submissive state.  When I'm submissive, I can communicate "I tried and I failed" but that's about it.  Other than that, I'm lousy at saying anything other than "yes."

Narrative is the opposite, though.  I need narrative.  I crave narrative.  Sometimes, when something is happening to me, I can't process it.  It more hot after the fact than during.  But Maxearnest talks to me; he tells me the things he will do to me and what I am and who I belong to.  And words are so fabulous there!

And part of what is so wonderful about being Maxearnest's girl is that he doesn't ask me to use words.  He can tell by looking at me if I'm doing well or not.  He can tell the difference between "I will do this only because it pleases you" and "oh yes yummy" from what?  The tension in my shoulders?  The arch of my back?  I don't know.  But it is like a kind of magic.

Letting Go Your Illusions and Don't Confuse it With Dreams

Sad.

It isn't him.  It isn't me.  We're just too different.  And he really feels alienated being in my city in America.  A City.  Any city. And America.  He doesn't care for either.

I'm still spending the summer with him.  And it will be a wonderful time.  But I think it is now a moment, not a life.  And that makes me awfully, awfully sad.  

I knew it deep down.  It was obvious he wasn't happy here and wasn't happy with what I could give.  I have a full-time job.  It is really cushy by American standards, but I have to work 4 days a week most weeks, and usually 5-7 hours a day.  For the last couple of weeks, I had 6 days off work, then 4 on, than 4 off, then 3 on, and I haven't done anything else.  I've quit my hobbies.  I haven't seen a single friend in the last 2 months and haven't even really had any long phone conversations with anyone but he still feels neglected.  But he doesn't have anything here except me.  Nothing excites him.  He misses home and little tempts him to explore and find hobbies or other people he might like.  I think he feels like I did visiting Dotty in the rural village in April.  

And I feel like I don't live up to his standards.  I multi-task, which he hates.  And I'm more independent than him. I'm craving time to myself to think.  To me, I think having 30 good hours a week with a partner is a lot, but he thinks that isn't anywhere near enough.  I feel like he wants all my time.  To me, being with a partner is roots, so you both have a ballast that lets you grow taller and stronger in the world, but I think he feels like it should be more.  But even aside from being in the world, I need time to think and feel just myself.  I've been meaning to write this for 10 days now, but 4 in the morning when I can't sleep is the only time I have to myself.  I have a letter from my dad that came a week ago that I haven't had time to open and read and think and feel about.

We'll see if I feel the same way when I'm in Europe; but I expect I will: this is a difficulty my parents are still trying to resolve with my mom constantly wanting time to herself and my dad wanting more from her.  In fact, MaxEarnest and I are actually replaying several of the dynamics that I see with my parents, although, oddly, we seem to jump back and forth on who plays the part of my dad and who plays my mom in different dynamics.

We are each hardy and frail in different things.  Yesterday I fell when I was biking and it freaked the hell out of me.  I switched over to biking cleats about a month ago and he went through an intersection when a car was coming and I was stupidly following him without watching. By the time I saw the car, I couldn't get my foot out of the pedals. It is the first time I've fallen in years, and it wasn't a huge deal (although my wrist and knee still hurt), but I just wanted to go home.  I didn't have any resilience left to enjoy our adventure.  He really pushed me to not give up.  He held me for a good 15 minute or so, but then wanted to keep biking, and I did what he wanted, but it was really hard for me.  But a couple of nights ago, he got in a cold breeze for maybe 3 seconds, and his shoulder really hurt.  I don't think either of us can quite predict what the other one will need because we're so different.

It isn't that we have different philosophies on life--we're even more different than that.  We don't even look at life the same enough to have competing philosophies.  It isn't enough to say that he loves Two and a Half Men and Californication and I love Six Feet Under and Downton Abbey.  I was working on a grant proposal for at-risk teens and talking about what the program does.  One of the steps involved kids sharing and the grant mentioned the importance of teens seeing that other people have experienced some of the same difficulties they had.  It is sort of like "It Gets Better" except it is just teens from different schools sharing with each other in person, over time.  This, to me, is one of the most valuable things my work does, and Maxearnest couldn't understand why this was important.  We talked about it a lot, and it was like I said we all needed to breathe Jello-o or something.  He couldn't relate at all to a sense of affirmation that other people had gone through these difficulties and you, (I) wasn't a freak after all.

I don't care that he doesn't have a job on most levels, although I'm the kind of person that wants to take difficulties now to avoid them later.  But the fact that he doesn't work means he wants much, more more from me than if he had to work for 30 or 40 hours a week as well.  The incongruity of our outside demands unbalances the relationship.

And, truth be told, we're lousy roommates.  The ex and I were lousy lovers, but great roommates.  We shared a 350 square foot apartment, for almost a year.  Maxearnest and I have really different expectations and likes and dislikes.  We operate at different speeds.  We value different things.

I'm in my little bedroom right now, because he doesn't tolerate fans or air conditioners, (but he also is unhappy when it is too hot --he's usually more sensitive to that than I). And I miss him.  I was lying on my side, with my cat in my arms and my back felt so alone, so empty.  I crave his touch.  I ache for him, because I feel this will end and I'll be back to sleeping with my cat, my blood turning to dust.

It seems I have to pick between a lover and a partner.  Maxearnest is the only lover I've ever had that I could imagine being with for the rest of my life.  Joyously and excitedly.  And I love him. It makes me cry, racking sobs that he can't hear under the air conditioner, that this is probably it.  Part of me wants to scream: "don't go!  I love you!  I'll give up the idea of having a partner to have you as an occasional lover."  But we'd be talking about him visiting me a couple of times a year and the two of us going away whenever I could sneak off from work.  But when I had to work, he'd come occasionally, maybe twice a year for two weeks at a time.  We'll see.  Maybe I will find a way to have a holiday-lover be enough.  I'm sure we'd keep skyping. But, long-term, I think I crave a partner.  Someone to support and be supported by.  Someone to make a life with, rather than escape for a few magical moments.  But magical moments are, well magical.  What's the dream that can't be compromised?  What's the illusion that must be let go?  

I can see the sun is starting to rise.  But I can't bring myself to post this because if I do, I have to e-mail him a copy, and there feels like a finality in that.  I do love him.  I can't bear a finality in that as well.

My Father's Daughter. But MaxEarnest's Girl

I'm sort of amazed to look at where I've come in the last year.  A funny turning point is that I did a summer-camp-for-grown-ups last summer that was all about 'inner-child' stuff, and the staff member I was paired with kind of blew me off.  She didn't meet with me and didn't meet and finally made an appointment and didn't show.  (She also wasn't reading the stuff I was writing, as she was supposed to--in a list of my mother's flaws, I mentioned that my mom had had bulimia and this person responded to the list"did you mother have issues with food?")  I thought about leaving and then refused to let her treat me like that any more.  I made the summer-camp people change plans to accommodate my needs.  When they said they wouldn't I said they needed to because they'd fucked up.  When they said I was having trust issues, I said "OK, I have trust issues, so act in a trustworthy way."  In retrospect, it was probably as valuable a lesson as I could have gotten.  When I set those limits, two other staff members really stepped up for me and I got a lot of what I wanted.  I think that is the moment that I really did begin to say "you can't treat me like that" and mean it.  And I had to mean it for it to mean anything.

My dad never hit me or abused me in a physical way, but he would get critical in ways that were devastating, and so I monitored my own behaviour so much, and also everything in the general environment.  My dad once told me I had "betrayed" him because he really hated a movie I recommended.  And in this year, I've started to see my dad as really damaged.  And started to let go of having a close relationship with him.  Maybe in a few years I can have a little more, but at the moment, I don't want to be around him if he is going to be so self-centered that he refuses to try to not hurt me.

And then I left my father's house to come to my home and see Maxearnest.  My identity is shifting.  I'm not Daddy's Girl anymore.  I'm sure issues will come up at some point, but they are not as salient.  I'm Maxearnest's beloved young slave girl.  There is a freedom and a joy there.  He makes me happy.  This feels like home. 

I trust him enough that I could just relax with him and literally fall when he shifted me and let him catch me. I didn't even tense up.  I'm sure there's a metaphor there as well.

We were having a very intimate conversation about my dad and kink and that my dad's criticism is probably what led me towards kink.  And all that is probably true.  And 10 years ago, I tried to analyze the criticism away and avoid the kink.  But now, I sort of feel like the kink was the silver lining.  Yeah, it sucked.  But look at this gift I got out of it?

I wouldn't change anything in my life, or at least nothing big--I'd still change the 2000 election--because it led me here.  And I'm so very happy.

Of course, I read the Newsweek article, and it is interesting.  But a huge difference with my experience because with Maxearnest, I'm taking responsibility for my desire.  I kneel at his feet or for him often.  He almost never orders me to kneel, but I sense that he likes it when I do.  And there's something very calming about it.  And then he usually pets and cherishes me and I look up at his strong hands and handsome face and I feel so very safe and adored and all is right in the world.  There is something about kneeling for him that is so very freeing.

Today he asked me if I needed to be used harder and I said yes, even though it scares me.  But I do.  He has been so very tender and gentle with me, and I love it.  I feel like an aquifer, just absorbing his love and his cherishing.  But then, there is that wild animal that needs to be pushed, controlled, taken.  I need to suffer for Maxearnest, to make the power about something more than rhetoric.  It calms that shrew beating in my breast.  And it makes me wet.

Life has always seemed about trade-offs.  How lucky that I don't have to pick one or the other.  I am getting it all.

Borrowing Trouble

I have a few quotidian concerns about MaxEarnest and me.  Will he like Seattle?  Will we work together in everyday time?  

But my biggest concern is more existential.  My young-girl is about 12.  Very sexual, almost insatiable.  That side of me wants to be adored and used and to please.  I'm also very naive and very trusting.  And Maxearnest and I just fit together so beautiful.  He delights in that side of me and cherishes that side and takes such wonderful, wonderful care of me.

I have this fear though, which is unknowable and probably irrational.  I feel like that side of me is being seen and recognized and is living in a way I've never really lived.  What if that side of me starts to grow up?  If my young girl went from 12 to 13, Maxearnest and I would probably fall apart.  I'm not at all rebellious.  I'm trusting and delight in having someone to care for me.  I have little lapses of discipline, like where I let go of a wrist when I'm scared and I don't maintain control, but I want to please Maxearnest and they are things I'm learning to be better on.  I also have moments where I don't necessarily want to obey because something hurts, it's hard and I'll think "why do I have to do that; I wish I didn't have to."  But I do obey.

But what if in nurturing that side of me, that side starts to grow up and become more like a teenager?  Maxearnest told me that he wants my erotic life to be focused around him, so I haven't opened a naughty novella since we were together in Iceland, and I am fine with that.  But then I read a review of a new naughty novel and part of me wanted to read it.  And I can't.  I'm not allowed to.  I'm actually fine with that.  I would so much rather live the life I'm living, worthy of being turned into its own naughty novel, than read about someone else's fantasies, but what if I read about another book in a few years and really want to read it?  I'm sure if it were really important to me, I mean really, Maxearnest would find a way to make it work.  But what if I become rebellious?  What if something hurts, really hurts, and I think "I wish I didn't have to do that" and then part of me says "you don't have to."

I have this deep feeling that if I ever lied to Maxearnest about anything important (I could dissemble about a present for him, or something like that), it would really hurt our relationship.  Even if he never found out, it would really hurt us. One of the things that is so magical between us is how well he can read my emotions, and how he uses that to make me happier than I'd ever imagined I could be.  Why can I even fear that someday I'd risk that for a little rebellious independence?  But I've read so much about so many women being unhappy in relationships in the 50s and 60s and earlier, and even now.  I don't understand how if they were being loved and cherished, they wouldn't obey.  But an awful lot of women found that to be an untenable situation.  I know is some ways this is different, but in some ways it isn't.  I guess I just want this moment to never end and I'm scared it could.

There's no way of stopping time.  There's no use borrowing trouble and worrying about the future.  But it is sad to think that I might grow in a way that would wreck the best thing that has happened to me.

A Traditional Housewife: Part 2

I’ve staying with Dotty this week, and it has been really, really hard!  She works 12-16 hour days, so I stay home, just like a traditional housewife, and I get some work done and it is OK, but, wow, would it have sucked to have this as a life.  I had quite a bit of work to do, but since I was on vacation, that meant 4 hours a day.  And then I’d shop for her, cook for her, clean the house for her.  She invited friends over and at one point wasn’t there to great them and I had to play hostess to her friends when I didn’t know where she was.  One night, she didn’t get home until midnight, when she said she’d be home “in a couple of hours” at 6.  I had a plate of food waiting in the fridge but she’d snacked at work. 

I felt a lot of the resentments that I read from women in the early 1960s.  When I took care of my dad when he was ill, I felt really fulfilled.  I made a difference for him and I loved taking care of him.  But with Dotty, I felt lonely and neglected and taken for granted because I have no social life here (my cell phone doesn't work where she lives--only Verizon works) and at the end of the day, I want her to notice what I did to make her house nicer and ask about my day and she is too tired.

And here’s the thing: Dotty is one of the most lovely, thoughtful people I know.  But work is eating her alive.  She is ‘only’ scheduled to work 9 hours a day, but that’s my equivalent of billable hours.  And, of course, I make a third of what I could so that I don't have that stress. It seems possible that in 6 months, she’ll be down to working maybe 60 hours a week, but right now, I’d say she’s working closer to 100.  She needs a ‘housewife,’ but it would be a pretty grim, isolated and lonely existence for anyone depending on her for a partnership. 

Dotty is stretched to the breaking point.  I can feel the stress.  She feels 10 years older than when I saw her in January.   I’m scared for her--I don’t know how she can keep up the life she is living. But she only gets 10 vacation days this year, and they have already been scheduled for a cousin’s wedding and to visit her parents.  (I cannot even imagine a life where I only got 10 vacation days a year.) But it made me realize that much of the traditional male/female issues can be accredited to the shitty working conditions in this country.  There are no gender issues with Dotty and myself.  There’s just the fact that she is horribly overworked and I’m staying in a community I don’t know, in a home where I’m a guest, trying to take a little of the stress off her shoulders.

But clearly, we need better conditions for the people who work full time as well.