Hanging in there. Barely.

I'm blue.  So blue.

Why?  Feeling left out of my birth family.  I'm sure I'm not the only person in the country who has to justify to their parents why they aren't interested in drugs or spirituality, but I feel like I'm the only one (and I'm sure it is pretty unusual).  But I left visiting my family by feeling quite isolated.

Work has sort of gone to hell.   Intellectually, I think it will work out.  But  I'm exhausted. I'm scared.  I feel isolated. And it has been 2 months of uncertainty and I am stretched to the breaking point.

And then there is this mess with the cruise.  MaxEarnest and I were going to go on a cruise together, and we had paid for it.  I can't get a refund.  I've tried everything I can think of and no one is budging.  It is SO frustrating!  I have never been a cruise person before, but MaxEarnest and I figured we would have fun just having sex for a week before we travel to fun places.  I can reschedule for multiple times this spring, but no one wants to go with me, even though I offered to cover the cost.  The thought of going by myself seems like the saddest thing I could imagine, and the thought of eating the ticket seems crazy and the whole thing makes me feel sad and pathetic. 

And I miss MaxEarnest.  Tony has been ill.  And when I'm with Tony, I'm quite clear that we are very good together.  But when I'm not with Tony, I miss MaxEarnest.  I want to run away to Iceland for another long weekend.  I want to explore new places in Europe.  I want him to tie me up and hurt me to the liminal place, but not beyond.  I want him to demand my surrender.  Tony knows I'm a 'naughty girl.' He knows I need to be dominated.  I think he knows that I need some roughness some times (although I'm less sure on that).  We've talked openly about it.  He says he needs time.  But I hadn't had a good orgasm since August.  I bought some new books of smut over the break, and have had a few good ones since then.  (Fifty shades was SO disappointing!  It is much more about the pornography of conspicuous consumption than the pornography of kink.  I started off thinking it could be really interesting, but, ultimately  I found it much too vanilla for me.  She never really explored submission in any way.  There were a couple of hot scenes, but I didn't get a single orgasm out of all 3 books.  And it didn't explore the relationship in any meaningful way.)  But maybe my erotic life will go back to smutty books and a vanilla sex life.  And if other things work out, maybe that would be an OK trade off.  Who knows, if I have kids in a few years, maybe sex wouldn't matter as much.

I have decided that I need this blog as I navigate stuff with Tony.  I've decided there are things he can never know.  Like the fact that I'm fundamentally unsatisfied with sex right now.  He knows I want more.  He's said he needs time.  But I don't want to tell him that I'm not having my needs met.  When he asks if I like something gentle, I say I do, but I wouldn't want just that.  And that is true.  I wouldn't be happy without gentle too.  So we're working on it.  He doesn't need to know that I fantasize about Anne Rice and Molly Weatherfield novels when we're together.

Multiverses

If there are multiverses, then somewhere, I am lying in MaxEarnest's arms in my Queen size bed that I bought so we'd be comfortable together.  In that multiverse, we've just had very good sex, but he's probably tired from the jetlag, because in that multiverse he came to see me before we went off to Aruba for a month.

But in this multiverse, I'm quite sick and at my parents' house, having extended my Christmas holiday, because there's no need for me to rush back to my life.  It makes me so very sad, and yet, I'm also at peace.  As painful and as sad, I think it is a grown-up, mature decision.

It feels like I've started to think of the new guy (let's call him Tony) and MaxEarnest as sort of polar opposites.  The new guy is someone I could fairly easily build a life with.  We want similar things and similar amounts of time together.  We do really well supporting each other in our goals.  He lives 2 miles from me, but I'm pretty sure he would be happy to move in by 2014.  I actually expect we'll be engaged by 2014, if I don't break it off from some desire for what I gave up with MaxEarnest.

I had wonderful vacations and wonderful sex with MaxEarnest.  And the new guy doesn't like travel or kink. But I think he'll learn enough, and I'll travel on my own and have fantasies.  And we'll have children together.  And I will fantasize about MaxEarnest for the rest of my life.

If I thought both the gentlemen involved would be up for it, I would propose me running off with MaxEarnest a couple of weeks a year.  Deep down, that is what I would like the most.  But, as MaxEarnest would say, you don't need everything all the time.

I was holding my niece all through Christmas (perhaps why I'm sick) and she was so joyous and loving and alive.  Holding her feels like life.  It is just this deep sense of purpose.  It is right in the marrow of my bones.  My soul sings to her.

I know MaxEarnest thought I wanted kids because I wanted societal approval, which always struck me as funny, as I'm planning on being a single mom if I don't meet the right man, and the U.S. society is SO judgmental of single mothers.  Maybe it is different in Europe, but in the U.S., they are so looked down upon.  When he and I took the train to the airport, there was this beautiful family across the aisle from us, and I started crying, because I knew I had to pick between him and a family.  I hoped something would change, but deep down, I knew I had to pick.  And it broke my heart.

But I still wish I could have everything all the time.  Maybe in another multiverse, MaxEarnest and I will find a nice flat in Berlin, overlooking a canal, and raise children there. And, I suppose, in another, John and I have a child.  And in another, Bobby and I do.  And in another, I never met MaxEarnest because I was still grieving or too scared to take a risk, and still hopelessly along.  I grieve what can never be.  But I also am aware of how lucky I am for what is.

Life

I miss MaxEarnest.  In my head, I know we wouldn't have worked.  We weren't working.  I missed him all the time and my life started being much more about waiting for a vacation than living a life.

The new guy is everything MaxEarnest isn't, and that is both good and bad.  We work together really, really well in everything except sex.  We want very similar life goals. We are supporting each other very well.  I've had a rough time at work and the new guy (also a lawyer) spent a lot of time going over lawyerly stuff with me, that was quite helpful.  He is sweet, loves my cooking (thanks MaxEarnest!) and talks dirty to me about wanting to have babies and has already made it clear that we should get married, probably in late 2013.  And I think he's right.

Sex is boring, though.  He will occasionally talk about how I'm all his, but he is a timid lover.  I got him to spank me once and he spanked me about as hard as you'd pat a dog's head.

And I don't know what the fuck to do!  My head says that this is so right in so many ways, and I can have a rich fantasy life.  But part of me worries that I could have an affair in a decade.  But then I'm like--nah.  Most women have less libido in their 50s.  He would be a good father.  He is a good man.  (MaxEarnest is a good man too, but didn't want kids, or to live in the U.S.)

I'm so grateful to MaxEarnest.  I feel like he has made so much of my life possible.  Crazy that I had a wonderful first love in my 40s.  Maybe not even a first long, but a first good love.

Moving on

MaxEarnest and I parted today.  It was the kindest, most loving moving on I have ever seen.  He is such a lovely, loving man, and I'm so grateful to him.  He is such a foundation of holding, of serene warmth and love.  It made it much harder to say goodbye, but it will make it much easier for us to be friends.  I think I will always love him.  I expect our paths will continue to cross, but I don't know how.  It made me so sad to say goodbye to him.  He is such a wonderful man.

The reason MaxEarnest released me is because I have been going out with someone else.  He is more vanilla, and I don't know that I'd ever share this blog with him.  But I think he would be a great father and a great partner in life and in my intellectual endeavors.  He is kind and warm and we communicate very, very well.  He is open in having kids and thinks I am his soul mate.  We've only gone out 9 times.  We haven't slept together.  I don't know what happens next. But I think if I had tried to spend a couple of months with MaxEarnest at Christmas, there's a great chance it would have torpedoed the new guy and I.

There's another thing I'm saying goodbye to.  At least for now.  And that is this blog.  I will miss it.  I have loved writing it.  But somehow, I don't think I should be blogging if I can't share it with the new guy.  It may be in a few months I can, but I just don't know if or when I can and I feel like to have good communication with him, I don't want to be actively hiding something from him.  

MaxEarnest was everything I wanted in sex, and I realized that sex is not enough.  I want a family.  I want to share a home and a life.  I don't know how I'll do in a more vanilla environment, but this new man wants a vanilla life that is so compatible with mine.  

I had a crisis at work this week and both men were there for me.  And a lot of people at work were there for me too.  The crisis isn't solved.  I don't know if I'll keep my main job, but I really feel like MaxEarnest's unconditional love has changed me.  Maybe people at work would have been there for me the same way if this had happened last year.  Maybe the change is that I can now see it.

4 Years Ago

It has been a crazy couple of weeks, and last night was, well, I'm relieved.

But, of course, election nights stick out.  And election night 2008.   The party I went to last night was rather lame and the party 4 years ago was spectacular.  4 years ago, it was one of the best nights of my entire life.  I was there with the ex.  We kissed, knowing we were going to break up, but still a sweetness and an exhilaration   (We had always bonded over politics.)  And I had started to talk to John again.  John was going to take me out for brunch--I think it was on Sunday, but I'm not sure.

But even though the night 4 years ago was so much more beautiful and memorable than last night, my life is so much lovelier!  Last night, a guy tried to pick me up at the party!  And in a very sweet way.  We talked politics, and then he walked about a mile out of his way because I'd park far away to have a free spot.  I have never had a man pick me up like that.  Engaging, respectful, but also earnest and eager and clear.  

I feel like MaxEarnest has changed me so much that I am no longer who I was.  Before, I was deeply damaged and now I am this lovely person and men meet me and see me as this lovely person.  Somehow, all those years of feeling like damaged goods are gone.  And now, I am... What am I?  I'm not sure.  I'm figuring it out.  But it is good.

Debating

I totally want a binder of woman, but I'm just not masochistic enough to listen to another Mitt Romney debate.  This is so very painful.  In a not good way.

Who would have thought that pure vanilla could be so twisted?

Discipline and Punish

The systemization of consumption may be parsed as the eroticization of the gendered body, thereby enabling Foucaultian paradigms to (re)inscribe the inherent hierarchical taxonomy of the pain-pleasure continuum. 

(Just in case google sends any Foucault po-mo grad students my way.  Maybe I have a touch of sadism after all....)

Now to discipline and punishment.  

I finished Fifty Shade of Grey.  It was a quick read (obviously). 

I'm struck by several things in the book.  First of all, Ana communicates much better via e-mail than in person, which is so very true for me too.

Second, the book does a good job externalizing a central conflict that I have internally, which is he wants all kink and she wants all romance. How do you combine the two for a life?  I was quite surprised at how the first book ended and it will be weeks before I get the next one from the library.  

However, it brought up the unresolved issue that I had over the summer.  In it, she is punished, hard, and hates it.  "He has needs that I cannot fulfill. I realize that now. I don’t want him to hit me like that again, ever. ... I did follow my heart, and I have a sore ass and an anguished, broken spirit to show for it."

And, honestly, that happened to me this summer.  Except MaxEarnest didn't punish me hard. My ass wasn't that sore, but my spirit broke and took some real time to mend. 

Part of me accepts that MaxEarnest has the right to punish me.  But it was horrible for me.  Flashbacks of bullies beating me up.  It was the first time I ever purposefully tried to ignore what was happening to me with him and just sign songs to myself to make it through.  Whenever I was beaten up as a child, I was told I was 'fun to tease.'  Not, "fight back" (that wouldn't be attractive in a girl, duh!) but, essentially, 'don't make it fun for them to hit you.  And I just went right back there.  The girl everyone hated in elementary and middle school. 

I had no idea how badly I would take it.  Actually, that's not true.  I had inklings.  If I look at what I wrote around that time, I knew I didn't think it was fair and didn't want it to happen.  I didn't talk about it, even when I wrote about it.  Why?  I was scared.    I wasn't sure that he was going to punish me, and I thought the transgression was so small that if he did, it would be a very quick punishment, and when I tried to talk about it, it seemed to make it worse. We had talked about my tendency to sort of leave my body early on, and he never pushed me to that place before.  And I wanted to please.  And maybe part of me was rebelling.  I can't articulate it, but I think part of me was.  After it happened, I felt so despondent.  I just cried and cried.  And he held me.  He was SO good to me.  In some weird way, it heeled some of the damage from being beaten up as a kid.  But it took a long while to get over.  Weeks before I was hungry for his touch.  And I can't go through that again.

I know I have to talk to him about this. But it is much easier for me to blog than to talk. I don't like hiding behind the blog, but the fact that I'm writing this will mean we will talk.  (Hello MaxEarnest.)  I wish I could just talk to him.  I feel like hiding behind my blog keeps us a bit apart.  I wouldn't like it if I had to find out how he was feeling from a blog.  I'd say "why can't you just tell me."  But when I've tried to take my blog out of the equation, it hasn't worked as well, and he has never said that to me.  I can be far more articulate here.  

Even if I e-mail him directly, I want to please him.  I can't say the things that are hard to say.  Here, I have to be honest.  That is a requirement of this space.  I can choose what I talk about, but if I talk about something, it has to be honest and complete. It is very easy to hit publish, and even after I hit publish, it is very easy to e-mail it to him. But even e-mailing him directly, I tend to say what I think I should say. The thing he thought I did wrong happened because I was trying to communicate in the moment and be sexy instead of hide behind my blog, and he didn't think it was sexy.

I can't imagine he would do something like that again.  He knows I have this trip wire.  I think if I'd understood how deep it ran and been able to communicate it, he wouldn't have done it the first time.  But I also need to be strong enough to start this conversation and every time I try and start it, I don't.

So here is what I should say to him: I don't want to be punished again.  

I can't handle it.  I know I know you know that on one level and I know you also want the right to punish me on another level.  Maybe I could handle being made to stand in a corner or to write lines, or something like that.  But I can't handle being hurt as part of punishment.  I just want to be your good girl.  I promise you that I will try very hard to be your good girl.  

We've been together for 10 months now, and you've only punished me once.  You know that I try to obey you.  I want to be your good girl without fearing punishment again.  Just obeying you because I want to obey you, not because I feel hysterical that I will have to endure that again.

Spoiler about 50 shades ahead:

This other part of me is wondering if I should even try and be a submissive when I'm not with him.  That seems to be the only way my sense of eros is engaged.  But I don't know if I'm strong enough, and I wonder how important fabulous, mind-blowing sex is, anyway?  I could just have my fantasies and a vanilla sex life?  Don't women lose interest in sex when they get older?  According to 50 Shades I am older.  Of course, exclusively vanilla sex would hasten my  loss of interest in sex quite rapidly. At the end of Fifty Shades of Grey she leaves him.  Decides, after being punished, that it is too fucked up and she wants a vanilla, romantic relationship that is far less complicated.  (Of course, there are 2 more books, so I have a feeling that something else happens--after all they're making a Hollywood movie about it.)  I'm not going to leave MaxEarnest over this, a;though there was a time when I think he was ready to leave me and I couldn't see another way through it.  I love him. I love that he stuck with me when it was hard.  And we have much better communication than the 2 do in the book. But I don't see how our lives will fit together.  And if, at some point, we actually see other people (instead of saying that we can and not doing anything about it) I have to figure out if I want to continue to identify as kinky, or if I want to let that live in my fantasies but not my life.