Freewritten

Back in Town

Hey la my boyfriend’s back in town

With a glint in his eye and a bounce in his step that

Jolts that hat off his head like a breeze through the subway.

Moving, making, jamming to the beats of streets lined with

Metal doorways aligned with the earth covered in concrete.

Every person has their day

And every day finds its way through back alleys and bright, dirty pizza kitchens.

I walk these streets, hair blowing the wrong direction,

And smile.

I can see the Hudson river running under the bows of the ferries

And smell the financial district’s infamy

And perhaps in spite and perhaps because of it all

I laugh.

New York feels good just before summer.

I turned thirty.  

The next morning, over coffee and cold chocolate milk,

I explained to a not quite five year old that I was older

And that blonde in pigtails and overalls was younger

But, at almost five year old, she wouldn’t understand.

See, older or younger, only the relation to her was important,

Opposites meaning nothing if definitions dictated she no longer be the sun of my jealously held attention.

 

I turned thirty.

Once again stars died above my head as I watched anything but the night sky,

Casting instead for ancient heroes in the silt of sunken quarries.

These invisible curls too familiar,

Striking and hissing at anyone who dares kindly touch,

Stonily surveying mirrored images of men and women whose brave forays into my spaces have birthed mourning,

This personal pantheon of sorrow.

 

Did she mean to turn them into statued shadows of their humanity?

Or despairing in her requisite loneliness,

Hating the unbidden talent that seeped from her eyes,

Find Perseus kind in release, her saviour?

 

These are the times to feel everything and block nothing.

These are the times to welcome death and find phoenixes.

These are the times to see, remember, and, when necessary,

Laugh as much at the tragedy as the comedy of it all.

We are no Medusas.

The Spun Quiet

How easily certain things invade the brain.  

Hearing choruses of mournful hallelujahs and catching scents of lavender on the air where neither exist.  

Dreaming of underwater castles that seem to be decaying rowboats, the octopus clung to the insides of the underside upturned on the bottom of the sea.  The cartilage of crab and prawns scattered outside the place where, if you shine your light and look past the blur of your breath, an eye is shining, alien and clean. 

Sketching dances in sepia on wooden floors that are not made of steps and slides but of light touches, laughter, perhaps even a kiss spun in time to music long past its popularity, resurrected for a moment before being again forgotten.

These are the places the mind spins in a happy quiet.  In the calm, serenity and melancholy lie together in lovers arms, balance entwined beneath the storm.

Is it Rejection?

Last night, I brought up a subject within my relationship that is often beloved and often reviled by different segments of the community at large: commitment.  Go ahead and get your shudders and shivers out of the way.  Ok.

Commitment is one of those concepts that can be all things to all people.  In the last week I’ve spent an inordinately large amount of time around sets of people that have, within their primary relationships, set (and usually public) commitments.  Many were marriages, both open and closed; others were partnership situations that have defined their relationships without pursuing the paperwork.  All that definition got me thinking about my primary relationship and the journey he and I have wandered in the last three years.

Over its course, BS and I have *chosen* to pursue huge changes in our relationship.  These have taken the form of opening our relationship, closing our relationship, reopening our relationship, altering our definitions of personal space, reexamining our definitions of family, even splitting up for a time.  I believe that all of these changes have informed what is the current working definition of our relationship and have been necessary to our happiness.  However, due to a failed marriage in my past and a learned ambiguity toward relationship commitment in his, we have not chosen to pursue any “above and beyond” commitment structures.

Back to last night.  I introduced the subject as “What might commitment look like for us?”  I was careful to make it an open topic and not something that I was absolutely set upon.  Its a conversation that, surprisingly, I am now interested in having.  BS, fairly and clearly, wasn’t so sure—he’s taking time to think about what further defining our relationship would mean to him and if he’s interested.  It was a successful piece of relationship communication.  So why do I feel like I’ve been rejected?

Tradition and societal pressures—yes.  I do admit that I grew up in a conservative household that cherished clearly defined committed relationships.  This is not true of BS and its not something I desire to pursue to the dogmatic resolve of my parents and their chosen culture.  To be sure, I have no desire to be remarried.  However, what I cherish in commitment is the stability, the backbone if you will, that can provided within the context of something that is at times intrinsically a pit of quicksand (i.e. a relationship).

And so, the age old question arises—Is it commitment or is it codependence?  

I am very glad to have a boyfriend who is willing to be honest enough to take the time to think through something that he can see has importance in my mind but that he, in essence, has no context for.  I am also very glad that we are proactively continuing to create our own context for what we desire our relationship to become.  Do I hope that we find a place where we can comfortably (with stretching) commit to each other on a level beyond where we are now?  Yes, I do.  But I’m striving to ensure that I allow the space for that commitment to match both of our individual desires.  Reformulating our relationship is awesome but I’d like to avoid stretch marks.

Call for Art Closes TOMORROW (Saturday, March 10)

A Quick Thought Post-Grue on ‘Sensual Topping”

Warning:  This is a kinky post.  Yeah, you’re not used to me being the one in control.  I know.  Meet a different side.  

The highly social nature of the whole weekend in Vancouver (interactions between my boy and my primary; open, unstructured social time at the Grue; interactive scening at the Grue afterparty) worked very well within my style of topping. The boy termed it “sensual topping” in his scene report, which I think is an apt description.

I loved watching and enjoying not only the reactions of those who were interacting with me about (and sometimes above!) the boy, but also his reactions to being opened up to so many ideas and opinions about what might happen to him. An example: he had to count trampling steps, in multiple languages, and when he ran out, I had others count for him. We went through english, french, german, spanish, hungarian, and Japanese before we were finished. The confusion of having to not only count, but to pay attention to which language was being spoken AND which number came next looked just exhausting. grin

I was careful to make sure that I was the only one giving orders to mitigate his existing discomfort with public play, however the humiliation aspect involved in this type of scene was good for both of us. I must do highly crowd-interactive scenes more often. Thanks to @beyourcommander and @PopeBacon for their lovely contributions.

On the Grammys

Those players rarely know what box they’re opening

The new faces, shining

New bodies on display

Belting out hearts’ cries

A decades’ expression

Stayed tears inlaid with rhythm

The weeping entirety of their lives

 *

And now, it’s come back

They stand in the black of an empty stage, waiting

Honesty is quite a thing to share with the millions who watch your every step

Most cheer your facade

But some cry with you