To that end, tonight I’ll be heading to Berkeley to pick up a Heartwood flogger Theo bought as a surprise.  “It’s your first big public flogging, and I wanted to make it special.”  The surprise hit me hard when they told me, and I have to say that I’ve got very mixed feelings about it – on the one hand, I love floggers, and can’t wait to get my hands on it…and on the other hand, I’m nervous and excited, but a little (ok, a lot) humbled, too, by the gesture and thoughtfulness.  It really is going to be a big deal to walk into the Citadel as a small, not a Big, this time.  I’m feeling intimidated, nervous, and more than a bit out of my element, and I’m feeling little jolts of worry – that I won’t be strong enough, that I’ll break too easily or disappoint them.  Honestly, I’m used to striding in with a boy in tow, and playing, secure in the knowledge that no one’s really watching.  With Theo, though, there’ll be a bit more attention paid, especially by those who’d like very much to swap places with me.

Thankfully, Theo has been very sweetly talking all of this over with me, while I’ve worried and panicked and twisted myself into little knots that they’ve patiently unwound.  Kyle, too, has been talking me through a lot, and offering love and support from a distance.  I’m surrounded by people who cherish me, even when I’m knocked a bit sideways with nerves.

I promise to tell y’all about it on the other side.

Then, after the rest of the day had had its way with me, I stopped by the Big Pink House to drop off a belated birthday present for Leo.  Leo and Levi are two of the warmest people I know, and soon I was invited in to sit and chat in the living room.  Levi caught the look in my eye, and asked about how I was…and it all came tumbling out.  It’s hard to know what to say or how to say it – the things that have happened this past few years are shocking, to say the least – but they were both so very sweetly supportive as they listened to my tales of woe. It was tempting to stay all night, but it got late and I wanted to leave before their dinner got cold.

Leo is planning to run for Ms SF Leather, which is really exciting, except that the contest itself will take place on the same weekend when I’m up in Portland for Butch Voices with Kyle.  Ms Cat, who is the exquisite co-host of the Eclipse parties I’m always raving about, is also running…which is gonna make the judging extremely difficult.  I attended IMsL last spring and it was fun and very sexy, and so I’m hoping all of you within driving distance of San Francisco will consider going to root them on for me.  (Or come up to Portland for BV, which promises to be quite excellent, especially the Saturday night show – I hear they got a KICK-ASS stage manager for that.)

I arrived home to find an extremely romantic email from Kyle – a song from the 70s I guarantee y’all have heard, the lyrics written out for me expressing his love and desire.  A most excellent way to say goodnight.

Anyway, I just wanna give a big ol’ shout out to everyone who’s been taking such good care of me lately.  I spent my hour with the therapist admitting how lonely I’ve been feeling, how everything that’s happened has made me an outcast, and the universe responded by throwing heaps of love in my direction.

Sure, it’s selfish to think the universe would care about little ol’ me…but sometimes it’s really nice to see that it does.

——————–

Ps  Wow – look at all those helpful and thoroughly-researched links…I bet that’s a dead giveaway that I’m a teacher, huh?

Friday night I’ll be heading over to the Citadel in San Francisco for another wonderful celebration of female flesh, otherwise known as Eclipse, this time celebrating this weekend’s Pride festivities.  Hosted by Ajax and the beautiful Ms Cat (both very cool people,) these parties are open to anyone who is female-bodied or identifies as female or trans.  It costs $30, but if you volunteer (as I love to do – I’ll be serving food to all those beautifully broken bodies) admission is free.

The festivities go from 8 pm to 1 am, and feature a dungeon full of gorgeous debauchery and a number of sexy demos, too.  Leo and Levi will be offering a session on the art of cocksucking (and, having seen a bit, I can tell you that’s gonna be worth the price of admission all by itself,) Alotta Boutte will be performing, and there will be bootblacking, Tarot reading, piercing, Daddy play with Leland and her Daddy, and more.

What are you doing just sitting there?  Get moving!  You need to get your butt to SF and fast.

You can check out the details at Fetlife here.  You’ll need to join Fetlife to view the page, but if you’re interested in kink, you should definitely be a member.  It’s free and full of lots of kinky folks just like you who’re into (fill in the blank.)  (You think I’m kidding?  Join and try out a search.  I dare you to find something there isn’t a group for.  And…if you do find something that’s been woefully forgotten?  Start a group and see how fast people sign up.  So far I’ve found groups for even my darkest kinks, even if I haven’t gotten up the guts to join them all yet.)

And if you do make it to the Citadel tomorrow night, do stop by and say hi.  It’ll be easy to spot me – I’ll be the one serving up juicy melons to everyone. 

I realized the other day that I haven’t written much about him, which is odd, because he’s become a rather large part of my life.  We’ve fallen into meeting once a week for frozen yogurt in Berkeley, or, lately, to go see the drag king show at the White Horse Inn.  We bicker like siblings over who’s gonna get to pay for things, but it’s worth it, because I love going places with him – when I make a snarky/silly comment under my breath, he gets it, and he’s ready to shoot back with one of his own.  He’s got my back and I’ve got his – I feel safe with him, which is a precious thing to find in a friend, and not something I take for granted.

I think one of the reasons I like him so much is that he’s nearly as awkward as I am (and, yes, we’ve actually argued over who wins the awkward award, but this is my blog, and so I can go ahead and claim that I won) and that’s incredibly comforting as we’re attempting dangerous maneuvers like going to an intimidatingly infamous gay bar for the first time.  He’s unlike anyone else I’ve ever met – extremely smart and funny, but so completely unaware of his attractiveness that it’s almost hard to believe.  And yet, under that self-deprecating shell, he’s a very real, deeply caring guy who happens to be a lot of fun.

I’ve been asking to take his picture for awhile, and he graciously agreed to let me last week.  Unfortunately, that night I was exhausted and suffered a few false starts, but he was very patient with me, and allowed me to keep stumbling along until we found our groove (in this case, a guitar and a pair of sunglasses that had us both laughing.)  I’m really pleased with the pictures that came out – they capture little glimpses of the sweet, funny, sexy, handsome guy I’ve come to know.

(And, for those of you keeping score, I managed, as I took the 300+ pictures, to knock over a glass of tea – spilling it across the floor and under the bed – to nearly lose his glasses behind the bookcase, and to just barely miss stepping on 5 billion trumpet parts by slipping sideways and falling awkwardly onto the bed, nearly knocking said bookcase over onto myself in the process.  I honestly did not know trumpets had that many parts.  But I did manage to avoid serious injury to either of us, and, given that my face was obscured by a camera and my mind obsessed with the next shot, that pretty much counts as a miracle. )

So, without further ado, here are my favorites:

Photography geek picture.  I just love the composition on this one:

This is the Arron I know best, with his eyebrow crooked up and wearing those awesome glasses:

This is the face he made every time I asked him to smile (there was growling as well):

I threw a little tantrum that he wouldn’t smile for me and then sneakily caught this gorgeous picture as he was laughing at me over it:

Yeah, ok, this one just seemed so right.  The poor guy is so amazingly awesome, and yet all people seem to wanna know is what he’s got in his pants.  The answer, of course?  Red plaid boxers:

As devastatingly sexy as this picture is, all I can think of when I see it is the gel that was all over my hands (…and my shorts…and my camera…) from trying to style his hair for the shot.  Note to self – I am not a hairdresser.  I need to stop pretending I am.

Yup, I was lying on my back on his bed, pointing the camera up at him when I got this super-cool reflection.

Plus, damn, has he got that hungry look down or what?

I love the motion in this picture.  The song he was playing was beautiful:

I forget what I said to him, but, whatever it was, it made him suddenly very shy.  And that “morning light” effect?  It was nearly 2 in the morning, nowhere near a window.  I learned a cool trick with my flash to make it look this way:

At one point, he jumped up and raced over to grab these sunglasses.  Maybe we were just punch drunk with exhaustion, but we both loosened up and ended up getting lots of great shots (including a few without his shirt on that I’m not gonna print here.  Yeah, I’m totally showing off now.)

The look in his eyes makes this shot for me:

Tagged: Arron, Eclipse, Folsom, friendship, Pictures ]]> http://uncommoncuriosity.com/2010/03/07/friends-with-benefits/feed/ 12 sroxy DSC_0301 DSC_0308 DSC_0347 DSC_0349 DSC_0374 DSC_0405_2 DSC_0408_2 DSC_0489 DSC_0525 DSC_0542 DSC_0569 http://uncommoncuriosity.com/2010/03/05/google-fishing/ http://uncommoncuriosity.com/2010/03/05/google-fishing/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:25:31 +0000 sroxy http://uncommoncuriosity.com/?p=2059 ]]> In case you don’t follow me on Twitter, I’ll sum up my morning:

1)  I woke up at stupid o’clock to go to the gym, and discovered a spider in my bra.  While I was putting it on (the bra, not the spider.)  The spider and I will both be needing therapy now.

2)  The left side of my head is throbbing with the gut-wrenching pain of what doctors like to call a migraine.  Isn’t that a cute little word?  I think they should rename it something with a lot more letters that involve screaming and throwing sharp things, just so people understand a little better what it means to have one.

3)  Part of me is laughing hysterically that I’m still planning to go to get my beat on with Arron tonight.  Yes, leave it to me to go out of my way to find someone else to beat me up tonight, when I could just stay home and get topped by a headache.  In my jammies.  I must be a masochist…

4)  Ugh…my head hurts.

5)  I don’t like pie.  At all.  Especially not cherry pie.  Yes, let the humor commence.

So, in summation – early-morning spiders and headaches, sadism, beatings, cherry pie, therapy and a sweetly brave guy named Arron.

Yeah, I can’t wait to see the search hits on this one…

We would meet at his house when no one was around, and play, taking turns giving and receiving, depending on our moods.  I had a lot of fun -  I mean, this was the fantasy I’d had for years and years and years, being tied up or tying someone else up and beating the tar out of each other – but afterwards I always felt…well, awful.  I’d feel incredible during the play, but then, about an hour later, I’d suddenly crash.  I’d feel cold, and horrible, and terribly lost, like having a sudden attack of low self-esteem and no motivation in the middle of Siberia.  As good as I had felt before, I felt ten times worse, and I figured that I must be broken, and I questioned if I was even cut out for playing.  Back then I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, and I didn’t know where to go for help, someone to tell me I wasn’t crazy.

Now, of course, I know what was happening, and I even know a name for it – drop.  Drop can happen to both tops and bottoms, and it can happen in a lot of different ways, but it’s usually marked by an intense physical and mental low that can affect mood, motivation and even your body.   After Kyle and I had played at the dungeon, he experienced a sudden chill, and described feeling lost and needing a lot of reassurance.  Of course I was right there with a blanket and as much love as I could pour over him, holding him and reassuring him that I was there and I loved him and he had done wonderfully and made me so very proud.  Interestingly, I’ve found that that sort of reassurance helps with my own top drop – being there for him afterwards strengthens our connection in a way that helps me, too.

The name for all of this post-play loving is aftercare, and there are as many versions of it as there are couples.  When I played with my ex, we didn’t engage in anything like that – when we were done, I was told to get out quickly, so that neighbors wouldn’t suspect too much.  There was no connection, sometimes not even a hug…and that left me very susceptible to drop.

Now, of course, I know to anticipate it, and how to approach aftercare with Kyle.  However, I’ll be playing this Friday with Arron, and so we’ve been discussing aftercare for months.  We’re very good friends, to be sure, but not lovers, and so aftercare with him will be very different from what it is with Kyle.  I’m very lucky that, despite the fact that the conversation is awkward at times, Arron is committed to having it with me, and that I feel secure that he will take good care of me, as I will take care of him.

The hardest lesson for me has been to convince myself that needing aftercare isn’t a sign of weakness, and that acknowledging it is an integral part of being a good partner.  For me, physical play is an intimate act, and if I’m not brave enough to negotiate what I need, then I need to admit that I shouldn’t be playing.  Yeah, the image of being that happy-go-lucky painslut/Dom who can dart in and out of play with strangers is a seductive one, but it’s not me.  I connect with my partners in a way that transcends the physical act of the beating, and that connection has to be slowly and compassionately relaxed, not severed quickly.

So, how do I do that?  And how do I communicate it to my partner?  I’ll be approaching those questions in tomorrow’s post -  “Negotiation – Not Nearly as Awkward as Having a Breakdown in Public.”

Arron and I arrived at the Citadel with just a minute to spare, and had a moment to sit down and catch a breather (and, in my case, pull on some slightly more sensible shoes.)

We were assigned sheet duty (covering all the couches, chairs and mattresses upstairs and downstairs with sheets, which was made a bit more complicated by the amorous couple who were loathe to vacate their spot on one of the mattresses.  There was much embarrassed giggling as we worked fast to return their mattress to them, newly re-sheeted) and then we checked each of the stations for safer sex supplies (bleach, condoms, lube, paper towels, etc.)  We finished early, and then went to help out the kitchen crew with getting all the amazing food ready.  I love helping out because you meet so many fun people, and we were soon joking and laughing with a really cool bunch of knife-wielding, watermelon-dicing sadists and masochists.

After we had finished setting up, we had a few moments before the party started, and, after I had put my dangerous boots back on, we took a tour downstairs, stopping to try out a big swing and a spanking bench.  Arron sat on the spanking bench and silently, cruelly challenged me to take advantage with coy smiles and pseudo-innocent expressions.  It took every ounce of control not to.  (Shocked?  Despite spending the day yanking his chain, quite literally, we hadn’t discussed playing together and I was actually trying to be sensitive and not push his boundaries.  Yes, I know, totally unlike me, but I was trying to be a conscientious host.  Humor me here, ok?)  I have to admit, it was kind of fun, this game of chicken we were playing, egging each other on without wanting to actually make the first move…a most delicious type of flirtation.

I had never been to an all-female and trans party before, and I was a bit like a kid at Disneyland (except without the long lines and with considerably more lube.)  There were beautiful women and drop-dead handsome studs, and I was a bit sad that Kyle couldn’t share the night with me, but determined to have a good time nonetheless.  Arron and I sat and watched a sharps/farm scene involving a pony, a pig, a lot of needles and a bunch of barbed wire.  I had to look away when a long needle was sent through one cheek, across the mouth and through another cheek, but Arron was sweet enough to console me with M&Ms.  (I returned the favor with some peaches – and these were no ordinary peaches, these were the sweetest, juiciest peaches anyone could remember tasting in a long time and led to a number of passionate discussions comparing peaches to women…)

After the first demo, there was a break and then a take-down demo involving a fantasy of turning the tables on a very bad trainer…and from the sound of the audience I don’t think there was a dry seat left in the house.  Arron and I decided to head downstairs afterwards to see if anyone was scening yet.

Downstairs at the Citadel is the dungeon, and they have a number of St. Andrews crosses, spanking benches, swings, beams, cages and the like.  There were a couple of scenes already going, and we settled in a spot where we could watch all of them.  It was clear Arron was enjoying himself, so I tentatively asked if he’d like to play, and he was really sweetly shy about it, even though I could tell he was interested, so…I had to insist.  After the other two were finished, I dragged him over to a cross in the back and asked him to flog me.  He was nervous because he’d never used a flogger, so I promised to show him how…and then I asked him if he’d like me to strip.

Damn, I wish I could have taken a photograph of the boy’s face right at that moment.

Needless to say, he said yes.  I stripped down to my skirt and boots and assumed the position on the cross.  Now, flogging is an intimidating art – when you’re just starting out, the tails never fall where you think they will, and the prospect of sending someone to the hospital after hitting them too hard in the head or the kidneys can be a bit daunting.  Arron, amazingly, picked up my flogger and took to it immediately – he was soon landing blows like a pro, varying intensity and speed and watching the movement of my muscles and the color of my skin for instruction on where to hit next.  Every now and again he would pause for a moment and rake his nails down my back, my arms, my thighs…and an involuntary shudder/growl would erupt from my gut. I was thoroughly enjoying his violent attentions when suddenly he wound my pigtails around his hand, pressing a cold fist against my neck, and pulled me back off my toes, half-whispering, half-growling in my ear…and then he bit my shoulder so hard it sent me to my knees with a cry of pain.

Which is to say, I nearly came right there.

Now, I have an awkward, if not somewhat confusing, response to pain – I giggle.  A lot.  In an ironically horrible way that usually just goads my tormentors on to more extreme and harsher punishment.  So, when he bit me so hard that I fell to my knees, I started laughing, which only encouraged a harder beating…which, in turn, made me laugh harder.  Suffice to say I was well and truly beaten before he stopped so I could go man the front door for my assigned volunteer hour.

…but that was only the beginning.

(Next:  The Eclipse After Party – Part II)

And I was grinning like an idiot.

Folsom Fair was yesterday, along with the Eclipse party – This Shit Will Fuck U Up 4.  Today I am covered with little bruised reminders of having worn ridiculous shoes all day and then having let someone flog and scratch and bite me all night.  I am sore in all the best ways and still flying high with a big ol’ smile on my face.

And as soon as I come down, I promise to tell you all about it…