Sometimes I think life is designed as a torment to me

So just what am I supposed to think when, as part of a costume, Hal had a pair of leather cuffs danging from his belt?

"Oh fuck yes, I knew he was top-ically inclined"?

I don't think you're paying enough attention to me, she says as she rubs her naked body close to his in bed.

Oh?  he replies.

No, you definitely haven't.  I have been giving you so many clues, she whines.

Like what? he asks.

Like even on Wednesday when I fell asleep at 9, and I said that I was thinking of putting on the collar and the leash and waiting and letting you find me like that?  That was a big fucking hint.

I have clearly been remiss in my duties, he states.  Put the pink things in, go about your business, and I'll deal with you later.

Well, fuck you very much Blogger, for not saving the major changes I made to my blogroll!

Fuck.

And here you thought you were predictable!

For a long time I would have said that when I'm mightily stressed, I'm completely uninterested in sex.  This week - well, this past month, really - seems determined to prove me wrong.

I work full-time, as does Jay.  I'm not in the field I'd prefer to be, but I do something I'm damned good at, and I like my boss, so that helps.  Work's been... busy.  Really busy.  I don't have enough hours in the day, etc. and so on, blah blah blah.  Added on top of the busy bullshit, this has been the week of my name getting associated with shit that is so not even close to my demesne.  I have job duties.  I'm pretty clear about them with people.  And no less than four times in the past three days has my name been listed as the responsible one for things that I don't even have the slightest clue about.

That is intensely frustrating for me.  If I might indulge in a bit of bragging, I know a fuckton of things.  I am a wealth of knowledge, which is actually part of my job description.  But I don't lie about what I don't know - I'll be very blunt and upfront when it comes to telling people I don't have a fucking clue.  And I'll also be blunt and upfront when it comes to telling people that it's not my job, and they need to speak to the person who does own it.

So when others fuck up and put me on the hook for things I shouldn't be, I am irritated.  I am even more irritated when it results in hundreds of emails and phone calls to me (oh, if only I were kidding).  Let's talk about the fact that answering my phone is pretty much my least favorite part of my job, hmmmm?  (And how my voicemail is now changed, and I don't have to answer it this week, with my boss' permission.)

So a lot of things have been conspiring to make me stressed.  And I, oh, I am all about the sex.

Jay and I have had sex every night for the past week, and almost every night for the past month.  Joseph is all up in my business again (shocking, I know) and that is totes okay with me.  Hal's been on his game as well, and let's talk about the lovely comments we've made to each other.  The imagination?  In overdrive.  And the dreams I've had!  Good lord!

And yet I am so stressed that rather than join Jay at an activity tonight that we both enjoy and I adore, I opted to stay home.

What.

To be sure, I am not complaining.  I am slightly confused, but I am not complaining (okay, maybe I'm complaining about not being able to go two nights without dreaming of Hal in an inappropriate way, but other than that...).  Perhaps my self has decided that since sex is a highly effective stress-reliever, it does not behoove us to not indulge?  Who knows.  But good lord!

Project plans

One of the biggest selling points of our current house was that there are enough rooms that both Jay and I can have our own, separate offices, and we can also have a guest room.  Jay and I are both the type of people who need space of our own, to do our own crap in, etc. and so on.

Better yet, my office is up on the third floor, which means there's a whole floor between it and the downstairs neighbors.  Meaning I can be up there with the stereo blasting, working on whatever I like, and they don't hear me.

And perhaps best of all, I can paint my office.

The office is currently getting painted a lovely deep dark blue called "Nocturnal Sea".  Eventually a painted, glow-in-the-dark moon and stars will go up there as well, and I've already bought a room-sized rug for it.

Once it's done, I will have a nice little office.  And Jay and I will have a nice little playroom, with a conveniently-located attic in which to store some of the larger pieces we're thinking about building, such as a wooden pony, and a spanking bench, and a bondage frame.

Sure, we could buy them, but where's the fun in that?  I <3 power tools.

We'll also have a nice bureau in which to store some of our toys, like the honkin' huge (seriously, it is titanically huge) dildo I just bought!  Apparently right now I am very interested in insertions, specifically, large ones.  Good times!

There will also be hooks for canes and crops and paddles and such, and nice thick curtains so no one can see in.  And air-conditioning, because fuck this summer heat and humidity, seriously.

The second coat of paint goes on this weekend, and then the stars, and then the rug and OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY.

Some times you feel like a beating!

Some times you don't!

(Yes, I am singing that to the tune of the old Almond Joy/Mounds jingle, why do you ask?)

One of the things I've gotten more aware of as I've gotten older (you'll note I did not say wiser) was that my life tends to move in cycles.  Oh sure, there's the usual circadian rhythms, and the menstrual cycle, and blah blah blah, but I'm talking more, and more overarching.

I've noted that I have an overarching cycle in my life, for example, with my appetite.  I cycle back and forth between a highly diminished appetite, where I can go all day without eating and nothing is very interesting, and a very enhanced one where I need to eat about every fifteen minutes and everything sounds DELICIOUS.  Similarly, in terms of how easy it is for me to get up early in the morning, how interested I am in interacting with other people, how interested I am in leaving my house and going out and being social, and how interested I am in bottoming.

Well, that last, it varies from "please beat me ALL DAY THANKS", "yeah, a beatin's 'aight", "touch me and I'll break your arm", and "I can beats you nao?"  But, you know.  It cycles.

When I first noticed this, well, it caused me some worry.  OH MY GOD I would think WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME and WHAT THE HELL HAVE I BEEN DOING.  You see, I frequently question myself.  I shouldn't really, but I do it anyway.  And clearly since I was not interested in any sort of submissive or bottoming activities, that meant that a, I was screwed up, b, I wasn't really a submissive/bottom, and/or c, I really need to not do that.  Mostly it was d, all of the above.  With a dash of "how the hell did that seem like a good idea".

Hey, I didn't say it made sense.  However, it is more or less what I thought.

I'm in one of those "please to be beating me all days thank you" phases right now, which I haven't been for a while.  It is delightful.  I'm past worrying that my ever-changing desires make me wrong, or broken or whatnot.  Now we're working on enjoying what's happening right now.  Easier said than done, but I think worthwhile.

Also linked to that is working on communicating with Jay as to where I'm at and what I'm looking for.  Again, easier said than done.  It's one thing for me to know something in my head and be aware of it, and quite another to verbalize it.  Words have power for me, and giving Jay the words to describe what I want gives him power.  Whether I trust him or not is secondary to that, really - certainly trusting him as I do doesn't make it any easier for me.  But... working on it.

Working on a lot of things, really.

Naked time!

It is about a MILLION DEGREES out here right now, which I am NOT A FAN OF. It's only May 2!  It's not supposed to be hot until at LEAST June!

Yeah, that had about the effect on the weather you think it did.

On the plus side, there are curtains on the windows.  We had guests up in March (oh fuck, that was March already) and that prompted me to move really quickly through the rest of the "getting the house put together" business that I'd been neglecting since we moved in.  Oops.  Well, no, since I got it finished in time.  But... yeah, so I'm not the most prompt about that.

But as I was saying, there are curtains on all the windows now, so we can have the windows open and the curtains drawn, so we still get air but can wander around naked if we like, and seeing as how it's about A MILLION DEGREES OUT, that's on the plan.

If this is what getting older entails, I am NOT INTERESTED.

While digging around in old computer backups tonight looking for some music that somehow fell OUT of my iTunes library, I came to the realization that I have turned down a shocking, shocking number of opportunities of the sexual nature in my life.

At this point in my life, I have to admit, my first reaction is whyyyyyyy.

Like, there were three guys in 2003 - THREE - while I was NOT with Jay, who were all about it.  Why on earth did I not do anything about that?  Seriously?  What the hell was I thinking?

There was another guy in 2005.  Didn't do a blessed thing.


There's been a few more this year (okay so odd-numbered years tend to be good, okay).  There were all the guys in college who I didn't realize until well AFTER college that they were hitting on me.


Christ I feel fucking stupid.


To be a bit more fair to myself, I do know a bit of what I was thinking.  High school having done a number on me but good, the idea that anyone found me attractive was not a feeling I trusted.  I never quite believed that anyone genuinely found me likeable and attractive in a sexual sense.  I always figured they had some ulterior motive that generally involved my public humiliation.


Then there was the fact that I was brought up to believe that you shouldn't have sex before marriage, and once you're married, you stay married.  I still believe in the second, although the first I've done a lot of work to unlearn.  However, again in 2003, while I'd gotten around it to the point where having sex with Jay was okay, it wasn't completely okay, and the idea of having sex with more than one person in my lifetime was ZOMG WTF scary.


Still, the older french thinks the younger french was a bit of a frikken dipshit.  Just... CHRIST WHAT WAS WRONG WITH YOU AUGH GOD.

New year! Sweet lord!

My god, when did it get to be mid-January.

Oh wait.  After the frenzy of making sure I had Christmas gifts for everyone, including the in-laws (which, oh god, what a challenge - what do you get people you don't know well, aren't fond of, and who have everything they want anyway, especially when your partner is no help?), wrapping and shipping gifts as required, driving two days each way to see my family for the holiday, driving back home for New Years, having Vinnie up for New Years, going back to work, working on two routines for dance showcases at the end of the month, having friends over, attending a couple of birthday parties and OH RIGHT working... yeah.

I really would have liked to ring in the new year with something, oh, KINKY, but with Vinnie up that wasn't going to happen.  True, we now have a guest room, and it's not right next to the bedroom, and both doors were closed, but still.  And now that Jay and I are both working long hours again, we pretty much get home at night, eat something, vegitate, and go to sleep.  We just haven't had the energy to do much else.

Sad part is, we're both working on major projects for work, so who knows when that will change!  Seriously, we like our jobs, but UGH.

However, one of my goals for the next year is to blog once a week.  SO.  Even though I may not be participating in anything kinky,  I am going to make the effort to talk about it.  That should be a good time, right?

Right?!

Once again beaten

The intersection of feminism and kink has come up a lot this past week in the blogosphere - at least the parts I frequent - and naturally, someone has already posted and included a lot of the thoughts I have.

Not all of them, but a lot of them.

Anyway, I highly recommend that y'all read this over at Sugarbutch.

Blah.

I'm not sure when it got to be 2 am, and how it got to be 2 am without my getting done much of anything I wanted to.  The lights still aren't on the Christmas tree, laundry is still unfinished, the new computer still isn't set up... but hey, I tagged a whole bunch of posts and read a whole lot of crap on the internet!

*sigh*

I also have like, no Christmas presents bought for anyone - for most people, I have ZERO IDEA what I'm going to get them.  My house is a mess and I'm having people over in early January, I don't know what I'm going to bake, this coming week at work is going to be insane...

Eh.  Whatever.  I think I'm going to go to bed.

Bitten

The first clue I had that perhaps my attaction to Hal was not entirely of the platonic sort was when he mentioned his fangs.

I have a very sensitive neck, and sensitive ears as well.  Jay has made me squirm and shriek just by coming near them, and a breath across the right patch of skin raises goosebumps down the entire corresponding side of my body, something which Jay finds endlessly entertaining.  I'm rather protective of these areas, as goosebumps are not my idea of fun very often.

Perhaps that's why I like to be bitten - having my ears gently gnawed, or my neck tenderly nibbled - or not so tenderly - is quite arousing for me.  Having other parts bitten is enjoyable as well, but the sensitivity of the skin on my neck and ears adds something to the deal.  Having my neck bitten makes my eyes roll back in my head as my entire body shudders in pleasure, my breath coming hot and heavy.

When I first met Hal, we immediately clicked.  You know how it is with some people, where you know immediately upon meeting them that they are absolutely supposed to be a part of your life and there was a part of you just waiting for them to show up?  That kind of click.  If it weren't for the circumstances under which I met him, which prohibit our having anything other than a professional relationship right now, he'd immediately have taken his place as one of my best friends ever.  He'd be the kind of friend to spend the night at the bar with me, take in a Sox game, just hang out and play video games, and have geeky, intense, ridiculous conversations with late at night.  He would be, as I told him, one of "the posse".

We discovered early on that we're geeky in so many similar ways, although he has an unfortunate preference for Spider-Man rather than Batman.  We discussed games, and more comics, etc. and so on and were talking more about our personal lives when he mentioned the pair of fangs he owns.

My fevered little brain immediately granted me the image and sensation of him using those fangs on my neck.

Up until that moment, I would have sworn - in fact, did, to Vinnie - that everything was strictly platonic.  I was mostly kidding myself, I think; most of our conversations consisted of the sort of flirting one sees in the "I make fun of you because I like you" stage, although I really was somewhat convinced that it didn't mean anything other than two friends good-naturedly ragging on each other.  Clearly, my body and mind had other ideas, as they have frequently told me since.

Everyone loves mail, part II

Arriving in the mail today, courtesy of my credit card and the fine folks at Blowfish:

• A miniature "I Rub My Fishie" - did y'all know that it comes with its own shower shelf?  It totally does.  I think it's going to live in our shower (ps living by ourselves is AWESOME)
• A Feeldoe

Oh yes, a Feeldoe.  Did I mention that we're both switches?  Mwahahahah.

As for the previous mail, we did in fact try out the new clamps on Monday night.  I was sitting on the couch wasting time and half-watching the football game (serious Patriots, that was not your best outing) when Jay walks in with the new clamps delicately jingling in his hand and says "Take off your shirt."

Oh.  Well then.

I give him a conflicted look and took it off, then asked him why he said I should take it off.

"Because they you can take off your bra."

Oh.

The bra comes off and Jay moves over by me to put on the clamps.  The good news:  the clamps are adjustable and since this week is apparently "Pain is GREAT" week for my nipples, they felt fantastic.  The bad news is that my nipples are bigger than I thought (and I will swear that they're bigger than they used to be) and so the clamps don't really fit on them.  I stood up and they both promptly fell off.

Not to be deterred, Jay shooed me in to the bedroom and bid me remove the rest of my clothing, whereupon he clipped them to my labia, where they could again delicately jingle.  They still felt really good (like, really good; it's just apparently "Pain is GREAT" week for all of my body) but the jingling kind of broke my head.  Every time I breathed there would be this gentle chiming from the rings as they swayed and hit each other, and I found it juuust a bit disconcerting.

My head got broken even worse when he clipped the rings together.  Oh goody, just what a sadist always wanted, a fucking handle.  And yes, I do mean that in both senses.

Everyone loves mail.

Arriving in the mail today:

• An assortment of spreader bars, including a couple of 4" ones, for which we have some very specific purposes in mind
  
• Adjustable nipple clamps with 1" metal rings dangling from them
• A small bottle of Liquid Silk lube

 This is exciting for me.  Not least of which is because wow, could I please have my nipples tortured a bit please?  KTHXBAI.  Seriously.

Jay spent some more quality time last night pinching and twisting them, to the same reaction.  His comment was "You know, I've always been told that nipples aren't faucets, but damned if they don't work that way on you."  It doesn't work that way all the time, but hooo boy am I going to enjoy it while it does.

It's kind of a pity that Monday Night Football is on, because otherwise I'd so totally be in bed convincing Jay to try out the nipple clamps on me.

Actually... we live by ourselves, and the shades are closed.  HMMM.

Seriously, what the hell.

Why is it that some times, Jay pinching and twisting my nipples makes me scream in pain, and some times (like last night) it is the HOTTEST MOST WONDERFUL THING EVER.

On maturity

I wasn't kidding when I said that 2009 was the year of men in my life. There's a lot to unpack with that, so I'm going to try to not blow the entire load in one entry because that would be silly (blogging hang-ups: I haz them), but I do want to talk about it.

First and foremost, Jay and I got married early this year. That didn't really change our relationship (except legally), I don't think. We've been together for most of the past 10 years (ten years! TEN YEARS, dear god, ten years). We've lived together, lived apart, shared bills, slept in the same bed practically since we met each other, been to each other's family gatherings and holidays and weddings and funerals, and been a linked pair in most of our family's and friends' minds for a long time now.

People keep asking me how it feels to be married, as if it were some life-altering totally radical change in our relationship. I don't have an answer for them, because it did not radically alter our relationship. We giggle that we're married, and are ridiculous entertained by referring to each other as "husband" and "wife". Yes, we're twelve, what of it? But the fundamentals of our relationship have not changed. I refer to him as my partner for a number of reasons, but first and foremost because that's what he is. We've both worked hard - damned hard - to have a relationship of equals, and just because cultural baggage says we're not, doesn't mean I want that.

What it has changed, however, is our relationship to other people.

I'm told the term I'm looking for may be "Saturn Return"

I've been working my way through the Top 100 Sex Bloggers of 2009, and discovering lots and lots of fantabulous new reading material.

My blogroll is sadly out of date.

Hell, this blog is sadly out date. Yes, it's been well over a year since I've posted here. At the time I really dropped off, August of 2008, I had moved with Jay to a crappy tiny apartment, I had a crappy job that sucked the life out of me (almost literally; I wound up distressingly ill while working it), my life was a mess.

Clearly, some things have changed.

There's so much to write about! 2009 has been the year of men in my life! We moved to a brand new apartment that has a room we're seriously considering making a semi-permanent playroom! There are hooks more or less permanently attached to the head and footboards! Jay and I got officially married! I have a much better job, that while I hate it, doesn't make me sick! I have been thinking about and wanting and having sex again!

Seriously. Part of my adult identity has been my libido and sexual tastes, and for a while they were just... gone. It was fairly distressing. Added to all of the other things that were fucking my shit up last year, and the tail end of 2008 and, if we're honest, probably the first half of 2009 were a head-fuck of gigantic proportions.

But now that things have started progressing again, it occurs to me that having this self-created safe space to verbally work out some of the things in my head and in my life is probably a helpful, useful thing, and it probably behooves me to utilize it.

So. I'm back.

And updating my damn blogroll, jaysus christ that thing is a mess.

Wait, what?

When did it get to be August?

No, really, when did it get to be August.

I am so not ready for it to be August.




Also, as a maintenance note, I know I've kind of dropped off of the face of the internet for a while. I don't know when I'll be back regularly; I'm in the middle of the 18-months-of-weddings. Seriously. It started with a friends' wedding in March. By September of next year, I will have attended no less than FIVE ADDITIONAL WEDDINGS, a couple of which I get to be involved in. Plus, I'm moving, and, I got a new job. It's been a little nuts around here.

Oh christ jesus

Interestingly enough, during the interlude between my last post and last night, I spent most of my time being top-py. I got to do a lot of tying up of Jay and tickling him until his face turned red and he was almost crying, which is ever so much fun :)

Meanwhile, most of the reason I wanted to post is that, for the most part, we just bummed around the house all weekend. Well, not the bumming, but what happened during the bumming, I suppose.

Jay had hopped in to the shower, and he comes out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, and walks up to me where I am sitting on the couch in the living room and grabs my hand. I am assuming that he wants to drag me in to the bedroom, which I am amenable to, so I start to get up. He shakes his hand, and shoves it under the towel, so that I can have the wonderful experience of grabbing freshly shaven balls.

Since sincere fondling would not be a good idea in the living room, as my flatmates are home, I take the opportunity to drag him in the bedroom and thoroughly inspect them. I approve.

I then shove his hand in my pants, so that he can enjoy the fact that I at least trimmed my pubic hair. What can I say, I've been lazy. Then we get the great idea that, you know, since we're not doing anything else, why don't I go and finish the job?

It only took me forty minutes! Actually, I probably shouldn't be proud of that.

The snatch has not been this smooth and hairless since probably some time in the first W administration, something else I should probably not be proud of. At the very least, this is the first time in a long while I did not just try to do everything in the shower. That is a pain in the ass, almost literally. Thanks to the boobs, I really can't see anything down there when I'm standing up. It's hard enough to shove them far enough out of the way when I'm sitting to do so, but it does work a lot better.

Saying that we had sex (kinky sex!) after that is kind of anti-climactic, but we did, and it was good, and yes, it really was the first time I was the bottom since February.

I feel so naked!

to put the world to rights

You know, it's really difficult to take pictures of really tall boots while you're wearing them. At least, I find it difficult to get a picture that I like.

A week or two ago, I had asked Jay if he'd be willing to indulge me in what I believe I termed as "serious rope". Not so much predicament bondage, or anything that would cause me pain in any way, but being seriously tied up and immobilized by vast quantities of rope. There's a kind of zen in being unable to move like that, in the presence of someone you love. I needed that.

For whatever reason, we haven't managed it yet. We've both been tired - me more than usual; hating my job tends to make me sleepy, which I am ascribing to mild depression - and busy. I spent the weekend at a friend's house last weekend, which also didn't afford us many opportunities to do anything. And, Jay being Jay, he wanted to have a definite plan in mind.

I'm not posting this to complain, however it might seem. But... I still need that moment of calm. I need to feel that giving up of the effort to control everything - giving up that feeling that I have to be in control, like I have to be in charge and be a rational adult. It's difficult for me to relax completely unless I'm forced to. Rope just happens to be a really good way of calming me down, and giving me the ability to let go and just be. It's one of the few things that can reliably shut my nattering mind up, without giving it extra things to work over later.

My calendar is looking rather free on Saturday at the moment. I think that I will be penciling him in, if he's amenable to the idea.