Awaiting punishment

Things have been so glorious that I don't really want to write this. And yet, in all fairness, I must. Because life, in fact, is not all happiness and victory and telephonic union. Sometimes, life is painful. And I don't mean that metaphorically.

I am, alas, very prone to typos, and becoming more so as the weeks go by. I put it down to aging, perpetual perimenopause, ADD, and a disintegration of concentration brought on by SAD and the dwindling days.These are explanations. They are not excuses.

There is no excuse.

I have grown lax. I have let my vigilance slip. And the collector has been too tolerant for too long. Finally, today, he snapped.

Work was crazy.
Work was insane.
I was being bombarded by phone calls.
During a short pause I wrote a short poem.
Images of objectification that accorded with the morning.
That accorded with my mood.
That accorded with a scenario
looming in the future.
The poem was short.
Not a lot of words.
I proofread carefully -
or so I thought.
I ran a spell check.
But one error remained,
an error that was a real word
that the computer wouldn't catch.

He was livid.
His glaring eyes
and cold voice
cut
through the words on the screen.

He had allowed me to go on in this way too long. Not that I didn't know I was getting away with orthographical murder - an ironic sin for a Junior High spelling champion. I'm a really good proofreader - as long as I'm proofing someone else's works. I did try to be vigilant. But those typos - I just didn't see them. I really didn't see them. Still, that's an explanation. Not an excuse.

There is no excuse.

He made a very interesting point, did this punishing pervert. One that impressed me more than anything else he has said on the topic. I accept that it is a sign of disrespect to submit messages and pieces without perusing them to insure perfection. I accept that in fact there need be NO reason for his insistence on perfection. My job is to serve him, and whatever he requests - no, commands, orders - I must supply. No excuses, no arguments, no exceptions.

Sounds reasonable, no?

But this time, he made a very powerful point, in very powerful words. He spoke of the typos as polluting his artworks. He does regard my poems and stories as works of art, he takes them quite seriously, he pursued and acquired me to serve him as his poet, his provider of literary delights created for his own personal pleasure. Would a painter deliver a commissioned portrait with a long stray drip of foreign hue? Certainly, the Venus do Milo was not originally missing her arms. Any fault in my offerings, if such there be, should be due only to a failure of talent, and I must work very very hard to become better and better so as to make my collector properly proud of his property. My talent must not fail.

So I am due a punishment and I deserve a punishment and it will be very very painful. He will enjoy delivering it, of course, sadist that he is. But the purpose of the spanking and caning and I think that's all but who knows... the purpose of all this awful pain will be my punishment, not his pleasure, and somehow the very same level of pain feels a whole lot worse under such circumstances.

[Note to the philosopher, who has retained the right and intent to worry about me: nothing will stop you from worrying about me, and in fact I love that you worry about me. But please try to be reassured that I am basically safe, and have TWO bags of frozen peas waiting in the freezer.]

I don't exactly know when my punishment will take place. The fiend's visits usually don't receive much advance notice, and finding a good intersection of our schedules can be a challenge. The final weeks of the election have made things that much harder. And there has been one more complication...

Marks and bruises.

By this weekend, I needed to be sans marks and bruises. The bruises are gone. The mark? You can still see traces if you know what to look for, but barely, and I no longer feel the raised edges under my fingers.

I'm having a visitor. S--, the male member of the tremulous trio, the murky ménage à trois. His other girlfriend (and his great love, I think) broke my heart after becoming my first female lover, but he and I have achieved a comfortable balance and are continuing as friends who some times have sex. And very good sex it is. Vanilla but pure natural vanilla, sweet and rich and creamy and attentive and long lasting and the best way he knows to break through the walls and truly connect.

S-- comes to town around every 6-9 months, to see his mother. Last time, he stayed here for a night or two, but we were chaste. I still belonged to the philosopher and he was all I wanted. (I will refrain from the sentence that you know damn well comes next.)

This time, I can do as I wish. But I do NOT want him to ask uncomfortable questions. And my assaulting art collector does leave obvious reminders of his teachings. So this will be the calm before the storm. Instead of aftercare, there will be the gentleness, the loving fucking - softening me up and increasing my vulnerability, for the punishment to come.

And come it will.