He likes my labia as they are, thank you

In his comment on yesterday's post Portion control - pain by the ounce, Charlie asked a question he has raised previously as well:

Has he talked about marking you as his property at some point? My sub wears a couple of labia rings.

Short answer: No.
He has not.

The longer answer is rather more complicated, and touches on the frustration I sometimes feel when writing here.

Now of course, above all else, I write here for myself. Setting things down organizes my thoughts, and gives me a chance to document my personal development as well as what have been 2 very important relationships. I do also think I have something different to say about what a D/s relationship can be like. About what any relationship can be like. About different ways of looking at the world and love and... I was going to say power, but I think it's not so much about power as it is about giving and yielding and teaching and communicating and so much more.

I often think that some of my readers just don't get it.

I admit that I'm used to that in my life. I often think that I see things so differently from most people that my attempts at conveying my own perspective just makes others think I'm crazy. Perhaps that is a sign of my failure as an artist - or if not my failure exactly then a sign that I have far to go in translating my vision into a language others can understand. It's as if I persist in speaking an unpredictable mix of French and Swedish while those around me speak only English.

However, I keep on trying.

I sigh, and then keep on trying.

It is hard for you all not to see my relationship with the sadist through the prisms of your own relationships. Or at least through the prisms of what you read about most BDSM relationships. After all, what else do you know? In fact, I was quite puzzled myself in my early days with my demon muse as to what it was he wanted from me. And we still puzzle and frustrate each other as the months go on.

The thing you need to understand is that he is not like most people. And certainly not like most doms.

Remember that in the beginning I usually did refer to him as my demon muse. My muse. He found me on FetLife and was attracted to me by my writing - both by what it said about me and by the writing itself. That is why he wanted me. To write for him - and to be the writer he knew I could be. The rest came as rather a surprise.

As you know from references I have made elsewhere, I am not alone in his collection. I only know a little about the others. Each of us gives him things he needs and serves him in different ways. But, as he has told me numerous times, I give him something no one else can.

My mind.

I am his treasure, his prize possession, and what drives him into a fury is a perception that I am wasting my talents and not treating my art with respect. That is why he has beaten me for typos and for writing a bad sonnet.

Yes, he thinks I am beautiful, and he has taught me to see myself the same way. Yes, he enjoys my body, and the ways that I serve his pleasure. But the link between us, the place where it started, the place where we are bound to each other, is in the world of the mind. Of thought. Of art. Of poetry. Of beauty and metaphor and intellect.

He is in truth the sexiest man I have ever known. But what sealed my doom, what made me realize I was in danger of falling in love with him, was the message in which he referred to both Shakespeare and James Joyce's Ulysses. After that, I didn't have a chance.

So what does this have to do with Charlie's question?

1. My Master doesn't have to mark my body to prove that he owns me. He has made his mark on my mind and deep into my soul. That is more than enough

2. He quite enjoys my body as it is. My mouth. My breasts. My pussy. My butt. The soft, round mound of my belly. Why would he alter them?

3. I admit that I sometimes think of being branded with his initial. But when I do, it is perhaps more for the sake of the ritual than for any physical proof that this body I inhabit belongs to him. And rituals are very powerful for us both. There was one he had me perform, which I never wrote about here, which marked me psychologically in a far deeper way that could any piece of metal driven through a piece of skin.

Tattoos and brands and collars and piercings have meaning for others and that is fine. We all organize our relationships our own way - which is a point I often try to make. A BDSM relationship, however you live it, is still above all a relationship and must be lived by rules that work for the parties involved. There is no Central Committee (thank goodness!) to tell us how what positions we must assume, what forms of address we must use, what punishments are designated for which misbehaviours, and how we may enjoy each other's bodies.

The challenge for you here is to suspend what you know about relationships and try to see things through my eyes. I am not saying that what we do is better. But it is different. He is different. What we give each other is different. What we learn from each other is different - because yes, of course, he learns from me, too.

If what you read here makes you look at your own lives a little differently, that's ok. If you just think I'm totally nuts but it amuses you to read my ramblings, that's ok, too. It's quite likely what I've said here makes no sense whatsoever - I'm very tired and (as is often the case) didn't think things out before I sat down to write. All I ask is that you try to listen to what I'm saying and to open your mind to a different way of thinking.