Sensitive spanking article hits the Sunday NY Times

Sunday morning.
Well, no.
Not really.
Sunday afternoon.
Unknowing,
unprotected,
unprepared,
I'm reading the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times.
The actual paper!

Such joyful decadence on a weekend when the sadist and I were deprived of each other's company due to an unwelcome and lingering cold. He was not pleased with me. Admitting it wasn't really my fault, he was not pleased with me and required me to devise a 4-part plan to reduce the number of colds I get in the future.

I do get an awful lot of colds.

But I'm straying from the topic.

So I won't even mention how relieved and happy I am about the results of last Tuesday's election, both in the US as a whole and in my own state. On top of everything else, we won 3 out of 3 statewide measures legalizing marriage equality (one in my state of Maryland), and defeated a Minnesota constitutional amendment against gay marriage. A very good day.

Back to the topic.
An article.
The headline of which took my breath away.
  
Finding the Courage to Reveal a Fetish

Read it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/fashion/modern-love-a-spanking-fetish-is-not-revealed-easily.html?ref=fashion

It's about spanking.
Desire.
Need.
Hiding.
Revealing.
Sharing.

It's not about anything very extreme.
But it's open.
Honest.
Real.
And perhaps will get readers to think.
To wonder.
To reconsider their automatic responses.

It left me breathless.
In fact, kept me breathless through the entire article
and as I wrote the following letter to the author.

I sent the link to the fiend.
I sent the link to the philosopher.
I posted it on my oatmeal girl Facebook page.
But I did NOT post it on my other Facebook page.
and I did not send it to my "regular" friends.
I did not say - Here,
read this,
Perhaps you'll understand me a little better.

I'm not as brave as Jillian Keenan.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Dear, brave Jillian,

It was - is, even as I write - a painful debate as to which e-mail account I should use to write you. To thank you. The account with the name most of the world knows me by? The name on my checking account and electric bill and medical records? Or the name that in some ways even more people know me by? The name on my blog. The name on my stories. The name on the messages to my sadistic lover.

I began with the other account.
Then switched to this one.
And am still wavering.

In a way, it doesn't matter.
What matters most is to thank you.
Not that I'll be brave enough to use your article as a way of coming out.
The way I am,
what I respond to,
what I need,
the structure of my relationship,
these are all much to intimate to try to explain to my friends.
And in many ways it's none of their business.

It's the discomfort that's the problem. Knowing that they'll think there is something wrong with me. Something they should worry about. It's wincing every time I see BDSM misrepresented in cop shows, or made into a joke. All of which has its place. We shouldn't have to live in a purely painfully accurate world. But it shouldn't be only that.

And with knowing that other people have these feelings,
with knowing that a relationship can feed my needs,
comes liberation.
Comes joy.

Thank you for your bravery.
And for your sentence structure.
And for being unreasonably enthusiastic about Shakespeare - in any context.

oatmeal girl