The way it used to be

He spends holidays with the family. Usually a mile or so away at his parents' house, though sometimes at the house of a sibling. He has a lot of them. Occasionally he ventures all the way into the next state to visit the one brother who bought a house that far away. But never alone. He gets a ride with some of the others.

He can't drive.

We used to talk about it beforehand. I'd tell him to think of his kitten hiding under the table. I'd be curled up at his feet, until the urge to be naughty became too much for me. Then he'd feel my hand sneaking into his lap... I wanted him to think of me as he had dinner with his parents and the gang of siblings. I wanted him to get an erection, and then feel the blush staining his pale, Irish face, until it almost matched his red Irish hair.

I envied him his close family. I kept thinking that one day I'd get to meet them. They fascinated me, all so different, all so close. I have pictures of his cute and funny red-headed niece, who is his goddaughter.

Some of his family is on Facebook. I resist the temptation to send a message to the brother to whom he's closest, the brother who had invited us to have dinner with him and his wife. I resist the temptation to write and introduce myself, to say I'm worried about John, I'm worried he may be depressed, is he doing ok, is he making progress on the dissertation, please don't/do let him know I asked after him...

I'm trying hard to let go. I have to let go. I couldn't take the silence, especially when I know, I know, I've known all along somehow deep inside that it was all a fantasy.

And yet the pain keeps coming back. I'm going up to New York next week and I wish I could tell him I'll be in New York next week and how about meeting my bus and going somewhere for tea just to talk. Just so I can see him again.

It wouldn't happen.
I drove him crazy.
He has no room for me.
He has no room for anyone.
He has a goal.
He has to finish.
And besides.
He doesn't have relationships.
Except for the family.

He spends holidays with his family. And he used to sneak off during the family dinners to check his e-mail. If anyone commented, he'd say he was expecting something from a student. I'd send him provocative messages, and he'd write back, and then slip back into the family gathering.

I wonder if he thought of me today.

Probably not.

But I thought of him.
I still do
think of him
every
single
day.

Do they sell Super Glue for broken hearts?

I suppose I should be frightened

I am learning more about what burns inside my demon muse. He tries to spare me, but sometimes I stumble upon information... He hadn't told me about the activity he refers to below. Our schedules last week were too complicated to accommodate the meeting we both wanted. His needs were too pressing. He couldn't wait.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Probably worked to your advantage, since I have been trying to think of a word for the session and can only come up with savage. To share a little more of the insight you seemed to enjoy last time, I will say that afterwards, I was almost nauseated, and not in the existential/Sartre way, but actually physically sick, sort of. Fun, huh?

I suppose I should be frightened.
I suppose I should be buying
iron bars for all my windows,
bars to keep the werewolf
and his fangs from breaking in
and tearing strips of bloody flesh
and anguished screams from my white throat.
At least the house is brick,
cinder block and brick so that
the wolf can’t blow it down.

He is a fearsome beast.
I never would deny
that hungers such as haunt his
days and dreams are not the sort
that any cautious pantheist
would want to tempt with
sexiness unconscious and with
innocent allure.
And yet he draws me back.
I just cannot resist the –
no, I don’t know what it is but
better judgment never had a chance
and so I always wear his chain,
as real as if he’d soldered
a steel collar round my neck.

It’s better that I know.
Better not to see or hear or feel
the worst that he can do,
but better, too, that I can get these
tiny peeks inside his darkened cave
so that I know a little more of
man and beast I loyally serve.
And in the end,
while I might crave surrender
to his fiery intensity, and
greedy lust and passion as he
crashes through defenses that
had never been expected to
protect from such as he;
while I might even yearn
to show that I would take
the pain that he knows well
can never fully sate
the fiend when at his worst;
there may be times like this,
when he might think I’d flee the scene,
and yet this silly poet,
who really should know better,
has just this foolish wish –
to hold his head in her bare lap
until the sickness ebbs away,
while singing Yiddish lullabies
in that unguarded breathy voice
that makes him tightly grip the chain
and never set me free.

Meanwhile, I grow my nails.


[Posted with volunteered permission.
The last line is a private reference.]

Vermont

What more is there to say?

Except
perhaps
Iowa.

Equality is coming to America.
Go forth and love.

Pain

loss
hurts.
need
hurts.
i thought
i'd found it.
i thought
we had it.
wishful thinking.

i wanted it so badly,
i built it from my need.

i had a rough day.
i was sweet and kind
and there
for a man who called.
a man in pain.
much worse pain than i'm in.
and i cried when we hung up
and sorted out my grief
and wished i had a lover
as in someone who loved me
whose job it was
to care for me
and i'd be there
to care for him.

not a chance.

still.
it could be worse.
i am treasured
and i am owned
and i
am being trained
to serve
his needs.
and in his cage
i'll find some peace.

at least i'll know where and who i am.

Coming up empty

There have been so many things rolling around my head this weekend.
Images.
Thoughts.
Grief.
Tears.

A short, intense conversation with the sadist yesterday following --

no.
i don't feel like writing about it.
even though it was lovely.
even though he ordered me to masturbate.
even though he allowed me to cum
even though i floated through the rest of the day feeling
very owned
and very small
and very happy
and very chained.

perhaps you have noticed that i've been writing pretty regularly lately after a somewhat dry spell. he hasn't been making him write for him much. my training has focused on more practical aspects oriented towards my physical service for him. but today i was given a writing assignment, which oftentimes siphons off my creative juices.

besides, i've been feeling weepy today. weepy and sad and grieving on a beautiful spring day that i would have loved to have shared with the philosopher. even without being together, we could have shared it, with e-mails, with a phone call.

i have to give up.
but it takes time.

i broke down today.
i e-mailed him.
i sent him a link to a great article in today's Sunday New York Times about how a blogger is getting married to one of her regular commenters. See? It pays to leave comments!

Speaking of which, I noticed today a new reader from Louisiana, who spent a lot of time here. I'm dying to know who you are, so do please say hello, either publicly here or with a private e-mail (the link is on the profile page).

anyway, i e-mailed the philosopher and i haven't heard back and maybe that will finally cure me of e-mailing him. of course, he might have been off-line all day, and sometimes he doesn't check e-mail over the weekend. but i need to just let go.

just
let
go.

except you all know that it isn't that easy...

ah well.

this post seems pointless, except to say that i'm here and still struggling, except for when i'm focused on my demon muse, and then i'm floaty and happy.

hmm... if you were a logician, what would you conclude?

He was here

This morning.
He showed up in my stats.
What was he doing up so early in the morning, anyway?!

It doesn't matter.
It's irrelevant.

If you had read the lunacy in my last post, would you want to have anything to do with me?

It's my broken heart.
I'll learn to deal with it.

And now scientists are saying that
the heart muscles do regenerate after all.
Very very slowly,
especially at my age.
But still.
A hope for a cure.
Someday...

Struggling

The sadist loves that word.
Struggling.
He loves to know that I'm struggling.
Struggling with a poem.
Struggling for air.
Struggling against the pain.
Struggling against my love.

Struggling against my love when it's love for him. He takes a sadist's pleasure and a narcissist's satisfaction from my love for him. It's another chain with which to bind me. Food for his confidence.

But that hasn't been the problem this week. My demon muse has been bound by chains of his own, the chains of his life, and hasn't had much time for me. There were few protective reminders that I am his, that I have work to do, exercises to practice to prepare me to serve his carnal desires. He allowed me to write for him once - over the weekend I think, I can't really remember, my mind has been working so badly.

The sadist isn't the only demon in my life.
There are others... thoughts... emotions...
trolls, hiding beneath the bridges of
my brain and my heart, waiting
to leap out at me. Waiting
to startle me. Waiting to
make me lose my balance.

I lost my balance this week
and I almost drowned.

Maybe it was the changing of the seasons, causing the earth to shift on its axis, leading me to lose my footing. Certainly the cats were acting strangely, fighting fiercely, growling and hissing and then maintaining an aura of wariness when they joined each other on what I foolishly once thought was a chair I had bought for myself.

Perhaps it was a manic spell. Except that I was too depressed for that, with a fragile balloon of sadness and tears nesting just beneath my throat.

Maybe it was just my broken heart.
Nothing more than that.
A broken heart demanding attention.

I wanted so badly to write him. I wanted to write him and say that I missed him desperately (bad idea) and that I hoped he was doing well (maybe ok) and now my glasses are fogging up and it's becoming hard to see the screen and there were things I wanted to share with him, such as the outcome of the work of the committee I was on and the clever April Fool's spoof that Gmail posted yesterday.

I struggled.
I struggled against temptation.
I struggled against temptation
with few words from my owner
to reel me back to sanity.

In the end, I couldn't resist. But I didn't completely fall. I knew that if I wrote him he wouldn't answer but would himself be thrown off kilter and I do/did/who-knows love him and want to give him peace.

So I went back to craigslist.
To craigslist in his city.
In his part of his city.
And I left a note in a hollow tree.
I stuck a note in a bottle
and threw it out to sea.

I wrote a very short post, w4m, with a name in the subject line that he would know was for him. And a short quote from a book, with a number, an age, altered to make it refer to him.

He didn't respond.
He probably hasn't seen it.

Later, I realized that if I really want him to see I should put it in Rants & Raves, which I know he reads. But I put it in w4m. Just in case...

He didn't respond. But a small handful of other men did. It was clearly much too esoteric to land a big haul, even in a city that size.

Some of the answers I ignored. A few were from men who seemed nice and/or intelligent and/or interesting, so I was honest and explained that the post was a message for one man, that I was suffering from a broken heart, and that I lived outside our nation's capital. I had an interesting conversation with one man, eventually discovering that we have a common interest, at which point I referred him to FetLife. It's amazing and sad how many married people are silently nursing their secret needs.

Another man turned out to live just a couple of hours south of here. He is smart, a writer, intriguing, having grown up abroad, and somewhat secretive. Of course, it turns out he's married but living apart from his wife. And eventually the talk was all of sex (no, he's not kinky) and then he was wanting to make plans for the weekend, and then he was acting like a child who couldn't accept the idea that this weekend was to be MY weekend, I had earned it over the last month of meetings and interviews for my committee, and no, it wouldn't be enough for me to have Saturday and then he would come up and spend the rest of the weekend in bed. "Now, Mommy! I want it NOW!!" Men are such babies...

So I wrote to men during the day yesterday as I fought the grief and longing and struggled with love and loss of concentration, which makes me think it was largely hormones, because I was dropping things and bumping into things and struggling with a headache, and finally when I came back to work after lunch home with the cats I drove the car head on into one of the supporting posts in the underground parking garage.

Not on purpose.
And not very fast.
But you know what cars are like these days.

It's not too bad. I was going very slowly. I didn't report it to insurance because I have a big deductible and then they raise your rates anyway until, it seems, you've covered everything they paid for the repairs. I'll take it over to my mechanic to check for internal injuries but mainly I'll just live with it.

Still.
I'm pissed with myself.

I drive into things every so often.
I lose focus.
And I don't have stereoscopic vision.
I need a chauffeur.
The kind Memphis Minnie was after.
One who won't drive anyone around town but me.

I lose focus.
I mess up.
But at least I didn't write the philosopher.

Not yet.

And now the cats are friends again. They're both in the chair, curled up together in the chair, Ketzel having given Marko a loving and very focused bath with her kitty tongue.

They always do eventually make up.