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.

Long distance can sometimes seem not so far

we were together last night.
the philosopher and i were together
or as close together as we could be
with 250 miles between us.
he wasn’t here for the party
of a dozen people and
homemade soup
and somersault salutes
and champagne celebration.
but he was here.
he phoned.
and phoned again.
and again.
every half hour or so
he phoned and we talked
and exulted and rejoiced
and we shared the victory
and we shared the speeches
and we shared the inspiration
and we shared the history
and tears of joy
and we were together
and i feel him here still.

YES WE DID!

I was looking for a really inspiring picture of Barack Obama as, with utmost faith, I prepared this post the night before Election Day. And then I realized that wasn't what belongs here.

Yes, he won the election.
Yes, he inspired people (including me) to an extraordinary extent.

But it was more than that.
Foolishly, the Republicans derided him
for being a community organizer.
Very foolish.
The community was organized
and it was the community
one person at a time
one neighbor at a time
that won this election.

"You and I together
will change this country
will change the world."

I've long thought that one of the most powerful things Barack Obama ever said, from very early one was: "We are the change that we seek." And I do believe that Obama's supporters have been changed by being part of this process. We have seen that we CAN make a difference. We can believe in something and we can work for it, we can work together, and we CAN make a difference.

We DID make a difference.

And together
we are already changing this country
and we are already changing the world.

VOTE!

YOU'VE GOT
THE WHOLE WORLD
IN
YOUR
HANDS.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Later: I did it.
I voted.
And yes, I cried.
Before, during, and after.
I cried,
and I hung out
at the Obama tent
with a friend from the health club.
He said he loved how
emotionally vulnerable I was.
The fiend feeds on my vulnerability.
Would he have laughed
at my tears?
Or swallowed them?
As for my friend, hmmm...
could he be a dom, too?

Who cares?
What we all are is ecstatic.
Triumphant.
Exulting in our power
together
to defeat the devil
and change the world.

Lest we forget...

Never take for granted your right to vote.

Pinned

The week of the Democratic convention, I was convinced that I was going to receive a gift from the philosopher. I didn't know why I felt that way, but the feeling was clear and solid. On the Tuesday I came home at lunch and saw a large-ish padded bag in the mailbox, but it turned out to be yet another Obama t-shirt as a reward for yet another contribution to the campaign.

That Wednesday there was nothing, and I felt let down.

And then, on the Thursday, the day of Obama's acceptance speech, there it was. A small padded bag this time. Inside was a white cardboard jewelry box. And inside that was The Pin.

I cried.

It was so beautiful.
It was Obama's logo.
And it was a gift from him.

I've worn it nearly every day since.

It arrived a few weeks after the final break-up, perhaps a week and a half after we'd started talking again. He had bought it a while before, having fund it on-line.

It really is beautiful. You may not be able to tell from the picture but it is handmade, pieced together from different kinds of wood, in their natural colors, as if it were a jigsaw puzzle. My office mate informed me that the technique is called intarsia. Whatever it is, it's beautiful, alive, glowing...

I wear it almost every day.

And when the election is over...
it will still be beautiful
it will still be a gift
how long do you think can I keep wearing it?

YES WE CAN-VASS!

The fiend kindly gave me permission to "redistribute [my] servitude" in service to the greater good (thank you again, Sir!), allowing me to head down to Virginia with my best friend and steady canvassing partner M, along with a host of other volunteers from Maryland in general and Montgomery County in particular. A glorious day. Each time we go out, we never feel like we've accomplished all that much, but in fact we are winning this election one vote at a time.

And we WILL win this election.