New Welts for a New Year

There are limits to what I am allowed to post about my lessons. And the limits are redefined after each of my tutor's visits.

This time I may say nothing about what was done. Only about the effects.

So.
He was here.
I screamed.
I cried.
I came.
I smiled.

He left me with hot hard red welts, and hot hard red nipples that even untouched are screaming with pain. My neck is red and my hair is wild and I'm happy and drained and in a daze and my body is stunned and smiling and my mind... ah my mind...

I hope I can drive safely when I head back downtown for evening services. And I hope people take the look in my eyes for religious ecstasy. Which I suppose it is in a way. For I am certainly feeling worshipful. But not, at the moment, towards the God of the Jews.

I have my own God now. My own sadistic God at whose feet I gratefully worship by serving him in any way he commands. And I carry his welts as proof of the depth of my service. His welts that were so hot that they melted the frozen peas I used to reduce the swelling.

I learned many lessons this afternoon, in the time between day and evening services. I won't tell all of them here. But I will say this.

He is right. Well yes, of course, he's always right, you and I know that. But he is right about this particular thing. I am not a masochist. I am most definitely not a masochist. This pain I was subjected to, I would not seek it out on its own account. I happily, willingly, freely offer myself to it in order to please him, and I accept it gratefully as punishment and correction. But I suffered. I truly suffered. I screamed as I never have before, and I am sure this is not the worst that he will inflict on me. I am grateful that he used me for his sadistic pleasure, I am grateful that hurting me like that DOES give him pleasure, but he is absolutely right. I would never go to some stray sadist and say here, hurt me as much as you can because I crave the pain.

He is right. He is always right. I am not a masochist. I give him my body and my mind and my soul to torment for his pleasure, and it is in this service to him that I am fulfilled.

Thank you, Sir.
Thank you for allowing me to serve you.
Thank you for my lesson.
And thank you for finding me worthy of being trained.
I hope I continue to find favor in your eyes.

The birthday of the world

Today is the birthday of the world.
Rosh hashanah.
The beginning of the Jewish High Holy Days.

We say it is the birthday of the world.
But we also say it is the day the world was conceived.

Conception, birth, creation, it is an ongoing process, creation. We are constantly being created, born, re-born. We look around us, look back, rethink, make adjustments, and are born anew.

The universe is a great, continuous work of performance art. And our lives are part of that.

These are the Days of Awe. A time to look back. A time to look forward. A time to heal the world, on both an intimate and a grand scale.

I'm not sure how I feel about this whole God thing. I've had certain experiences that I don't like to talk about, experiences that made me doubt the doctrinaire atheism with which I was raised. Yes, there are Jewish atheists, and I was a third generation one. But I started to feel things, sense things... things that made even less rational sense than an orgasm-inducing stick of oak baseboard trim. My rabbi says I'm a pantheist. He doesn't seem to mind. Indeed, he sounds proud of me. I suspect he's a bit of a pantheist himself.

So I'm heading into 10 days of looking back and looking ahead. And looking into right now.

I can't help looking back. I have so many memories tied up with the holidays. The first time I came to my synagogue was shortly after September 11th. I came with the woman I thought I was in love with. I don't think I was really in love with her, but she broke my heart anyway. By Yom Kippur it was all over. We each kept seeing the man we were both involved with. Now THAT was an interesting story... I still see him every so often when he's back in town visiting his mother. I'm expecting another visit in about a month or so. I... um... no. Let's just say I'm looking forward to it.

I had my dyke haircut back then. I was trying very hard to be a lesbian. I failed miserably, but now I wonder if that didn't have to do with my unrealized submission. Another thing to think about.

Now my hair is thick and shoulder length and with only a few more white bits around the temples. Everyone says how gorgeous it looks. And I thank them and think how it's long and gorgeous because the philosopher ordered me to grow it. So whether or not I choose to think of him, I can't help it. My hair looks beautiful and it is his.

I sit there in services with my little notebook, jotting down good bits from our prayerbook, jotting down bits that people say, jotting down my own thoughts... and feeling every moment that I am in service to my demon muse, to the Sorcerer, who told me in no uncertain terms to get myself a notebook or 3. I think of the year past and of all the loss, and I think of the year ahead and feel both dizzy and safe. I have given myself over to his mysterious plan for me, and it feels good to have given myself over. I'm afraid of heights, I'm afraid of falling, but I close my eyes and let myself fall back, and whether he catches me or lets me crash to the ground I will accept my fate.

I don't believe in that kind of God. I'm not sure if I believe in God at all, although I seem to have a sense of something... I think I'm some sort of mystic... but I don't believe in a God who has a plan for me and everyone and that i just have to have faith that Someone has already written the script. If I do believe in God, it is one who said ok folks, see this world you find yourself in? It's your job to sort things out, to fix it, to heal it. If your dog is lost, I'm not going to pop down and find it for you. You have to take care of each other and figure it all out.

But for some reason, I believe in my demon muse, this man who managed to hunt me without making me feel defensive. I'm a cautious pet, I run from people who pursue too hard. But I never realized the danger I was in until it was too late. And now he has this plan for me, and I say yes, Sir, I agree, this is not a game.

And I look at the year ahead, and all I see is me walking forward into the mist. And if he's leading me over a cliff, so be it, because I'm not looking down.

And to all of you for whom this applies, and anyone else who wants it:

L'shana tova.

A gut yontiff, a gut yor.

Best wishes for a good holiday and a good year.

(And God, if you DO get the urge to meddle down here, could you please make sure Barack Obama wins the election?)

Ensorcelled

Some people have too much power for their own good.

No. Let me rephrase that. Because obviously having that much power does THEM a lot of good. It's the people against whom they wield their excessive power that need to worry.

And of course I'm not talking about "some people." I'm talking about one person. One man, the fiend, the collector, my demon muse, my sadistic Svengali.

I think I should be calling him The Wizard.

Or better still - The Sorcerer.

There are certain items that live at my house for when he allows me to serve him. For when he trains me to fulfill his goals for me.

There is a chain.

And there is a cane.

This is no surprise. I have referred to these items before, and they are not unusual items in a sadist's box of toys.

Except, of course, that they are not toys.
This is not a game.
We do not play.

There are things that he does to me with the chain...

And the cane? Well, you all know what one does with a cane.

Except that the Sorcerer has done something more. He seems to have bewitched them. Or me. I'm not exactly sure which. Perhaps both. What I AM sure of is that he has me scared.

I first discovered what he had done last Friday.

I have specific instructions as to where the chain is to live and what condition I must be in when I touch it. This, however, put me in a quandary, as friends were coming over for the first of my traditional debate parties, and I feared someone might catch sight of it when they went down the hall to the bathroom. The fiend, being as concerned about hiding our interactions from inappropriate attention as I am, readily gave permission to do what needed to be done to relocate the revealing objects. So without a thought, I moved the heavy length of chain into the drawer of the bedside table, and then reached out to move the cane from where it stood propped against the headboard.

That's when the trouble began.

I'm describing this all in a very lighthearted manner, but that's more a case of whistling in the dark than anything else. This whole thing really scares me. Scared me then and scares me worse now.

My fingers closed around the cane.
And I shivered.
I started having these little convulsions.
Little earthquake twitches of my whole body
Tears rose up into the base of my throat.
The little convulsions kept coming.
I think by this time I had put the cane in the closet and was sitting on the bed, computer on my lap, trying to tell him what was happening, except I kept having these little... almost like little seizures.

And then I started cumming.
I had one little orgasm after another.
They were small, but they were definitely orgasms.

And then I started to cry.
Just like after an orgasm.

I can't remember if the effect was repeated when I put the items back later that night. But I know what happened today, when I again had to put them away for a while.

The contagion has spread. It is no longer just the cane. It happens with the chain as well. Just reaching out my finger, touching the cold hard metal... the shiver... the sharp shake of my body... the convulsions following one hard on the other... the orgasms... the sobs...

It is now dangerous to touch both the chain and the cane, whether to hide them from prying eyes or to bring them back to where I can see them from the bed. I brought the chain back out and the reaction was so strong that I was truly afraid to touch the cane. I opened the closet door and just stood there, looking at it, head propped against the wall, afraid to reach my hand out, shivering at the thought of reaching my hand out, shivering at being so close to it.

As I have said before, I am no longer afraid of HIM. But I am starting to be afraid of what he can do. I am afraid of his power. I am afraid of his control - the control he already has and what it will grow into.

I am afraid. But that doesn't mean I am stopping. I have no intention of stopping. I'm too far gone. My submission is as absolute as is his ownership. I am not his slave but he owns me nevertheless. I am his creation, I am his pet, I am his toy, and I rejoice in what he is making of me.

And if that means I gradually lose control over my mind and my body, so be it. Adventures like this one don't come along all that often.

And I walk through the world with shining eyes.

Saturday night at home with the cats

Feeling good tonight. Feeling happy. Peaceful. Pretty. Light. Busy and focused but just mildly floaty.

I had my bangs trimmed today. That's enough right there to make me feel a bit lighter. There was just too much hair up there. Although it did feel weird to be calling up for an appointment to get my bangs trimmed without first getting permission from the philosopher. Unsettling. But I'm ok.

It was his birthday yesterday. We're in that short stretch of time when you could say he is only 21 years younger than me. Why, we're practically the same age!

Such a silly, meaningless thing to say.

We had a long post-debate phone conversation last night, divided into two parts: before and after my debate-party guests left. It was good. It felt really really good. It was all that other part of our relationship that was so wonderful when he would visit. A closeness, a comfortable closeness, an intimacy that comes from some intangible comfortable connection that has nothing necessarily to do with sex or submission. And yet, it can't be totally separate from it, as our swimming in BDSM meant revealing all our vulnerabilities and that sort of nakedness is bound to create an intense intimacy unless you are putting up steel-lined walls against it.

So we had that part. The warm friendly comfortable part. And it was good.

But I'm learning not to fool myself each time we have one of these comfortable interactions where I don't go off and cry or regret afterwards. I'm starting to accept that it is naive of me to trumpet "I am cured! I can see! I can walk!" after each one. It doesn't happen that fast. It just doesn't. But eventually I'll be ok. And I did feel good today.

So here I sit, on the couch, in the company of Marko and Hot Jazz Saturday Night, working on a volunteer project for next weekend, thinking about how I wish someone would make me independently wealthy so I didn't have to worry about work getting in the way of life and poetry and music and submission. And smiling.

I sent my first text message today, in response to one from the collector. A tedious project, sending a little text message, but I suppose I could get better at it eventually. Except that now I pay for each one, so I'm in no hurry to do a lot more - or wouldn't be if it didn't feel so wonderful. It made me feel very owned. On standby waiting for word of the needs or commands of my manipulative mentor. It's so curious how such a small thing can be so arousing with just a slight shift in context.

The feeling of being tethered made me shiver and glow. And although what my demon muse is creating with and through me is a completely separate issue from what is or is not going on with the philosopher, it does help, again and again, to know that I am a valued property and that my sadistic Svengali has enticing plans for me which I don't yet fully know or understand.

So I'm happy on the couch with Marko and my laptop, even with too much to do and not enough time to do it.

Besides, the new year begins Monday night as Jews celebrate the birth day of the world.

I am gestating. I am growing into something new and glorious. My tutor is sitting on me, Horton hatching his egg of many colors, and when I emerge he will spank me hard and I will cry and then burst into song.

And the world will look new.

Rainy Night Blues

curled up on the couch
listening to the rain
listening to the blues
watching the cat bury non-existent food
thinking of love
thinking of loss
remembering men and music gone by
my CD shelves are filled with the music of men gone by.
music and men, the men are better gone
but the music makes me shine.
the men are better gone.
all but one, the only one
to leave no music behind.

i just can’t keep from crying
sometimes.
but the sun’s gonna shine on my back door
some day.

Artifacts for grad students

Given that my relationship with my demon muse is grounded in BDSM (and the "S" most definitely stands for both submission and sadism), he is working hard at training me. My ass still shows traces of how hard he is working. But as I can never forget, his goal is far beyond making of me an obedient little sex-and-spanking slut. I am to be a Great Poet, revered down through the generations. Therefore, my mephistophelian manager was astounded and outraged to learn that I didn't carry around a little notebook for jotting down my priceless moments of inspiration. "Off with you!" he cried. "Get thee to a stationers!" (Well, more or less...)

So after work I wended my weary way to Staples. And emerged not long after with not one but FOUR notebooks. One is my Serious Writer's notebook, covered in fairly convincing faux-leatherette for which no calf sacrificed its tender skin. It has heft, it has narrow lines, it has sort-of-gilt edging... I love it passionately. That one is now carried with me everywhere my now-decidedly-heavier fanny pack goes. The other three are lighter, spiral bound, and nowhere near as obtrusive. One lives by my bed, one in the car, and the third at my office desk where it has a more subtle presence than the notebook which will be my legacy to the future.

It's not as if I hadn't thought about getting a notebook before this. At home, I've been writing on my laptop. But elsewhere, I've been scribbling on any piece of paper I could lay my hands on, snagging a small pad from office supplies and stuffing it in the bottom drawer of my desk, and then smuggling home the sheets of passionately kinky verse which I pen for the eyes of my perverted professor alone. So I did feel the lack.

But something stopped me. Because I was no stranger to having a little notebook tucked into my bag. In an effort to curb my compulsion to e-mail the philosopher straight through the workday, I had early on acquired a compact little notebook with even narrower lines (yum) on which I would record my lunchtime musings. I'd feel as if we were spending the time together, and would float back to the office on a cloud of submission and desire. At home, if I could manage to wait that long, I would transcribe my musings into a message and relive the fantasy pleasure of lunch with my master. Those were the early days. Later there were pages of struggling with break-ups and anger and frustration, as well the first time I dared to actually write down that I loved him. One of the scariest things I ever did in that relationship was allow him to see that page when he first came down to visit.

So little notebooks had connotations for me, and I held back. Still, I had been given a direct order from my torturing tutor, one I dared not disobey. So now I have my lovely notebooks, and they fill me with pride and a sense of identity as a Real Writer. A True Poet. This is no game. Well, the fiend had already said that when he accepted my service, and I never questioned him on that. But I thought it had more to do with his view of BDSM and service and submission and all that. Now I know better. I am his pet poet princess. My notebooks prove me so.

And years from now, when some poor beleagured grad student is trying to haul a dissertation out of my collected works, she or he will be grateful for these little books that give a glimpse into the lubricious secrets of my meandering mind.

Empty and Full

I don't feel like writing tonight. There is too much roiling around inside me. I don't want to look at it. I don't want to sort it out. I don't want to set it out on paper for anyone to see.

I'm not that much of an exhibitionist.

I have nothing to say. Nothing, and yet much too much. My mind is a library of odd occurrences, strange meetings, failed relationships, and broken hearts. One heart. Broken over and over again. It gets boring after a while.

There are too many people in my life. And yes, of course, you see what I'm getting at, too many and yet not enough. Too many people sort of in my life, but too few where I really want them. If I want them. Perhaps I don't. I look at the list, I look at the line, these mainly men, but even the women, who were here and gone and who pop in now and again, an old lover, a long-ago housemate and occasional lover, a close friend and permanent though rare lover, others I won't mention... I look at their resumes and there it is, right under name, address, phone (land line and cell) and social security numbers to help with the background search: "Emotionally (and otherwise) unavailable."

There are too many memories in my life. Too much sadness, even while, now, I am basically so happy. I'm writing, I'm creating, I have a mentor who is putting me back in touch with something inside myself that had been hiding in a cave for around 45 years, and even then never danced the way it does now. I write and write, every day, and I can see already, in just a few short weeks, the way the poems are improving. They are starting to be good. So I'm happy, and excited, and intellectually stimulated, and shining with an identity that feels like truly mine and not borrowed from someone else. It's mine from long ago, but crystalline, refracting everything around it into dancing rainbows, crystalline but with a molten flowing center inside. A different dance, a slow dance, warm and sensuous, that I was too young to know when the storms of puberty sent down boulders of turmoil to dam up the ancient poetry stream.

I need to find balance. I need to find peace. I keep saying oh yes, everything's ok, it's fine now, I've let it go, and for a while I believe it, and when challenged I say oh no, Sir, you're wrong, I'm fine... but my demon muse can always find new ways to torture me, and he has a bullshit meter so sensitive he can spot self-deception from halfway around the globe. He knows me far better than I know myself, and has from before we even met.

I do think I will be ok. I will find peace. And there are things I do know now, things I do understand, things I do believe now, that have made me feel a lot better. The doubts are gone. But the loss is still there. And the tears do come back. Like now...

I have nothing to say. Really. There isn't anything to say, and besides I'm a lousy typist and I can't see the keyboard when I'm crying. I have nothing to say. All I want is to curl up and cry and be held and cry and then stop crying and still be held.

You can't always get what you want.

Maybe a caning would do instead...