play partners

So last night I went to a play party at our local kink dungeon. I first visited the space at the beginning of the month, attending a rope class with my girlfriend (for now, identified as GF) when she came out here to help me move in. We had a great time, and clearly left an impression - the next event I went to was the 35 and under munch and party, and I was remembered by several people who asked after GF. At that party I didn't play, but I did practice some self-ties and chat with a few really cool people. I attended a second rope class last week and got to demo bunny for the instructor, as well as practice on a few folks.

After the last rope class, I was contacted by someone else who had gone to the class, a male dom in his 40s (I'll call him RG - rope guy). Guard way up pretty immediately, but he was friendly, respectful, and decidedly approachable. We messaged a few times and when I asked which party I should attend this weekend, RG said that he would recommend the Saturday one since he was going to be there. Cheeky but not out of bounds at all, so I showed up after a very long skype call with GF, talking about what I expected to happen and how she would feel about it.

The evening was a lot of fun, and I found myself really enjoying RG's company. I'm realizing that the kind of play that I'm interested in (basically, actually bottoming instead of just being a body for other relative newcomers to practice on) is possibly limiting my interactions to playing with older men. In this particular case, I felt very respected by him - he didn't try to talk over me, listened and responded thoughtfully to what I was saying (even when it was somewhat unrelated to the topic at hand), and was able to carry the conversation with enthusiastic stories while also interspersing them with genuine questions. He did ask if I was a toppy or bottomy kind of person, but otherwise let my words and reactions explain the kinds of things I'm interested in from either side of the slash. My only hesitation is that we did have a lot of our talking (we talked for about 2 hours solid) focus around the shift that has been happening from the more protocol-centered public D/s to this younger, more sensation-driven experimental kink. He didn't seem entirely upset at the switch, but wasn't 100% behind the change either, which does indicate that he could be looking for something more along the lines of power Dominant/submissive dynamic instead of just a play Top/bottom dynamic.

Talking with RG and with GF has made me reflect a lot on what I want out of kink right now. I still have a buried part of me that deeply wants to experience being dominated, allowing myself to be broken down emotionally/physically/mentally/verbally, to surrender to what someone else desires even if it edges on things that I don't actually want or like. A big part of me is afraid that if I go there, I'll enjoy it too much, that the more sensation driven play that I enjoy now will become less exciting in comparison to the addition of the power dynamic. I'm avoiding doing any kind of serious rope play for that reason too - it feels too easy to let myself get lost in the sensation and the dynamic.

So what feels safe? What, realistically, do I want? Since GF is several states away and generally inaccessible, right now I'm focusing on play partners. Someone to tie. Someone to help me develop as an impact top. Someone to experiment with. Someone who will, as GF put it, help me with "assisted meditation" like the feeling of being rhythmically flogged for a long time. I'd like to find someone to have playful intense impact scenes with. If I'm honest I'd like to find someone to kindly and cathartically beat the crap out of me, as a way to blow off some of the stress I'm accumulating in class, but admittedly that would be pushing GF's buttons pretty hard right now. I know she'd be able to rationalize it and try to not feel hurt, but based on past situations, I feel like it would be particularly hard for her to hear about that, especially not being here and knowing that it was happening at the hands of a man. A woman would be so much easier for her to handle - quirky, but true.

I spent a good part of the night talking with someone else I recognized from the rope classes. I asked her for the scoop on the folks in the room, RG in particular. She's been in the scene here for about a year, and echoed that he's one of the "old guard" who is well known and commands an earned respect by other people in the community. In other words - not a creeper. For me that was very reassuring - I still intend to talk to him and get to know him fully clothed, but with an eye towards assessing if we're both interested in playing with each other and finding out what kinds of limits that would have.

creativity and rope

I sometimes wonder if creativity can be an intrinsic trait or talent. I'm sure, like many talents, it's one that can be nurtured or neglected, practiced or abandoned, littering the side of the road along with the ballet classes and piano lessons.

I remember around middle school (or maybe early high school?) having an epiphany that I no longer felt creative. That some link to childhood flights of fantasy and imagination had been severed (or maybe just left to wither), replaced by the reinforcement of memorization and facts and logical organization of knowledge. It felt like a loss, I was sad. But I didn't really try to change it, just accepted that color coded notes and matching binders might be as "artistic" as I was going to be from now on.

As I've been doing fairly regularly over the past year, this morning I was skimming around FetLife looking at photos. Beautiful, artistic photos that capture form and emotion in stunning visuals that have this incredible aesthetic appeal. You feel like there's really no way anyone could not find beauty in this photo, even your stodgy prudish great aunt who would normally be horrified at the idea of seeing a naked woman under any circumstances. But this, this ethereal creature who represents everything our culture idealizes about the female form, bound in complex flowing ropework that accentuates and highlights, set against stunning sunsets or swallowing darkness - wow.

I don't remember when I first realized a fascination with rope. Being restricted and restrained by various means was a very early fantasy in my erotic imagination. I wish I had a super interesting weird backstory, but I'm confident that the origin of that particular desire isn't unique - like most, I grew up with a vague but pervasive sense of shame and guilt around expressing desire and sexuality. Imagining being tied up and "forced" to receive or perform certain sexual acts allowed me to also imagine enjoying them, freed of having to pretend I didn't want something because it was "wrong" or "dirty." Totally the "good girls don't do that" syndrome. I didn't actually grow up in a strictly religious or anti-sex family, but did go to a Catholic school and generally picked up the message along the way that I wanted to be good.

I tried to hint to various girlfriends in college that being tied up was something I would enjoy. Maybe even being spanked a little bit? Occasionally I could move things that direction by presenting it as experimentation - I'll tie your hands to the head board for a little bit and touch you, then we'll switch? Very rarely did I have someone take the initiative, and when they did it tended to be in the spirit of "you seem to really want this so I'll give it a try because it will make you happy" rather than "you want to be tied up and I want to tie you up because it gets me hot too." A subtle difference, but an important one.

When I first started dating my current girlfriend, one of our first dates involved me inviting her to go with me to the sex store to buy rope and a book. It was an invitation to try it, certainly, but was also something I was doing for me, to finally act on the fantasy instead of just tying down a leg or arm with a scarf while masturbating. We didn't learn much from the book - it was full of complex knots but without a lot of basic rope mechanics we were spending too much time trying to get the knots to look right instead of on getting each other trussed and moving on to sexy times. Taking a rope class that emphasized that there was no "right" way to tie, that you could simply use the rope against itself to redirect it where you wanted it to go, was eye opening and immediately rewarding.

Fast forward a year. I've been to a number of rope classes, and here in my new city I get the chance to go to a practice group every other week. I'm learning that not only do I melt with the feeling of rope applied with purpose and desire, but that I enjoy rigging, learning to manipulate rope and bodies into a functional and/or beautiful result.

This is where that creativity comes in. I pick up on lessons pretty quickly, can see a demonstration of a technique once or twice, try it out, and feel pretty solid on it. But I look at these incredible photos on Fet, of suspensions and even ground work that is unbelievably beautiful and unique, and I can't even begin to imagine coming up with those things on my own. I know that it just takes a lot of practice, starting with these building blocks and individual skills, trying them in combination and churning through a lot of ugly results until you find something beautiful to refine into stunning. But it does sometimes feel that some people are born with this inherent creativity to see a body and know how to tie it to enhance that person's unique beauty, and it's a bit disappointing to feel like I just don't have that talent. I might be able to practice and brute-force my way to being pretty good, paying my dues as it were, but as a member of that instant gratification generation, I wish I could just have that creative spark instead of having to nurture it.

my mother did not want to be a nurse

-        I remember my mother talking about when she was growing up, the kinds of jobs that women could have. She thinks of herself (I think correctly) as one of the last generations of middle and upper middle class white families that taught their daughters that you could become a teacher, a secretary, or a nurse. Then you would work for a few years, get married, and stop working to raise children. If, God forbid, you were widowed or (*gasp*) divorced, at least you'd have something to fall back on.

      My mother is incredibly intelligent and driven to seek out challenges. She loved history (her father taught history, or was it geography? I should ask), and got a degree studying it. She got a job and moved from Virginia to New Orleans, working for Sears and Roebuck. I've never asked what she did, but I suspect that if she started as a secretary, she didn't stay there for very long. By the time I came along, my mother had indeed married and moved again to Colorado. She then went to night classes to earn her masters degree, carting around toddler me while still being very much the stereotypical American housewife who cooked and cleaned and took care of me and my father. She graduated when I was about 3 or 4, it's one of my earliest memories wanting to go on stage with her and not quite understanding why I didn't get to. My dad told me that it was her moment to be in the spotlight, and indeed it was.

      I grew up in a different situation entirely. I was always told that I could do whatever I wanted to do when I grew up. I participated in Take Your Daughter To Work Day, was encouraged in my outlandish dreams when I drew pictures of my future as an actress-veterinarian-princess, and didn't learn until much later that being a girl sometimes came with disadvantages and assumptions about my ability. I excelled in school, not without drawbacks and unhappiness, but my academic ability has felt like a defining feature of who I am for pretty much as long as I can remember.

      From little snippets of conversations that I've had with her, it sounds like it was hard for my mom to pursue a different route than the expected one, and she fought her way up in the business world. By the time I was in high school and college she was very successful, consulting as a project manager and clearly holding many responsibilities. But it seems like she really struggled with that internalized sense of “women don’t do that." She obviously feels like she could have gotten a lot further up the corporate chain if she had been born just a little later, into an era where women weren't overtly denied jobs outside of "caretaker" roles.

      Sitting in a class we had about the history of nursing, it made me wonder how my mother feels about my desire to be a nurse. It feels like a very different situation than the one she faced – I have so many other options, and this is the one I choose out of all of them. I can tell myself (and her) that I’m going into a more “respected” part of the field as a nurse practitioner, which I can assure people is “almost like a doctor” because even though I could be a doctor, I’ve decided not to. (I know I'm making the smart choice, and it's frustrating when I have people ask why I'm not going to medical school "because you're so smart!" I know I'm smart, that's why I know better than to go to med school when what I really want to do is be an NP.)

      But even though those kinds of justifications seem oddly to mollify people, it feels almost painful to say them and I don't anymore except to explain what an NP actually is. Nursing - as a nurse practitioner, a nursing assistant, a registered nurse, a clinical nurse leader or specialist, a doctorate of nursing practice - is not a job to be pitied or looked down upon. Nursing is an incredibly powerful position, the chance to provide care to people in their most vulnerable moments, to help them reach for the healthiest life they can live. Nurses train incredibly hard - I still have to learn all of the same drugs and interactions and doses as the med students do, I will be able to diagnose most diseases, illnesses, and side effects that a doctor does, and as a nurse practitioner I will be the primary care provider to my clients just as a general practitioner or internal medicine practitioner would. (remind me to unpack the "mid-level" care provider box soon.) We are not "just nurses." If you haven't noticed, over the past few decades, nurses have become a vitally important member of health care. Doctors don't work alone, nor does any care provider. We need each other, as colleagues, not as mindless servants who just do what the doctor tells us to do. Nurses get sued for not advocating for their patients when doctors make a bad diagnosis - we are all responsible for protecting the health and safety of the patient.

     One of my professors pointed out those moments when people say "Oh, you're a nurse! I could never do something like that." Our inclination, as generally people-pleaser types, is to assure them "Of course you could! It's really not that hard, you get used to the (sights/smells/sounds/etc)." I have done the same thing regarding being a Peace Corps volunteer on many occasions. Our professor said that now she replies with what she sees as the truth. "You're right. You couldn't."

first week musings on health and nursing

Yesterday, one of our professors asked us "What is your personal definition of health?"

I'll give you a minute, stop and think about it.

Was it a little harder than you expected? It was for me.

The World Health Organization's definition has been presented several times in our first few days. Written in 1946, it says that "good health is a state of complete physical, social and mental well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." (http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story046/en/). That was in my brain when the question was asked, but I tried to reach behind that and think about how I personally felt.

The first thing I think of when I think of health is physical health. The "absence of disease or infirmity," I guess. The ability to ask certain things of my body and to have it perform those to at least the level of my realistic (if not ideal) expectations. To say "hey, I'm going to bike to school every day, it's two miles away" and have my body that has not been regularly exercising at all be able to handle it. To be able to lift and move furniture when called upon to do so. To not wake me up in the middle of the night coughing or vomiting. Healthy. But that doesn't feel quite complete.

The catch for me is that social and mental part. I feel like physical health, to an extent, is something that you can look at and say "yes, I have that." I may not be a marathon runner or an Olympic weight lifter, but I get by. But with social and mental health? Isn't there always room for improvement? Aren't there always moments where I feel lonely, or tiptoeing on the edge of depression, or making choices that I practically regret while I'm making them (but continue to do) surrounding food and the negative self-image that brings me? Will I ever truly attain social and mental health? Maybe I already have social and mental health, by being able to function in society with a minimum of social awkwardness, by having a mostly sunny disposition, by at least seeing and naming my flaws. Or maybe I'll never quite get there, will always be just a little too unhappy, a little too self-critical and self-sabatoging, and that would mean that I'm not healthy. That doesn't quite feel right either.

So what is health?
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On another note, that same professor asked us about our images of nurses. What comes to mind when you think of a nurse? For me it was this:

Yep, the hat. All about the hat. (by the way, image copied from a google search that turned up: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kaylac/7154766404/)

Other people in class started offering their responses. Someone mentioned the hat, another Nurse Ratched, a third offered the sexy Halloween costume. Then a few people talked about experiences. A nurse who had comforted a terminal grandparent. The NP who had inspired them to go into nursing.

When I was in the Peace Corps, my father passed away. That grief and guilt is something I feel ever-increasing pressure to deal with, particularly getting into medical settings that remind me of that time. But that's another story for another day.

After his funeral, I drove to visit my best friend from college. She and I met through an ex of mine - I don't remember why I first took her to the ER (chronic health issues) but over the next three years we became quite close, often chatting for hours in one hospital or another. I went down to see her, she had been doing really well over the past year, but 24 hours after I'd arrived...we were driving to the ER. And then she was going into surgery.

I went with her mother into the recovery area as she woke up from anesthesia. The nurse took me at my word about us being sisters, only commenting that we didn't look much alike. Later, on the floor, there were two people on staff who stuck out in my mind. They might have both been RN's, maybe NP's, maybe clinical nurse leaders, maybe nurse assistants. My friend was on a self-administered pain drip - if it hurts enough to wake you up, you press the button and get a dose (if it's time for another "allowed" dose - it prevents you from overdosing). If you feel better and fall asleep, the button goes unpressed and you wake up in pain.

One of the staff members insisted that only my friend could push the button, and generally had a "follow the rules" attitude. I understand, the rules are there for a reason, often good ones. The more I dig into the classes I'm taking, the more I can see why that kind of stance by nurses is encouraged.

But the person who I'll always be grateful to was the nurse who walked in quietly in the evening and found me on top of the blankets, lying next to my "sister," holding her and pushing the pain medication button whenever it would allow another dose while she finally slept, and responded with a smile. That, to me as a family member of a patient, is what makes a nurse.

cell phone anxiety

I was sitting in my first day of classes today, the first day of being a real life "twue" grad student. It surprised me how quickly I was falling back into community college patterns - trying to stay awake, in particular, when the very first professor was spending a seemingly inordinate amount of time to go over the syllabus. Normally I would have surfed the web, checked out facebook or maybe postsecret. But these class rooms have a booth behind them, for the tech folks to sit and monitor all of the room a/v equipment, or in today's case, for the professor teaching the next class to observe our computer screens for amazon retail therapy.

I tend to feel a bit of anxiety when separated from my phone, from the ability to immediately discern every noise and movement, to monitor each email and text as it arrives (but somehow always seem to miss the calls). I had my phone in my lap today in one class while I took notes, and as I struggled to type fast enough to keep up with the professor's rapid overview of the first chapter, it kept buzzing.

And buzzing.

Texts.

I knew I couldn't look at them, this was a professor who roamed the aisle of the auditorium-style room, and here I was sitting right on the end of the row, in prime viewing area. I accepted the fact that I would not be checking them, didn't feel much of a pressure to find out who was texting or why.

But I did feel anxious. Every time I felt it move, I noticed a catch in my throat, an ache in the pit of my stomach, knowing that I was actively ignoring these people. A social pressure and feeling of obligation to respond to (or at least to read) the message now that I was aware of its existence. How silly is that? Next time, I'll leave my phone in my bag.

trigger warning for body self-esteem/weight issues

I know it’s been said before, but how do women in this culture learn to judge each other so harshly? As someone who has felt the sting of judgment – for a million different perceived social and physical flaws – for most of my life, I tend to think of myself as more compassionate than most. I love it when I see body-positive messages and photos. Belly pudge makes me smile and sit at ease, especially in those artsy nude photos aimed at making you comfortable with how you look. I love touching my girlfriend’s belly, kissing the gentle curve under it as it slopes down to her pubis, resting my head on it when we cuddle on a couch, even pressing my own belly against it. On her it looks stunning, real, comfortably lived in. A body that has a lot demanded of it and knows how to enjoy a beer with friends, to move with genuine laughter, to poke over waistbands with glee at how delicious and indulgent the world can be.

But I still find myself calculating the calories I’ve eaten minus the amount of time I spent running. Really, it’s about getting in shape and feeling good about myself more than the weight, I swear?

So I blushed with self-disgust when I found myself on facebook, smirking in perverted satisfaction, as I saw that one of the “cool” girls I went to high school with now definitely has a double chin, and arms that are flabbier than mine. “At least I don’t have to tip my face awkwardly up when I smile for a photo to avoid the evidence of too many doughnuts from showing under my chin” I think to myself, suddenly feeling slightly less insecure about the re-emergence of my love handles. “I can’t believe she didn’t even lose the weight for her wedding – she looks so different!” I sneer. I gloat a little.

But almost immediately other thoughts sneak into my mind.

What about my lover, the one who is so tall and slender that she looks almost otherworldly? She has talked about previously being fat, we’ve discussed our body image issues countless times. When I looked and found some old photos of her, she was certainly bigger than she is now, maybe even to the point of “plump” but far from the point of being debilitated from rolls of fat or strained joints. Just a rounder face, a belly when she sat down and leaned over – essentially, where I’ve spent a good deal of my life in the "overweight" category. I think she looks stunning now (although she doesn’t quite believe it and insists on “getting toned.”). I quite honestly think that if her younger self could have carried the same confidence she can project now, she’d look just as stunning with the other 40lbs she used to carry. I tend to go for women who have that extra softness to their bodies, she's an exception rather than a norm for me, but I would never tell her that because who needs to feel any more conflicting desires imposed on her body? It's hers to love, to learn to love, just as mine feels more beautiful when my lovers approve but is still ultimately mine to make peace with regardless of anyone else's presence or opinion. I think she's beautiful, and it's hard to see her in so much pain in regards to her body. Maybe it's because I often feel such deep pain at my feelings about my own body.

What if the girl who I’m judging on facebook, this person who I hardly know and haven’t spoken to or seen in person in nearly a decade, has been fighting those kinds of battles? Maybe she was bulimic in high school, exercised compulsively to maintain that skinny figure. What if college brought anorexia, or practically buying stock in laxatives? Maybe she was skinny and mired in that deep despair of thinking that her weight was inversely proportionate to her desirability, to her worth. Maybe this fuller figure is not the result of some lazy moral failing, but is a hard won victory in the fight to find happiness and contentment. As someone who has fought that same fight, who continues to struggle between inhaling the contents of my fridge late at night and the urge to vomit up everything that passes my lips without the label of “healthy”, who the hell am I to judge? How do such ugly thoughts grow in my head in the first place, and what does that say about me? About the time and place that I live?

Welcome To Another Blog!

So here I go again. I still have two other themed blogs that have been left tragically unfinished, and yet I've got writing and I want to get it out there into the world (for no one but you to read). Thus, a new blog. Another chance to get caught, to out myself to people I know and love in real life. Self-destructive tendencies never really go away, they just mutate. I like to think that this mutation - painful honesty - can at least be filed under a healthy kind of self injury?

About myself:
I'm a cis-gendered female, nearing my late 20s. I'm mostly femme-ish, sometimes I put on my more masculine clothing when I need an extra shot of confidence in a new situation. I use the word "queer" in relation to my sexuality, but I guess what that means is that I build relationships with female-bodied folks who tend to present in more masculine manners. Sometimes they identify as gender queer or trans* to a greater or lesser degree. Occasionally I have quick crushes on cis guys, or femme women, or whoever I happen to feel attracted to. Hence I like "queer" but in reality it tends to work out visibly as some shade of "lesbian." Another post for another day. I'm also kind of sort of poking around the realm of open/poly relationships. Over the past year or so I've been getting into the public kink scene. I've just started grad school, a new adventure in a brand new city in a part of the country where I never thought I (a queer, liberal, kinky lady) would live. I'm optimistic, I've been surprised about my geographic prejudices before and expect that to continue.

I've had blogs of various sorts for nearly...gosh, 12 or 13 years? Good grief. One was for when I was coming out to myself and then others. One was for working through my feelings about being depressed and self-injuring. One was for my attempts (somewhat successful) to develop and maintain an eating disorder. They were discovered (at least the first two) and in getting help for the depression, I came out more fully and that certainly did me a world of good. Amusingly (and tragically) it's still a work in progress (the coming out). The depression is mostly just a dark memory that I've stuffed away and try to not look at too closely. The eating issues have continued to follow me around, I'd like to use this blog to help sort out my feelings about it. I've had blogs about travels, about living abroad, about practically living in my car. I haven't had one about cats yet, but I suspect it's in my future.

I'm supposed to be reading for class, we start tomorrow. I need to finish so that I can Skype with my girlfriend and go to bed at a reasonable hour (how's that for responsible adulthood?), but I just wrote this and finally felt motivated and compelled to put it out into the world NOW. Those moments of motivation are rare and always come with procrastinating on school work, so I figured I should just go ahead and strike while the iron was hot. Please ignore, enjoy, ponder, or go have a cup of coffee, as you prefer. :)