circles

After writing that post about feelings I miss, I felt little stirrings of a few of them this weekend. Life circles.

It was a mixed bag of emotions, melancholy and a sense of sadness or disappointment were actually quite present for overall feeling pretty good about the weekend. Maybe it's just that there were bright points. I'll start with the sad so I can end on the good.

Things with M. I've been really shying away from sadism, particularly from her sadism. We went to a set of rope classes down in Memphis, my first time down there. The first class way Tying for Sex and Sadism, essentially some creative ideas of ways to hold a body in creative places or positions where you could both fuck and hit them at the same time. M had another partner lined up in case I hadn't joined, so they tied and I worked with the woman who was sitting alone next to us. She was still quite new to rope and the public kink scene, her husband was traveling for work or he would have been there. Clearly I wasn't going to truss her up and start dry humping her while using a paddle, we'd just met and that's not my style. But we had a nice time chatting, and I helped her learn a few tricks about a single column tie, and I put her in her first chest harness and (at her request) took a picture for her. She tied me a few times, and we even did a few of the more positionally-suggestive ones, but we certainly didn't get to the moaning and growling stage that some folks on the other side of the room were finding.

The next class was Partial Suspensions for Pain Play. My newbie partner had to go to work, and M was still roping with Shy. I considered offering myself up to either side of things with a stranger, but then decided to sit and watch, and was glad that I did. The whole thing was certainly creative, he had a lot of good information, but his idea of sadism was a lot of open handed slapping on the inner thigh and actually stepping on her thigh or calf with a part of his considerable weight. I don't know why, but stuff like that just freaks me out, I'm always afraid they're going to break a bone or something! M was happily trussing up Shy and doing some rather painful things with this look of glee on her face. And that's when it kind of started coalescing for me.

A part of me wants pain, badly. I want to feel pain, and I want to accept pain for someone else's happiness in giving it. I certainly don't want to play with someone who is unhappy or bored or upset about hurting me. But there's kind pain, and there's cruel pain. M is cruel with her pain, looking immediately to maximize that intense unpleasant sensation. There's no subtlety or endurance aspect, it's 0-60 pretty damn fast, and it stays at 60 until she can push it higher. Watching her, I got a sense of carelessness. She didn't think about trying to minimize other discomforts (like lying half naked on a freezing cement floor) and rejected my attempts to do so. The safety concerns presented by the rig we were using, trying to partial suspend over a 1 foot wide beam that was about 8 inches from the ground, may have crossed her mind but certainly didn't seem to affect her actions. This person could fall off the platform without having her hands to break her fall, or she might have a corner digging in to her side as she sprawls across the beam. Stepping on her thigh is not just pressure on her thigh but is also digging that muscle into the corner of this platform. The presenter smacking his sub with the bottom of his bare foot is fundamentally different than doing it with the heavy soled boots M had on. That her bottom wasn't actually a masochist and was pretty much doing this to be nice never seemed to be taken into consideration as M was going about having her sadistic fun and showing off to all the other sadist tops that she, too, could be mean and laugh while she did it.

The other thing that made me uncomfortable and nervous were  her comments to me throughout the day. About what she was planning to do to me later. Reaching out to randomly pinch my nipple or smack my ass. Just general entitlement to my body, in painful ways when I was not looking for pain. Later when she was going to scene with Cat, a well known rope bottom, and it seemed that they were going to do a "nice" rope scene, she told me that it meant that mine would have to be the hard/painful scene. And I just was not in that kind of mindset, and every moment was pushing me further and further from it!

When we first started playing, she at least tried to find some sense of connection. She would hug me. Stretch my shoulders sensuously. Look at me.

But when we did try and tie that night, and even when we had a fun scene last week, there was none of that. She was looking at the rope and at the audience, finding ways to push the envelope and to impress. And she did, don't get me wrong - it was fun and gained us a lot of acclaim for the evening. But last night when we did try and go up in the air it was clearly not well thought out at all, and her focus was so much more on the rope and the "task" than on the process. Sometimes you rope just to see what you can do, where you can push. After watching her take her time and really listen and be with Cat, it hurt to just be her little rope toy, a body that she could try and do cool things to. She talked as we drove about feeling connected to Cat in that moment, of giving her something unusually tender and sweet when she normally gets strenuous and painful. And I was sad, because she didn't see that that's what I was asking for too, silently.

So I kind of brought it up, which I'm actually really proud of. We were both in this melancholy mood, and she actually asked(!) when I told her I was figuring some things out about how I wanted to play. I told her that it was pretty clear that she and I were starting to look for different things, that as much as I want to explore her sadism and the act of accepting that, the more we talk about it (and now that it's possible since I'm not with GF), the more scared of it I become. That maybe the kind of topping that she so disdains, "safe" topping or topping to create a scene that makes the bottom happy (even if they want that to involve crying and begging for mercy), is the kind that I want and need right now.

As I was saying it, I was thinking of a scene I'd watched the night before, while M was tying Cat. I met a woman at the rope classes, we'd ended up chatting on a break and she and a husband/wife duo were actually tying near M, Shy, and me. She caught something in me, some little spark was there as I listened to her talk. That she was a lesbian and had already lived several lifetimes of adventures while only looking maybe in her 30s/40s intrigued me further, especially with her bottoming to this cis hetero Dom guy in front of his wife. We kept talking, and I kept sneaking smiles in at them through the classes. We went out to dinner with the presenting couple and the main hosts from the club (a "power" couple in the rigging world who M is trying to get closer to), even though I much rather would have gone with these folks.

I was happy to find that they had returned for the party as well, and it quickly became clear that it hadn't quite been their intention to do so, although the guy, Bob, did have a scene lined up with Shy. The eye-catching woman (J) and I talked and hung out both alone and with her friends.

(blush time - when M and I got back to the club and were going to change, J asked why we were changing. M replied that we wanted to get all sexy for the party, and J looked at me and said something along the lines of "wait, but you're already sexy." That and when she whistled as I walked back out of the bathroom after changing was enough to give me little happy stomach feelings - being wanted and wanting that spark of connection is such a validating feeling)

For better or for worse, J is even more of a rope bottom than I am, and that's saying something. So even though in hindsight I would have loved to have tried tying her, at the time I was way too intimidated. So we watched Bob and Shy. And it was just so beautiful it made my heart ache with longing for this large, gentle, cruel man to do that to me, too. She's not a masochist, but is recovering from a break up with her former dominant, and needed to hold someone else's desire for giving pain, needed to step into that role as a submissive to someone. He was gifting that to her. Getting something from it, certainly, but getting a lot just from giving to her. He held her tightly, tenderly, a small smile ghosting on his lips, both of them with eyes closed. He started just with a single column tie around one wrist, using that one strand of rope to wrap and unwrap her body, letting her feel his control, his presence. Eventually he took her to the ground, put her in a coconut leg wrap under a futo, partially suspended her with his own strength. There were flickers of pain across her features, but also sinking in, breathing into that pain as strength, as connection. When they were through he held her in his lap, her face buried in his shoulder. God it was beautiful.

As M was preparing to do...something...with me, they were all getting ready to go. We had been talking about the day, and Bob had been particularly engaging in asking me about the things I had gotten from the day. As M was making moves to clear an area for us, I shyly gave J a hug. I happily gave Bob's wife a hug. And, only slightly hesitating, I gave big manly Bob a hug. His long arms wrapped around me in a way I don't often experience, and he pulled me closely in towards him, holding me with conviction and intent. I practically melted into him. I felt so many emotions, and he just continued to hold on with the same conviction. So I let out my breath that was caught in my throat. And I let myself be held, told myself to be open, and started to feel it happen. This man, who truly was a sadist when he was playing with J during the class, was somehow able to be kind in his sadism. Generous. Connecting. Loving.

Finally we broke the hug, and I could feel myself pushing down a feeling of tears at the loss. What an unexpected connection in such an unexpected way. I'm sad that I didn't ask Bob to tie me, and I'm sad that I didn't ask J if I could tie her and explore that spark of desire through rope. But man did it feel good driving home, even melancholy about not enjoyably playing the night before, knowing that I'd had a spark of connection and friendship and desire in such an unexpected place with three unexpected but wonderful people.