Sunday Evening

It was a busy, albeit fun, weekend.

On Friday night we were in the Gay Pride Parade, on our Leather Pride “float.”

Our Leather Pride float was the truck belonging to my current Master and slave couple, Steve and kim, with their car trailer attached.

We used bungee cords to secure camp folding chairs back to back down the middle, about a dozen of them.  People rode in the back of the truck, too.  We had a Fringe Elements banner, and signs for Bluegrass Leather Pride, and a Leather Pride flag.

We also had scented bubbles and cans of silly string.

We met in a lot behind one of the local gay bars, and waited for a bit, then moved into the sort of pre-staging area, which worked out really well for us because it was a very sunny day and could have been unpleasantly hot, but we were under an overpass, so it was quite pleasant.  It was a lovely day, clear and dry, plenty warm but by the time the parade was actually starting it had cooled down and the sun wasn’t so bright.

We had quite a few people who were on our float – Steve and Kim, Charles and jacki, Karen, Meg, Christie, Russ, Caile and Ms. Tammy and Ms. Tammy’s goldendoodle, Honey, and Kim’s 20 year old daughter and her friend.

In the truck we had Kody and Jessie and another couple of friends of theirs.

Walking beside we had Daddy Donald and Chris, slave drew, Bootblack Bella and Bootblack Astro, and Jay walking beside, along with Sir Charles part of the time, and his son, Nick, and Kenny drove the car.

All together, it was a pretty good turnout, nearly 25 people.

And, again, I assume because we were near the front, we were also what a couple of local stations lead off with in covering the pride parade.

As the newscaster says, “And it was the Gay Pride Parade in Kentuckiana today…”. you see Nick walking by the camera, then you see Ms, Tammy, and jacki and me and Charles and Kim and Steve.  Then the coverage moves on, but you can see us quite clearly.

I look incredibly domme-ly.  I have a can of Silly String I am apparently trying to understand how to use.

Not much earlier, they’d been playing with the silly string a bit, making sure that they were all open and caught the attention of a kid, mostly by spraying him accidentally and kind of scaring him, so we had to give him a can after that.

The first thing he did was spray us back, rightfully so, and I got a spotty sort of mist of green Silly String particles all over myself, face and vest both.  Poor Charles and jacki were nearly beside themselves trying to get it all off me, saying things like, “I’m sorry I’m touching your boob, Ma’am, I am just wiping off your vest.”

I saw an old lover at the parade, someone who was covering it for one of the local media.  I haven’t seen him in a long time, it was a pleasant enough encounter.  He still looks fabulous.

The parade had a few protesters, though the only ones I actually saw were a pair of men who looked like Mormon missionaries – short sleeved “dress” shirt, tie, conservative haircuts and dress slacks – with signs.

The signs were great, one had signs that said something like, “Don’t be pitching a tent around my cub scout,” and “FALSE Preachers + Teachers, There is a Hell, You’re on the HIGHWay!!”

The other had a sign that said, “Celebrating STRAIGHT NORMAL PRIDE 365 DAYS A YEAR.”  Actually, neither of them looked a bit like they were celebrating anything at all.

There were a couple other ones at the end of the parade, which was the Gay Pride celebration, but I didn’t get out there.  I stayed on the back with a few other people as we rode around a few city blocks to get back to the gay bar.

There was a Mary J. Blige concert downtown last night, so between them, us, and the drag queens, there were a lot of high heels than normal on the street last night.

 

A Real Post, Sort Of

All right, so I am here and more or less back to normal.

I haven’t unpacked, of course.  I’m still working on pictures, but I’m closer now.

I’m still processing, I think.

One of the things that was funny was how many people from Louisville were at International Mr. Leather.

We left for Chicago about 1 or so.  Chicago traffic is always challenging, though I was not driving, which is always a plus to me.

I went with Jay and Karen, my Leather SIR and Leather Ms.  Neither of them had ever been to IML before.

We were staying a ways out because I had gotten a deal on a hotel room, thanks to a friend.  We were going to at least see how the train worked, and it did work pretty well for the first two days, though taking a train limits what you can do and wear, so the third night we paid exorbitant parking rates and it was worth it.

We got checked in and by the time we had gotten to the hotel and changed and figured out the trains and actually got to the hotel it was too late for me to get my press credentials, which was fine anyway.

We walked around the hotel for a few minutes, which is packed virtually to the rafters with hot gay guys who are, if not fully naked are somewhere between half and three quarters naked.

We had not eaten on the way up, so Karen and I went to dinner.  We walked a block or two to a grill and were having a very nice meal when Karen said, as someone walked by, “Isn’t that Chris?  Donald’s Chris?”

I looked up and indeed it was Donald’s Chris and Donald, too, and another friend or two of ours as well.

You have to come to Chicago to see your friends, I suppose.

We didn’t do a lot that night, we went back to the hotel for a bit after dinner, had a drink, talked to more hometown folk we saw, as well as some out of towners I don’t often see.

Eventually I will catch up on sleep.

More tomorrow.

This Blog was Pre-empted by the Fringe Elements Newsletter

Which I really wanted out last night, but that clearly did not happen.

I set myself a tight deadline and knew it would be painful, and it was.

But I think it’s done.

However, I still have to dash out on the last dog run of the evening for my friends, and by then, it will be late, and I am still working on photos.

Other than that, though, I’ve been lounging.  Obviously.

 

Event Drop

I had a great time at International Mr. Leather.

I saw lots of people I knew, met tons of people I didn’t.

I laughed until I cried more than a few times.

I took the train by myself in Chicago, which if you know me makes you afraid for me.  I didn’t have any incidents, by the way.

I bought one new toy, nothing fabulous, but a long quirty thing.  It was from a vendor I have bought toys from for 15 years, I didn’t have anything like it and it was very inexpensive, particularly for IML.

I had great seats at the contest and took, literally, close to 500 photos, I think, and I need to get through them.

Tonight, I am dead tired, though, and I’m not even going to write a proper blog.

Look for me soon, I swear I will be back.

Plans and Things

I have finally gotten all the Kinky Prom photo edited and all but five of the 250-ish I took have been sent out.  Three of those I am just waiting on an email address so I can send them out, and two are of a person neither I nor any of the six or eight people I have had look at the picture knew her.

Today and tomorrow, I am *off,” in that I don’t specifically have plans to do anything in the evening.

Of course, it’s also Derby week, and we have two parties planned for this weekend, so it’s not like I’m really slacking off, of course.  I do have some paperwork to do, and some emails I need to answer, but I don’t necessarily have to be anywhere or do anything.

After this weekend, too, it will get a bit quieter.  The Center will take a lot of time, but much of it will be time that I am already spending on kink-related stuff, and we will have most of the bugs worked out, too.

I need to get out in my garden and do some weeding, clear out some of the growth that didn’t get cleared out before from winter, see what came back and where I might have an open spot or two.

I need to clean my house, which is not so much terribly dirty as it is wildly disorganized at the moment.  I haven’t unpacked the things from Saturday’s party yet, so the chairs in my den have bags in them.

My desk is piled high with magazines and notebooks, computer gizmos and random odd things.  An ancient fortune cookie in the wrapper.  A pair of beaters from a mixer.

A bag of tiny, mint-flavored, bone-shaped treats for the dogs.

I need to put the couple boxes of Bluegrass Leather Pride stuff on shelves in the garage, and deal with the contents of a garden basket I won at the dog show this spring, and move the 10 pairs of my shoes that have accumulated in the living room back upstairs.

And I will do all of that, honest I will.

But it won’t be tonight.  Tonight drew and I went out on the scooter for the first time this year and it was lovely.

And I was, in the 20 minutes I was away between that line and this, I trimmed a small shrub that was beginning to block a walkway, took the beaters to the kitchen, the dog treats in their cannister.

I can see the top of my desk again, one chair is mostly empty, and my blog is done.  How cool is that?

 

 

I Lost My Post

I had one written, I swear.

A decent one.

I was actually proud of myself because I have been so behind, I haven’t commented or responded to comments, I’m a bad person, and I had actually written a post.

I’ve been so busy with Bluegrass and I will be for another three weeks, I’m behind everywhere.

I had it ready, I hit publish.

Usually I cut and paste it to be sure, but I didn’t, of course.

And it’s gone, and I can’t find it and there’s no draft for it and I logged in so I shouldn’t have lost it, but I somehow did.

I might go cry.

Attracting a Partner, Part 5

I seem to be doing a whole series here, don’t I?

One of the comments that was made reminded me about another thing that I think is important about finding a new partner.

Sometimes it’s also about letting go of the old partner.

Sometimes that’s one of the harder parts, I think.

There are usually two varieties.

One is, the person who’s ex was SO incredible and SO perfect and SO amazing that it’s hard for anyone else to measure up.

The other is the person who’s ex was SO awful and SO horrible and SUCH a complete asshole that they can’t seem to see past that to anyone else.

The first one is hard, for sure.

When you have to follow a saint, it’s hard to live up to it.

Their former Master or Mistress was the love of their life, the be all and end all of all BDSM and kink, the perfect melding of demanding and nurturing.

Their former submissive knew them so well that they never had to ask for anything, everything was already in place, they were pliable and compliant and obedient and, in short, perfect.

Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that they were not, indeed, perfect.  The Master/Mistress was also probably grouchy and unreasonable on occasion, and the slave was not always so accommodating and well-versed.

We have to remind ourselves that no person was all good, or all bad.

Then there’s the other side.

I bet you’ve seen it, too.

The person who can hardly speak without spewing bile about their former relationship.

I have a friend who went through a relatively messy divorce a couple years ago.

It got to the point that I honestly avoided her because her primary and initial topic of conversation was always her asshole ex-husband and the asshole things he had said, or done, or was threatening to do, or not do.

It didn’t require an inquiry.

It wasn’t in response to, “How are you?  How’s the divorce going?”

It was in response to “Hey, nice to see you.”

I think it never occurred to my friend how she came across.  She was SO caught up in the miasma of her life – there were challenging children involved, too – that she couldn’t step back and see.

One of the other things that always occurs to me, when I encounter someone who has nothing but unkind things to say about an ex is, one of these days it’s going to be me.

It’s also true that I don’t think it says anything good about you and your judgement.  If the person you last hitched your wagon to was so horrific…  Um…  Well, gee.  That sort of means your judgement might not be all it could be, either.

Now, I know sometimes people change, but even so, most of the time the change is not that profound.  Most of the time, the person you “married,” for lack of a better term, is pretty close to the same person you “divorced.”

It’s also true that while it’s possible that the reviled one was 100% at fault, it’s uncommon.

Almost every ended relationship I’ve ever seen was at least 70%/30%.  If nothing else, you stayed with someone who was an asshole for longer than might point to your good judgement.

So, if someone has nothing but bad to say about a former love, well, that tells me something.

I don’t mean that you can’t talk about issues with your friends, or that you always have to put on a brave front, but in general, a brave front will go a long way to creating a brave back, too.

Fake it until you make it.

Learn to say, “You know, I think we were both at fault, but I learned a lot, so that’s a good thing.”

Save the in-depth bitching for your friends, the people who talk about their past escapades to you, too.

When you look around, too, don’t focus entirely on what you DON’T want.

I don’t want anyone who is not local, who has small children, or is much under 30 years old.  I DO want someone who is smart, funny, mature, stable, and wants to be submissive.

Notice there’s a reasonable balance there.  There are a few things I don’t want, and things I do want, and I think it’s a mistake to focus too much on one or the other.

I see profiles that tell me all the things they don’t want, which are often rather obvious.

They list that they want honest people, and fun people, and people who are drama-free.

Not me.  I am looking for lying, boring and bat shit crazy people.

No, wait, no, I’m not.

It’s rarely wise to jump from one important relationship to another.  Spend some time putting a period at the end of the sentence rather than just adding a semi-colon and moving on.

Once in a while, it’s true, the person that you meet a month after the worst breakup of your life IS the love of your life, the person with whom you are, you should pardon the expression, “tied” to for life.

But most of the time it’s not.  Most of the time it’s just a rebound, and rebounds can be fun, just as one-night stands can be, so long as everyone is on the same page.

I think the best thing to do is to behave a bit like you’re just beginning to date and you have fairly strict parents.

Go out in groups.

Go to parties.

Avoid sleepover parties.

Date a lot of people casually.

Give yourself a break, give yourself time to heal and move on.

You can’t attract a new partner if you’re still focused on the old one.

And please remember to update your bookmarks for my new home on the web, which you can find here.

Attracting a Partner, Part 4

So, I’ve talked about knowing what you want, what you are looking for, what you will compromise on, all that.

I think it’s important to recognize that, however much you might dislike the thought, you may never find the relationship for which you are looking.

It’s possible.

Not a happy thought, maybe, but possible.

I think first you need to make a life that you can live, even if you never have anyone else to share it in the way you’d like.

I see people who put their life on hold until…

Well, until.

Until the fabled day when your life becomes perfect, when that life includes the perfect Master and perfect slave, or dominant or submissive, or whatever it is that you put there when you fill in the blanks.

Once you have that, well, then, your life will be perfect and everything will fall into place.

Unless that never happens.

Again, I don’t mean to be a downer there, but I think we all need to accept that our lives may never have all the things in them that we would like, whether those things are people or things, experiences or adventures.

One can either sit and wait for one’s life to begin and find, perhaps, that one has reached the end of it without it ever really beginning, or one can build a life that is at least full, even if it doesn’t contain all of our desires.

It is also true that most of us find the person far more appealing who has a life that is full and happy, even if they’d like to have more in it, as opposed to the person who sits and weeps about what they don’t have, focusing always on what is missing rather than what is present.

I do tend to be a half-full kind of girl, that’s probably obvious.

The old saying is, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear, and I tend to think that’s true, or at least, when we are ready and our eyes are open, we see the opportunities around us.

When we have been realistic about what it is for which we are looking, when we have defined our terms and sifted our needs our from our wants, once we’ve done all that, I think that we can open our eyes to what might be out there.

I always encourage people to become involved.  For me, that means the kink community, but I do recognize that’s not for everyone.

I think if you’re looking for kink relationships, and don’t want to be involved in the kink community at all, then you’re missing out on a lot of opportunities, but that’s beside the point.

Find what interests you and pursue it, whatever that is.  Join a book club or take cooking classes or get involved in your church or volunteer at your local food kitchen or SOMETHING.

Again, I think it makes a great deal more sense to go to a munch or a kink gathering, and I think everyone needs to consider it, at least.  While your kink might be a private one, if it’s too private, finding anyone else who shares it is going to be challenging.

The person who interests me, at least, is someone whom, when I say, tell me about your hobbies and interests, lists a few things.  Things that are not all televised sports.

When your life is full, it’s amazing how much more likely it is that you’ll need to make room in it for more.  And if, to your great sorrow, you never have to do that, isn’t it better to have a life that is full except for this thing, as opposed to a life that has nothing in it at all?

 

And please remember to update your bookmarks for my new home on the web, which you can find here.

Attracting a Partner, Part 3

I’ve been talking about finding a partner, and I’ve spoken mostly about being realistic about what it is you want, and what you have to offer, and about monogamy and non-monogamy.

I want to say, too, that I believe that whatever you want, there’s someone out there who is interested in the same thing.

You don’t have to settle, but you may well have to accept that your pool is smaller than you’d like.

I could have five new submissives by the end of the evening, using only Fetlife and text messages, but how worthwhile would those submissives be?

Many of you submissives who bemoan finding a dominant are not really saying there are NO dominants, they are saying that the dominants out there are not worth your time or effort, and I would agree.

No one ever said it was easy.

Vanilla relationships are easy, right?  It’s a piece of cake to find what you want and need and like, right?  So clearly, adding one more piece to the mix, well, that wouldn’t make it any harder, right?  Not at all, surely?

Right.

So, relationships are hard, and kink relationships are also hard.  Finding people who suit is never easy.

However, if you can’t even honestly articulate what it is you want, those chances go way down.

If what you want is to have an occasional play partner who likes kinky sex with spankings and some rope, well, those people are out there.

If what you want is a 24/7 total power exchange dynamic where every part of life is controlled, well, those people are out there, too.

But you can see how it might be hard to find what you want if you aren’t labeling it accurately.

SAYING you want a TPE and really being unwilling to have control go farther than the bed, well, that’s going to make it hard to make that vision a reality.

I think we so often mislabel ourselves, particularly when we’re new.  People use the vocabulary they see without trying to figure out if it’s really what they are, and that’s compounded by the fact that our vocabulary is somewhat fluid, and has few absolutes within it.

I can tell you what I think a bottom is versus a submissive versus a slave, but that’s only my interpretation.  Six other people would have at least six other definitions.

Mine would be correct, of course.

And even within my always-correct definitions are some contradictions and caveats.

For instance, slave drew is not submissive.  Not even a little.  He’s submissive towards ME and he’s generally courteous and respectful to most people, mostly.  Mostly.

But he’s not a bit submissive.

It was quite funny last fall when he came in second for the local Munchie awards in the category of Most Admired Submissive.

Our reaction was, Have they ever MET you?

So, add that into the mix, the occasional wiggle room for the vagaries of life, and what you have is something that makes it that much harder to find those with whom we are compatible.

I think that the people who have the most successful kinky relationships are generally the ones who have spent the most time inside their own heads, poking around.

For a lot of people, too, finally finding someone who is at least open to the dark recesses that they’ve kept mostly hidden can be wildly intoxicating and that makes them less than discriminating about their partners.

It’s kind of like saying, “Oh, wow, you love missionary position, so do I, clearly, we are soul mates,” or “OMG, your favorite band is Maroon 5?  Mine is, TOO!  We are destined to spend eternity together.”

Those discoveries might be either nice bonuses, or possibly the basis of a friendship, but do not indicate soul mate status.

We forget sometimes that relationships are relationships.  If you’re not compatible on more than a surface level, it’s probably not going to work, however great that level does work.

On the other hand, one thing that can be very freeing about kinky relationship is that kinky relationships already don’t fit into a lot of the boxes that we grew up thinking were the norm and the target.

In the vanilla world, being a control freak or a masochist are usually seen as bad.

Kinky relationships offer a lot of different KINDS of relationships.

You can really define the relationship you want.  It might not be what you can find, to be sure, but you can at least define an ideal, and go from there.

And please remember to update your bookmarks for my new home on the web, which you can find here.

Attracting a Partner, Part 2

I had a comment asking about something I’d planned to address, too, so I’m going to go ahead and do that now.

What I want to address is monogamy.

I think that there are two things that you can’t really compromise on and be happy about, and those are children and monogamy.

If you want children, agreeing not to have them to please someone else, or having them because someone else wants you to, That’s something so intrinsic, I think, to who you are that compromising on it is something that you can’t reconcile, truly, within yourself.

Monogamy is like that, too, though there are some differences.  Children are an either/or situation.  You either have children or you don’t.

Monogamy is not like that.

There are a millions flavors of monogamy, and nearly as many definitions.

I think it’s important to know why you have the expectations about monogamy that you have.

For some people it’s because it’s what they know.  Most of us had monogamous parents, or at least parents who projected monogamy.  When there was NOT monogamy, it was usually due to a secret affair that was followed by pain and recrimination.

For some people it’s more about insecurity than anything else, the sense that if you love someone else, you are not able to love me, too.  We have to remember that love and affection are not finite; we do not have a limited amount of those things.

You do not have to take away from one to give to another.

It’s more like dipping a pail in the ocean.  You can fill a pail a million times, and the ocean will still be full.

On the other hand, I also recognize that non-monogamy is not for everyone.  For some people, it eats their hearts away.

I think a submissive or slave has a right to require monogamy in their relationships, in the same way that they have the right to set other limits, like being unwilling to change jobs or turn control of money over to another person.

And, as a dominant or Master, I have the right to refuse to offer it.

What I don’t have the right to do is say that I offer it, and then not, just as a submissive doesn’t have the right to say they accept it, when they don’t.

I think every relationship calls for honesty between the participants.  I think there is a huge difference between non-monogamy and cheating.

I think it happens because submissives may feel they have no other choices, if they want a dominant.  They say they can accept it, and in the end, they cannot.

It’s important to remember that there is a difference between sex and play, and that’s just the most basic topics that are usually on the table in a discussion about monogamy versus non-monogamy.

And then there are a myriad of discussions about both sex and play.

If you’re discussing sex, what does sex mean to you?  You might choose to limit all sexual activity, or any activity when you’re not together, or that intercourse is off-limits, but oral sex is ok, or that a dominant acting on a submissive to the pleasure of the submissive is ok, or that sex with toys is ok, or not.

If you’re talking about play, then what kinds of play are you talking?  Is a birthday spanking at a party ok, but a private play session not?  What about a play session with someone you’d not be interested in having sex with – someone of the same sex, for instance, if you’re not gay?

You really have to start defining your terms.

I think you have to believe, too, that you have a right to find what you want, but I think, too, you have to accept that your requirements are likely to limit your pool.

And please remember to update your bookmarks for my new home on the web, which you can find here.