"What Sort of Training Do You Need, My Dear?"

"I need be trained into a good submissive. Learn to take whatever is being done to body and not saying or moving.  — a******6"

That is an interesting proposition.  It reminds me of a time when I stood facing a blank wall and was punched again and again, never knowing where or when the next one would land.  I was thinking about that incident just today, as it happens.  Problem is, I wasn't a sub doing a scene with my lover.  I was a kid being physically and emotionally abused by my brother, his command to remain in position enforced by a savage kick to my kidney or my testicles when I tried to move.
Incidents like that may be why I am a Dom today, I don't know.
But enough about me.  How shall I go about training you?  Let me think on that.

Still My Favorite Valentine

Definitely, and by a long chalk: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlequin_Valentine

It Really Was, No Kidding

Not that I expect you to ever believe it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voqL5ksOuoo

Most likely I will go to my grave unforgiven.

Such is life.

Life goes on.

Academy Demolished

The Academy for Difficult Girls has lost its home at Yahoo yet again.

I don't know whether this was the work of that creepy little stalker who has been posting libels against me on various groups, or the mischief of some random clod, or just another meaningless glitch in Yahoo's system.


Don't suppose it matters -- Yahoo explains nothing, apologizes for nothing.


There is a backup group,


http://www.keepitnice.com/kinc/pg/groups/11774/academy-for-difficult-girls/

and when I have the time and energy and am not feeling so kicked in the teeth as I am right now, I will create, I suppose, Academy 5 at Yahoo.


In the meantime, my apologies for the interruption of service.

The Woman Who Received Many Blessings

Once there was a woman who received many blessings in her life, so let us call her Deo Gratia. "D.G." is a suitable name for her.

D.G. received many blessings, but she was only allowed to keep two of them.

The first thing that happened to her was that she received the gift of life, and that is not a small thing.

She had a fiance who loved her and gave her two daughters. But first her fiance was taken from her, and then her girls.

She suffered for years from a terrible disease, but one day her doctor delivered two blessings: not only had her disease gone into remission, but her disease was one which, if it went away, it never came back.

This was an especial blessing because she was still young enough to have another child, now that she knew she would live long enough to raise it.

She had a boy, and then she learned that the disease which would never come back, had.

D.G. had another man, and he said he would marry her, but when it came down to it, he let her down.

She had a profession which brought her satisfaction and money, but there came a time when she could not work at her trade, so she worked at jobs which gave her too little satisfaction, and far too little money.

In the end, there were only two blessings which would not be taken from her:

First, her son. Even death would not separate them, because he would love his mother forever.

Second, all suffering eventually comes to an end.

She Said "Don't Retreat, Reload!"

So he did.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/01/09/arizona.giffords.chairman/

Playing Cat and Mouse (Over and Over In My Head)

For several years I have been haunted1 by "Cat and Mouse"2, an episode of The Twilight Zone3 in which a woman invites a stray cat into her home and learns that he is a man who has lived for centuries cursed to spend every day as a cat.4
They become lovers, which is beneficial to her since she has hitherto been crippled by extreme shyness (she is the "mouse" of the title), and he makes it clear from the beginning that he is interested only in a very casual relationship. Even so, she is crushed when she learns he has had sex with a friend of hers. So much that she decides to drug him, and he wakes up the next day in a cat-carrier at a veterinary clinic, where she is arranging to have him "fixed".

1 No, that is not too strong a term.
2 Which never should have occupied so much space in my head, but there it is.
3 And not even the classic Rod Serling series, but the 1980s color revival.
4 At night, he can change voluntarily between cat and man.

So why does this story keep coming back into my mind? Specifically, why did it climb into my head when I woke up at 3:00 AM and prevent me from getting back to sleep before the alarm went at 4 and I had to get up?

What does it mean to me? Do I feel as though I am in danger of being emasculated -- sexually, or socially, or . . . what? I don't get it.

My sex life is actually pretty good right now, and I seem to have better control over my sexuality than before -- it's been quite awhile since I did anything stupid and destructive on account of listening to my dick.

Not having regular work bothers me a lot. That could be it. It certainly makes me feel weak and helpless and impotent, and it prevents me from "doing my duty" by my wife and to a lesser extent by other people I care about.

Do I feel as though I am, like the cat-man, the victim of some immense, cruel, disproportionate revenge?

Possibly. Several times recently I have felt ill-used by demands and complaints that seem irrational and arbitrary.

I don't know. And I don't know why I have been feeling so irritable all morning when it has actually been a very enjoyable and undemanding day.

I've been feeling very pleased with myself over my increased self-awareness since I went through therapy, but times like this show me that there will always be limits to it. But at least I am noticing that my feelings are irrational, and not trying to blame them on someone or some circumstance around me.

It Wasn't True

I looked at an old post today, and was shocked by what I saw there.

I wrote about how it was that, when it seemed there was no chance I would ever be reconciled with my wife, she asked me to come back and try again, and how my abrupt decision to give her a trial hurt other people.

What I wrote back then was an attempt to paint a gentler picture of what happened, out of a desire to exculpate myself for going back on my word, and to scold someone else for what I perceived as going back on hers.

What I said simply wasn't true, and I think I knew even then that it wasn't.

I was really a mess back then, but that is not an excuse for the many ways in which I hurt the people around me. Having figured out that my mind was confused and disordered, I should have withdrawn from human relationships as much as I could until I knew who I was and what I wanted. Instead, I rushed about in all directions at once, causing harm all around me.

And then I distorted and misrepresented what I had done.

I shouldn't have done that, either.

Try Other Things Before You Try Killing Yourself

And other useful advice from rm:

http://rm.livejournal.com/1933522.html?view=22593746#t22593746

For the longest time I thought I wasn't wired for suicide, and that this was all that had saved my life on several occasions. Then I really did feel suicidal.

Bupropion helped*. So did reminding myself to mutter "I want to live" under my breath, instead of "I wish I were dead".

* The first antidepressant I tried didn't help, but I found that it's like reporting sexual abuse: if you don't get help from the first person/drug, keep trying until you do.

Pastor Jones

Text of a message Mrs. Psycho and I sent out this morning:

Pastor Jones is back in the news today (first he says he will, and then he won't), and we have decided to donate $20 to the local mosque for the express purpose of providing a copy of the Quran to someone who wants or needs it. We'll inform our local newspapers, also, in the hope that other non-Muslims will follow our example. Maybe we can out-weigh the "pastor's" destruction, for a net increase in the number of Qurans.

We are pretty damned short of money, but we will find $20 in our budget for this purpose, and we hope to persuade some of our friends to do the same.

Considering that "Pastor" Jones' church-and-used-furniture business only has about fifty members, our "action" may be bigger than his.

Little man, What Now?

Years ago, I saw a film on television late at night, titled, Little Man, What Now?. It was a remarkable film about a young couple struggling to survive in a country where everyone but themselves seemed to be going crazy over one ideology or another, each promising to bring the country out of the Great Depression and provide every citizen with his/her due.

Rather than embrace any of the various movements, they preferred to just muddle through, raise their baby and hope for the best.

It could have been set in almost any Western country in the early 1930s, but it is especially poignant because it is set in Germany, and we who watch it a lifetime later know what lay ahead for them.

Poor souls. To say nothing of their baby....

I am thankful that my wife and I are still together.

People went out of my life this year, and for much of it I thought my wife was going to be one of them. I am grateful to her for offering me another chance.

I was in a great deal of pain over the past year, of which the hole the doctors cut in my head last Thanksgiving was only the most obvious, and far from being the most painful. Some of that pain I took out on my wife in ways that now make me cringe with shame. Very little of what I put her through was deserved.

Mainly, though, I look back thankfully on the good times she and I have had. There were a lot more good times than bad, after all. And I look forward to good times yet to come, and give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.

Reflections

If I had it to do all over again, how would I do things?

If I could rewrite my life so that it did not include the pain I caused to my wife, and to R, and to N, and to others . . . .

But in that case, I would not have had so many good, rewarding experiences, ranging from the birth of R-boy to the simple good times I had with each of my lovers.

So I am in the position of feeling terribly guilty over actions by which I benefitted immensely, some of which I simply could not wish undone.

So what does that make me?

Maybe just...an American.

Now What?

I have always said, "There is a way", but what if there isn't?Perhaps I have put myself in a position from which there is no honorable way to move, no way to avoid a choice that breaks the heart of at least one person I would rather die than hurt.But to choose death myself would only cause still more pain than any choice I can make. So what then?

I have no idea.

You Not Read This

The following passage is highly offensive and blasphemous, and you should not read it:

"the pain of consummation soon melted away. Muhammad was so gentle. I hardly felt the scorpion's sting. To be in his arms, skin to skin, was the bliss I had longed for all my life."

You also should not read the rest of the manuscript, which is why Random House is withholding publication.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121797979078815073.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

Now say thank you.

Selfishness

To choose between two women who love me, each of whom wants me and needs me, is not easy. Choosing between them without taking into consideration their needs or desires, and only my own, is a lot harder, but it's what I have to do.

Making a decision like this requires a very special and ruthless kind of selfishness, like that of an infant or a hunted animal. I hadn't ever expected to be forced to make that kind of decision.

And if you're sitting there reading this, feeling impatient about my endlessly saying "I have to decide, I really truly have to decide, and nobody can decide it for me, it's all up to me," I understand exactly. I'm tired of it, too.

Bad Man

No matter how this ends up, no matter which woman I wind up with, I will always look back on this time in my life with contempt and self-loathing, because I know that this long period of delay and indecision is causing pain to both women in my life.

Each of them is torn by uncertainty and ambivalence. R has passed up job opportunities in order to remain in the Willamette Valley area so that I would not have to decide yet, and also so that I would be available to my wife so that as my ex-wife, she would not be deprived of my assistance when she needed it.

Big joke: when my wife finally heard about this, she told me bluntly that once I left she would not want to see me any longer.

Christ's bones.

New Perspective

At feministe, quoting from http://collegecallgirl.blogspot.com/ :

One of the cruelest tragedies of the sex industry is that it attracts girls like me who already have skewed ideas about sex and self-worth and then completely reinforces all our secret fears. The men you meet, the whole lifestyle, whispers to you that you were right all along, that all that really matters is being desired.I still struggle every day to change my thinking. It makes me almost sick to my stomach to meet new people whether in a personal or professional capacity, because I worry they will not think I am pretty. Most of my friends are men with whom I have had former dalliances because I just do not feel comfortable around people who I don’t know with certainty find me sexually attractive. In my head, my worth is completely tied up in my appearance and sex. As a result of being abused at a young age, my thinking is fucked. There is something wrong with my brain. No matter how logically I know that who I am is more important than how sexy I look, I have internalized the lesson that it is my sexuality that makes me lovable.Of course, this is a trap that will keep me perpetually insecure because not everyone is always going to be attracted to me. When you feel that perfectly normal fact as a deep blow to your self-esteem, it’s impossible to ever really feel confident.

Fuck.

I wonder what my therapist will say when I show her this and say that Friend Call Girl speaks to my condition? My wife and I joked once about my working as a gigolo. Fuck.

Well, I had already decided that, whether with my wife or with R or with N or on my own, I was going to change some things.

But fuck.

Fuck.

I'm Sorry, N

Several months ago, my wife asked me to stop seeing N. I agreed, but I continued to exchange e-mails and text messages with her. We called one another by pet names and shared our concerns in a fashion which was more like that of lovers than of friends, but it was always our intention that this connection was intended to serve as a substitute for a romantic relationship, not as a continuation of a relationship held in abeyance. In particular, we used the word "moonlight" as a reference to the Moonlight Sonata, in turn a reference to Beethoven's unrequited love for his student, as a way of saying, "We will not talk of our feelings for one another, but we each know how we feel."

Still, my wife regarded it as a threat to our reconciliation, and she asked me to end it, and I didn't do it. I kept on talking with N, even though I knew my wife didn't approve. I shouldn't have done that. Oh, well, I've done a lot of things I shouldn't, in the last couple of years.

I didn't want to stop talking with N. She was a good friend, before and after our becoming lovers. Talking with her late at night was a high point of my day. And N was having a very hard year, including a very frightening illness, a medical treatment that changed her body in ways that she found very distressing and made her feel unattractive, and other problems that left her feeling a powerful need for a friend, and for someone to tell her that she was indeed loved and lovable, desirable and desired.

But finally, early this morning I told N that we shouldn't talk any longer, not at all. No phone calls, no text messages, no e-mails. And N, I'd appreciate it if you didn't post a comment on this post, either.

Our feelings have not changed. But we are not in a position to act upon them, so we will say nothing more about that.

This is one step towards my reconciliation with my wife. I want very much to be reconciled with her, and to continue our marriage. I hope that this will help move us in that direction. We'll see.

Honor Veterans -- Even the Inconvenient Ones

Major Alan G. Rogers was the first out gay man to die in the occupation of Iraq.

Not the way he would have wanted to be remembered -- for one thing, I'm sure he wasn't keen on the dying-at-an-early-age part.

But he was, even though the Department of Defense would rather you didn't hear about him.

Know what, DoD? Tough shit.