You and i

Or, the online version of "Are you my dommy?"

There is a weird phenomenon of online kinksters that I simply do not get.

Yes, my darlings, it's 'You' and 'i'.

I'm referring to submissives -- usually male -- begin begin emailing or messaging me and refer to me as 'You' (and themselves as 'i') right off the bat.

I do most of my play in person, so perhaps I've missed something here. This may well be the norm in online communications -- although so far, my experience doesn't back that up. Most charitably, I'm sure they mean well. Perhaps this is intended to be a sign of respect, or of status.

To me, it's neither -- and it irritates the hell out of me, for a few reasons.

First, and most critically, jumping into You/i in email communications puts me in a D/s dynamic that we have not negotiated, without my consent. I can't begin to see where this qualifies as sane, or consensual.

Second, I feel like I've wandered into a one-size-fits-all BDSM script every time this happens. The men who do this rarely have an idea of who I am or how I play. If they are looking for Ye Olde Standard Domme, I can't begin to tell them how disappointed they're going to be. Yes, I have the boots and the rope. Yes, I can be a mean bitch. And -- domme? With an '-me' at the end? Have you met me?! I am a gender bending feminist, who tops for her own reasons. I am not a 24 hour BDSM fantasy line.

Thirdly, if you do this in a public forum, you have potentially outed me without my consent.

Last, but not least -- I'm sorry, but you earn the right to call me by honorifics. If you are lucky, I will play with you as a friend and a equal, something I love to do. If you are extremely lucky, you will be allowed to enter into a D/s relationship with me, in which you earn the right to call me Ma'am, or Sir, or Mistress, or whatever the fuck I choose -- when I choose it.

I would be extremely interested to hear from others who do more of this online thing whether I'm just being cranky on this.

(PS: I should say, for the record, that calling oneself 'i', or anything else one wants, is always fine. It is always someone's right to call themselves whatever they want, and to ask for their preferred form of address. If anything, that's the heart of what I'm trying to say.)

On calling the scene

Lest I lose my switch credentials (I know, bloody unlikely!) I also have a few random thoughts on bottoming.

Tops, seriously, a word to the wise from a covert operative:

Trust your bottoms to call the scene.

Seriously.

If you don't trust your bottom enough to call the scene, you should not be playing with him or her.

Now, of course this implies you've set up means to call the scene. You have, haven't you? Maybe there's a safeword, or a color system. Or maybe you play one of many variations on "the counting game". (Mine is what I use at the very end of scenes when I want to go for the nasty wallops: Pick a number. Count only the "good ones". When we hit that number, you're done. Of course, when this game is played on me I am liable to start making up imaginary numbers just to be a brat.)

But unless or until you hear that call, or unless or until you're done (you being the Domly Dom and all that), or until you have fairly solid evidence to the contrary, trust that your bottom is with you.

Seriously.

One of my first play parties, I was co-bottoming with my then lover. We were both being played sadistically hard by two co-tops. It was harder than I'd ever been played before, and . . . I loved it! I loved it, loved it, loved it. It was challenging. It hurt like hell. And I think my lover (who generally had no reticence to caning my ass black and blue when she couldn't see my face) kept seeing me in pain, and asking if I needed her to call the scene for me. No, I didn't. What I really needed was for her to trust me enough to know I'd call it if I had to. And I have to say, the only major downside to that scene was that her concern for me kept pulling my energy back down, and made it harder to give in and fly. She meant well, but it had exactly the wrong effect.

I recently heard something similar from another bottom, who was playing the counting game with a top who was beating her to the point of tears. "Do you need me to stop?" the top asked. "Have you heard my number yet?"

Seriously. The reason we pervy bottoms do this stuff is that we like it.

I know that doesn't make sense sometimes, particularly if we are crying, or making pain faces, or screaming, or calling you a rat bastard or a bitch. I know it's hard sometimes.

But you know, crying is not a safeword. "Rat bastard," and "you stupid little cunt" are also not safewords. 3.14, 42, or 93 if your 'number' is 7, is not a safeword. (Although technically 23 might be. But I digress . . . ) No, the safeword is what we've agreed on.

Until we get there, I'll agree to safeword if I need to if you'll agree to stop fussing over me in the meantime.

How to Fuck Up

There's an interesting thread going on right now over at Mistress Matisse's journal about codependency and rescuing. In short: guy is at wits end trying to help his addict girlfriend, guy appeals to Matisse for advice in how to help girlfriend, guy ends up getting some advice he probably didn't at all expect about dealing with his own codependency. Unsurprisingly, the entry touched a nerve. The comments board is on fire with folks' opinions on all this.

Somehow, from links of links of links, I ended up at an oldie but goodie from the Alt.Polyamory FAQ. I haven't read Elise Matthesen's "How to Fuck up a Relationship" in a while, but it's still a good one. (And no, it's not just about polyamory.) If you want to fuck up a perfectly good relationship, there probably isn't a better game plan.

Go read it. I'll wait . . .

Seriously, though, building a healthy relationship keeps coming down to pretty simple strategies.

• Develop tools to know and understand yourself.
  
• Develop tools to communicate.
  
• Use them.
  
• Take on responsibility for your own "stuff": actions, emotions, feelings, desires. Be accountable.
  
• Respectfully decline to take responsibility for your partners' "stuff".

Sadly, while this stuff is "simple," it's sure as hell not easy. What is the saying? A minute to learn and a lifetime to master? It's that. It doesn't help that we're up against an entire culture that encourages dysfunction.

And everyone has their own stumbling blocks. It's not easy, not at all. But looking at the alternatives of codependency and mutual resentment, I can't imagine intentionally going the other way.

And its all on a foundation, one block on the other. If "you can't exchange power you don't have," it's equally true that you can't be in a relationship if you don't have a self to relate from.

It all starts with knowing yourself. I don't care what your practice for knowing yourself is. I'm fond of sitting practice and Julia Cameron's "morning pages" but everyone has their own way. Meditation, yoga, trancework, therapy -- whatever works for you is your way. But without that practice of self-knowledge, there is nothing to communicate. No responsibility to take, and none to withhold. There are no clear desires and no means to articulate them. There are no means to determine if something is working for you or not. And that feels like a very dangerous place to be, and a very dangerous place to take others.

Polyamory, emotional distance, and practice

Mistress Matisse has some very astute things to say about polyamory this week.

And I think she nails the absolute key quality that helps keep things working: perspective.

No one can predict with perfect accuracy how he or she will feel about anything, but exactly how you feel isn't as important as how you respond to those feelings. There is a key trait in people who do polyamory well, and it's this: They are good at regulating their strong emotions. By that I mean, when something emotionally intense is happening to you, either good or bad, you're able to see it as part of a larger whole and keep it in perspective.

There's a lot of very good, pithy examples in the article -- go forth and read it.

As a magickal person, I'd add that this is yet another place where having a daily practice fits in for me. I don't particularly care what someone's daily practice is, but I am a huge fan of having a solid anchor to return to when emotions get off kilter. For me, that's my morning pages (unpublished writing in which I can rant for twenty minutes), my sitting practice, and my yoga. For someone else it might be regularly grounding and centering. Or aikido. Or a regular workout routine. For a poly person, it might be a regular time to personally sort through their feelings before a checkin with their sweetie.

The key to me is that these kinds of practices create just a small moment of distance between ourselves and our emotions. I have emotions, I feel them - but I am not the same as what I am feeling. "I am angry," has one set of implications. The difference between this and "I feel angry" is more than semantics.

The other thing for me about a daily practice is the discipline of it. I'm very good at pushing through the steep incline of learning something new. I absolutely detest the long plateaus that inevitably hit my practice afterward. Working through the sore muscles of renewing my workout practice? No problem. Actually getting on the mat twice a week no matter how I'm feeling? A lot harder.

But, I'm thinking a lot about what Matisse has to say about maintaining existing relationships in the face of new ones.

But you can't act like a junkie who needs an endless New Person fix or your original partner will freak out. You have to feel all the good emotions your new relationship is bringing you, while continuing to love your existing sweetheart the way they need to be loved.

True, that. And, also the lesson of a daily practice. Daily practice -- with the emphasis on daily -- is all about returning to center in the face of the new shiny. I write my morning pages as close to daily as I can, no matter what's up. At my best, I do the yoga whether or not I feel like it. And, the real nugget there for me is that despite all of my resistance, I always feel better after those practices than I did before. When I am on the mat, I may feel a ton of resistance. I tend to bargain with myself to make it through just five more minutes of class. It's just like trying not to safeword, some days. But when I make it through, I never have the thought that I wish I hadn't. I never once leave feeling that that investment is a waste of time. In a way, my practice is my existing sweetheart, and my practice gives me the skills to (one happy day) nurture a primary partnership through both the inclines and the steep slogs.

A Kinkster's Guide to Pantheacon - Part 1

For folks that don't know, Pantheacon is the longest running pagan con on the West Coast, usually netting about 1000 pagans every February for conferences and rituals on every topic under the sun. I've been attending off and on (mostly on) for about twelve years now, and try not to miss more than a year at a time, if that. The further I get away from the West Coast, the more Pantheacon is my yearly family reunion.

I also have a soft spot in my heart for Pantheacon as a kinkster. I've been going to P-Con since long before I realized there was a kinky "community." I was poly long before my 23-year-old self first went up to San Jose, but P-Con was my first chance to actually meet other poly folks, and talk with them in person about what worked and didn't in their own relationships. I remember how many years I was too scared to go to the ecstatic Pombagira ritual to the sacred whore; it makes me laugh now, but it's true.

I remember the huge trepidation I had about going to see a flogging ritual demo with Dossie Easton and Joy Wolfwomyn perhaps eight years ago. (And remember being mildly surprised that the top in question was the very sweet-looking woman that I'd met at Elie Sheva's Hebrew Paganism workshop the day before. Shows what I knew back then!) But I did go, and that was the first time I really, deeply got it that kink might be something that fit with the rest of my life, with my values, with my spirituality. And of course I haven't looked back. I've made it to as many of Dossie's workshops as possible since: kink workshops, poly workshops, hot chakra-opening exercizes. Every last one has been itself worth the increasingly long trip out.

And my own first flogging was at Pantheacon, too. I remember still the negotiation we had over pizza, the full table of pagans getting wider and wider eyed as they realized that I was going to let my priestess and top friend C. use her barrage of floggers on me. (Good thing, too - she'd gone through hell getting them on the plane, so best she got some use out of them!) Everyone skipped the next workshop, went back to C.'s room, and Miriam got naked and flogged a bit. Years later, I did some of my first topping scenes at Pantheacon, teaching a young man the sephirot of the kabbalah with some very nasty binder clips applied to the back. (I think the difference between mercy and severity might have seemed rather slight on that!)

Even my tools tend to come from P-Con; almost all of my floggers come from Pantheacon vendors, and hope to get a proper hand-made corset this year. (And, insha'allah, a collar.)

I'd started this post planning to talk about kink- and poly-related workshops on the menu for this year, but I'll save that for another post tomorrow. This trip down memory lane has been far more interesting, now that I think about it. I realized that my early adventures in kink were linked with my magickal practice, but hadn't realized quite what a debt I owe to my beloved Con for that. This year, I hope to pack an inordinate amount of rope and keep the tradition going . . .

(to be continued . . . )

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Some folks like to work out their frustrations through BSDM.

I get it, but I'm not that girl.

My period has started. I'm in pain, and I'm cranky. I want a gold star for not killing anyone yet today. It doesn't matter that it's barely daylight out and I haven't actually left my house yet. In fact, I think I want a new gold star for every hour I don't kill anyone today.

On days like this, I can think of nothing I want less than to play someone. Take out my frustrations? Um, no. I'd seriously draw blood, if just for the symmetry of the thing.

Nope. If I'm going to control someone, I want to be in control of myself first. If I'm going to discipline someone, I want to do it from a place of self-discipline. I play to gain mastery, not lose it.

One happy day, I shall slip my (as yet hypothetical) service sub notes from under the door: instructions to run me a hot bath, pour some red wine, and then take $10 and go to the movies. Only then I shall slink out from the confines of my room and become the good mistress again, restored by hot water and the sympathetic magick of red beverage, and most of all by solitude and understanding. I shall return to laughing and being myself, to inflicting pain and pleasure with skill, to being in control of myself enough to control others.

For today, I shall draw myself little gold stars with a highlighter, and get through the day dreaming of that bath tonight. Perhaps I'll keep reading Sex, Time, and Power which is just starting to make sense of all this blood and moon nonsense.

On Icebreakers

In a munch last Saturday, the discussion leader asked about New Year's resolutions. What a fantastic opportunity for an icebreaker! Sadly, it didn't work out so well for a lot of folks.

Being me, I have some suggestions.

So - you're in a kink meeting. The leader brings up an icebreaker question, such as, "What are your resolutions this year?" Or, "What is a fantasy that you'd like to act out?" Or something even worse, "What's one of your secret or forbidden fantasies?" Something like that.

If you're most people, you freeze, right? How can someone ask something so personal and earnest of me right here, right now? How can I answer that in front of all these people, many of whom are complete strangers?

Or, perhaps you go for the literal truth. Well, I did make a resolution this year, and my resolution is to lose weight or clean up the house or pay my bills or whathaveyou.

Stop for just a moment there. Just pause.

When the cute guy or girl at the grocery store asks how your day is going, do you really feel obligated to tell the whole and dirty truth: that you just had a bad day at work, and the cat just puked on your carpet so you have to buy cleaner? Not so much, eh? You smile and say, I'm fine, how are you? or perhaps you even go for a pickup line. That's what's happening here. Just breathe for a moment with me, we're going to be okay.

So, a few suggestions.

First, there's no one grading you here. In the kink example: no one knows or cares if this is really your most forbidden kink. There is no one with a scorebook or a lie detector. (Although that could be a fun scene.)

Second, this is your opportunity, and one you don't get very often. Right here, right now, you have the opportunity to say something that might encourage more of what you want from the scene. If you're looking to play more publically, you might say that you want that. If you are looking to be left more to yourself at parties, this would be a lovely time to say something about your singular devotion to your dom. No one is asking you to confess your secret Daddy play fixation in front of everyone. (Um, ooops!)

Third, you get points just for answering. For the resolutions, I really paid attention to the folks that didn't resist the question, or argue with it, or try to use a cop out. I paid a lot of attention to the folk that answered with something - maybe not their "real" resolution, but something. Why? Because those are the folks showing me in this moment that they have the social skills to use an opportunity like this for connection, and to speak up for something they want. And those, my friends, are the people I want to be playing with. In a few cases, I made note of the actual resolutions. In most cases, I just noted who spoke up.

Finally, the more specific the better. Saying that you want to "play more" is a start, but not terribly helpful as an icebreaker. It doesn't tell me if you want to top, bottom, or go sideways. It doesn't tell me if you're looking to play more in your bedroom or at parties, with just your partner or with others. It doesn't tell me if you're into singletails, canes, floggers, needles, mindfucks, cageplay or rope. It doesn't tell me much at all that helps me to get to know you better, and that's where it really falls down on the job.

For myself? I believe I said that I want to be doing a lot more rigging this year, both in my mundane and magickal life and on cute bottoms at parties. When I got a couple of volunteers, all the better. I made a date to play with one of them the very next day, fulfilling both our resolutions at once. Huzzah! Maybe next year I'll be ready to be even more specific, resolve to perfect the art of hair bondage or something like that. Who knows?

That, my friends, is what the icebreaker is for. It's your 20-second opportunity to put your best face forward to ask for something you want from your community. No more, no less. No panic.

Now go forth, and break that ice!

Riders

For those of you expecting an entry on pony play, my apologies for the misdirect.

No, today I'm thinking about the other kinds of riders. Those long lists on which big named rock stars spell out all their desires for a show: M&Ms with all the brown ones picked out, or day lilies, or local barbecue.

This morning, doing something as mundane as plucking my eyebrows, I realized that I have a set of riders for play.

Mine are quite nearly arbitrary, but strangely essential. A great many of them have to do with my mane.

• My hair must be well-kempt (at least to start). I wear my hair up so much for topping that on the days I wear it fully up otherwise I find myself being saucy and sly all day.
  
• Well shaven, natch.
  
• Eyebrows plucked or waxed. (If I cannot at least have ruly eyebrows, how on earth am I going to manage a bottom? I mean, really . . . )
  
• And, fizzy water. Perrier, or the like. That's the rider bit. It's not that I must have it; I'll take a pickup scene where I can get it, and I'm not a water fetishist. But the reverse isn't true. I almost never drink the stuff except when I'm scening. And so having it is a signal to self to go into scene space. Grabbing that nice cold bottle on the way into the playspace or bedroom? Mmmm. That itself gets me a little excited; my reptile brain knows exactly what's coming.
  
• I'm a sucker for robes, and blankets at the ready.
  
• And of course there's the little detail of choosing my toys to take on a party or out of town trip.

A little less formal than, say, using magick to get into scene space. But no less ritual. Some of these things get me in the mood hours or days before a play date. I pluck my eyebrows today because of things to come days from now. I am preparing myself, and that means that by the time play comes, I've got all of myself on board and ready.

And I have to say: I definitely suggest it. In my life right now, my play dates tend to be planned out weeks or sometimes months in advance. If I were waiting on an arbitrary "mood" to arrive (or not) I'd be lost in the water for a lot of it. Having these little keys to remembrance helps me bring myself fully to play in a way that is subtle, slips past all my guards, and is amazingly effective.

Documentation

I've been thinking a lot lately about the power of documentation.

A lover once told me, "I feel like as you go through your day you're also writing about it in your head." She seemed a bit concerned by this: not concerned that I'd write about her, but that I might somehow not be fully living my life because my writer's brain never turns off.

And I have to say, at least in part: guilty as charged. I think of myself as a poet and a writer at least as much as I'm a witch. I have published in print and electronically under five names, put out two 'zines, helped produce three others, have run two Web sites, and currently have more blogs than I can count on one hand. Granted I'm no Ana Voog, but I've done a pretty good job of documenting my life, with more or less artistic license.

And, that changes how I look at the world.

The first change is somewhat passive. I constantly collect images for poems. I sometimes think of pithy phrases for my blogs as I go through my day. I am constantly scribbling down ideas for blogs or articles or books. So that's true.

More than that, there's something about documentation that makes me actively push myself into a different life than I might otherwise have. To write on a topic -- and I have a few I write on -- I need to keep up at least a bit on that topic. To write about magick and power exchange means that I have an extra incentive to keep honing my knowledge about two of my favorite things. I am generally not content to have a boring day; that gives me nothing to write about. (Yes, I realize Plath could wax rhapsodic about picking her nose. But please, let's not make her an example.)

It's not just writing. When I was a teenager, I desperately wanted to be Andy Warhol - not to be famous as an artist in my own right as much as for touching and connecting others' fifteen minutes of fame. In my twenties, I created and hosted salons and played yenta to other artists. I wanted, and still want, to lead my life as art. And so I've always surrounded myself by creative people, and so I tend to watch what they do as well: visual arts, performance arts, songwriting. I have no skills in those arts, but have a deep appreciation for them. I can only manage a good camera well enough to photograph well behaved subjects like artifacts and museum pieces, so of course I'm amazed at how these artists capture everything from gorgeous landscapes to writhing bondage babes. I've been intrigued by photography for most of my adult life, at least as long as I've been writing. Self-photography intrigues me. Little image blogs. Large installations. But I tend to watch it, not do it. And I'm okay with that -- the photography has other uses for me.

The community whose SIG I attended last week has both a bondage SIG and a photography SIG, and there seems to be a solid overlap. And so, as I found myself tied six ways to Sunday, there were also flash bulbs going off in all directions, photographers setting up shots, and the lively interplay of artists between the photographers, riggers and bottoms, who in turn seemed to keep switching roles. Naturally, I loved it.

And now suddenly I find myself with hundreds of shots piling up. In a few short months I've gone from the girl with the "don't photograph me" band on her arm to a massively documented bona fide rope slut. Just like with my writing, the representation is not the experience. (And I've been a postmodernist long enough to never expect it to.) And yet the representation is its own thing: a reminder, a testament, and ideally a dialogue with the experience. I find myself wondering, along with: what affect will this tie have on my bottom? also: what will this look like? what is the symmetry or deliberate asymmetry? how will this look at thus and such angle? Along with: how does this rope feel to be in? or: how can I do some yoga and dancing in this suspension? a bit of: how can I vamp to the camera? A physicist or post-modernist might call this observer theory: the camera does not merely document an event, but changes its very nature.

Perhaps that's what my lover was getting at. And I have to cop to it. And, I can't say I see it as a bad thing.

The SIG was going at a much higher level than I've seen before for demo and teaching work. Was it just the nature of the community (which has a lot of very good riggers)? Perhaps. But I like to think there's something else at play here. Rope is an art form which is beautiful in part because it's ephemeral. But photography changes that dynamic a bit. The ropes aren't just ephemeral and dynamic. They're also processual - the process is the product, and the documentation helps retain that. And of course the photograph takes the rope a step further into a tool for product: the finished photograph. So now we have three levels of art going on at the same time, at least: the ephemeral feeling of rope on body and power exchanged, the process of the tying and untying, the product of the photograph.

There have long been days I've wanted to play Kiki to someone's Man Ray, so perhaps it's no surprise I seem to be surrounded by photographers. There's something erotic about the dynamic when artists of different media come together: dancers and musicians, riggers and photographers, visual artists and writers. The dance between arts has an erotic charge as hot as sex: the orgasm that starts between the ears. If I recall correctly, the Thoth deck has art as alchemy, and that's it exactly: the third being that emerges when two creative beings collide.

On Going Sideways

"There's the road to heaven
And the road to hell,
And there -
There's the road to Faerie."

I'm giving a lot of thought lately to third roads and other pathways: queering the categories, genderfuck, switching. Paradoxes and in-between spaces.

Should I start by saying that there's no "better than"? Do I need to? If I do, let me say: there is nothing wrong with being straight or gay, being top or bottom, being gendered, being firm in one place. But also - there is nothing less than in being where I am, which is a place where none of these distinctions hold much meaning other than providing points of frission for play.

Even when you get to recognizing switching in the scene, there's a whole mode of discourse on switching that less and less resembles who I am or how I play. The discourse seems defined by a set of either/ors that don't fit my life. The local scene is actually pretty "accepting" of switches, but still there are groups that are open to "tops, or switches in top mode," or "bottoms, or switches who are in bottom mode."

First, you have to get there. You have to get beyond the question "Are you a top or a bottom?" Please don't ask me who I am, at least not by providing a set of binary checkboxes. Instead, ask me what I do. Asking, "Do you top or bottom?" would at least be a first step. Asking "Do you top? Do you bottom?" expecting an answer for each not contingient on the other would get us even further there. But not quite. Not for me anymore.

Top mode. Bottom mode. I used to think I knew that that meant. I had a lover once with an icon that had a little picture of a light switch on it, and said: "I do switch. Do you?" And I loved that icon. I was just starting my adventures in topping at that point, and the idea delighted me. Yes, of course I did! And I felt a lot like that light switch. Up position: now I am topping! Down position: now I am bottoming!

And at first, I'd get frustrated. Why couldn't I hold myself to one of those perfect boxes? As a bottom, I began to find myself noticing exactly what my tops did, taking notes. Did that make me a "bad" bottom? As a top, I found myself wanting to please. Did that make me one of those terrible service tops I kept hearing so many bad things about?

And yet, there was already something compelling about switching. That lover with the light switch was the one who growled to me, taking me down for the first time after a short history of bottoming to me, "There's a reason that I'm usually the bottom, and it's not that I'm the nice one . . . " And I kept finding it over and over to be true, and delighted in it. By accident or design, I found that to a one the masochists that topped me played me much harder than any top ever had, and I loved it. I quickly grew to expand my capacity even more as a pain slut under these vicious players than I had in years of (just) bottoming to (just) tops. These days, I get the same feedback about my own play; I take people harder than they might otherwise go, because I've been there, and I know the way.

I think it was my priestess training that actually began to change things for me. The concept of dual awareness began to really sink in, and seep over into my play. Ah, yes. I can top, and still be open and vulnerable. I can be tied up, and maintain enough dual awareness to also learn the ties I'm in and plan to use them later.

But it's more than that. There's a kind of alchemy that I'm just starting to explore. A place where I'm not either/or but both/and, and I honestly can't tell what parts of me are running top or bottom energies or why that distinction would be relevant. There are moments when it's all just life force - my life force connecting with the life force of someone else, and becoming a new entity. The ferocity of getting back to my early days of incredible rough sex before anyone ever thought to ask me what team I was playing for. Getting back to just life force.

Ironically, or maybe not, this is coming at the first time in my life that I'm also gaining a serious interest in D/s.

I had an amusing moment the other day at the SIG. I was in a partial suspension, lazily swinging in a completely comfortable chest harness, one leg in the air, slowly working my way from a half moon up into standing again. One of the local riggers said, "I could have sworn when I met you at ARS you were a top." I just smiled and said "I am . . . !" And there's no paradox for me there for me any more.

I am still dropping the last vestiges of worrying about being seen as a top or a bottom, and I'm happy with that. It's a process. Mostly it's not my ego that makes me not want to lose "cred"; it's my desire to keep finding bottoms who will play with me. And I find as I give in and trust the process that it still happens, pretty much in the way I need. I love that surprise of folks that mostly see me in one mode suddenly seeing me in the other. Even more, I love those that can see and honor both of them in me at once. Something as simple as my calling in a sweet submissive who's never met me to do a quick act of service for me while I'm in suspension: beautiful.

There's a great moment from the SIG last week caught on tape. I'm dressed already, have my glasses on, but Pyrate Lass is still in a full katana. I'm testing her breasts for sensitivity, "all in the service of photography". She's in the rope, but she's standing, I'm kneeling. I'm doing, she's receiving. But she's beaming. I come back from it, and one of the photographers orders, "Do it again." And Pyrate Lass beams "And she does!" as I do. Who is topping here? Who is bottoming? Does it matter?

Like most things in my life, this is a work and play in progress. I don't think I've figured out an ending point. It seems more likely I am just beginning to queer these categories.

Service

Sacred service is the path of honoring what the Other needs, in the form it appears to them. Yet it is doing so without losing the essence of Self that the Other called into service. It is never second guessing, but it is often looking ahead of and beyond what is asked.

It's a paradox.

(If you think by service I mean bottoming, or service topping, then you probably have never seen me go sideways yet. Hierodules and priestesses R us.)