Don't drive me blind...

The weekend was spent at June Lake with some girlfriends, being mellow, enjoying the mountains, the snow, the complete and total lack of cell phone reception or internet, being blocked off from anything that could distract me from things that needed to be done.

And it was beautiful, it was perfect. Light snowing, that brisk wind that penetrates clothing, even though I was running around in a t-shirt half the time. The condo was lovely, a three bedroom design, perfect view of the lake, lots of space, decorated for summer vacations full of fishing.

I read and wrote, more reading while on the road, writing while curled up on the couch. Churned out a good 7,000 words over the weekend, which was nice. Haven't been forced to sit and focus on a story in a long time.

And my reading was Peck's Road Less Traveled, which was recommended to me a bit ago, then brought up again by the navy man living with my parents. Decided it was a sign of sorts, so I tore through it.

It opened me a bit. Helped me see things that I had not seen before, or at least old things from a new view. This is always welcome, if not always comfortable.

He said, of the many things that echoed with me, that to grow is to give something up. That one of the reasons why people do not grow is because of that loss, the fear of that loss.

And I was reminded of the time when I was just about to turn 18, when I was talking with an old friend about... gods, I don't remember exactly. I was trying to change, though I don't remember why. I was trying to feel things again, instead of being stuck in a constant detached apathy, but I was afraid that I'd never be able to regain that outer shell again if I opened myself up.

My friend, he told me that I would always be able to draw upon that detachment that I was so good at. It would always be there.

He was wrong.

But it was his confidence in telling me that I would not have to give up that shield that allowed me to step forth on the path I chose.

Because I was not willing to be vunerable, I was not willing to true change, not at the heart of me.

These last few years, maybe even longer, I've used sex as a shield when it comes to dealing with men. Not the act of sex, but my knowledge of sex, my over-experience of sex. It's a way to bring down the alpha dog because men so often define themselves by their experience, and it's so very easy for me to slide in and set them on their asses. I take joy in it, gliding in, unnoticed, and then opening fire, in my own way.

I thought, not that I was teaching, but that I was opening them a bit, that there was a purpose in the action.

But it's just fucking dick-waving. It's me being insecure in myself, just like those men who posture at each other, who talk big but can't back it up in the least, but they'll keep building the conflict.

Except I can back it up.

Where it is similar is the motive behind both actions: insecurity. Proving of the self.

And it is true that I sometimes do it simply because I enjoy causing social dissonance. I love that look of confusion, when someone's world view is suddenly not able to apply, and they have to scrabble around to try to make sense of things, you watch the gears shifting, clicking together, and it's a moment of mental vunerability, a quick absence of boundaries.

But there are times when I do it because something not related to sex or sexuality is making me uncomfortable. So I lean on my strength instead of confronting that which bothers me, developing it so I can be secure in it.

The muscle is weak until you exercise it.

And I'm allowing parts of myself to atrophy with disuse.

Which means I have to stop. I will never get better, never be more, if I'm not willing to step outside that comfort zone, give up that well-earned crutch, that sculpted shield.

So there's a project, one of many. But it's recognized. I know what I have to do now, and I'm aware of what things I do when I engage in that behavior with that motivation.

... ... ...

I went out with GV8 last night, hit Amoeba and Cafe Was. I really like that restaurant, though for the atmosphere, not the food. The food is okay, just not great.

But before that, he showed me the construction site.

The loft is coming along well. So much has been done in the last two weeks. It's going to be finished very soon and it looks better than I had imagined already. He walked me through the various rooms, showed me the spa, asked me about decorating and the like while I took pictures of the progress.

A stereo was playing, one of the works must've left it on.

Then Mazzy Star's Fade Into You came on and I asked him to dance with me.

And we did. We slow danced in the partially finished BDSM room, illuminated by a set of construction lights, footprints in sawdust, his hands roaming over my back, his face in the curve of my neck, then my hair, inhaling.

I could have sunk into him, merged.

Over dinner, we talked. Mostly about me, how I feel like I'm not living up to his expectations, how much it bothers me that he can't see how much I've changed in the last few years, how I'm weighing my words with him now because I'm afraid anything I say will get tossed around in his head without discussion until he makes a decision that greatly impacts me like he has in the past. We talked about love, falling in love, collapse and reformation of individual boundaries and identity. We talked about how he does not know what he wants, which is what is causing us such stress now. We talked about how insecure and anxious he makes me feel, keeping me on edge, that I'm losing trust in him because of his constantly changing mind. How I need a commitment to level out, that he's never, ever given me that, so he's never seen me truly level.

I came home happy, but exhausted.

Because he said that, this coming weekend, he'd take me out on a true date.

I'm not sure what that means. We've done "true" dates, in my mind. I don't ask for much, I don't need much, high-priced meals, shows... it's all the same, save for the novelty of the memory that keeps it standing out, and you can have novelty with a ten dollar meal.

But I'm excited. I'm looking forward to what he will do.

... ... ...

I went to dinner earlier this evening with my aging model friend I've brought up a time or two before.

We talked about GV8, and about me. How GV8 called me needy the other night, and how much that bothered me.

She said that I wasn't needy. And... I remembered... I'm not. When I'm single, I'm content. More than content, I'm happy, I'm confident, I'm attacking life with a machete.

Toss me into an unsteady or undefined relationship, I immediately become edgy, anxious.

And GV8 has put me into a highly emotional, insecure situation. So I'm being anxious, fighting my need to cling to him for stability he cannot offer me.

She also said that, in our discussion, and this is more me needing to remember this than communicate it, as my eyes are starting to close while I'm typing which will make coherency a risky idea, that I've watched my parents' relationship. My father's random outbursts of rage, my mother's constant appeasement, making sure that the rages are minimal, that they don't happen at all.

And that's what I do in my relationships.

I appease. I am constantly submitting myself to the needs of the man I'm with because I'm trying to stop any sort of outbursts or ending of the relationship.

It's fear-based. It's what I've seen, what I've learned without realizing. This is why I am so confident when I'm single, so happy and free, and why I'm so edgy and lose so much of myself when I'm in relationships. I give, not out of love, but out of fear, out of a need to appease, to placate.

This needs to stop.

I'm glad my friends are comfortable enough to talk to me about such things. I'm glad I know so many amazing people who are willing to put up, even encourage, my constant navel-gazing. They're a blessing.

They help me grow.

In bed, I crawled up his body, tongue sliding from groin to neck, lips coming to meet one of his ears while bodies writhe together.

He laughs and calls me his alpha sub, which causes me to pause his pleasure and look at him, head tilted to one side questioningly, "What?"

"You're my alpha sub," he repeats, which earns him another head tilt, "You're an alpha... and a sub."

I do not consider myself an alpha. I tend to step outside social groups and live the life of the roaming outlier.

But I do know that I am submissive, and that personality trait manifests itself strongly, enough so I have to be aware of it and control it to the best of my ability.

I managed to prevent myself from submitting to a man for over a year, though I had a few lovers and a couple one night stands, and then I hit GV8, much like running into a wall.

It amuses me so much, the thing that I have been told would ruin me, that would supposedly make no man want me as a committed partner, is what makes me desirable as a committed partner to him.

High partner count. Lots of experience.

Pleasing him because I'm wonderful in bed because of years of experience that would mark me to the socially/sexually inexperienced as uncontrolled and untrustworthy. That the only reason that he did not do a one or two night stand with me was because I knew what I was doing.

Because he learned that eighteen year olds might be young and hot, but they can't give head to save their lives, not to mention simply have sex.

Because women in their twenties aren't much better.

But I am.

We work towards partnership, towards that relationship. And maybe it will not work out in the end.

A twenty year gap in age, and I'm with a successful man, a man who is amazing in bed and happily works with me to get me up to speed. A man who has done so many things in life that I cannot help but know he would protect me at all costs.

Which is what I ask for.

I put in the time. I created who I am now, and I'm no where near done. I pushed boundaries, took the time to learn how to please, how to fuck, educated myself in life with books, with school, with people. Pushing myself to be the best I could be, which is still yet to come, so I could be with who I considered the best. To my own standards, my own values, which tend to befuddle so many others until I take the time to explain them.

I keep a wide view, a large scattering of social groups, a variety of music, books, movies, shows, experiences, so I can be the best I can be. So I can connect with others. So I can expand how I see the world and know all my opinions.

It truly tickles me how this worked out. I'm with a man I can actually respect, who I actually feel safe with, which means I can submit to him. And I would not have been able to do this with him if I had not pursued the path I had.

We're coming up on six months soon, six months of playing and never losing that excitment, that edge we seem to keep on what we are doing. Anxiety, amazing sex, nights out on the town, pleasing each other. No dullness.

I never expected this.

I was in the shower, maybe a night or two ago, I don't remember, and I thought to myself that I might actually love someone again. That I never imagined those words passing my lips once more. That my standards and expectations had grown too high and I was much too out there for most men to handle, for most to understand. I assumed that I would be alone, which I was mostly okay with. It's not like I'm ever actually truly alone, what with the various men whose company I kept for various lengths of time.

But I never expected to have a partner again. I never expected to meet someone I could respect.

Maybe I speak too soon, maybe this will all blow up in my face in a week, in a month, in an hour. But right now, the possibility is there and I find that startling.

And I love how this post didn't even address what I wanted it to. C'est la vie.

It tolls for thee...

He's breaking me down.

There's something to be said about submission.

Something strong running through you, in different ways, with different needs and trigger points.

My issue, as I will call it, though it is not precisely that, is my need to please and serve. My desire to have someone worth serving.

My submission gives up my individual identity. I cease to be myself and instead become an extension of my partner.

If I can submit.
Which means I need to relax and trust.
Which means my partner needs to make me feel safe and that he has to be worthy of my trust.

Safe means power and strength. Trust means perfect control and honest communication.

He's breaking me down, slowly.

My need to please rises, and I feel that tugging in the back of my brain telling me that I need to become his. That I need to sink into him, that feeling of perfect surrender, that feeling of willing loss of control.

Control, my addiction.

Because I have never found a man with more control over his lusts than I have over mine.

Hence the lack of respect.
Hence the lack of trust.
Hence the lack of surrender.

He breaks me down. I seek his body under times of stress.

He made me dance for him. Something I have never done outside of a club. I'm not a performer. The compliments, the confidence, the knowing that unless a select few people are on the floor with me, it is likely that I am one of the best in the club. It leaves me. Nervous and shaky.

But I danced for him.

In the half-dark. Song of choice, Portishead's "Strangers". I always return to my trip-hop.

Too nervous, too shaky, blocky movements caused by anxiety. If we had been at a club, it would have been so much easier.

When I finished, the shakes continued to vibrate my body. I walked to where he was sitting and gently dropped to my knees in front of him, put my head in his lap and slid my arms around his waist while he stroked my hair and told me how much he liked the way I moved.

I stayed like that until the shaking stopped.

And I knew I had given him something, a part of me that would cause us to entangle even more. A hook on a line leading from me to him, something that would hurt if he ever ripped it out.

It wasn't the dancing. It was the recovery. It was the laying with my head in his lap until I settled. It was using him for comfort instead of finding it in myself. It was trusting him to treat me gently until I calmed and fought off the waves of anxiety that come from a solo performance.

He was right. It's something to battle, something to get over. I've had many men ask me to dance for them and I've declined each one, too nervous, too anxious. He was the only one that meant something, that had that power over me, the power I had given him, that could make me dance.

We had sex later that night. It continues to get better, continues to get more intimate, and for the first time I felt the stirrings of an orgasm solely from penetration. Oddly, it did not frighten me. The idea that, one day, I could give up my focus, my control, my monitoring, of what goes on during sex, enough so I could relax and actually orgasm through penetration... amazing.

We come closer and closer to that vaunted "making love".

Something I've certainly never done. Not even with Rick.

It truly does amaze me.

And, maybe, all those people who talk about the ectasies of making love, of that partner they truly care about, how that sex makes all others pale in comparsion, maybe they're right.

But it makes me think of the couples that make love who have had sex with no other partners.

Do they know, really? Do they know the difference in feeling between a grudge fuck, a pity fuck, a fantasy fuck, a one-night stand with no pretensions, a caring fuck, a friendly fuck, or a drunk fuck? Do they know what it's like to have sex with someone who you do not love, possibly don't even know, where all it is is the physical and what you create inside your head?

I do not mean for this to sound derisive, but how do they know what making love is, if they've never encountered its opposites? If they've had no variation? How can it be treasured?

I've always laughed at the idea (for me) of making love.

That anything could be as good as the brutal, animal fucking that comes with a man like Riot. Being completely used and degraded, being tossed around like a blow-up doll because your partner is so damn strong. Having your mind so involved with surviving the sex that you can't actually be bothered with thoughts of anything aside from taking the blows and the penetration (wherever it ends up) as best you can, minimal damage. Days later, you're still staggering when you walk.

That, to me, is sex. Is perfect sex.

But now I'm entering a realm of something I haven't experienced, something I don't understand, and, honestly, I don't really respect the opinions of most of the people who talk to me about it because it's such a religious experience for them and they usually have so little experience in the sex arena that I can't quite take their information seriously.

Which isn't the best of me, I know.

Maybe it won't happen. Maybe GV8 and I will split before I ever get to that point with him and, maybe, because of that, it'll wreck my trust for any men in the future. It's possible. I am a bundle of damage, but at least I take stock of my wounds and attempt to heal them.

I picked up Dune as Hope suggested. A cult of women that I think might be my heros, save for what appears to be a heavy thread of spirituality. But maybe it will change me like it changed her.

Who knows?

I've always said sex is what you make of it.
But I'm starting to think that I am what sex has made me.

88 lines...

Mmm, mildly late-night blogging.

Was over at a friend's place watching Dollhouse. I love that show.

It's not just the show, actually. His apartment makes me feel very relaxed, just drains the anxiety right out of me. It's very minimalistic and clean, and the air conditioner works wonderfully. I'm a total A/C girl. Best way to get me to relax is to put me in a dim room with a bed and pile of blankets and, of course, the A/C running.

It's a childhood thing. When I lived in San Gabriel Valley my bedroom had one of those air conditions that would stick out of a window. My bed was directly below it and, on summer days, I would sit beneath it and inhale the cold air through my nose. Something always made it smell so good. It helped to put me to sleep, helped relax an energetic child.

My mother likes to recount the day of my birth. I was the firstborn, a project that took them five years to achieve. My birth was quick, I came out clean- no blood, no mess. I had done absolutely no damage to my mother's body upon exit. I did not cry, just settled in on her chest and slept. We've been bonded since that moment, if not before.

Of course, then I was constantly sick. Anything I could have, I did my best to acquire. I think my crowning achievement was getting Scarlet Fever when I was two, which is what is theorized to have done the damage to my heart.

I was, as I said, the firstborn. Not just to my parents, either, but the first grandchild on my father's side of the family. There was no shortage of babysitters and caregivers for me.

But something was a little off, and commented upon. Women rarely soothed me, including my mother. I would spend all morning, all day even, screaming with whatever sickness I had gained, my mother half out of her mind with dealing with me being so sick every day, but as soon as one of my male relatives or neighbors came by and she put me in their arms, I was calm.

This continued through my entire infancy, noticable enough that relatives still comment on it.

I still feel more at ease around men than women. The significant majority of my friends are male, and it has always been that way. I don't feel comfortable touching women. Even when C hugs me or touches me, I lock up without thinking. I don't know if it's a scent or the sounds of their voices, but I just cannot relax with most females.

I hope that I get through this one day. It's something I've been working on.

... ... ... ...

I am approaching the one-year anniversary of the end of my last relationship. In truth, I do not know exactly when it was. Not the day, not the month. I'll have to go digging through old journals to find it.

This is the longest I've gone without getting into a committed relationship since my first serious relationship.

This has been a goal of mine.

Singlehood. For a year. I was so craving freedom during the last six months of that relationship, so craving the stimulation provided by other people, wanting to roam and explore, wanting to get out, to go out, more.

And I have been. This year has been a fairly active one for me, though I feel like I've gotten mildly stagnant on the personal progress front, especially where it concerns tackling my social anxiety and doing things that make me uncomfortable, but only because I'm frightened of the unknown.

But a whole year.

A whole year of not being tied to a single entity. Of not having to think of a partner's concerns and wellbeing.

Of course, now that I've vocalized this, some random man is going to come into my life in the next few weeks, sweep me off my feet with what usually does it for me (intelligence, banter, drive, and sexual/social dominance), then tie me up and bone my brains out, then request exclusive access to my body.

Because that's my usual luck.

In the hopes that that does not occur, once I hit my one year mark, I think I'm going to do something special for myself. A vacation or something, all on my lonesome. And then I start plotting for my two-year anniversary.

It's not that I don't want to be in a relationship.

I'd like it, eventually.

But I don't think that it'll be easy (or possible) to find a man that truly suits me. That I suit.

And why should I get into a relationship with someone who doesn't entirely fit? I can get sex from any number of sources. There's no reason to settle.

Oh, gods, I'm beginning to sound like all those other blogs (usually by men) about the search for that one special person, and how they'll continue to live life and party it up until they come in contact with them. Save me from myself.

What am I going to do?

Well, this week:
-Drop my transcripts off at the university
-Register for fall semester
-Register for CSET
-Review my transcripts and compare what is needed for the two programs I am planning on entering
-Potential concert on Tuesday
-Dinner with friends on Wednesday, or a date, depending on if he gets back to me in time.
-Movie night with friends on Thursday
-Another concert on Friday
-Study for CSET, then BBQ on Saturday
-Potential date on Sunday, or Arrested Development marathon with a friend

Somewhere in there, if I manage to meet the man of my dreams, I will report back right away.

But, really, I think Henry Rollins is out of town, so there's no chance of me running into him.

(End note: I'm tired, I'm rambling, this is silly. I'm going to bed.)

(Secondary End Note: The more I've thought on this, the more this chain of thoughts keeps circling my head. I'm looking for someone worth pleasing, worth serving. Worth submitting to. Someone worth linking myself to in every way, though not necessarily right away. But I really do hope that one day I find a guy that I can respect in every way, a man that I can bow to, who will understand that particular dynamic not just as a sexual one, but a social one. My need to serve, to support, to please, runs so very strong. I want to belong to a man, I want him to own every piece of me, and value that ownership.

Until then, I'm going to run free and become the best I can.)