New sex partners have a way of showing me a new perspective, putting a spin on something familiar so it seems unfamiliar and exciting. Occasionally, completely foreign concepts come up. Mostly, it’s different. That’s something I seem to gravitate towards — different-ness. It’s therefore impossible to talk about sex with T without at once comparing it to what I experience with my Master.

T had a handicap the Master never had. With my Master, I was crawling up his leg. T, however, was forced to take it slow. Master insisted on it, and I agreed — things should progress at a pace that Master was okay with. T seemed to deal with this quite well — he was obviously quite experienced in holding back.

Our late-night conversations involve quite frequently our past relationships. T talks about his girlie before me, and I find myself talking about Master, and the asshole I dated prior to Master. T has the deepest of respect for the Master, and is in no way like him. I like this different-ness, since what attracted me to the Master is not present in T, and yet I find myself enjoying him as well. I’m feeling reacquainted with my body in a way I haven’t in a long time, with T eliciting responses I’d long given up on, after a number of dissatsifying encounters with those prior to Master.

One night, late, T and I lay awake, limbs tangled, discussing how things tend to play out for us in bed. T spends a lot of time attending to my wants and needs, servicing me in his own ways, more often giving love to me than asking for any kind of tit-for-tat exchange. “Why do I deserve this?” I asked, panting, after T had spent the better part of two hours slowly teasing me to climax with hands and lips and tongue. My old programming was rattling around inside my head — a man who gave hours of petting and oral without a natural expectation to jump to the next step?

His happiness, as he tried to explain to me, is not dependent on him being able to stick his dick in me. It turns out that watching my enjoyment is satisfying enough.

It is no insult to my Master that this concept did not come clearer earlier. It’s not been until now that I’ve had a sexual relationship with limits, limits aside from those I made myself for my own personal comfort. I’d never had that period with Master where I disallowed certain contact; with T, there were days where all he could do was look and wish. I had difficulty grasping that the looking would be at all satisfying.

The conversation spun off into a discussion of worthiness — to have a worshiper, someone who existed (even for a moment) for nothing more than to bring my body pleasure, someone who would follow my curves and kiss their sensitive parts, whose idea of a treat was to be able to taste my orgasm, especially if he’d caused it. I was unfamiliar with this concept, of worthiness. Why am I worthy of this sort of treatment, this worship?

He looked at me, confused, flabbergasted. I am worthy because I am worthy. My worthiness is inherent. Crazy woman, what a question. You are worthy because I’ve decided you are. And he worshiped my body.

I’m still used to thinking of sex as some kind of exchange. A transactional thing. If I want oral, I’d better be prepared to suck some dick. That kind of thing. However, more and more, the lovely people who’ve been doing the majority of my sexual educating have been teaching me that it’s about asking for what I want, telling them what works well, to be daring and adventurous, playful, but certainly not convinced that there’s expectations or that my desires for certain activities will only be met if I’m “deserving” enough. I don’t need to earn love. I am already worthy.

I’m hoping that this realization will mean I’m more comfortable with saying when I want something and what I want. Prior to this I’d sort of been letting the situation declare itself and going along with whatever appeared to be appropriate at the time. There was no real thought put into what I wanted, or how to go about obtaining that. This is not to say that I am or ever was dissatisfied with the intimacy I shared in these situations, just that my future encounters are very much limited by this glitch in my thinking.

I am worthy, I am telling myself. I do deserve what I want, and I should not feel ashamed asking for it. I’ve been enjoying this new freedom I’ve allowed myself in sexual expression. I’ve enjoyed feeling comfortable in my own skin and powerful enough to be able to initiate what I want, when I want it. I am loving how the ability to initiate things myself doesn’t mean T stops chasing, either; I still find myself receiving a string of kisses planted down my neck and shoulders, receiving invitations to more should I so desire. I’m enjoying the open-endedness of it.

I’m enjoying being in control.

That’s the word for me. To develop exceptionally early or exhibit mature qualities at an exceptionally early age.

I taught myself to read before kindergarten. I grasped cosmic concepts (the immutability of time, the certainty of death) before age 5. I was a generally strange kid who didn’t socialize well, from what I remember. And sex. Well, sex came entirely too early for me.

It wasn’t even my cousin telling me the plumbing of how it worked. (We were like eight and six, respectively.) It wasn’t even when my mom caught me playing with the Barbie dolls. I think it was when she found out I’d been playing “house” with the neighbor kid, and the not-minor freakout she had over this knowledge. Before third grade, I not only understood how sex worked, I understood that it was important to hide this kind of activity from my parents, lest they have a gigantic meltdown. No talk. Ever.

I’m never going to forget the way she asked me, stooping down to get in my face, in a confrontational manner. “Did you suck his dick?” she asked, browbeating me. “Did he jack off in your mouth?” I felt like a horrible, filthy, sick, perverted, twisted, disgusting person. I was eleven years old, eyeing older men, wondering at what an act of rape would be like, wondering at the experience of sex.

Because I couldn’t trust my parents, everything I ever learned about sex was something I learned from somewhere else. Pornographic magazines, the internet, the radio. I’ve talked before about how Sue Johanson is one of my personal heroes; I’m lucky to have had her while growing up. I’m lucky to have grown up riding public transit, where the government publicized links to places like sexualityandu.ca. I feasted on reliable and correct information, and used all the birth control correctly.

I was armed with a false sense of security, knowing what facts I needed to know to keep my body from being physically damaged. I was completely unaware of what place sex served in a healthy relationship, however, and so when my boyfriend-at-the-time started correcting me every time I said “If we have sex” to say “when we have sex,” I didn’t take it as the pressuring I should have. I didn’t see how he was trying to control my boundaries, by setting them for me verbally. I didn’t feel the profound sense of violation I’d feel now, knowing my boundaries. Boundaries had never been explained to me. I was a slut. Sluts don’t get told about putting up boundaries. I was wrecked anyway. I was sixteen. I was fucking a man nearly four years older than I was. My mother was convinced his relationship was based entirely around his ability to use me for sex. I believed otherwise.

The day she figured it out, or rather, the day she screamed about me fucking him, throwing it in my face, and I gave her an answer that wasn’t “fuck off,” … that’s a day I will never forget. There was tons of histrionic crying and hysterical screaming, shouting, threats, shows of violence, and emotional abuse. For the next six months, my mother froze me out of her life. I fantasized about suicide.

“I just don’t know how I’m going to tell my family that my daughter is a slut,” I remember her whispering, between sniffles and tears. I fantasized how my skull would fly apart from a self-inflicted shot to the head. I imagined dying slowly of a wasting disease, leaving home, becoming pale and cachectic and thin. I wondered what it would be like to die of a drug overdose. I was too scared to jump off a building. Guilt, guilt, guilt. My boyfriend was no help. He lived alone, and complained about my mother constantly. I ground my teeth down to painful stumps. He threatened suicide. At first I was scared, concerned for him, missed him, loved him. Later, the attention-seeking behaviour became exasperating. Then, came the Master.

My Master met my boyfriend and lived with him for a short time. I was pressured often to spend time with him, in compromising situations, often asking me to use my Master or my best friend as a pretext to borrow a vehicle and be afforded additional freedoms. At first I exploited this, and Master was given many opportunities to observe me with this strange man. I was depressed and sullen. Then came a night when I deliberately didn’t invite him along somewhere, because I knew he would try and make me have sex with him, and I had no interest in being effectively date-raped. It was at this time that I realized he didn’t respect my body, or what I wanted, or my boundaries. I began avoiding him in earnest, and the histrionic behaviour erupted in full. I didn’t break up with him, because I was terrified if I did, that he’d kill himself.

My Master, who by then had moved out of my boyfriend’s apartment, felt that this was an opportunity to act. I remember listening, horrified, as he detailed to me the list of things he observed while living with the man who would come to be known by many names besides his own. The behaviour obsessing around sex (and calendar marking to match.) The misogynistic comments. The sense of entitlement. The arrogance. The ignorance. I sobbed on the phone, after my boyfriend had yelled at me for lying to him to keep him from being able to have sex with me. He knew I was avoiding him, but I had no idea how to tell him I was terrified of him, that he made me feel unsafe. The Master stood up for me, tearing a strip off of this man on my behalf. The act was sealed when Master returned with the report of how guiltless, entitled, and arrogant the boyfriend had been when Master insisted he treat me as I deserved to be treated. “Are you going to talk to her, too?” he asked, as if my Master was my parent to mete out punishment on the boyfriend’s behalf. Instead, he told me the truth. Master saved me from a pitiful little man, rescuing me from a situation where I, and my precociousness, were being taken advantage of. I smiled for the first time in years.

The ideas about sex stuck, though. I was shocked when I was discovered to be having sex with Master, and my mother was amused rather than infuriated. I was convinced, down to my bones, she was going to kill me and gouge Master’s eyes out with her fingernails. With no explanation, she laughed instead. I learned nothing.

I still believed, as I had when growing up, that I was broken or tainted or unworthy in some way, because I was a slut. From being made fun of by my little brother for being a closet lesbian, getting caught using porn, slurs based on my more boyish appearance, my strangeness was polarized for some people. I hated myself. I wasn’t a virgin, I wasn’t thin, I wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t stereotypically ‘hot’ (big-titted-narrow-waisted), I wasn’t popular… I didn’t even think I was particularly smart. I’m almost ashamed to say that my relationship with Master was not one of romance — I leapt out of a sick and sorrowed relationship, out of a fountain of emotional abuse, into him. I crawled up his leg, into his bed, and unloaded, piece by piece, my months and months of pent-up need for, and lack of, love.

Fortunately for me, Master was smarter than that. He insisted that that not be the direction things take, and caught me, carefully, and put me down. I tried to take advantage of him, sexually. He held me at arm’s length, until I stopped with the force, and he held me close, until he wanted to do more. He picked me up, bandaged my wounds, and didn’t let anything complicated develop until he felt comfortable with everything. He was gentle and careful, calculated and slow. For months and months, our sexual activity consisted of me crawling into his bed, naked, so we could nap together. I had no idea how to expand things, how to get what I want. I had no idea what I really wanted. We built a sexual relationship out of teenaged fumblings, and it’s taken a great deal of time to get comfortable talking about sex and about what feels good. I still feel guilty for asking for things (such as oral) despite many reassurances to the contrary. I still feel like an asshole when I tell him to stop because it hurts.

My precociousness and my armament of knowledge didn’t lead me into good choices, and I was unable to distinguish between sexual attraction and an actual relationship. I wasn’t protected by being shut out. I was unable to seek advice. What should have been a strength became a weakness. I grew into this idea that I should be this totally willing and submissive little thing, a real slut, with no desires of my own, since I was value-less after having lost my de facto virginity to the man before Master. My precociousness, my early development, should have been an opportunity to teach me how to wield the weapons at my disposal, how to protect myself. I was taught to ignore that part of me, and later, taught that it diminished my worth. “Who wants to marry a person who’s not a virgin?” asked my schoolmates, at Catholic school, and later at college. “Not me!” they’d chime. I’d remain silent, trying to shrink myself smaller.

The first person I had a healthy sexual relationship with was my Master… and it seemed the strangest thing, at the time. He insisted on the above — that I tell him to stop when it hurts, that I not have sex I don’t want to have, that I not do anything I don’t want to do. This seemed foreign to me at the time. I remember being stricken with a dermatitis or vestibulitis of some sort from having reacted to a particular brand of lube, and every act of sex was excruciating. Halfway through, Master noticed my pain, and I was sorely chastised for letting him hurt me like that for his own benefit. I have value? I was bewildered. This man I had known before Master, this man who was three-plus years older than Master, who was so much more experienced … he’d never made me feel as if I could ask for what I wanted, or refuse. He’d never made me feel valuable, sexy, beautiful. I had missed out on the best part of sex entirely.

I thought back to my sexual experiences prior … on the ex’s inflatable couch, being groped, knowing that within a time frame of hours he was going to take me to his room and try to have sex with me. Instead of acknowledging the feelings I had on the subject, how distasteful I found the idea, instead of refusing, I simply talked myself into it, trying to relax, detached, for when the inevitable moment came. I ignored my revulsion at the completion of the act, and tried to ignore him as much as possible while he was performing it. I was emotionally detached.

I think my mother’s idea was that she was protecting me, by making sure I knew nothing. Her idea backfired in the sense that I learned everything there was to know — factually — but nothing about what there was to know — functionally. I could tell you brand names of birth control pills, but nothing about intimacy. The solution my mother came up with was to pretend that intimacy wasn’t possible because of my age, my sluttiness. Or maybe she just forgot to mention it, what with all the talk of what a whore I was and asking me if I did it ’so I could feel loved.’ I was never asked a single question about sex that didn’t sound like a personal attack before I’d even answered. I was terrified of her, but knew sex was as normal as breathing. I had to figure it out on my own, somehow.

I hear this type of thing is genetic — my grandmother developed early and so did many of my aunts. My child might end up being much like me, in this way, and I think about it all the time. How will I handle it? Will I have to explain to an eight year old or a six year old, one day, what sex is, without lying to her or making her feel as I did, as if she were a filthy valueless little thing? And if I don’t, if I indeed tell her (or him) the truth, how many people are going to come crashing down on me, thinking I’m setting my child up to be assaulted sexually? Truth be told, I had no concept of what sexual assault was until I was over the age of 18. Several of my friends had experienced it without realizing, this non-consensual-but-not-totally-forceful sex, myself included, without seeing that we were being taken advantage of, with no advice on how to protect ourselves from things besides pregnancy and disease.

I had no power to say ‘no’ and no idea of when I should say ‘no’ or why. It’s this that I feel it most necessary to correct. I had a significant decrease in my self-worth with the knowledge that I was a slut, and so have vowed to never make my child feel ashamed about their sexuality. It’s a huge part of me, and of my life, and trying to shut off that part of my personality, or not being allowed to experience it because I’ve been taught it’s ‘wrong,’ is one of the bigger travesties of my teenagedhood. It’s part of why I have felt it so important to write about sex, and my sex life, and my sexuality. I need to come to grips with this somehow, to jackhammer the idea out of my head that this is somehow wrong, or bad. Fortunately, I have Master, T, and my good friends around me. My children will grow up happier than I did. That’s a promise.

That was the year I first remember hurting myself deliberately. I concentrated very hard, considering what I was about to do. I remember assuring myself, steeling myself, saying to myself, the next step, this next step, I’m going to do it, no matter how much it hurts.

I remember the feelings, old memories, fond, often-handled. The way skin felt as it tore, the taste of blood, the way one direction would tear off long strips, another direction only small chunks. I remember testing the waters, getting to a place where it really, really hurt to continue to do what it was that I was doing, and then pushing myself harder to steel myself against more and more intense pain, feeling proud as I took it in stride, as if that alone was what made me strong.

It doesn’t matter what particular method of self-injury I chose — habitually I chose those that were easy to hide — I’ve been doing it longer than I can accurately remember. I used my teeth inside my mouth, tore thick strips of skin off the soles of my feet, pierced my fingertips with needles, taking care not to pierce so deeply as to draw blood, and then grabbing the needle and pulling it out of my skin by force — making sure to create a tear from puncture point to needle exit, a layer of skin I could then tear off with my teeth, satisfying.

In the beginning, I rarely drew blood — except by accident, scratching a little too hard, pulling skin off until it tore membranes underneath, drawing blood. These were painful injuries and difficult to explain. Why does it appear as if I’ve torn off a good chunk of skin on the palm of my hand? Uh, … because I did. What happened? Oh, an accident. Insert lie, concocted on the spot, spun to hide my strangeness.

I could sense this, the sense I was different in this way, that other people didn’t do this. I noticed it in the way my brother never picked at scabs that grew, the look on my mother’s face when presented with some of my injuries (a slight bit confused, raised eyebrow, she knows my explanation doesn’t add up, but it doesn’t matter, because she’s too terrified to ask me what really happened, so if I give her something plausible enough to ignore, she’ll give me an ice cube / band aid / bottle of peroxide so I can go get on with my life.)

I would later learn about ‘cutters’ — how they hid their scars from everyone, how they deliberately caused themselves pain and make themselves bleed and then hid it from everyone because it was wrong. At this point, I had been tearing chunks out of the inside of my mouth for years — scar tissue, altered sensation, permanent changes be damned. I would start with a little nibble and eventually I would find myself faint, slightly nauseated, spitting clots into a cup, staining sheets, marveling at how much blood there seemed to be to my child’s-mind, this blood I had sucked out my self-inflicted wounds.

I was not a ‘cutter’, I assured myself. I did not ‘cut’. there are no ‘biters’. I did not have the mind to think broadly in scope yet, nor did I know that inclusive phrase which would come to be coined for this — self-injury — I minimized my behaviour. Well, that time I smashed my head against (hard object) for the purpose of attempting to do myself some real injury was isolated (and so were all the other times that were exactly the same.) The way I bit myself so hard that it caused nerve damage — I couldn’t feel three fingers for close to six months, because of the crushing power of my own jaw on the nerves running through my wrist — there were no ‘biters’, I said, and since I bite instead of cutting, I am not this ‘cutter’ thing that my brother makes fun of and nobody understands.

I remember the bad wounds, as they healed. Ah! I would cry out. So much pain! Worse pain than causing these injuries! Surely this wasn’t fair? But God does not play fair, and neither do the creations of one called God. My injuries would heal and hurt four times as badly on the healing as on the inflicting — but that wouldn’t stop me, as soon as they were healed, as soon as I could feel that smoothness of healed skin, the nibble would start, and the tearing, and the blood.

I am self-conscious about them … nobody must know, after all … and so any occasions experienced in everyday life where I might be ‘discovered’ were fraught with anxiety. I remember fighting myself to not — not — do something that would get myself noticed, but like all of my addictions, it would sneak up behind me, and I would catch myself, mind finally not racing with thoughts, and a sudden awareness would creep in upon me — that taste, the taste of blood, the feel of skin between my teeth. I hesitate so so much to call it self-injury because while it was an injury and I was doing it to myself, it seemed so … trivial, at the time. The best coping mechanism I had.

I have gotten better about it over the years, and under the quivering threat of Master’s wrath. He so does not enjoy his slut desecrating her temple. Everyone must show a minimum of respect to my body — even me.

A friend the other day mentioned the concept of play piercing in a BDSM context (in an offhand way — she finds it sexy.) I have a few piercings, permanent ones, and had actually just finished stretching one shortly before the topic was brought up in discussion. Despite having had my piercer joke when I had my nose pierced that “yeah we’re a pretty reputable place, piercing isn’t about gay leather men getting BDSM kicks anymore!” I had never totally connected that sensation of being pierced with eroticism, but once I did, the eroticism of the idea washed over me.

From a scientific point it makes perfect sense — cause pain, body releases natural painkillers, you get a free high. I remember watching an episode of Kink, specifically watching a woman be play-pieced in the buttocks with what appeared to be one-inch, 23 ga. hypodermic needles. Thoughts crossing my mind remained detached and primarily in the role of observer: “That would hurt. She’s bleeding. Well, at least the needles are all sterile — if you’re gonna do this kind of thing, good to see they’re doing it right.” This was years ago.

It was not until this evening, when I associated the small level of eroticism I get from stretching piercings (while meditating on my habit of tugging on the machineheads in my earlobes when I’m cogitating) with the physical act of being pierced, and thusly, with the sensation of being pierced. I was discussing with T the two new piercings I want to get in my ear, which I have already gushed to Master’s boredom about, when it hit me. I’m on the couch, patiently nipping at my lip, careful not to draw blood, and I’m talking about purposeful injury for individual gratification — piercing, and therefore, play piercing, was for the first time, placed on that same shelf of mine, next to my self-soothing tactics described above. Replace relief and mental quiet for eroticism and passion and I felt as if my world came sharply into focus.

For me, a girl who grew up terrified, a girl who knew familiarly the taste of blood-clot before age 10, the reasons I find myself going back to my (minimized) SI type behaviour is the same as appears in the textbooks: something to feel, when I’d rather not feel self-loathing or fear, a way to feel alive, an attempt to clean up ‘loose ends’ (I made many a nailbed bleed profusely with my attempts at “manicure.”) I thought about the relief, of perhaps not feeling that compulsion to tear-rip… I felt a different kind of relief, and in that relief came sweet, sexual feelings, the kind that don’t slip in when there’s stress around. Without causing myself pain, only dreaming about piercing == erotic for 15 seconds, and I had relaxed most profoundly.

I thought on this epiphany, wondering at it. I dismissed it actually happening in reality, since I once remember (much younger) promising Master I would not ask him to draw blood, and that is a promise I stick to. There are limits to how comfortable he is damaging his toy for her pleasure. I understand.

I feel as if a door has been opened. This is no fetish gong which Master must-ring or our Relationship Is Doomed, rather, an internal understanding that didn’t exist before, an understanding that while I have this idea of using Master’s influence on me to help correct incorrect assumptions and to re-program default settings, there’s a possibility that simply through the act of living out my cravings for pain through Master, this SI thing  I’ve had for 15 years might be fixable too.

If I can relax simply by thinking about such eroticism, would integrating this type of thinking (play = soothing because play = pain and pain = soothing) into my sex life help me curb the desire to cause myself pain as a way of deserving-him? Is it deserving-him or is it punishing-myself or is it flaw-hunting with a hypercritical eye? There are many complex reasons why I find these things soothing, and I don’t totally understand them yet. I do know one thing, however, and that’s that if there’s a way for me to somehow eliminate this desire to be-so-perfect, this high-strung constant-worry buzz that weighs on my mind constantly, I’m ready to try it. This one involving sex and the use of something I love anyway is a bonus. Ah, I pray so hard this is possible! Better living, better personhood, better relationships … through kink.

I was burned out yesterday. Too many nights, no sleep, all work — whether work-work or school-work. I arrive home at a strange hour, crawl into (a cold) bed, and attempt to sleep. I sleep until evening time, where I have an hour or two (perhaps) to recuperate and eat and pack for my work shift before it’s off to work for another graveyard.

It’s snowed 40-some centimeters total in the last 5 days, and over a weekend, too, so no plowing the roads and sanding was heavily delayed (especially on Sunday morning and the middle of Saturday night, when I still had to safely make the 35km trek to work.)

My first evening to myself after this had finished, I was wiped, with all of my favourite resources (sense of humor, patience, understanding) worn down to a thin membrane. I cried. I needed to connect, to be human. I texted the Man, the husband, the one who’s far away. “I can’t fix your problem from here,” he soothes on the phone, and I know it’s true. He comforts me anyway,  and I grow the confidence and shed my embarassment at my emotional state. I have a unique reason for feeling so disconnected and discomfited.

I crawled out of my hiding place, asking the Second to follow me back. I begged him to connect with me, talking about how I’d been hesitant to ask for this earlier in the evening, feeling as if I always am the one demanding me-time and trumping him-time, feeling as if I’m surely an inconvenience. I articulate this, telling him how I feel. “I think I shouldn’t ask for things, even when I need them,” I confess, remembering my formative years, “I feel as if I should just float along, and not disturb anyone.” Ironically, it is doing exactly that — moving in and out of my place as a ghost, connecting with no-one — that has led me to start feeling so worn down, causing the erosion in self-confidence. The paradox is not lost on me.

My husband comforts me on the phone, and the Second comforts me with touch, connecting and reassuring me that it is never wrong to ask for what I need. He admits that sometimes he is unable, but it is never, ever wrong to ask, he insists. He calms me, insisting that though I feel as if I’m an inconvenience, this is not a feeling based in rationality, that I’m trying to be considerate, but that it’s ultimately his decision to make — gently, gently chastising me for making the decision for him, for not-asking because I had already decided he wasn’t wanting to give it to me.

“Sometimes, I say not now, but it’s more a matter of ‘it’s not what I had in mind’ — maybe I was thinking tomorrow, instead of today? So ask, I didn’t realize you wanted. I am willing to give these things to you.”

My boys take such good care of me. It is my responsibility to make sure that I let them know what I need… instead of immediately assuming that they aren’t interested in giving it to me.

For those of us paying attention, Pope Benedict XVI, or as they’d call him at my high school, le pape Benoît XVI, is visiting the United States.

I’ve seen very little of this in the American media — you think they’d be apeshit over it — nor have I heard much from the Canadian newswires (though to be fair I haven’t been paying much attention.) A quick read through the top Popely headlines in a French newspaper has things pretty much summed up though.

I’ve often said I enjoy reading about American news in French newspapers and Canadian news in American newspapers and all sorts of combinations of the above. International bias is a beautiful thing sometimes, and in this case, it jumps out all over the page.

Les francophones autour de moi won’t need a translation but I’ll summarize one or two articles for the rest of you.

In Washington Thursday, the Pope expressed his ‘profound shame’ regarding the pedophiliac-priest scandal that has rocked the entire Catholic church. That same Thursday, he met with a small group of people who were sexually assaulted by clergy members. The majority of meetings and speeches he’s given, however, have been varied as to the content: to the American people, he states that clergy-related rapes should be viewed “in the bigger context of sexual morals” of the American people, as if these rapes are somehow the fault of a lack of morality on the part of the general American population. His speeches to the Bishops, however, contain a totally different tone: “Your efforts to care for and protect are bearing their fruits; not only as part of your pastoral responsibility; but for all of society as well.” Having these facts all on the same page makes it quite clear that Benedict believes the problem of rapist clergy is in fact the result of American sexual immorality, specifically pornography, and goes so far as to tell the Bishops that they are doing a good job in handling the scandal.

Let’s digress for a moment, to see how the glossing over of this important issue is a very deliberate political move on the part of a politically conservative figurehead who is empowered by the people of the Catholic church to be an idol on par with God. Let’s not forget the commandment that stated one shall not have idols before God — however and unfortunately, many Catholics (and Christians) take the word of the pope as the word of God directly, without considering personal agendas.

The official priestly pedophile scandal did not erupt in a major and public way until 2002, when a Boston-area bishop admitted to having kept silent about sexual abuses committed by clergy members. It was the pope at that time, John Paul II, who entrusted Benedict with handling it. He wasn’t Benedict at this time, of course — he was a simple cardinal, Josef Ratzinger, responsible for the all-powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. In total, more than 10,000 children were sexually abused since 1950 by more than 4,000 priests. After a long period of abject denial, the American church was finally forced to take responsibility: 700 priests had their priesthood revoked, and 2.3 billion Euros (3.65 billion Canadian dollars) was dispersed by the church to buy clemency from the families, avoiding several embarsassing lawsuits, and finally, an official zero-tolerance policy for pedophilia within the clergy was instituted. (This is, of course, over and above the actual law within the actual criminal code that forbids sexual contact with minors when in a position of authority.)

Many victims are dissatisfied with this result, saying that it is one thing for the pope to express shame, but that he has revealed no mechanisms by way this tragedy can be avoided in the future. Elsewhere, the pope gives the impression that he’d rather gloss over the issue of sexual abuse by clergy members, stating that every sector of society is touched by sexual abuse, and that this should be considered alongside the abovementioned sexual immorality that he says pervades the United States. He never gives specifics for how the issue will be handled, nevermind having been personally at the helm for the last six years. He simply uses it as a springboard to slam his favourite scapegoats: mainstream media, pornography, and general moral bankruptcy:

(translated from French quotes): “What significance is there in talking about protecting our children from abuse when pornography and violence can be seen in so many living rooms, across the many media outlets easily accessible today?” He stated that reaffirming the ‘fundamental values of society, in order to give young people and adults a solid moral foundation’ was something he hoped for.

Within what was supposed to be a intervention about rapist pedophiliac clergymen, the pope managed to broaden his scope to include “the media and the industry of entertainment,” and the danger of secularization in a country with 65 million Catholics — the third highest concentration in the world, after Brazil and Mexico.

It’s a devious jump, the jump from rapist pedophiles to pornography to mainstream media to secularization. It’s interesting to note that when Benedict mentions pedophilia, a rapist clergyman, sexual assaults, or his shame, the next subject out of his mouth is about America’s moral decay. As if America’s moral decay suddenly makes a man who attended seminary school and took a vow of celibacy unable to prevent himself from sexually assaulting a small child.

It’s important to pay attention to his word associations, as they’re tricks pulled by religious pundits quite frequently in print media. The reason he always mentions these subjects side by side is to cause people to think that there must be a correlation between the two (or three, or four) — and that correlation perhaps equals causation. Nothing could be further from the truth, but it is how major political and religious leaders use the media to manipulate our opinions.

During his stern talk to the 400-some bishops, the pope highlighted some points to take note of. He preached that by moralizing the United States, by banning pornography and violence in the media, he hopes that ‘the children’ will therefore avoid degrading situations and vulgar manipulations of sexuality, which, according to him, are omnipresent in the present day.

I personally fail to see how less violence on TV makes fewer priests rape children, but I do see how controlling our media by calling for the desexualization and desensationalization of the same would make the Catholic church a more powerful political identity. He also preached against secularization, and against the once-a-week Catholics, stating that it is unacceptable to attend Sunday mass and then spend the rest of the week promoting practices that are against the doctrine of your faith, which, as far as catholicism goes, means no sex except for procreation and under no circumstances may you use birth control.

I find it personally quite interesting that the pope wants to control the sex lives and the media consumption of 65 million target Americans, but will pay out somewhere in the neighborhood of 3.5 billion dollars American to prevent rape victims from filing lawsuits and will secretly relocate them to make pressing charges extremely difficult.

God loves you. Jesus will forgive you. But the Catholic church as a political construct will stop at nothing to gain total control over what information goes into your head (as little as possible and as dogmatic as possible) and over how you live your life and affect those around you, and they want you to live your life with only the tiny slivers of information they’ve given to you. Dogmatically they go so far as to pressure that they should reserve their skepticism for science, not faith — that instead of having faith in science, and the thousands of years of experimentation and eureka!s that went into it, we should devalue it at every opportunity.

Don’t buy the smokescreen about pornography — pornography is not making priests rape little boys. Pornography is a word that Benedict uses to distract the easily-distracted from the topic at hand — that their young sons are being sexually assaulted by men in a position of authority, ordained by the one of the oldest Christian traditions in existence, by men who’ve taken a vow of celibacy, by men who you trust to confess your darkest secrets to so that your sins may be forgiven.

This is a church that will remove a priest from the priesthood entirely, shaming him for a lifetime, for having consensual sex with a woman once — but will relocate a priest to a new parish for having raped perhaps dozens of young children.

I thought hard about it. I really did. And there are some parts of the Catholic church that I will keep with me for the rest of my life — but I cannot, in good conscience, associate myself with an institution that would protect rapists from legal recourse and silence victims with injections of cash, all the while trying to control my access to legal and consensual sexual activity, stating that it’s what contributes to the moral decay of society.

I call bullshit, Benedict. No man who protects rapists from the full punishment they’re entitled to will be looked upon kindly by God, and I refuse to accept such a man as my religious leader.

Consider me excommunicated.

My Master and I are learning to do a thing we never did learn… a thing the construction of our sex life seemed to skip.

This is through no fault of anyone’s, and is actually a product of the times, and of my society’s brainwashing young adults about sex. I had finally broken out of a long-dead relationship, and my awakening had mostly been to do with the experience of my Master’s love. He moved close, lived with the long-dead boyfriend, learned more about me, about the relationship I existed in. He watched as we spent time together, my long-dead coupledom, himself, and my best friend.

He watched my eyes as they traced the ground and my flat voice as no touch of the long-dead could awaken me. He knew (from conversations) that it’d been more than a yearish since I had had sex. He knew (from living with the long-dead, hearing him talk) the number of days it had been, as an exact number.

He knew (as I had told him, between sobs) how I craved to feel closeness and loved, and how I felt nothing from this man. I was living in difficult and strange times, short on close friends, limping through my last year of high school, trying to fade away from my tortuous family. I had no sympathy or empathy from the long-dead, and there was no end in sight.

Master threw himself down as a hero. He controlled the situation. This is Master’s calling … to control the situation, to make a difference, to improve lives. He did it without expectation. He did it simply because he loved me.

He swooped in on the long-dead, itemizing selfishness. She lives with a mother who views her daily with scorn, he scolded, and here you live, alone, bankrolled by your parents — sobbing to yourself about how your life is so difficult because you can’t fuck her?

My Master’s love for me shone through.

I gravitated towards this love, searching for warmth. I wrapped myself around him. Once severed from the dead, I slept with Master, enjoying his warmth. It was our first real shared experience. The snuggling. And napping. I had never done anything so intimate and so lovely.

I threw myself at him.

There is no other way to describe it. We have described it between ourselves as exactly this, multiple times.

He protested. He thought too highly of me. He wanted to make sure it was right. I think he was afraid of taking advantage of both of us. Of me.

The first time we were together was memorable for all sorts of bad reasons. What I remember most clearly, however, is the feeling that things were different now, that I could exhale, as if all of my sins were suddenly washed away.

We did not learn to tease this out of one another. There was no dancing around the subject. There was abject need, deep-seated want, and submission.

Now that Master is gone, I am learning to tease and be teased. He is so far away, he is learning a patience that was never required of him when he lived here… he is learning to tease and be teased.

At this moment, we have words. Occasionally voices, but sometimes, only words. So we tease each other with words — no senses, except those generated by the mind.

It helps we’re both heavy-duty readers and good writers. It helps that we’re both communicative, have been from the start. It helps that we both love technology and will communicate with whatever technology is at hand. IM, SMS, lots of abbreviations in technology. It means we’re good at it. So we revel in it. Teasing each other, with only words.

It’s been an education in what we want. Newly uninhibited, secrets formally abolished, we’re talking about things we’ve never talked about — with no judgmental attitude and no hurt feelings. Just openness — hands, palms up, on the table, a meditation on openness and sharing.

I have booked a trip down in May (shh don’t tell) and anticipate some particularly needy sex. I plan to draw out the need … on both our parts. I want to experience that deep-seated want, that quivering, near-painful need, and I want to watch him unleash in want.

I’m learning to tease, to draw it out, to make him be patient, whether it be by resisting (ah!) or controlling the situation. He’s had his admonishments but I have my own ways of being drawn out — and they involve the silent fingers of a flogger on the curve of my back.

There are times, however, when I don’t want to feel submissive. Times I don’t want to defer control. Sometimes I am the one in control … most recently, with T, the close-at-hand boyfriend.

T is submissive by himself. I daren’t ask him to dominate me … aside from the fact that Master disallows it … since he’s so submissive I doubt he could manage to truly throw me down in a way that had meaning. I have to believe it, or I’ll fight back. I don’t believe it, so I don’t fight back, or submit — I dominate. It’s a setting, almost, an if-I’m-not-being-dominated-then-dominate switch.

I dominate T in ways that don’t seem like actual domination. He came out of a relationship where he had everything he’d asked, for a long time. When he started dating me, I made it patently clear to him that he was not going to be able to ask-and-receieve … that it was up to me whether he got it or not, and that sometimes, the answer would be ‘not.’

He pays his attentions to me, occasionally getting me very riled up — I tease him back, enjoying how I manipulate his responses with my body. Eventually we are breathless, nearly on top of one another, quivering with anticipation. When he takes me, he takes me over and over again, on my urging, until we collapse in a heap, exhausted, hot and sweaty.

I like teasing him with my body and studying his responses… pretending I don’t notice the erection brushing against my wrist, pre-cum trailing down my side, my arm. I will deliberately graze sensitive areas and tease myself away — rolling over in bed and twisting. Arms wrapped around me are manipulated so they grip me in a sexual way or not at all … hard to stay unaroused when your hand encircles my breast.

It amuses my Master when I tell him about it, how I coax and tease this man into a frenzy with my body, and let him give me orgasms until I am gasping and dry-mouthed. I return the favor … painfully slowly … but the painful holding back always gives way to a grappling acrobatic sex act, something stimulating mentally as well as physically. I know he enjoys having the opportunity to enjoy my curves, dampness and folds, to bury himself in woman as I know he desires. I am predatory in my ways, yes, but my prey is not mishandled.

My master soothed me on the phone today, telling me about how I shouldn’t be afraid to talk about how much I love sex, even sex with men who aren’t him, even how much I enjoy fucking T. He has the option to not read it, and would rather hear about my enjoyable moments than have me keep my mouth shut about all the good parts for fear he’ll get jealous. If he only hears the bad parts he is similarly disinclined to let me play with boys!

I remember the last time I played with girls in earnest, how I beat the one with the crop, how disappointed I was when she cried out “too much!” … my Master talks of one day acquiring a lovely little slut besides myself, and training her to be a third. I imagine, sometimes, watching my Master fuck her, fill her with semen … I like to imagine what a theater show that would be. It would appear as if I’m a bit of a voyeur.

In talking about my tendency to switch, my Master and I discussed some of the other sexual activities I’m interested in exploring with him. We came out with a pretty impressive list, one that reads much like a porn category browser and not as a list of kinks: group sex, bisexuality, anal, DP, BDSM, voyeurism, cuckolding, roleplay, nonconsent, and on, and on. How much of this do I want to explore with my Master? All of it — even if he’s not the most involved party member, and is simply the one in control.

How interesting … that I dominate when left to my own devices, but when Master is involved, he automatically gets control, in my mind. I think it’s telling … I think it’s good.

There’s a lot of backstory to all of this, but I promised myself not to write this blog in chronological order. If I started at the beginning and worked my way to the end, I’d never be finished. There’s so much I’m here to discover and enjoy.

I have had all kinds of problems in my history believing certain things, good things, about myself. I was raised by alcoholics, who are well known for their ability to defer blame — it was not their fault, it was my fault, kind of thing. I grew up in this environment, somewhat toxic, with a stunted ability to love myself, to believe in myself, to stand up for myself, to know I was lovable.

I’ve struggled with mental health issues and relationship issues, especially among best-friends. I felt for a long time as if nobody would understand me, as if I was perhaps so weird as to be unlovable. That is, until I met my Master.

He loved me, and loved me so hard — it’s as if he believed that by loving me hard enough, he’d be able to reverse the brokenness in my brain. Well, he’s discovered that he can’t reverse this thing simply by loving me hard enough, but together, we’ve come up with a plan.

We’ve long enjoyed together games of power and lust and control … especially with him on top, and me being submissive to him. We’ve decided together that we’re going to come up with a plan … a plan to help train me to be the person I am capable of being — that person who is lovable, and who loves herself. I’ve long frustrated my Master with my tendency to brush off compliments but take criticism in close — he has determined that there should be punishment for such a slight against his judgement, and I agree with him.

Maybe it seems a bit extreme — a beating for some self deprecation — but the upside is it’s something we both want. A new realm to explore, sexually, something special just for the two of us, something we’ve dreamed about for a long time.

I enjoy the pleasure-in-pain that comes with BDSM. I wonder if it reduces my tendency to self-injure, and why — I know I have had far fewer episodes of SI since we started talking seriously about doing bondage. That said, there’s things like stretching my piercings that some would see as SI that I am not defining as such — but the days of head-scratching lip-biting skin-pinching are over.

Mostly I enjoy deferring control to him. I worry about everything, all the time. This is no different when I’m having sex — I worry about pleasure, his pleasure, my pleasure, whether we’ll have orgasms, together, separately, whether he’s enjoying my body, whether it’s a good position, etcetera. I spend very little mental time actually enjoying the feelings of having sex … I think this is why I like to defer control.

If I’m being controlled while somebody takes me, I need not be concerned for their pleasure — it is up to them to be concerned for their pleasure. Nor do I need to be worried about my own — it is up to them to take me and have me how they will — I’ll simply enjoy the act of being taken by force and lustfully fucked.

I’m incredibly lucky in this sense to have who I have, this nonjudgmental person, gentle but strong, firm when delivering those whistling strikes to my ass. He enjoys the submissiveness of the situation too, though I’d be hard pressed to say specifically what it is about said submissiveness it is that turns him on.

I know I enjoy the feeling of helplessness, limbs restrained, as digits and perhaps toys probe my nether regions. I enjoy not being able to control what happens to me sexually — I want all the attention I can get, nevermind the technical nonconsensuality behind it. I love being something so lusted after that he can’t help but mount me and fuck me given the opportunity.

Of course, rules need to be drawn up. When is it appropriate to correct me, and for what? What are appropriate levels of correction for each infraction? What requires a single correction and what justifies an entire afternoon spent in a scene, slowly torturing me and punishing me into a whimpering pile of woman, mewling softly for cock.

I must say that the more Master and I talk about his plans for me, how he plans to train me for the future, I get all wet and excited. He assigns me homework — toys to get used to, since he’ll want to use them on me, that kind of thing — and then demands pictures via camphone. I don’t dare let anyone look at my cell phone album now — if they did, they’d see some very compromising things.

Maybe that’s part of his ulterior motive, I wonder … to make me walk around, all self-conscious, wet in the panties and with a shot of my pussy in my pocket.

That would be humiliating in the perfect way to amuse him.

He’s far-far away now, on this business trip, and we talk on the phone… he whispers to me, in a hoarse and quiet voice, hiding somewhere … a storage closet, maybe? … all the dirty things he wants to do to my body, and make me do to his. Sometimes it’s all I can do to not sink to my knees right there, at the sound of his husky master-voice, the voice he only uses with his slut, when he calls me his slut.

Until I can get close to him and see him and taste him, have me scoop me up in his arms and trot me off someplace, I will have to content myself with this — with imagery, with text, and with that expectant feeling between my legs.

Being a slut does not mean I have no boundaries. This is by far the easiest mistake to make. Most people hear ’slut’ and they associate it with its traditional definition, sexual promiscuity. In this context, however, I use slut in its more modern sense, as a choice to have sex with whomever my partner and I decide is appropriate.

You’ll notice that in the original article the emphasis is placed on having sex with anyone one so chooses, regardless of pressures. My deviation from this definition is a thing they never taught us about in sex-ed class — Boundaries.

Boundaries are a set of rules laid out ahead of time, so that everyone remains comfortable. The list of rules is long, and some of them are implied. Every couple has its list of boundaries — whether openly discussed or not.

I am a slut. This means I have a high sexual appetite, and desire stimulation in ways aside from what society calls “normal” sexual outlets. I desire multiple people, of multiple sexes.

By far the biggest hurdle for me to get over in rebuilding my sexuality is the hurdle of other peoples’ expectations. It’s very easy for me to get hung up on ideas about what other people want my sex life to be. Monogamous, vanilla, vaginal, no-batteries-required, unaccessorized, on my back, in a bed, legs spread, like I should be. It’s that should word that I bristle at — that I’ve bristled at all my life. I don’t take kindly to people telling me how I should live my life.

So if they are not free to tell me how to have my private sex life with my private partners, why does multiplication in any degree give ‘them’ any more right to degrade my choices? So it’s two girls, instead of one man, or one man and one girl, or a man aside from my declared. So it’s a man aside from the one who took my virginity — if such a thing can truly be said, being as I’d broken my hymen myself from penetrative play long before I’d seen an erect penis.

By far the biggest misconception is that having sex with multiple partners automatically means that I am having sex without value, without emotional attachment, without the proverbial ’strings’. That sex with everyone aside from my husband (and perhaps even my husband!) is emotionless, flat, a simple act of masturbation between two people.

Many people (with no research to back them up) will go on record stating things like ‘premarital orgasms ruin your ability to form lasting relationships‘.  The theory is based on the fact that every sexual encounter releases oxytocin, the hormone of attachment, which promotes strong feelings of interconnectedness between two people. Some Christians, particularly one Eric Keroack,  believe that multiple exposures to oxytocin dulls the body’s natural response to it — that eventually the attachment hormone gets worn out and stops making people feel attached to one another.

This theory sounds like it makes a lot of sense — we know this happens with other drugs in the human body. The part where this logic departs from common sense is the part where Mr. Keroack and other people trying to control your sex life tell you that your brain only becomes desensitized to pre-marital oxytocin; that oxytocin produced by the brain after marriage produces no desensitization at all. Mr. Keroack does not offer any evidence-based studies to back up his theory, but uses his credibility as an OB/GYN within the United States to push this piece of propaganda.

As there’s no evidence to back up this claim, and indeed, every claim against cohabitation and premarital sex, I am forced to reject my other teachings from the Christian church regarding sex, on the basis of lack of evidence. This includes: the sanctity of marriage, the entirety of the homosexual issue, the topic of birth control and abortive choices, monogamy, the woman’s place in a relationship, etcetera, and so on and so forth.

This will leave many people to believe I have no belief system in place to cause me to set down boundaries. Why don’t I fuck everyone I pass in the street, then, since I seem so unable to control myself?

For starters, because it would be disrespectful to my husband.

My belief system (or I should say, truly, our belief system, as we have constructed it together) is based on trust, respect, and intimacy. It has our relationship as the pinnacle in a large network of relationships. I describe him as my ‘primary‘ relationship, and primary he is — he is the first person I depend on. We have built our lives together so they intertwine, so that we are really one family unit, and I’m sure, as he is, that our friends think of us in this way.

It also means it’s his primary input I listen to when I want something to change. And nothing changes, without a discussion. There is no going out to prowl around and having late-night sex with an unnamed stranger and coming back to eat dinner at home — because it is outside of our boundaries.

A feminist or two would point out at this time that by allowing him to set my boundaries, they really aren’t ‘my’ boundaries. Talk like that gets us into a deep discussion into the natures of my BDSM relationship, and frankly, I’m not about ready to have that talk yet, so hold that thought, kittens.

Our boundaries do not include lines — of what is off-limits and what is not, for example — but rather, protocols for certain situations. Mostly, if I want somebody who isn’t my husband, I have to ask my husband, and then suitably convince him that this is not a passing crush — that I want to have a proper relationship with this person, and that they are suitably interested in having a proper relationship with me. Then there’s the screening to determine if this person is suitable to be trusted … after all, my husband is trusting them with his favourite toy. One does not loan out one’s favourite toy to just anybody.

So far, only one man has met these criteria. He’s at present asleep naked in my husband’s bed.

In talking about our boundaries we’ve learned so much about our relationship, and about each other. My ability to have penis-in-vagina sex with my secondary is a temporary arrangement — available to me at this time only because my husband is unavailable for six months, and on constant negotiation with my husband. I am pleased with this situation, and see my secondary for what he is — a gift, from my husband, someone sweet and warm to hold me at night and care for me, while he can not.

The unwritten rule is, then, that once he is back to envelop me in bed, the secondary boyfriend becomes less of a boyfriend, and more of just a friend. Being the open and honest people that we are, the secondary knows this — I dare say it makes our time together a little more precious, since we know that it’s limited.

There are other rules of course — mostly that there are several things reserved solely for the husband. As a slut who’s devoted herself to him, I cannot deny him these things. He has the privilege of keeping precious to him the little things he enjoys — unprotected sex, anal, and the ability to make me helpless, among a few things.

I laugh when it’s implied that someone like me must have a lack of value for sex within a relationship. I dated my secondary for eight months before being allowed intercourse with him — and I knew full well the entire time that intercourse might never happen. How many serial monogamists do that? That’s not even the relevant question — the relevant question is how many don’t? What boundaries exist there — are they even socially acceptable?

Ahh, how the lines blur when situations change, but this is the beauty of boundaries; that they are flexible and can be updated to follow the times… which is why I expect that my boundaries will be a topic of discussion on a fairly regular basis. Enough so that I think it gets its own category.

So there.

“I’ll just have to be a better benchmark,” he said to me, and I’ll never forget how he said it. Matter-of-fact, unshakable, as if he just-knew his love would be enough to conquer everything.

I took his virginity with no reverence, and he gave it to me guiltlessly. I was awestruck by this person who gave sex a large measure of respect, without outright telling me how ‘bad’ a thing it was. He had no experience and all the experience I had was with selfish partners who had even less experience than I did. Now I had a lover, and no idea what to do.

Points for enthusiasm?

I know I loved him like I’d never loved anything before, and he loved me back. We functioned on a crippled form of sexual communication — my telling things was stifled and he only responded to the messages he received. I’d doublethink my desires. ‘I shouldn’t [ask for something different] because it’ll [insert reason I made up].’ I had absorbed that women’s-magazine bullshit about pleasing your man producing a perfect relationship. I was castrating our sex life, and he was none the wiser. I thought it was normal. He didn’t know any better.

We talked about all kinds of ideas that came into our heads; we really were two peas in a pod. He professed to love me so much that he would do anything — anything — for me. He came out and said outright that if there were someone I wanted besides him, we’d talk about it. I agreed, not fully understanding. It wasn’t until in thinking about it later that I fully realized the gravity of the situation — a man who was offering to fulfill my every basic desire, and this included in the sack!

He knew I’d had relationships with women, but in his matter-of-fact way he said he didn’t care one way or another because he loved me how I was. I told him I thought I was bisexual — he said he knew I wasn’t going to run off with a girl and get married and leave him, so I could have all the girls I wanted.

This man surprised me at every turn. I was a girl who trolled the internet learning about sex the hard way — filtering out the meaningful facts from the mythical bullshit. I trolled four sexual health forums for close to two years, mostly answering questions, but learning amazing amounts as I went. This sex business was really controversial within everybody’s head … maybe I wasn’t alone in not understanding my sexuality.

I consumed pornography at breakneck pace and masturbated as appropriate. The day I figured out how to give myself an orgasm was a red-letter day and I’ve worked hard at having them often, ever since. I was consuming written erotica in genres considered out-of-the-mainstream — specifically bisexual and orgiastic pornography. I dug out my rape fantasies from childhood and young adulthood and watched rape-fantasy pornography. I didn’t breathe a word of this to my boyfriend.

One day, I was at his house, sitting at his desk, playing on his computer. We were getting ready to go out, and I was surfing his internet history. I came across a porn site he’d used, and followed some of the links he’d followed, interested in what turned him on. I named a category in a light voice, laughing, pretending mischief in searching through his sexual desires.

I was unprepared for his reaction, though in hindsight it should have been expected. I was pounced, nearly knocked off his chair bodily with the force he used to grab the mouse from me and close the browser.

Our eyes met and I could taste his fear, hear it in the quivering anger in his voice. I don’t remember the specific words in the conversation, but I remember him feeling as if his privacy had been invaded because the girl having sex with him wanted to know what turned him on when she wasn’t there.

I think that’s when I realized that what we’d come to was effectively a sexual crisis. He wanted things I hadn’t considered, and I wanted things he’d never thought of. We were both too terrified of alienating the other person to ask each other, and this was the way our society intended for us to develop sexually. So I grabbed him, and we got in the car, and drove.

We talked deep into the night. At first it was fear and anger and privacy issues, but eventually the walls came down, and the truth came out. I’m afraid to ask you for this because I’m afraid I’ll gross you out. I’m afraid to ask you for this because I’m afraid you’ll think I’m weird. I’m afraid, so afraid.

It opened a dialogue, and the floodgates opened. I want to try this, this, this, this. Let’s try this, this, this. I think this, this would be fun.

He asked me if I would consider letting him play with my ass during sex, confessing that anal turned him on a lot. In fact, it was the anal category that had caused his panic in the first place.

I was so, so hurt that he’d not want to discuss something sexual with me. I felt hurt and rejected and like maybe the reason he didn’t ask me about it was because he didn’t want to do sexual things with me in that way. In reality, it was nothing like that at all… and in reality, I was doing the same thing to him.

We went to the sex-toy trade show the week after, and walked hand-in-hand, in public, browsing for buttplugs. It’s one of the happiest memories of my life, the memory of starting to get over one of the things that made me hate myself — my large sexual appetite, my deviant tendencies… that which sets me apart. Apart became, suddenly, a desirable trait — a trait that brought my soon-to-be-Master and I together.