An Unexpected Gift

 (This was written on Thanksgiving, but because the Missy and I are in the backwoods of Missouri for the weekend, internet connectivity has been sketchy, so it’s taken me til now to upload it.)
I am grateful today. Grateful for the unexpected gift of a beating.
I know, that sounds odd (or maybe not, if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time.) But it’s true.  And I know, it’s Thanksgiving, there is no gift-giving on Thanksgiving. But this gift has me filled with such gratitude that I have to share it here with you, and I believe it fulfills the “what am I thankful for” requirement, though this isn’t something I could share around the dinner table with my bio family. But you all? Why yes, yes I can. And I should (after all, you haven’t heard from me for real in days.) And so I will.
I went over to W’s Wednesday feeling unsure about a lot of things. I left his house later that day feeling re-centered, full of hope and joy and a certainty that everything would be okay. And I know, the fact that he played with me, tied me up and whipped me and said nasty things to me and fucked me, shouldn’t be the content of a “Thanksgiving” post, right? But the other kind, the more conventional kind, where I tell you all about the amazing weekend I spent with my daughter, and the joy and gratitude I feel for my family and loved ones, that will come in a later post.  But now, right this minute, this is what I want to tell you about.
Have you ever heard the saying, “If you say it often enough, it becomes truth?” Most times it’s used when child-rearing. Tell a child often enough he is a worthless piece of shit, and eventually he believes he is worthless. It works when we do it to ourselves, as well. Eventually we internalize the tapes that we play in our heads: “I’m unattractive,” “I’m unlovable,” “I don’t deserve it.”
(As an aside, there is a fantastic book, one of the first feel-good self-help books that came out in the 1960’s, called Psycho-Cybernetics, that addresses this exact phenomena. I found a dog-eared copy in a pile of my father’s books when I was going through his things many years after he died, and though I don’t read the genre for the most part, I found reading this book to be a life-changing event. So if any of what I said rings true to you, go and read it. Seriously.)
Moving on.
There is a thing that W always says used to say but doesn’t so often anymore, that he said from perhaps Day One of our relationship, and that is that becoming familiar with each other, becoming lovers, becoming friends, becoming comfortable with each other, is a kink-killer. Oh, maybe he didn’t say it quite that way. I think what he actually said is that once you know each other well, once you have established a relationship, the edge is gone. And for him, for kink to be really hot, there has to be that edge, of the unknown, of uncertainty. Maybe even, for certain types of play, of fear. Once that’s gone, once you know each other, the edge is gone. That doesn’t mean that the kink won’t be good, but, well, it won’t have the sharpness – the edge – that it once did.
I have spent the last 3 years of our 4-year long relationship trying to prove him wrong. And, I think, succeeding for the most part, showing him the error of that thinking, as I think he has come to see that the deeper you know someone, the deeper you can go, and there, too is an edge to play on. The edge of the abyss: deep and dark beyond imagining (and a far more powerful place, in my opinion.)
And so, in many ways, that tape has been quieted. Not silenced; I hear it raise its querulous voice occasionally still, especially when I see the sharp desire in his face to play with someone new, someone unknown, and I know that he is hearing its siren call, playing that tape in his head again. And…I have learned to accept that. I have learned that, as long as he acknowledges that it is not the only edge to play on (and thus lost to us forever), I can acknowledge that for him, it is an edge that he wants and needs to occasionally explore.
But that is not the only tape that he plays in regards to relationships, and how they work (or don’t.) The other one he says is, “Familiarity breeds vanilla.” In other words, after having been with someone long enough, the kink dies, or at least dwindles. Kind of like long-term marriage kills sex, right? Newlyweds start out fucking like bunnies twice a day, then eventually it dwindles to twice a week, then twice a month, and finally, twice a year. (I just read this line to my daughter. “The solution to that is obvious: don’t get married,” she said. In my head I replied, “Or get kinky.” But I digress.)
Personally I refuse to believe it. Or at least subscribe to it. (And have said so many, many times to W, loudly, vociferously, and at times, petulantly.)
In terms of our relationship, because our relationship is both kink and vanilla, a little less kink isn’t necessarily a relationship-killer.  Even if we aren’t as kinky as often as we once were, we still have vanilla, and we actually like vanilla with each other an awful lot. We like each other, we still have hot sex (though admittedly less often) and when we do play, it’s still intense and as hot and ferocious as ever. But…as he has said, it’s easy to fall into vanilla when you see someone all the time, because you know that there is all the time in the world to play. There’s always tomorrow, or next week. There is not the aegis to do something that you have when you only see someone once a month for a weekend, the imperative to playplayplay! because that’s all you’ll get for a month or more. So you fall into routine and habit (an enjoyable routine and habit, but still…) and the kink becomes something you do every other time you see each other, and then every third time, and then maybe once every couple of weeks. Or the scenes you do become shorter, and where once you might have walked in the door and found yourself in some kind of play scenario all weekend long, going from one thing to another with vanilla time interspersed between scenes, the scene becomes a two-hour event interspersed between everything else vanilla you do that weekend. Or where once he made you wear heels and shackles to bed, or attached a chain to your ankle while you worked at the computer, the shackles now hang on the wall as decoration, your heels are only put on to scene, and the chain, well, who even knows where that is anymore?
And eventually you are proving the adage to be true. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And that is the sad part. I don’t believe it’s a truth, but because he says it so often, because he listens to the tape in his head, sometimes he makes it true.
We have addressed this, and are working together on ways to combat it. Things that make us both feel connected to our kink and each other, such as setting up some low-key protocols for when I come over to his house. They fulfill my need to know that the kink is still there, while not placing a burden on W to do anything except enjoy the fruits of my submission. 😉 Since these are things that he doesn’t actively have to do (well except for one, small part that I don’t think he minds), and since they are things that have grown naturally out of our four years of knowing each other, and lastly since they aren’t hard and fast “rules” (a concept that always squicks W out somewhat) it has worked pretty well.
But…I do still miss playing more often, and in the ways that we used to. I can’t help it, he is my Dominant, my Owner, my Kinky Partner, the one that makes my kink-o-meter run and my juices flow. It is through kink, when we are in that space deeply together, that I feel our connection the strongest, and in a way that no one else has ever made me feel, not even the Ex.
Also, I’m a ball of kinky energy; I like to play. So, yes, this “we have all the time in the world to do things, we can just enjoy each other’s company,” is terrific, but I need my kink. And frankly, our proximity to each other (living in the same town), or the fact that we see each other every week, should NOT mean that we allow ourselves to settle into 90% vanilla. I just don’t think familiarity has to mean that.
This is how I see it. In a vanilla marriage, yes you could let your sexual interactions become routine. You could let it be a chore. That’s easy to do, and you hear about that all the time (hell, I lived it, before kink, with the Ex.) But it doesn’t have to be that way. Successful couples make the effort to keep things fresh, to stoke the other’s interest and their own in each other. It can, and is done.
Kink couples are no different. And we have such a wider range to play with, to explore with, to experience with each other. Unless we just aren’t feeling it anymore (and that happens to) why wouldn’t you want to play with each other as often as possible? I’m not talking about elaborate, four-hour long or weekend-long scenes. I’m talking about little bits of play here and there, or small scenes, or even just the “bend over I’m going to fuck you in the ass, cunt,” kind of scenes. (Though yeah, the four-hour long going-from-one-thing-to-another type are amazing and sorely missed as well.)  But, as I said, there are ways to combat that. With some effort, with some desire. As we have started to do with the aforementioned protocols-that-aren’t-really-protocols.
What? You want to know what those things are? Okay, I’ll spill:

1. He chooses a pair of heels and places them at the door for me to change in to as soon I come in.
2. Before I leave his house for home, I am to grind beans for a pot of coffee and leave his coffee pot ready to go. (I was so fuzzed when I left yesterday I forgot!) 🙁
3. I am to make him hard each morning that we wake together, if he doesn’t already wake that way.

As I said, these are not hard and fast rules, and I don’t get punished if I don’t do them (although I might wish to be, LOL) but they have become part of our routine, and a part that I cherish, not just because of the way it makes me feel to do them, or even because I know that these are not arbitrary rules he just made up to appease me, but because by implementing them, he acknowledged and validated my need for them, and found a way to feed that need while pleasing himself.
This truly is what relationship is about, and this is what makes our relationship so fucking good.
But it’s insidious, that little saying. It worms its way into a person’s brain, into our belief-system, and soon even I start to wonder. And worry. Are we really at that point, the point of such familiarity that kink is no longer interesting?  Or is it (my worse fear, the one that my own “I’m not good enough,” tapes hit on) is it me he isn’t interested in anymore? Maybe I just don’t turn him on anymore, at least in that fearsome, hot, aggressively kinky way that I love?  And that is where I have been lately, wondering and worrying if he just doesn’t feel…the passion…in what we do anymore. But as he is always telling me, I have an overly dramatic sense of things. I read, “He doesn’t want me anymore!” into an innocuous event that meant nothing. Again, my own negative tapes playing. And maybe that’s all that’s going on. Me reading shit into things that don’t mean…shit.
Travel presents a particular challenge for me. For some reason, when we mix vanilla and kink, and when we travel in particular, the kink part of his brain shuts down – whereas it throws mine into overdrive. This is how my head works when I am thinking about traveling:

• Yay! Road trip! That means Kinky Car Games! I envision playing a game in which I am told to flash truckers (juvenile, I know) or we stop to take bondage pictures, or I am made to use Baldy, with the game being that I have to start or stop every time we pass a truck or come to a certain number sign. You get the drift.
• Yay! Hotel! That means Kinky Hotel Play! In the bed, in the bath, on the floor, in the window, wherever!! The last time I mentioned this, W said, “It’s just another hotel room. There’s nothing ‘special’ about it.” To me, anywhere that is not home is special. And the added spice of trying to do something nasty in a hotel room and not get heard, well that makes it all the more ‘special’. It has nothing to do with the actual space.
• Yay! Event! Kinky Event Play! Play before, during and after! Being displayed, being used, being played with off and on, whether we are doing it on the sly at dinner somewhere vanilla or he makes me wear or do something that only we know about, or blatantly at the actual event…I look at an event as an opportunity for full-on, 24/7 kink and/or sex slave play and/or slutty-girl time. And lastly…
• Yay! A new city/country/place to explore! Places to pervert with clandestine kinky play, or guerrilla rope bondage, or just being made to be aware that even there, in the vanilla world, I am still his slut, still his sex toy, and could possibly be made to do nasty things. Even there.

I don’t expect that these things will be happening 24/7 while we travel, and in fact, W and I both agree that it would get tiring to be doing it all the time, but honestly, for me, sometimes just being told to “keep my legs apart during dinner,” or to wear my chain and lock when we go out that day is enough. It’s the symbolism. It is that he knows about it, that he wants me to do it, that he wants me reminded of our dynamic. For me, if we aren’t actually playing, the symbols are often enough. At least to tide me over. 😉
I love love LOVE travel with W. We are so very much alike in how we travel, the things we enjoy doing and seeing, and we both enjoy exposing the other to new experiences, places and ideas. We truly delight in each other so much as traveling companions. But that is all on the vanilla plane. As I mentioned above, for me travel is an excuse to mix in the kink, and really instigates and intensifies kink for me. And I very much want and expect it…or I have in the past, until I realized how much W disconnects the two. I have slowly come to realize that kink (and consequently sex) is the farthest thing from his mind when he travels. Even to a kink event. It is not until he gets into “kink space” that he throws himself into that frame of mind. And yes, this has been an issue for me every time we have traveled, although I have tried to circumvent it by making up the travel games, or giving hints, or asking outright for play, which works to a degree.
And by trying to tamp down my expectations.
So then we went on this cruise.
You can see where this is heading, can’t you?  I am already in an anxious frame of mind, worrying about where we are as a kink couple, and then to top it off, we go and do something that is bound to kick all my anxieties into high gear, because I am (being me) naturally going to have all those expectations, and he is (being him) going to do this compartmentalization thing: “this is not kink,” and…it’s going to exacerbate the anxiety I am already feeling. I probably should have said something, but I didn’t want to make him feel pressured, I wanted him to just be him, and I wanted to try and manage my own expectations (in other words lower them by a WHOLE lot.) I even considered asking him not to bring kink toys, but then we had been pretty vocal about the dungeon space on the ship, and Ad was getting into the idea, and…well, fuck. As I said, for me, travel IS kinky.
And, additionally, there was the obvious point that the whole point of this cruise was to be sexual and kinky with a whole lot of other open, sexual, kinky people.  So of course W would feel it, right?
I was so excited. The opportunity to be slutty and kinky and sexual with my Guys in public, in front of everyone, every day – I couldn’t wait! I imagined that W would have me wear things on my rings (I even made some pretty beaded danglies on the way down) and tell me what a nasty, sexy slut I was, and make me behave in just-this-side of inappropriate ways on board. I imagined sex and being tied up every morning in our cabin, and later in the dungeon, and maybe even in the bars on the ship. I imagined playing every night and every afternoon, either in the dungeon or in the sex rooms.
As you have probably guessed, the reality was quite a bit more…tame…than that. We went to the dungeon a total of twice, and the sex rooms twice, with three of those times at my behest. Ad woke up ready for sex every morning, but W…well…it seemed like he had kind of shut down. He was his usual vanilla self, but his sexy/kink self? Didn’t seem to be there. And when it was, it only seemed to be triggered by the possibility of play with others. I was glad to give him that experience, but the knowledge that he just wasn’t interested in doing those things with just me? Kinda made me feel…well, all that stuff from before all that more acutely.
His words, “Familiarity breeds vanilla,” rang loudly in my head on the cruise.
This paints a worse picture than I wish to convey. In all ways except kink, this was an amazing trip.  We had a great time, had some wonderful adventures, and even popped a couple sexual cherries (we three had sex in the playrooms and W and I actually had a “swinging” scene in the playrooms.) The places we went, the relaxation and pleasure in each others company…it was heavenly.  If we had been a regular old vanilla couple or triad, it would have been absolutely perfect.  But honestly, I left the ship wondering even more than before where W’s and my kink relationship was headed. Wondering if he really was bored with me, if he had become so familiar with me that he was no longer interested in kink with me. If he had internalized that tape in his head to the point that it couldn’t be changed.
I will admit to my own fault in all this. When W didn’t seem interested in me sexually or in a kink way, I turned that off too. I made excuses not to want to do things, so that he wouldn’t feel pressured, and so that I wouldn’t be disappointed and feel rejected. And by the end of the cruise, I had decided (and even mentioned to Ad) that on our next vacation, even if it is on a lifestyle cruise, I would ask W not to bring his kink toys. Then I wouldn’t fight so hard for something that he obviously didn’t want. I wouldn’t have expectations then, and be disappointed.
That was what I thought about that last evening on the ship, and as we drove home. What if that was the case? Could I give up wanting those things as much as I did? Could I live with 90% vanilla, if that is what he wanted? I could go on a vacation and live without kink during it (I think) but to give in to a relationship that was mostly vanilla, or in which I was the driving force, the instigator, of our kink…could I do that? I knew that I could make it happen that way – be the instigator – if I could accept that role. He would do it, play with me, if I asked. Gladly. And well. And enjoy it.
But that isn’t what our relationship is predicated on. I even put it in my profile: “I show up, and he does things to me.” That’s the relationship I wanted, and missed.
The damn thing is that even when I am the one saying, “Let’s do this,” it is still good. I still want it. But it’s not enough.  And it’s not why I started things with him. I can get that with Ad, or any other number of play partners. I can bottom to anyone. What I want and need is someone that wants and needs to do those things to me.  And it felt on the ship as if…perhaps that was lost. Whether he had internalized his own tapes, or really just didn’t feel it toward me anymore, I no longer felt that I “show up and he does things to me.”
Once I asked him, “If I didn’t want to be kinky anymore, would you be satisfied with our relationship?”
He had answered truthfully. “No, I want a kink partner.” But now I was asking myself that very question. Could I be happy with someone that I had to ask to play with me every time? That I didn’t feel wanted me with the same intensity that I wanted him?
This has nothing to do with love. I have absolutely no doubt that he loves me as deeply as I love him. But as entwined in a love relationship as our kink is, it is still its own element, and important in its own right. Pull that out – and more specifically, pull out the essential element of our kink, coercion play – and could I be satisfied?
So Wednesday after the cruise came. I had spent all day Tuesday pondering this, and wondering if I should say anything to W. Wondering how to address it, or if I should. Was I just being a selfish, greedy bitch, always wanting more? Was W right, that this was just the price we had to pay for being “too familiar?” Words he had said earlier on the ship when I had brought it up came to mind though: “We have to fight against it,” he said. They gave me hope that perhaps it was just circumstances (his inexplicable inability to mix kink and vanilla) and allowing himself to believe his own rhetoric. Maybe we could fight it. But I was tired. Tired of wanting and not getting, tired of having expectations and having them unmet. So when I went to his house Wednesday I had decided two things:

1. I was NOT going to bring it up. W knows how I feel, and to bring it up again would only make him unhappy; and
2. I was not going to have expectations.

What this meant was that I wasn’t going to treat going over to work with him like a potential play date. I got ready to go to his house, and I didn’t do the things I normally do, in anticipation of even the possibility of play (shave my cooch, wear something sexy or at least wear a thong, put on make-up, do my hair.)
No expectations. Not even my heels at the door.
Until I saw them there. I don’t think the sound of my heart jumping in my chest when I saw them was audible, but it sounded deafening in my own ears. My mouth went dry and for a moment, tears actually obscured my vision. I know, ridiculously emotional reaction, but one that I couldn’t help. I walked quickly into the other room to hide my reaction. Then I returned, put on my heels, and we had our work day. It was a lovely day, and every time I moved I felt my heels on my feet, and every time I walked I felt them, and my heart soared and I felt light as air.
Still, when he said something about me needing a sound thrashing before I left, I didn’t let myself get my hopes up. He’d said that before and nothing came of it, and I didn’t want to want it so bad that I asked for it. If it happened, it had to come from him. It wouldn’t work any other way.
The afternoon wore on, and finally I was done with work, and he mentioned turning the heaters on upstairs. He mentioned play again, and though I smiled, I schooled myself not to react too much. While the heaters kicked on, we sat downstairs and talked and I fed us ice cream. Until he said, “Hand me some rope.”
Just that casually.
My heart did a stutter-step and I swallowed as I reached for his bag. I want him so very very badly that it is like this for me, painful, when he decides he wants me too. But I played it cool, and dug out rope. I don’t know if he saw my hands shaking when I handed it to him. And soon it didn’t matter, because he was doing something that made any shaking impossible: tying my hands around his hard cock.
It started as silly play, with us both laughing and joking about what he was doing. Then suddenly it wasn’t silly.  Suddenly an amusement turned into something more for him, and I could feel the change, in the air, in him, in myself. My pussy clenched, and I could feel the wetness between my legs.  We spent the next hour with him forcing my mouth down on his cock and forcing me to pump him with the hands that he had tied excruciatingly tight around his cock. I ended up with rope around my ankles and waist and neck. I ended up exhausted, with a sore jaw and fantasies that he put in my mind of being made to do this to other men. I heard his words, and felt how hard he was, and realized I had instigated none of this, it was all him.  And then he untied me, and told me to turn around and get on my hands and knees so he could fuck me from behind. First in my cunt, then in my ass. “Make it come,” he said, over and over, as I struggled to use hands that he had rendered useless. “Do it, you little whore,” he commanded, whipping me across the back and shoulders. And I did, whimpering in pain and ecstasy. Then he got out Baldy and made me do it again, and again, all the time telling me to “Come! Do it, slut,” until his words and the words in my fantasy (being made to masturbate in front of a roomful of people) were one and the same. I was shaking, and sore, and exhausted, by the time he let me up off my hands and knees.
But he wasn’t done yet. Without a word he yanked me up and tied me between the posts in his downstairs front room, my legs shaking from my orgasms earlier and my thoughts fuzzy. And he flogged me ferociously until I could barely stand. Until I was shaking like a leaf and begging him to stop.
It was an incredible, blissful, wonderful afternoon. And all weekend, I have been holding my knees open, my ankles crossed, while I write. And thinking about him, and our afternoon, and smiling.
So what was this gift that I mentioned in the beginning? It’s simple. It was the gift of hope, and of him showing me he still wants to do those things to me, and that maybe we don’t have to accept that “familiarity=vanilla.” He’s right, it could mean that. But it doesn’t have to. And I don’t think he wants it to any more than I do.
No wonder I forgot to make his damn coffee, right?