Posts in category "Thoughts"

It's A D/s Life: Life After Loo

I haven’t writ­ten about this sub­ject in a while now. I need­ed to take a break, to dis­tance myself in order to gain some per­spec­tive. Now that I’m here, I feel com­fort­able enough to talk about it again.

But before I go on, a lit­tle expla­na­tion of my poten­tial bias is need­ed. I’ve always been one to believe that a sin­gle bad expe­ri­ence should­n’t turn some­one away from any­thing for­ev­er. I try to keep this belief in my head when I catch myself asso­ci­at­ing the D/s lifestyle with pain (ha! get it?) and frus­tra­tion. The only hands-on expe­ri­ence I have being a dom­i­nant was with a per­son who would repeat­ed­ly hurt me and bring me down.

However, I don’t believe that this was a con­scious char­ac­ter­is­tic. It was a per­son­al­i­ty that was wide­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal, mean, and extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to deal with, but all of this fit the “type” of sub­mis­sive that she was. I saw her as a tremen­dous, effu­sive force that, when wield­ed cor­rect­ly, could be used to great advan­tage. The only prob­lem is there are only few with enough strength and patience to tame and guide such a force, although some­one who could accom­plish such a task would form an unbreak­able bond between mas­ter and slave. I knew that I would even­tu­al­ly have the strength, but I cer­tain­ly did not have the patience to be deal­ing with what con­stant­ly felt like a per­son work­ing against me.

So it’s with this cau­tion­ary step that I pro­ceed to explore the D/s branch of the BDSM umbrel­la. My sub was depen­dent on the lifestyle; she required it in her rela­tion­ships, and her only means of relax­ation was being a bot­tom at a par­ty. I knew the risks of get­ting involved. One of my biggest fears was that I would grow depen­dent on the lifestyle as well. After all, what greater ela­tion is there than to feel as if one owns anoth­er mind, anoth­er soul, anoth­er per­son.

As of yet, I don’t feel some tremen­dous urge to go out and find a sub to abuse. I’m not expe­ri­enced enough as a dom­i­nant to do that. I know, how­ev­er, that D/s is some­thing I’d want to explore in future rela­tion­ships. I con­sid­er it a basis of open­ness, trust, and accep­tance. Exploring the lifestyle (as a female sub espe­cial­ly) would lay the ground­work for a lot of oth­er things.

Many of which I have yet to dis­cov­er for myself.

Meet Me In Montauk

I admit that some movies, some scenes, some songs, some moments, still rub me the wrong way. In gen­er­al this is a good thing: the hard­er it is to let go of some­thing, the bet­ter the expe­ri­ence it was. I’m also giv­en hope in under­stand­ing that these things will pass, as all things pass, and every­thing will be put in its right place. Fortunately, this is easy to accept because of the fact that I’ve already gone through a full cycle with oth­ers. Perhaps I’ve also become accus­tomed to some resid­ual emo­tions, kept alive by the mem­o­ries of the ori­gins of lessons learned.

But all of this still does­n’t detract from the fact that some things still rub me the wrong way, as if my skin was peeled and every con­jured sen­sa­tion was a salt water burn. I can feel that sound in my ears, feel the pris­mat­ic danc­ing of light in my eyes, feel her say, “pris­mat­ic”, explain­ing the colour of her hair.

It’s not even the per­son with which I share these expe­ri­ences that makes it impor­tant, it’s the expe­ri­ences them­selves, because they mean some­thing. A change in my life. A change that may have not have hap­pened oth­er­wise.

And I real­ize that it’s not that I can’t let these mem­o­ries go, it’s that I choose not to.

Mrs.

I point­ed out the only cute one to Shirley, and she teased me about it for the rest of the night. I only chose her because she had those glass­es and that look. She was the type before I dis­cov­ered dis­cov­ered that I have no type. Almost every time some­thing like this hap­pens, I real­ize that they’re almost twice my age, and I won­der if there’s any­thing wrong with me. The oth­er guys I know feel guilty cause they talk to girls who are some­times 10 years younger than them. I feel guilty cause I catch myself flirt­ing with women who are more than 10 years old­er than me. I feel even more guilty when they decide to wear their orna­ment­ed engage­ment rings when wed­ding bands would be more appro­pri­ate, or when they show me pic­tures of their kids.

In almost all my rela­tion­ships, it feels like I’ve been wait­ing for my girl­friend to catch up. The only one who seemed to be on par or per­haps ahead, was sim­ply fuck­ing nuts. To me, the only sav­ing grace was a mix of open-mind­ed vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and the abil­i­ty to chan­nel this vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty into change, but most had one but not the oth­er. Perhaps I’m biased in believ­ing that a woman, not a girl, would have enough strength and expe­ri­ence to poss­es the prop­er mix of both. I real­ize that I’m prob­a­bly usu­al­ly wrong in this belief because most of the old­er men and women that I know are still very bliss­ful­ly igno­rant, and have become too old to change their ways (and this fact was a cause of a lot of my pre­vi­ous loss of faith in human­i­ty). Every now and then though, there’ll be one woman who stands out because I can read her like a book.

And she’ll be enough to keep my faith alive.

Critical Emancipation

Sometimes it feels like I’m wait­ing for inspi­ra­tion when I write. Like I’m wait­ing for a spe­cif­ic mood, or a spe­cif­ic song to come on and guide me through an entry. Lately, that inspi­ra­tion seems to avoid me. I keep try­ing to write about things that I feel I should write about, instead of the things I want to write about. Every time I search my head for the prop­er mood or mind­set, it’s only mem­o­ries that appear.

And they sur­face like pho­tographs, each one a still frame cap­tur­ing an expe­ri­ence, expressed in sound, warmth, light, and odour. I’m on the streets of Hong Kong again, sur­round­ed by peo­ple, brows­ing through the knick-knacky stores with the heat of the sun soak­ing through my shirt. I’m skat­ing on the Canal, map­ping the imper­fec­tions of the ice as I glide across them, the night sky burn­ing with the orange of win­ter. I’m won­der­ing through the mall of my home­town, enjoy­ing the strange famil­iar­i­ty of a place I fre­quent­ed so long ago, hop­ing I don’t bump into an ex. I’m in uni­form, clutch­ing the lapels of my blaz­er, as I step out from the heat of grandiose wood­en doors into the snow-washed quad. I’m on the bus to New York, try­ing to fig­ure out which pas­sen­gers are com­ing or going, won­der­ing where my own jour­ney would take me.

I fight against these mem­o­ries, try­ing to write about some­thing more rel­e­vant. In the end, I write about noth­ing, and I can’t fight against it any­more. I have to write the things I want, inspired by the things I think. I have to let go one more time.

From myself, instead of oth­ers.

Projection: Analysis

Freud saw pro­jec­tion as a defence mech­a­nism, a way of deal­ing with the thoughts and ideas that make some­one anx­ious. By sub­con­scious­ly attribut­ing these unwant­ed thoughts and ideas on oth­er peo­ple, one may be com­fort­ed by the false fact that they are not alone, or that there is some­one else they can direct their anger towards instead of them­selves. While I don’t dis­agree with this approach to psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic the­o­ry (I’m gen­er­al­ly a Freudian up until his ideas on devel­op­men­tal life stages), this is a much more severe, and less com­mon, form of my expe­ri­ence with pro­jec­tion.

Projection (or pro­jec­tion bias) can be defined as uncon­scious­ly assum­ing that oth­ers share the same or sim­i­lar thoughts, beliefs, val­ues, or posi­tions on any giv­en sub­ject.

In this case, the fault lies in the assump­tion, and the assump­tion is based on the fact that many believe oth­ers to be like them­selves. One may present this as a deduc­tive log­i­cal argu­ment, like so:

Premise 1:
I have felt this way in a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion / I would feel this way in a cer­tain sit­u­a­tion
Premise 2:
Someone else is in this sit­u­a­tion
Conclusion:
Therefore, that per­son must feel the same way that I felt / that per­son must feel the way that I would feel

Although audiatur et altera pars is not nec­es­sar­i­ly seen as direct proof of a fal­la­cy, the implic­it premise involved in this argu­ment is also the most impor­tant one.

Implicit premise:
All peo­ple think the way I do when put in the same sit­u­a­tion.

This hap­pens to be the premise that is false. It is also often implied, not on pur­pose, but because (and I’ll haz­ard an opin­ion here) humans are nat­u­ral­ly ego­cen­tric. Many make sol­id judg­ments on things that are pure­ly sub­jec­tive, tak­ing their view as Word. An exam­ple of this is some­one say­ing, “This song is good”, instead of, “I think this song is good”. Sometimes this is the inno­cent result of lazi­ness (of which I can be guilty), but in many cas­es, it’s due to the fact that the per­son actu­al­ly refus­es to believe any­thing else to be true.

It’s in the case of the lat­ter that assump­tions can lead to pro­jec­tion, what I find to be an extreme­ly frus­trat­ing thing to deal with. If I don’t talk to some­one, that does­n’t mean that I nev­er want to talk to them again. For some­one to assume this to be true of me, based on their own thoughts and ideas in the same sit­u­a­tion, and then call me out on this, is ARROGANT. When I’m fresh­ly out of a rela­tion­ship, I feel stronger and inspired. For me, this is an inher­ent side-effect of break­ing up. A break-up occurs due to the fact that there is unhap­pi­ness in a rela­tion­ship, and when the rela­tion­ship ends, there is a tremen­dous free­dom from this unhap­pi­ness. For some peo­ple, the oppo­site is true, and for one of these peo­ple to “com­fort” me because they think I feel worth­less and doubt­ful is INSULTING.

I’ve worked hard to be a bet­ter per­son, to out­grow the weak­ness­es and faults that I’ve grown up with. For some­one to believe that I have a weak­ness or fault that I’ve cast aside, sim­ply because they haven’t yet, is just plain sad. This one hits me espe­cial­ly hard because it triv­i­al­izes the tremen­dous amount of effort I put into self-improve­ment.

And as a result of what? Careless assump­tion. I’m not ego­cen­tric enough to believe that oth­ers think the way I do.

All I ask is that oth­ers do the same.