Eighteen months on

(8th June 2002)

This "essay" is fourth third in a series, being written at six month intervals. The first article was called "Outing myself" and described how I went about entering the scene, and the second was called "Six months on" and described how my life had changed since outing myself. One Year One described my life moving to New York to be with Tori. All of these essages can be found in the members area of subDOMinion ("lifestyles") or on my own web site ("writings").

What can I say? I'm a pervert. I've been living in New York for almost a year, and I don't regret a minute of it. Well, actually that is an exageration; I do sometimes regret giving up the luxury of my house and moving into a noisier environment; I have the normal regrets a person leaving their homeland has (America isn't England and never will be, unfortunately); I get annoyed with New York in general. BUT overall in most other ways I am so much happier and better off being here with my darling Mistress than without. I fear what will happen in another year when my work contract may expire and I have to leave America. How will I handle life away from Tori? Ugh; I hope that doesn't happen! I never want to leave her.

In some ways I've started taking Tori for granted. This saddens me a little; I never want to take that darling wonderful lady for granted. However, I've never been in a relationship before and I don't know if what I'm feeling now is normal. And so I catch myself somethings, and I kick myself and remind myself of just how lucky I am to be with her. Tori is now so much part of my life that I can't any other way of being. I fear I'm being too clingy, smothering her and demanding too much of her time. It's a difficult balance and so I stand back, waiting and ready for her to ask me to come over, or to see her. Which, in a quirky way, actually helps my sense of being her slave; I try not to push but instead wait on my owners pleasure.

Somewhere along the line I feel growth has stopped, or at least slowed. I don't seem to be learning new things. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, however. A retrenching and reinforcing of what I have learnt is probably called for. I've learnt so much from Tori in these eighteen months! Not just in BDSM but in life.

One lesson I haven't learnt, though, is when to stop. I'm a perfectionist. I want to be able to please Tori in every way she wants, and do it perfectly. And yet I'm not able to. One example is penetration. I'm uncircumcised, but my foreskin is tight. It can hurt sometimes! And, I think, this has caused a slight dysfunction. I have trouble keeping hard; it's almost as if I'm shrinking away from it, afraid of more pain. Recently I'd noticed that Tori hadn't been demanding this of me despite the fact that I know she enjoys this form of sex (riding me, using clover clamps as reigns) and I used to enjoy this as well! So when I raised the question we tried something along those lines, and part way through I lost erection. The result was me bursting into tears. Not because of the dysfunction but because I'd failed to do something!

Another area I've failed at is in anal sex. Tori has given me the Anal Pleasure book to read and digest, and I'm finding it hard going! I just can't get into it. And so I'm failing at my task of preparing myself for her pleasure. Failure is hard for me, especially with Tori. I can then over analyse it... does Tori no longer demand certain things from me because I'm not successful, and so am I depriving her of pleasure as a result? Well, I'm sure you see where this can lead... nowhere useful!

On a positive side, Tori and I celebrated our one year anniversary as owner and slave. As a surprise she had arranged a weekend visit to the D'Inn Glengarry. A very pleasurable time, and this has been written up as a seperate report.

Tori has continued to encourage me to switch, and this has been fun. I get a big kick out of seeing her helpless and wiggling in front of me, unable to stop what I'm doing to her. Sometimes I do it purely for her pleasure, sometimes I do things to make her struggle to avoid it, but still and always Tori is my owner.

This actually leads to a more interesting point. On newsgroups and other discussion fora I occaisionally see assertions that a slave should always lower themselves below their owner. I refute this point of view utterly. This may work for some people but definitely not for me or Tori. Instead I believe the opposite; it is my duty to help raise Tori. This may mean using my skills to her benefit or to teach Tori new skills. It may mean back breaking labour or computer skills or simply standing around to fetch and carry and providing moral support. I will debate and argue with Tori, I will wrestle and use my strength to overcome her, I will rebuke her when she needs it. Above I described problems where I am not pefect; equally Tori is not perfect. Tori is helping me become a better person and I help her in return. I use my skills to help raise Tori, not lower myself below her.

Looking back over this essay I notice two things. Firstly the thrust of the essay has become more personal in nature. My initial essay was intended to help people new to the scene to realise they were not alone and by describing my own experiences to perhaps come to terms with their own. I've no idea if it worked. Over these past eighteen months I've learnt a lot more about how Every Person Is Different (EPID) and how divergent a set of experiences people have. This essay, instead, has no such goal. It is now just describing milestones along my own path. If others find it interesting or useful then this is a bonus. Perhaps others may find their path intersecting mine and this may help them. Perhaps.

The other thing I notice about this essay is that I've focused on a number of bad things and not so much on the good. I guess this is partially a reflection on myself and on this past six months! Really this six months have been very very good for me. I've been happy and enjoy Tori's presence immensly. This has become almost the baseline of my life. As such the rare black spots are more starkly highlighted simply because they are the anomoly. Equally, I have a habit of introspection and self recrimination. I aim for perfection, and beat myself up when I fail at it. I started writing a diary but after 2 weeks it started petering out and didn't get updated much afterwards. When reviewing it I notice that even there I mostly wrote bad things about myself.

Despite the downs I've written about, this has been a wonderful six months. Tori's birthday came and went, Valentines came and went, and for the first time I actually had someone I wanted to make a fuss of for these two occaisions! The plans I'd made for both of these events worked out. I've been able to help Tori out on a number of occaisions and make her life better. Finally got around to joining TES. And, of course, get tied up and beaten regularly :-). Life really couldn't be better!

References:

My web site	Contains all my poems, stories, essays, public scene reports and other stuff.
Anal Pleasure And Health	The book I should be reading, by Jack Morin, Ph.D. Third edition. (link to The Stockroom, working as of 2002/06/07)
D'Inn Glengarry	A nice place to spend a weekend :-)
The Eulenspiegel Society (tm)	TES is possibly the best known S&M society in New York and provides resources (and discounts!) to the community.