... the Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan. Even though my mother is Thai, not Chinese, it still resonated with me in ways I didn't expect.

It's bittersweet and a little unsettling to think that for everytime my mother disappointed me with her inability to understand the things that were important to me, I disappointed her for the same reason.

It's been almost sixteen months since my last post. I'd like to write something meaningful to commemorate my return, but I have no idea where to start or what to say.

I finally left K. in November. After four years together, I wish I could say it was hard, but the truth is that he made it very easy. Between the constant fighting and crazy ex-girlfriend and alleged "secret" daughter - not to mention the fact that the bastard slept with my hairdresser and hit my dog - it was beyond time.

I ended up meeting one of my WoW (yes, submissive, geeky gamer-girl - that's me!) friends in real life. We flirted for months in-game, then took the "relationship" to text messages and phone calls. Finally, he came down to visit ... and turned out to be everything I wanted, needed or could have hoped for in a partner.

At 23, J. is four years younger than me and a far cry from the Dominant older man I had in mind. Believe it or not, I topped him - something I never imagined I could do! On his last night here, I cuffed him to the headboard and sucked his cock until he begged me to let him come ... which I did. Eventually. ;) And as soon as I unbound him, he flipped me over, spanked my ass and fucked me from behind.

Going from incredibly powerful to utterly helpless in the blink of an eye was a completely new, amazing experience for me. I've been skirting around the edges of the "lifestyle" for my entire adult life - and I'm defining "adult" loosely here, because I've been sneaking into S&M themed websites and chat rooms since I was 15 years-old. And in all this time, I never imagined that I could switch. I'm naturally, inherently submissive; I have no interest in dominating anyone, and am usually turned-off by submissive men. And yet I enjoyed everything with J., regardless of who was in control and who was being controlled. He wants me to tie him up again. He also wants to put me in a collar and leash and make me call him "master." Oddly, I find myself wanting the former as much as the latter, too.

It's not just the sex either, although the sex is wonderful. It's the fact that we have so much in common, and can talk forever about everything and nothing. He's smart. He's creative. He has a fantastic voice and one of those accents - I'm a sucker for accents; can you tell? - that makes me instantly wet.

He's a geek, like me. He plays WoW and once memorized Pi to 31 decimal places on a dare. We speak the same language ... well, almost. He thinks Star Wars is better than Star Trek and Superman is more "heroic" than Batman, which is just ridiculous. But other than that, he's perfect for me and I am absolutely convinced that he's the one.

I will not sleep with the married 40 year-old.
I will not sleep with the married 40 year-old.
I will not sleep with the married 40 year-old.
I will not sleep with the married 40 year-old.

... even if he does have a simmering Dominant streak and fantastic Southern accent! I've been the other woman before, however inadvertantly, and I refuse to do that again. If his marriage is really failing, then I'm sure I'll still be around and willing after it fails. If he's lying, then I don't -- shouldn't -- want to be with him anyway. I know this.

But, god, that accent kills me.


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I haven't had a chance to update since I returned home from my business trip in New Orleans. It isn't so much a lack of time as it is an overabundance of "adult supervision" ... and by that, I mean my 40 year-old boyfriend, K.

I know, I know -- that's not a very charitable way to put it. Our age difference is significant, but it wouldn't bother me (I love older men!) if he didn't use it as an excuse to talk down to me. It's the real reason we fight as often as we do; he lectures me like a parent, which I resent enough to ... well, act like a child. He brings out the brat in me, and not in a cutely submissive, "Here's your opportunity to punish me, Master!" kind of a way.

Anyway, he knows that I'm submissive, but I think he'd be shocked to read this journal and realize just how submissive I am. Even though we'll have been together for three years in April (assuming we make it that long), I'm not ready for him to have that level of insight, or me that level of vulnerability. So I hide this journal from him ... but since we live together -- or did, until his new house closed last week -- "hiding it" isn't much different from not using it at all. He's starting to spend more time at his house though, and less at mine, so I may have more "unsupervised" time online to devote to this journal.

My relationship with K. confuses me in many ways. He's 16 years older than me, but we still have enough in common to be very comfortable with each other on the increasingly rare occasions that we aren't actually fighting. Yet I have always felt at least slightly superior to him: better-educated, a little more intelligent, a touch higher class. I know those things shouldn't matter, and I feel guilty even for writing them ... but they do.

K. was a "bad boy" in his youth, and he still has a slightly roguish something about him. It's what attracted me to him in the first place, but what's keeping me with him is comfort: we're comfortable with each other, and the idea of "starting over" is an incredibly daunting one, especially since it's taken me this long to open up as much as I have about what I need (sexually) in a relationship.

While K. and I have dabbled in BDSM in the past -- and every time we do, he comes a little closer to what I need and want -- I've always suspected that he was humoring me and would rather have a more traditional "vanilla" relationship. Sometimes he seems to truly enjoy the Dominant role, and other times, he seems a little bewildered by it. Yet the possibility is there, and as much as we fight outside of the bedroom, it's something I desperately want to explore.

I don't know. I have some important decisions to make very soon, but I've always been terrible with them (I'm a Libra, so I weigh every option carefully and then second-guess my choices long after they're made!). I'm putting it off for as long as I can, but in the meantime, he's sensing the distance I've put between us and reacting -- badly -- to it. The longer I wait, the harder I'm afraid it's going to be.


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On a side note - aren't these icons gorgeous? They were created by ladylamia of lamiacreates.

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I almost joined an Arizona-based polyamory community this morning. I thought I was ready to come out of one of my few remaining closets, but I guess I'm not.

Here's the introductory post that never was:

Hi, there!

Since this is my first voluntary foray into the community - both this livejournal community, and polyamory in general - I thought I would introduce myself before slipping into lurkerdom. ;)

( Continued under the cut ... )

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I told myself I wasn't going to step out of the S&M box in this journal - I have another one for that - but I can't help myself:

For the last four days, I've been attending a company sales conference in New Orleans. I just came back to my hotel room after spending the better part of the night dancing with one of our Vice Presidents in a little bar on Bourbon street. He's married so he's not a prospect, but damn - I love his accent!

On a marginally related note, it seems like a shame to waste my gorgeous 45th floor hotel room and king-sized bed on sleep.

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The more I think about it, the more I think I would thrive in a 24/7 arrangement. I consider myself a feminist in all other aspects of my life, but when it comes to sex and relationships, I want nothing more than to be owned. A little bit of power play or kinky sex just isn't enough. It's better than nothing, of course, but it inevitably leaves me wanting more.

I have had several partners who "dabbled" in D/s or S&M - or both - for my sake, because they knew that it fascinated me or turned me on, but only one who was truly Dominant. I'm still in contact with him via IM's and e-mail, so I know he's interested in renewing our relationship. While I would love to spend a weekend with him sometime, I know we would never work as a permanent couple. We have nothing in common beyond BDSM, and as much as I want a full-time Master, I also want a full-time partner.

I don't think this is as contradictory as it sounds. While I don't entirely buy into the "submissives have all the power" rhetoric, I do believe that there is give-and-take in any relationship, including that between Master and slave. I want someone who will love and respect and value me as a partner, and stimulate me as much intellectually and emotionally as sexually. At the same time, I want someone who isn't afraid to end an argument by turning me over his knee - even if I happen to be right!

Now that I've written it, and reread it a couple of times, I realize that I'm saying 1) I want to be treated like an equal partner and 2) I want to be treated like a slave. How can an equal be a slave? Isn't a slave, by very definition, unequal?

It doesn't ring true, but I don't know how to explain it - yet.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, most likely because my current (and largely vanilla) relationship is in its death throes. I don't want to waste any more time settling for something that is less than what I want or need, even if what I want and need doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me right now. Who knows? Maybe if I keep chipping away at it like this, it will.

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I kneel on the floor at your feet, shivering violently, naked save for the heavy metal cuffs that encircle my wrists and tether me to a bolt in the concrete floor. My feet are unbound; I could move in a small circle if I dared, following the short length of chain, but I take deep, calming breaths instead and force myself to be as still as my uncontrolled trembling will allow. I'm terrified, and it shows, because I know with crushing certainty that today is the day that I have finally pushed you too far.

What happens next won't be about pleasure, or even punishment. It will be about breaking me completely, so that I can be remade in any image you choose. You didn't say it - you didn't say anything - but I knew the moment you knotted your fingers through my hair and threw me roughly to the ground, trapping both of my hands in one of yours as you deftly manipulated the cuffs and chain. It happened so quickly that I barely had time to react, let alone resist: one moment I was teasing you, baiting you with my words, and the next I was cowering like a frightened, broken thing.

But I'm not broken. ( Not yet. )

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I think I must have been a slave in a previous life, because I don't remember a time in this one when I wasn't incredibly, inherently submissive. I couldn't have been more than four or five years old the first time I rewrote the Cinderella story in my head, and then acted it out - awkwardly, with a blanket rolled between my legs - so that the heroine was enslaved and raped by all the princes at the ball.

Seriously. Who does that?

I knew about submission, coercion, rape ... even before I knew, academically, what sex was. I was never abused; I never even walked in on my parents in bed. I just knew, in my head and in my heart, that I wasn't destined to belong to myself.

I remember fantasizing about being tied down, shackled to a table, on display for so many men, touched and beaten and - yes - fucked by them.

There. I did it. I used the "F"-word as a verb.

As submissive as I am, as masochistic as I can be, I am not a "dirty" girl. I was raised in a conservative, upper-middle class household under the watchful eye of my very traditional Asian mother. She believed that sex was at best a necessary evil - something secretive and somehow shameful - and tried, on the rare occasions that she could bring herself to talk about it, to instill the same feelings in me. She was only partially successful, for while I still crave violent sex, I have conflicted feelings about it and struggle with an inexplicable guilt over my only mildly promiscuous past.

I know - intellectually, at least - that there is nothing "wrong" with me. My sexuality is different, even deviant, but not immoral or even particularly alarming (beyond the fact that I am so submissive that I have attracted real abuse in the past). Yet for some reason, I still doubt, and have been unable to embrace of even fully acknowledge that darker part of myself.

I created this livejournal, apart and anonymous from my personal journal, to explore my darkest feelings, desires, doubts and experiences. I hope that as I become more comfortable with these hidden aspects of myself, I will be able to join some communities and converse with others who are similarly inclined. In the meantime, my first challenge to myself is to write a fantasy using all of the "dirty" words that I have shied away from in the past.

I'll come back to that later tonight.

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