lack of words
31 May 2006 23:48![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amulIt's really hard for me to write about Shibari Con.
The suspension. I should start there. Lorena, as she prefers to be called in the scene, was a friend of a woman I'd met at 2BeCon, and -- as it turns out -- is engaged to a friend I knew at CMU through![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
papertygre. She took an instant shine to me, and actually made their group wait to have dinner so that I could join them (I was volunteering my time rather than paying, so I was busy after each seminar for about 30 minutes).
I and another guy ended up doing some groundwork bondage with her before the evening's festivities began, nothing special, but it was pretty much my first time working rope outside of a classroom environment, and I seemed to do pretty well, although I've noticed I'm using almost exclusively half-hitches.
Anyway, my first suspension. She tied my hands in front of me and bound them close to my face, after the usual chest and hip harness. Then she pulled me up into an inverted suspension, and bound my legs to the frame. I was pretty cool with all of this until she said, "You realize you're completely under my control now, right? You've no longer got any say in what happens to you." That's when I realized, or maybe I had already mentioned to her but now it struck me in full force that I haven't bottomed in any sense in several years, more than half a decade.
As I hung there, I thought about Apple Martini, and the way she praised my willingness to push her harder than she'd been pushed before. Other women, too, who had praised my willingness to indulge in their masochistically sensual desires. I realized that this willingness came from my distance to their experience. I'd forgotten what it felt like to be on bottom, to submit, to willingly give up control. I'd lost empathy for the people in my life from whom I've constantly demanded submission (and here I speak non-sexually).
It was not arousing to me in a traditional sense of the term. But it was profoundly powerful to me all the same. I realized, with starting clarity, just what affect I'd been having on several people in my life, in particular My Ex, Priceless Pearl and (f)AD. Understood, with greater precision, just what had been going on inside them during those periods when I became unyielding.
Compromise. This is a half-forgotten thought once again crystal clear in my head. With My Ex, compromise was always, "If you give up this, then I will give up that." It still rubs against my grain. Compromise, especially between lovers, should be each giving the other what s/he needs. It should be an act of indulgence in the desires of another, not a constant repression of what we need to feel whole.
The suspension. I should start there. Lorena, as she prefers to be called in the scene, was a friend of a woman I'd met at 2BeCon, and -- as it turns out -- is engaged to a friend I knew at CMU through
papertygre. She took an instant shine to me, and actually made their group wait to have dinner so that I could join them (I was volunteering my time rather than paying, so I was busy after each seminar for about 30 minutes).I and another guy ended up doing some groundwork bondage with her before the evening's festivities began, nothing special, but it was pretty much my first time working rope outside of a classroom environment, and I seemed to do pretty well, although I've noticed I'm using almost exclusively half-hitches.
Anyway, my first suspension. She tied my hands in front of me and bound them close to my face, after the usual chest and hip harness. Then she pulled me up into an inverted suspension, and bound my legs to the frame. I was pretty cool with all of this until she said, "You realize you're completely under my control now, right? You've no longer got any say in what happens to you." That's when I realized, or maybe I had already mentioned to her but now it struck me in full force that I haven't bottomed in any sense in several years, more than half a decade.
As I hung there, I thought about Apple Martini, and the way she praised my willingness to push her harder than she'd been pushed before. Other women, too, who had praised my willingness to indulge in their masochistically sensual desires. I realized that this willingness came from my distance to their experience. I'd forgotten what it felt like to be on bottom, to submit, to willingly give up control. I'd lost empathy for the people in my life from whom I've constantly demanded submission (and here I speak non-sexually).
It was not arousing to me in a traditional sense of the term. But it was profoundly powerful to me all the same. I realized, with starting clarity, just what affect I'd been having on several people in my life, in particular My Ex, Priceless Pearl and (f)AD. Understood, with greater precision, just what had been going on inside them during those periods when I became unyielding.
Compromise. This is a half-forgotten thought once again crystal clear in my head. With My Ex, compromise was always, "If you give up this, then I will give up that." It still rubs against my grain. Compromise, especially between lovers, should be each giving the other what s/he needs. It should be an act of indulgence in the desires of another, not a constant repression of what we need to feel whole.