What's Stopping You?

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/06/why-being-broken-in-a-pile-on-your-bedroom-floor-is-a-good-idea--julie-jc-peters/

Still trying to find the time to reflect on ShibariCon. This was forwarded to me by (Formerly) Achingly Defiant, and I thank the gods for ex-girlfriends.

I'll write of at least one ShibariCon-based epiphany that I had, concerning Mirage:

It's not that she was The One That I've Been Waiting For, it's just that she was the first girl in my entire life with whom I finally felt like I could be fallible in front of. I gave her a type of virginity that I didn't even know I still had in me, and the reason I've been struggling so much to get over the pain of our breakup is simply this:

I'm a heartbroken, recently deflowered virgin.

Of course this hurts. I waited thirty five years for someone I could trust like that.

ShibariCon this year was completely awesome on a number of levels. It's really amazing to think about what my life was like last year when I went, versus this year. In terms of social life, steps towards my career dreams, and actual skill with rope....I have grown so much, it's astounding.

I'll write more later, but I wanted to put something down so it'll be easier to find if I ever come trolling through my archives again to look back.

From last year:
http://amul.livejournal.com/455608.html
http://amul.livejournal.com/457883.html (Friends Only)
http://amul.livejournal.com/459474.html

Rule 1: Do not email anyone who visits your website saying, "Hey, I saw you were on my site and looking at X," no matter how much you believe it may be the hot girl from the fetish convention you just got back from.

ShibariCon was amazing this year. I really enjoyed the way I wasn't working the event, and after some careful coaching, I started finding "play partners" everywhere. That term is a bit misleading though, since it implies sexuality. Rope work with strangers this weekend was much less focused on sexuality, and much more about simply tying people up for the sheer fun of it. I don't really know where it came from, but Shibari really has become a kind of fetish for me - it is something that I now do for it's own sake.

Intriguingly, although I attended every class session (and that's 14 sessions over four days, starting ungodly early in the morning), only two of those courses were "about rope." The other 12 classes I attended were all about the psychology of bondage: why you do it, how to talk to strangers about what they want out of a session, how to move beyond the strangely rigid classification system of Top/Dominant/Corporal/etc, how to coordinate your scenes, how to negotiate boundaries and still keep it sexy.

Oh, and here's something completely fucked up: out of 500 people from across the world, united only by our mutual interest in rope, I was not the only person there with a Winnie The Pooh tattoo! Uncle P has TWO of them, in color!

I also finally met Cunning Minx of Poly Weekly fame, and OH MY GOD is she hot! ( (gushing babble) )

Don't be fooled by the tangents, by the way. The incredibly attractive woman whose email address I am illicitly in possession of is NOT the bodacious Ms Minx, but a completely different fine-looking woman who apparently thinks of me as "the really hot note-taker," because of my frantic scribbling during one of the classes by Lee Harrington,. Lee, incidentally, is currently trying to have text-message sex with me while his flight is delayed.

The underlying message of the weekend, for me, was one speaking to my fears and self-doubts, and calling them dirty names. I have carefully navigated the course of my life to a place that is as free from judgment and potential condemnation as it is possible to get without cutting yourself off entirely from other human beings. In such a place, fear and feelings of inadequacy, of self-depreciation, ought to have no power over me. Is it so surprising, then, that so many people joined me in learning how to overcome such demons under the guise of rope fetishism?

I bought some bananas. They're sitting on my table. It's wierd, you know? I mean, food just sitting out there, not in a box or can or anything. Just sitting on my table.

I am on a plane, lifting up out of an island city. I am in a car, heading down the highway. I am relaxing into the half-mad, half-enlightened state of geographic recomposition. I am struggling to access knowledge I casually tossed offline.

I am uploading. ( Read more... )
"Do you think there will come a point in your life where you'll just give this all up and become normal?" I scoff at this, who's normal?

"Well, me, for a start."

And she's got me there.