It’s not even 10pm and I am about ready to pass out.  My entire body aches, my finger is out of its splint tape simply because I don’t have enough brain power to reapply it.  My butt itches from tons of little tiny scratches.  My forehead is tender, my side is tender, parts of my scalp.  There are bruises already on my shins and many more that are still forming.  I can’t seem to drink enough Gatorade to catch up with the dehydration and sore throat from screaming too much and smoking too many cigarettes. We had an amazing night.

The energy at the party was fantastic.  While we waited for my domination scene we saw a beautiful knife play scene.  I’ve never seen a submissive giggle so much while being poked with sharps.  Our first scene was great, and I’m feeling competent with caning at this point.  Towards the end of our scene our close friends were getting started across the dungeon.  For awhile my partner and my friend were screaming in sync, it was really nice.

We of course had to fight, it is the basis of our entire relationship.   It took a little doing to clear enough space on the dungeon floor.  Though after the first few slaps, grabs, and kicks we had all the space we needed.  The highlights of the first fight scene was me being dragged around the carpet in circles by my ankles with him yelling, “How about that rug burn?”  Can’t tell you how many other people asked me that question as the evening progressed.  Our first scene ended after my head was shoved in a trashcan.  It was beautiful energy and ending on a humiliation point just made it.

Since my top was off, and difficult to retie, I decided to do a duct tape bustier.  Somehow we got the wrapping done while I was smoking a cigarette in the garage.  We toured the party engaging in some good conversation, but by the time we made it back to the dungeon area we were ready to go again.  This time the duct tape was the target.  We struggled, he tried to grab me up and I’d throw my weight so that he couldn’t lift me.  I was screaming, and insults were flying through the air, until he finally managed to grab me by the tape on my back.  I ended up hovering above the ground by my duct tape bustier as I struggled to get free and he was trying to rip it open.

The tape finally gave out and I went straight down, landing in perfect break-fall upright in fetal position with a loud thud and fits of laughter.  I felt the impact through my whole body, but it didn’t stop the cackling.  He had trouble ripping the tape off through my laughing more than me putting up any sort of fight.  Though as the tape really started coming off this largely switched to screaming.  By the end I’m back to kicking and fighting dirty as usual.  Though he gets the roll of tape, and preps to start binding me with it.

Amidst clawing, kicking, slapping, struggling, insults, screaming and writhing I end up with my fingers taped shut.  During this part I start cursing about how he stole that trick from a story I had told him about a prior scene.  Taped my arms together, somewhat unsuccessfully taped my eyes and mouth closed.  My hair got involved as well, this consent was so amusingly obtained while in roll.  He said your hair is going to end up in the tape if you don’t move it out of the way, and I continued to curse and say I didn’t give a shit.

Due to the large amount of struggling, ripped tape, and other mayhem in this part of the scene my right pointer finger got badly jammed and sprained during the taping.  We both saw the finger as a warning sign, but both consented to ignoring it.  It has been a point of hilarity throughout the day today as I can’t do things like open cereal boxes and have spent most of the day with a mutant double finger, since I chose the cheapest splint option available: paper tape and my middle finger.

I get tortured a bit while bound and am given enough air to get out of the tape in-between long blood curdling screams.  After getting out of it we start fighting again.  I start hitting him with the ripped off tape, and he picks up our rattan cane.  Due to the scuffling and confusion we actually switched weapons several times.  Eventually we’re both so overtaken with the sting, and so tired, we came to a truce.

A little bit later the dungeon mostly cleared out, and we had a quiet scene with me subbing for the “paint roller of doom”, a paint roller covered in carpet nails.  It was nice being in good ole subspace for a bit.  I had missed the lovely floaty nature of it all these past few months.

It was a great time even through the commute home.  We stopped at a Starbucks and enjoyed ridiculous fast food cafe drinks sitting outside as the sun rose.  After a four hour nap we went out to get burritos in the inner harbor and were amused at how we are tourists in the city’s tourist trap.  As we had difficulty finding parking and the restaurant.  We came home and napped while watching Fight Club.  Can’t think of a better way to have spent the weekend.

We both remain continually in awe of how we grow together, and how fun our lives remain.  The intensity and seamlessness of our scenes gets better every time.  A physical measure of our work on communication, and our personal soul searching.  We remain amazed at the response we often get from the community.  We’ve heard a lot of neat things about what others get out of our play, and we look forward to many more fights in the future.

A year ago today it was raining, just like it is right now.  It rained like this for days, Baltimore wringing the sweat of summer out of the sky.  A year ago today I got offered the job I have now.  Over this weekend I’d end up attending my first formal play party, and begin making this website what it is now.  If I needed a new birthday today would make a good one.

This stretch of time in the calendar year for me is like the weakening of the veil.  I see myself without the barriers of my ego.  This trend has been repetative throughout my life.  I can’t think of a tail end of August that did not have this moment.  Observed mostly in silence, in a thoughtless way, absorbing directly into the deepest parts of who I am.

It has also been a time of major change, it makes sense given that for many years this marked the beginning of school.  I also have this uncanny ability of pair my modal shifts, preferring to change everything at once.

A year into BDSM community, and I couldn’t even begin to explain how I got to where I am now.  Last night my friends and I were nodding off on the couch watching hojojutsu demonstrations.  This was after purposefully setting the floor on fire with my new torches.  The night before I had an unofficial meeting with the rape squad during happy hour.

There is a party tomorrow, and I don’t need to think hard on what I’m wearing or what’s going in the bag.  My new comfort level with dominating/topping bewilders me, and I simultaneously feel like I know nothing on the subject.  My boyfriend’s butt is still a little green from the party last week, and I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have at least one bruise or scratch on my body.

Meanwhile, I still get to work on time.

The path was made up of so many tiny moments.  I can’t pick any single one out and name it most important, truly all of them were.  I can’t quantify the individual lessons learned. I simply know I know a hell of a lot more than I did a year ago, and a year from now it will be even more.

I am simultaneously thankful that the weather doesn’t change, because there are many moments when I think the only thing that has remained the same is summer ending rains.

My family booked a week at the beach and my partner and I managed to arrange two full days to go join them.  Packing on Wednesday morning was an amusing experience as I realized I had no need to throw any lingerie or toys into my bag.  Of course the entire car ride consisted of wondering who was going to show up to happy hour that night, polyamory theory, discussing ways we want to play, and fetlife gossip.  We wondered how many small slips we’d make in front of my family as I have ceased to be vanilla anywhere outside of work.

As we arrived it began to rain, we took walks around the building talking kink, and I sat in the living room with my family chatting and editing suspension pictures.  When the rain stopped we went into our room, and the real trouble began.  He had gone into the bathroom to change and I was in the middle of putting my bathing suit on when he came back in the room and started rubbing cold wet hands on me.  I of course fall over squealing.

We get out on the beach and are on relatively good behavior until we get in the water.  There were several drowning attempts, and the beginning of a game of gross out chicken splashing around in the water attempting to make the most disgusting seductive poses possible.  A strange game of power exchange since the person dominating the moment is humiliating themselves, the control came from turning on the other while being as gross as humanly possible.

The heckling, threatening, insulting, assaulting talk of course was endless, and simply took a different form in front of my family.  Curt “pleases and thank yous” in front of my parents and vague references to kink.  My family starts to talk about going down to the boardwalk, I see if they can wait up for us.  Before we head out for a quick stroll on the beach he calls me a whore a little too loud.   We decide to tell my family to go on ahead to the boardwalk and we will catch up with them later.

When we felt the coast was clear we headed back to the condo, took a shower, and it was game on.  He’s been on me to top for a few weeks, and I had been working with him on headspaces.  A little pinching showed a lot of subbiness, and I regretted leaving the impact toys at home.  We had a good scene of spanking techniques instead.  I alternated between sting and thud hits, shaking him out of space with the occasional pinch.

All I could hear was screaming and smacking, and I worried for a moment about the thickness of the walls.  When we were done it had started raining again.  His hazy moaning evaporated into thick insults about me not wanting to go to the boardwalk in the rain.  We started watching an incredibly bad movie on the TV, and my family started to arrive back home seeking shelter from the rain.  The downpour turned to a drizzle, so we decided to venture out.

After about 10 blocks it started to downpour, we made our way back sopping wet.  As soon as we got dry we fell fast asleep.

In the morning we got up and walked back to the car to get some vegan friendly groceries and coffee.  The morning was about a vanilla as we ever get, though while getting ready to go back out on the beach there was molasses thick sarcasm.  We sat with my family for awhile on the beach and then we went for a walk.  I made sure to bring things with me that were hard limits for getting wet.

After arguing and sloshing through tide pools for awhile we stop.  I say I know he wants to throw me in the water, he notes I have a cigarette and other items that can’t get wet, that I probably planned it.  I grin a bit.

Back in our chairs laying in the sun and sand my family has decided to go back inside.  We proceed to feed the seagulls.  Getting a whole flock to surround out chairs.  Our good behavior continues to deteriorate.  It devolves into taking disturbing photos, leaving people on the beach wondering why that hot girl is rolling around in wet sand looking gross and someone is taking pictures of it.

We fly a kite, go inside, and slowly pack up and ready to leave.  Uneventful, polite, and no one seemed phased by us a bit.

It was a good vacation.

This morning I woke up at my usual time, after an evening of feeling ill.  I got on my computer and began on what I needed to get done for work, and I get a message from downstairs “do you want a bagel?” I responded, “Not really, maybe half”.

A few minutes later a plate arrives on my desk, a whole everything bagel slathered in butter and cinnamon sugar.  I just looked at it, kind of horrified, beginning to get a sense of the full extent of my nausea.  Reading my mind he asks, “How does it make you feel to look at it?”  I didn’t need to answer, and really I was too sick to get any words out.

I attempted to continue working, and eventually convinced myself to take a few bites.  I came downstairs with butter on my fingers feigning a bounce in my step, and after being asked to describe how my attempt to eat breakfast made me feel . . . I called out of work.

In any other relationship the morning would have gone differently.  Perhaps my partner would not have noticed I was ill, perhaps I would have called out independently and have felt guilty about it.  Maybe I would have been chased after with a thermometer and a bottle of Tylenol.  Only to be declared well enough to go to work.

This morning though, the dynamic came into play.  A visceral argument in the form of food I could not eat.  Placed in front of me by a partner who thought I was being ridiculous, and was determined to get me to admit it.

This event alone does not make us a power exchange dynamic, though it points to some of the most beautiful things about living in one.  How it comes to form in the most mundane activities.  After calling out I said, “I’m glad I decided to not go into today,” and I got the response, “You never were.”