I think we could all use a moment of Zen right about now

Don’t know about you, but I’m mentally exhausted by the recent circus-like American politics. I mean, isn’t it enough that we already have ridiculous amounts of regular tension in our individual modern lives on a day to day basis without all these end of the world as we know it scenarios being politically co-opted and CNN’ed to death and shoved down our throats every minute of every day?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making light of the U.S. (or world, for that matter) situation or trying to claim that’s it not as bad as it seems. I’ll even go so far to say that, as a species, I think we’re probably totally fucked - even if CNN will never broadcast that particular report.

But, Armageddon or not, I have a blog to run here. So, though it won’t bail out Wall Street or stop global warming, here’s my little contribution toward a break in the madness, my little moment of kinky Zen*… and I swear, it’s all true.

So, the other night, there I am, with all this world angst roiling away in the background of my insulated little reality where I’m sitting at my desk trying to get some very detailed and deadline driven work done. And if that’s not enough pressure, I’m trying to get this work done while also trying to manage wave after wave of hot flashes.

And, of course, I can’t be one of those lucky women who experiences mild or even "typical" hot flashes that come and go somewhat manageably, like a simple natural occurrence of New Age-y aging (re: "just think of it as a power surge, honey, proof that you’re becoming a wise crone, blah, blah, blah."). [insert eye roll here]

No. I get to be one of the women who gets to have these seriously debilitating episodes that include vision disturbances, dangerous dizziness (as in, I’ve fallen down because of it), difficulty with swallowing, breathing, putting more than two syllables together correctly, and generally remaining conscious and sane.

My hot flashes are not even hot, for christ’s sake. They’re scary, ice-cold whole-body tsunamis of just plain awfulness. They piss me off in a big way. But they piss me off most of all when I’m trying to work.

And particularly when I’m working under a deadline and dealing with a potentially devastating world financial crisis, these more-than-just-hot flashes make me dangerously, outrageously ENRAGED. They make want to just annihilate something, anything, everything. And God forbid that anyone should actually speak to me right at that point because that poor person would have just unwittingly identified my nearest and most convenient target.

So, the other night, just as I’m cresting the peak of one of these moments of unbearable flashy-ness, my husband decides to walk in the room and begin a general tirade about the economy, Sarah Palin’s laughable interview with Katie Couric, and John McCain’s grandstanding holier-than-thou announcement that’s he’s "suspending" his campaign.**

Then, barely taking another breath, he careens with righteously geeky anger directly into a rant about how his day has been nothing but crucial mp3 files not loading, computer programs crashing, someone stealing his stapler, just one fucking malfunction after another, etc.

Finally, he notices my eerie silence, my flushed face and wild she-bitch eyes, and he stops ranting. Abruptly. He knows what’s going on with my vascular system right then. He knows I am being remotely-controlled by renegade hormones. And, even more deadly, is the fact that I know he knows.

For what seems like an eternity, we stare at each other like that, like the US and Russia during the cold war, across the ocean of our stubbornness, both of us daring the other to prove who’s situation is more worthy of screaming about, silently placing our bets on which of us is going to spit first, on which of us is goin’ down.

And then, totally, deviously straight faced, he says it: "Niagara Falls."

Niagara Falls!***

The whole situation snaps. And the scene jerks into slow motion, for just one perfectly timed moment, like in a good action movie.

Slowly, I turn… inch by inch… step by step…

And BAM, just like that, we jerk out of slow motion again and I spin in my chair and reach out to deftly hook the fingers of one hand into the waistband of his jeans while I make a vicious grab for his cock with the other. But he’s too fast for me (but only because, remember, I’m at a menopausally-induced disadvantage).

So, before I can fully execute my famous grab-the-man-by-the-pants maneuver, he gets a too secure grasp in my hair and pulls me to the floor where I end up on all fours, at which point he immediately yanks my pants down over my ass and throws one leg over me so he can straddle me and hold me there.

Both of us are laughing stupidly now as I’m bucking up under him to try and get him off of me before he can get in that first ringing-loud smack on the plumpest part of my ass cheek. But alas [insert tone of fake disappointment here], he’s too strong for me.

So, while I’m laughingyellingmoaning and scratching at the hardwood floor under my desk, he begins… slap, smack, THWACK, with his bare hand. One ass cheek then the other… slap, smack, THWACK… and repeat, and repeat, and repeat…

until he hits that perfectly spankalicious rhythm that makes the whole room go languidly warm,

and I begin to give in and arch my back so I’m no longer trying to get my ass away from his hand, but closer toward it,

and his hand begins to sting and his thighs begin to shake from holding my wriggling body captive between them,

and the hot flashes stop,

and the lost stapler no longer matters,

and the failing world economy and out of control media and grandstanding puppet politicians have been put back in their rightful place in the larger scheme of things.

Eventually, there is much falling upon on each other and several and varied forms of pleasurable groping and giggling, groaning and sighing.

And though it will never appear on CNN, the story here is just as important as any other - that two people have found a way to live through one more day without having to resort to killing each other over shit they can’t do anything about.

Also never to be reported on CNN is the truth that no matter how dire the circumstance, comedy and kink will always save the day… and incidentally, that spanking is a highly protected secret cure for "atypical" hot flashes.

Hey, maybe the McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden teams should have an Ultimate Smack Down Spank Match! It wouldn’t solve the financial crisis, but it would certainly be an atypical cure for what ails this presidential race, and definitely more interesting to watch than any debate. However, in all fairness, the question-asking, time-keeping, rule-enforcing, Muthafuckin’ Dungeon Master of this event should be, could only be, the provocatively leather pantsuited HRC2012.

So there it is, kids. Your moment of kinky Zen. Or, the no-cost way to manage menopause, personal stress, and global mayhem right from the safety and privacy of your own home.

Carry on.

*In homage to Your Moment of Zen, from the Daily Show and Jon Stewart, who has my vote for president, by the way.
** And David Letterman, who has my other vote (since I write under a pseudonym, I get two).
***And Larry, Moe, and Curly, who also have three more of my votes for president, posthumously, of course (ok, the truth is that I get to vote as many times as I want because I’m from Chicago).

Feeling it

A post or so back, I talked about feeling it all the way down. And I just had a thought about that - an afterthought, aftershock, post script, whatever…

When I am submitting and that moment of surrender comes, I tend to feel it as a letting go, a relaxing, like heavy gates are swinging open in slow motion within me.

And that feeling usually originates as a tingling in the back of my neck that moves down my shoulders and radiates in expansive waves that wash down into into my chest and diaphragm. This is usually when the calm settles in and I being to float.

Also, when I start to feel the letting go of surrender, I want to begin exhaling in long slow beautiful waves. Really long, sighing, moaning exhalations feel very very good, and I feel dreamy, dissolved… at one with the world.

When I’m dominating and that surge of almost savage focus comes, I tend to feel it as a very fast expansion, as if some superheated energy has flash-flooded into a container that can barely hold it.

And this feeling usually originates in my solar plexus or my belly, and then radiates upward very fast into my chest and neck. I sometimes get dizzy at this point, and my eyes feel like they’re snapping into some sort of super vision mode, like I can suddenly see at both a microscopic level as well as into outerspace (I know, that sounds goofy, but there it is).

And when that flood of power begins to overtake me, I have the feeling that I want to suck in as much air as I can - deep, gluttonous inhalations. I think my chest actually physically expands at this point and inhaling feels so fucking powerfully good - like I’m suddenly more alive than alive.

So… this is interesting. Especially from the standpoint of chakras and energy movement. In my body, it seems that dominance goes up on the inhale, surrender goes down on the exhale, and either way, it all ends up swirling around at the heart.

Wow… I honestly never looked at my own responses like this before, contrasted in this way. The complementarity of this is really cool to me - up/down, in/out, etc.

Also interesting is that these upper body feelings are generally my first entrance into the “spaces” of either dominance or submission, and only later, after it’s spent some time swirling around in my heart center, does the energy move into the lower, sexual chakras - which triggers a whole other dimension of… swirling.

Hmm… Feeling it all the way down. Indeed.

Love and power, aka chocolate and peanut butter

I recently realized that I have never submitted to a man sexually if there was not an already established circuit of love coursing between us.

But, I have dominated men just fine without that type of mutual love connection. And, in fact, I’ve felt more clarity and confidence concerning my ability to dominate a man if I don’t love him.

It’s as if submission (me being submissive) is rooted in love and the feeling of connection, whereas dominance (me being dominant) is rooted in power and the feeling of detachment.

Hmm… so what the hell is that about? [Elizavetta ponders] And why am I making a differentiation like this; these mental groupings of love/connection/submission and power/detachment/dominance?

Is this a result of a cultural male/female thing I’ve taken on unquestioningly as a personal belief? Or is there really something integral to me about this differentiation?

OR, am I simply on the cusp of discovering two great tastes that taste great together… you know, kinda like the yummy heaven one finds in a Reese’s peanut butter cup?

These are my current questions of the day…

… which I’ll think about some more after I get back from the candy store.

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Image credit: bob.fornal at flickr

Behind the veil

A few months ago, I had begun a separate blog for some devotional writings I was doing. But recently, I’ve been realizing some (yet again) new levels of integration in myself, so I decided to bring that writing over here to Vespertine, where it now belongs.

Because these writings are somewhat different than most of the things I post here, I’ve chosen to put them all together on a page rather than include them in the regular blog post chronology here.

Behind the Veil will be updated occasionally and not on any specific schedule, so you’ll have to actually check that page (found in the top navigation bar) once and a while if you’d like to see what’s new there.

Enjoy.

Hide and Seek

And if I find my hard headed woman…
~Cat Stevens

I know now that it has always been my heart and body that long to submit, that ache to offer themselves up to that which sees, with absolute clarity, their true natures.

This heart-body that is me, this untamed spirit-self - this is the wild, essential part of me that automatically shows throat at the right word or look or touch from the right man with the right light in his eyes.

This is the part of me that comfortably dwells in the flickering pools of light that illuminate the dark nexus of surrender and renewal, that place in each of us where all universes are created… and destroyed… and remade.

But my mind, my survive-at-all-costs mind, has always been totally dominant and will stubbornly stick to the straight road of its own self-serving purpose even though my heart-body often pleads its own case in the most convincing of ways.

And I suspect that no word, no touch, no look by even the most righteous of man with the most beautiful of eyes, will ever change that.

This is not to say that I believe my mind is "bad" for being stubbornly consistent, or even that my heart and body are "good" for being properly (according to ideas about my gender) acquiescent.

On the contrary, I am beginning to see just how strong and complete this combination has made me - and how it has gifted me with the capability for masterful submission as well as exquisitely loving dominance, sexually and otherwise.

But this self-knowledge of the finer points of my own inner alchemical make up has not always been clear to me. In fact, it is relatively new information.

And, as with most discoveries about one’s self, after the ah-ha, comes the oy vey… or as they say, if only I had known then what I know now…

I once had a lover who called me his hard-headed woman. We flirted with dominance and submission but never crossed into that land even though, unbeknownst to us, we were both citizens by birth.

And so, at that time, I could not understand why he insisted on calling me hard-headed when all I ever wanted to do was submit my "all" to his every request, his every need for release and renewal. But then, neither he nor I had any idea yet about the subtle divisions that existed inside that "all" of either of us.

His naming of me as a hard-headed woman was not an insult, though, as it might have been coming from another man. He never uttered those words with any hint of anger or exasperation; it was a nickname, a term of endearment, saved for only the most intimate and tender of times.

In fact, he always said it with a barely concealed lust in his voice and something else in his eyes, something that totally astonished and confused me at the time, something akin to awe.

Back then, it was only the lust I understood and responded to. But, recently, I have come to understand the awe - the combination of respect and wonder and dread with which he looked at me. I have come to understand what he saw; what manner of creature he had found in me, hiding.

And in my new understanding, I can only sit here dumbfounded at the immensity of what we both lost - he because of his eventual inability to claim what he saw, and me because of my inability to fully be what I was.

Luckily, time does help most things of this nature. Well, it usually helps… somewhat…

And so, as my own understanding is carving a way for me to forgive him for not coming to look for me after our game’s counting had ended, I can only hope he is also finding a way to both understand and forgive my own need, back then, to stay hidden for so long in the devestating aftermath of that silence.

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Image credit: Unknown. If anyone knows who created this image, please let me know so I can credit him or her properly.

Submission

As a woman, the submissive part of me both wants and fears this: To be forced opened, penetrated, used, broken into, filled, forced to accept a fullness that I cannot provide myself.

Part of the origins of this can be found literally in my sex - my body is female, it possesses a place that is made to be opened up and filled - and so it makes sense to me that my physiology is partly responsible for making these things both pleasurable and fearsome to me.

Of course, I know that submission is much more involved than that, and much more unique to each individual, but I’m purposefully just looking at this in a bare bones kind of way for the moment.

So, in general , what does the submissive man most want and fear? Does his physiology sets him up with a different set of pleasure and fear? I think so.

From my experience with submissive men, I think it’s about losing control, by either losing the erection itself or "losing" it by coming. It seems like it’s about being forced to "empty" in one way or another.

Even when a submissive man wants to be anally penetrated, the penetration often has to do with denying the importance of the erection in favor of the penetration - a type of loss which makes the erection not the focus. Again, a kind of enforced losing or emptying of the erection.

Just pondering here…

Anyone care to ponder with me?

By the way, I’m obviously talking about heterosexual submission here. Not because I’m being a non-inclusive jerk, but because I just have no interest in same sex submission, and so I don’t ponder much about it. However, if you want to comment about it in relation to what I’ve said in this post, by all means, go for it. It’s all food for thought to me.

Cinéma Vérité: A Mind Fuck in Four Parts (part one)

A cold bare room.

Silence.

I am alone, sitting before a dark video screen, waiting for my Master to return.

I am tied to a simple wooden chair in the very middle of the room. My knees are held open by the same strand of rope that binds my ankles to the legs of the chair.

My wrists are bound behind me, and the long rope of my hair as well. Hands and hair, both lashed to the straight unforgiving spindles cutting into my back.

My mouth is filled with a rubber penis gag, my tongue compulsively trying to accommodate the constant invasion.

Headphones cover my ears, but they are silent. I hear no commands, no familiar Master’s voice, so I study the long thin cord that runs from the headphones to the place where it plugs into the blank video screen in front of me.

I meditate on the meaning of silence, the cultivation of an empty mind. I try to connect with the quiet beyond consciousness. I try, as always, to anticipate nothing but as the minutes tick by I only descend into a slow dread of peace.

He enters and closes the door softly. His sharp clicking footfalls stop directly behind me. Every downy hair on my body rises up. I wait for the heavy blow of His voice, the sharp sting of His hand, His whip, His demand.

I wait. I breathe. I wait. Until…

A magnified whoosh of white noise bursts into my ears followed quickly by the blue-gray static of the video screen flashing on.

Rioja

First Date 1999

After the last bite of medium-rare but before the last sip of Rioja , she leaned her perfumed shoulder against him. Under the table, her hand moved to his thigh. But only after she let him feel her breath on his neck did she open her mouth to let the very tip of her tongue make its way from the top of his collar to just beneath his ear.

Still, he did not shiver until she whispered, in her dark plum accent, “I do not want to be free.”

He was aware of the couple at the next table, their furtive glances, the hostess across the room straightening her skirt, the snow beginning to fall outside. Then, too quickly, a voice he did not recognize as his own answered, “I don’t know how to do that.”

She turned her eyes away first. But it was the slow dark sweep of her hair moving away from him that made him understand how the door to regret opens always on quiet hinges.

As they waited for the check, she sipped the last of her wine, savoring the already fading memory of black cherry and sun and oak.

The waiter arrived to pour a last wash of clear water into their silence. And the diminishing sound of her call and his response receded away from them like a crested flood making its slow way back to the rocky bed of its own dark river.

Any Date 2005

He rides the el home from the office and settles in before supper to watch the world falling apart on CNN. On the weekends, he fixes things that need fixing. He pays his mortgage on the first, fucks his wife when he’s supposed to, and faithfully masturbates beneath his keyboard every morning before work.

Occasionally, he remembers that winter night, the red cinnamon candles in the café, the warmth and secret scent of her breath, her quiet anger underneath.

At night, when he’s drunk and it’s quiet, he can even sometimes close his eyes and recall her delicious voice in his ear. But he can never remember why he didn’t fuck her. Mercifully, he always decides that it must have been something she said.

And she… well, she still eats her steak medium-rare at that same little Spanish place on La Salle. She still orders a Rioja Riserva ; her waiter knows which one.

Often, as she finishes her glass, she can recall the richness of his voice, even though his words have become nothing in her dreams. But even when she dines alone, her hair a lighter shade now and unbound, she remembers how much she still does not want to be free.

Image credit: 25-Year Old Woman with Finger in a Glass of Wine , by Silvestre Machado

Ironing Sutra

I heat the iron and test it.

and my mind wanders to last night… on my hands and knees… trying to calm the giddy longing rising in me… giggling and fidgeting… twisting for a glimpse of you behind me

I shake out your shirt and lay it across the board.

"stay still" you say in your serious voice, and I do… I close my eyes and hear the sound of your watch unlatching from your wrist, the clack of it when you place it on the table and then… the sharp flick of a first light slap of leather across the back of my thighs

I flatten one sleeve and stroke the fabric down along the board with my palm.

you smooth your hand down along my back and pat my hip…. "very good now"… I breathe in deeply and arch toward you as your fingers slide gently between my legs

I grab the iron and plunge it down, steaming along the length of one sleeve. I press harder along the crease and point the tip of the iron deep into the pleat at the cuff.

your hand leaves me… your belt comes down suddenly and too hard for a first blow… the breath I so luxuriously drew in hisses out fast now through clenched teeth

I lift the shirt from the board and snap it out, then arrange the next section of fabric. I press the iron down hard, and drag and steam – again and again – until your shirt is made presentable, the rough little confusions of wrinkles made smooth and crisp by the combination of pressure and heat I wield in my hands.

over and over, I gasp and grunt as your belt comes down… and down… I try to keep my hips still while your voice, far away, snaps out loud beautiful things I won’t remember… and strange colors come into my head… and the insides of my shaking thighs are hot and slippery wet

Lifting the bulk of the iron, I use only the point to bring into focus that place where the seam of the cuff receives the pleat of the sleeve. This will ensure that the cuffs rest crisp and clean at your wrists as your hands go about their day’s work; it will show that you care enough to demand, and expect, thoroughness.

you stop to look at me, at the work you’ve done so far… "wider," you say… and the belt’s length slides down between your fingers until the tongue of it dangles between my legs… I pant and whimper and arch… it barely touches my pussy… you whisper for me to stay still, to "open now"… but before I can get my bearings, before I can prepare, three precise slaps whip against the wetness… I clench desperately at the carpet… I hear a voice keening and a glittery whiteness rushes into what is left of my vision

I finish your shirt by steaming the collar with several heavy, solid presses – straight down, straight down, straight down.

I hear the belt hit the floor, your ragged voice saying something vicious… you kneel behind me, and with one hand push my head to the floor… the other is guiding your cock into me… your thrusts, so hard and fast, lift my knees off the floor… I hear your voice, strangling out its urgent command: "take it… take it… take it…"

I drape your shirt on its hanger, button the top button, and lightly smooth my hands down its cool, even length.

as we lay stretched out together at the edge of sleep, you tell me you want your new white shirt ironed in the morning… yes… yes, I murmur, and burrow deeper against your chest… yes… inside your arms

Image credit: Pablo Picasso, Woman Ironing , 1904.

Anointed

one drop of frankincense oil
on your thumb
smeared between my eyes

bitter, you said
bitter is the seeing

another drop on your palm
and yet another
rubbed on your cock
a sacred meal, prepared
before my waiting face

lick it, you said
feast on the bitter seed
the milky tear
eat, and be seen

Image credit: st-barbie at Deviant Art