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Talking to a friend the other day about his age range of interest i thought a bit about age and preferences. My friend Ben is probably right to say that i'm quite restrictive when it comes to my preferences in Masters but these preferences are not written in stone, although i can't deny that i have an ideal in mind that i'm naturally drawn to.

i remember sitting in my kitchen at the age of 16 discussing with a friend whether it's possible to fall in love with someone you don't know. If you have developed any idea about the person behind this blog, you must have guessed that i was the person defending the seemingly absurd idea that it is indeed possible to fall in love with someone you don't know. I must admit I probably do these things out of a desire to contradict, build up a debate. Whatever my motives, my reasoning was that of course you can because we're always attaching qualities to people and in fact, the least we know about a person, the more we can make them exactly the way we'd like them to be and at that point, how difficult is it to fall in love with this idealised persona. Whether those feelings would survive being confronted with the flesh and bones of the individual in question is another matter altogether, but your feelings are your own, you make them, all the chemicals and electricity that shoot all over the place inside your brain and cause you to feel are yours.

When i was a child, i was sent to school a whole year early so i grew up surrounded by boys who were all a year older than me. Whatever i did, i could never outgrow them, i was always the little one and they were always a bit stronger, a bit taller, a bit more. Maybe there's a bit of that in it too, i'm always attracted to men who are about one or two years older than me, and every time i see someone i like, i immediately assume that they must be about my age but a bit older -- unless it's blatantly obvious that they are like 12. In fact it always takes me by surprise, when i realise that someone i like is in fact younger than me. I'm unprepared for it and it always leaves me feeling a bit unprepared.

i have discussed my idealised Master with my therapist, the fact that he is my alter-ego, a mirrored reflection of me, he is another me, but with all the qualities that i lack: he's strong where i'm weak, dominant where i'm submissive, firm where i'm laid-back. He's the me that i'm not - and for this reason i bow down to his will and let him be in charge of that which is his by right: me.