the city-slave

Many times I have been accused of being a daydreamer living in a fantasy world. It's been going on since I was a child, by my teachers in school, my parents, down to, more recently, masters who consider my expectations unrealistic. As a submissive, you'll often get the occasional Master who will ask you "if this is a fantasy for you...", without hiding their contempt. It's like fantasising is something we ought to have grown out of, being only concerned with the here and now. It seems to me if you fantasise about things you don't have in your daily life, like winning the lottery, it doesn't mean you'll tear up the winning ticket, should you come across it.

Anyway, given my predisposition to not have my feet constantly firmly on the ground, i suppose it was only a matter of time before i would fly off to an entirely separate universe where the frontier between the real and the imagined is somewhat blurrier than here on Earth 1.0.

This universe is provided courtesy of Linden Labs in Second Life, a simulated world populated by lords and ladies, vampires and werewolves, warriors and slaves, whores and accountants. Everything you've ever wanted to be, you can be, if not in your first, in your second life.

After taking some time to get on the gravy train, i have, in the space of a week or two, burnt the stages that have taken me years in my first life to go through. After hanging around for a few days at a particular dungeon in Passion Cove where people come and go, fuck, whip and leave, i've been left, very much like in my first life, angling for more.

This "more" has materialised in the shape of the Gorean city of White Water where i have become a city-owned slave, undergoing my training while awaiting to be bought by a Master. With the help of a few sympathetic slave brothers, I'm learning the ways of Gor, how to talk, behave, serve, etc. So far there has been no sexual contact with anybody but during the role play scenes i am invigorated with energy by virtue of simply being in an environment made of überbutchy warrior men bent on camaraderie and hunts, and hyperservile slaves whose only concern is to ensure the comfort of their superiors. What can i say, like every other child, i thrive in the right environment, and i fit comfortably where roles are defined and i'm expected to be on my knees every time a Master is present and remain in silence until spoken to.

I'm uncertain how long this phase will last but i wonder if this kind of universe is maybe a little dangerous for me. In spite of my predilection for my dream life, i have nontheless never had much trouble (only a little) separating what's true from what isn't. Are things going to change now in my Second Life™?

body's a temple

self-drive

Yesterday my friend Marcus and i started talking about control. He was saying how a slave craves to be controlled by his Master. Somehow the concept didn't quite register with me. Something about it left me uncertain. Do i want to be controlled? I'm not sure that i do. In fact i suspect that being controlled too rigidly is what makes me want to run away. Marcus maintains it's reactance and there's possibly some truth in that but I sense there's more to it than that.

Sure, i would like a Master to have control over my life but not necessarily to control it. The difference i see in these two statements is that whereas the first describes a Master's involvement and final and, i should say, unappealable decisional power over a slave's life, the second seems to hint to a constant pain-staking passing or denying any decision a slave has to take in his life. It's kind of like bondage: i do like the idea of being helpless and vulnerably exposed but i would rather be free to serve and work to please my Owner. My service to my Master is something that i'm happy to offer as a tribute, a gift to symbolise and materialise my devotion to him, it's not something to be enforced every minute of the day, something which, i should add, must require a lot of work on the Master's part.

I suppose i prefer a model where I'm free to move and take decisions that put my Master's needs and interests at the core, instead of being told which foot to get up on.

has it already been since august?

i've been debating over what to do with this blog. If a blog's like a breathing, living creature, i'm afraid this one's been in a coma for a while. To be fair, I've been at its bedsite for a while now, bringing it flowers and trying to awaken it again but without success. I make mental notes of things i want to write about but somehow i never actually get to doing it.

I suppose i was a little fatigued by the perennial cycle of getting excited about talking to someone new and then seeing it not turn into anything. It felt like i was constantly writing about that when the real issue, namely what might actually have been the interconnecting wrongness of all these possibilities, appeared to blur more and more into vagueness.

I've considered calling it a day, blog-wise, but somehow it feels that there's stil more to be said, that the internal battle within me is not quelled and the virus is not defeated. Just like the blog, it was only dormant.

in my mind

i woke up the other day with fantasies involving cleaning. It might be the effect of the heavy pain medication i'm under as a result of a back injury but i think there's more to it than that. It's not that i fetishise or even enjoy cleaning but the thought of my work being used to make a man's life easier never fails to get me going.

In the past, i have been kept scrubbing floors and toilets to understand and accept my role and position. It's not that i necessarily enjoyed doing it, but on my hands and knees doing this mindless job i felt that the distance between me and my then Owner was immense and i felt content in my role. i loved the thought of cleaning the toilet he pissed in and scrubbing the floor he walked on. In my flat, i hate doing any of that but in that situation, i was more than happy to take time out of my life to do this job for my Owner.

That relationship was for me, the last one i've experienced that i have thoroughly felt as real and now, after repeated unsuccessful attempts at dedicated service, i can't help but wonder: what is going wrong?

A lot of people write on their profiles: no timewasters. I've been wondering what a timewaster is. Am i one? i suppose for most people out there a time waster is someone who likes exchanging messages but never actually intends to meet, or even worse makes the arrangement and in the end doesn't show. Now, i've never been a no-show, in fact, i've even shown at times when i really wasn't in the mood for doing that at all. I do it anyway. Why? I'm not sure. On the one hand there's the possibility that things could go unexpectedly well, on the other i really don't like disappointing someone and i generally feel that if i've committed to something, i have to go through with it.

When i reflect too much on it, what type of man i'd like to serve?, why isn't it working?, people tell me that i'm too much in my own head, that i have to let go and simply serve. I've tried that, and i don't think it really works. If it doesn't feel right, it usually keeps not feeling right. And when i keep going in spite of the way i feel, eventually i'm told i give out mixed signals, that i'm not sure what i want, that i express indecision but go ahead with it, only to later say it's not working. Maybe in this way i am in fact wasting people's time but i really don't have a clear recipe for not doing that other than not meeting people at all.

Possibly i'm expecting too much. I expect there to be a connection with a Master. i expect to care about him, and possibly for him to care about me. At the same time, i can't go full time because i do have another relationship that's important to me. "you want your cake and eat it", i can hear a lot of people say. Whatever. This is my reality, and it is what i have to work with.

I've even started considering recently that maybe what i'm seeking i can only ever really experience in my head. i've been blessed with a good deal of imagination and i can experience things in my head. Or i can read. Living them would be a bonus, sure, but it's definitely better to read a good story than live a bad one. Some guy i used to like used to sing: there's more to life than books, but not much more. And certainly there is more to life than there is to books but, once again, not that much more.

So while waiting for Master Perfect i can simply browse, surf, read, dream. And when it gets too much and it feels like this deeper need is just too unfulfilled i can usually manage an easy trick to "yank" it out of me.

the gangsta and the gay boy

cyberhonesty

Sometimes i wonder why i do the things that i do. Sure, meeting someone new is always exciting but when you've just started talking to somebody you haven't met yet, should you start complying with their requests? It's hard not to. For me, at least. Requests may come in during the day while i'm at work and i could simply say that i've complied without actually doing so, but then i'm overcome by this sense that i would be letting him down and i can't really cope with it. So i comply. i follow the requests of the exciting stranger behind the text message. And i've never been much for online/on-the-air games but it's hard to deny him what he wants when my instinct is to try and please him. I have to say similar experiences in the past have been quite disappointing. The more there's been pre-encounter activity, the less has the encounter been likely to actually happen, or lead to anything regular, or positive. Or both. But what can i say, ironically i'm rather optimistic in general and open every new chapter with a clean slate. It's not an effort, it comes quite natural.

the long silence

A long silence, i know. Things have been partly out of my control. I've made one more attempt at finding that which i feel is lacking from my life, one more attempt that hasn't gone as i would have hoped. The silence was not necessarily imposed but partly provoked by the master who wanted me to submit posts to him for approval. Maybe the blog is one area of my life, possibly not the only one, that i don't want to subject to someone else's will and i suppose this sense of rebellion stirring within me that i couldn't quell ended up catalysing the overall response that brought me to want to reaffirm my independence. It's getting harder to stay in a place where i can simply serve and obey, maybe i'm developing more of a dom personality. Dear reader, i've just laughed harder than you have. I tell myself it's simply because i haven't met the man who makes me want to relinquish control. Far from me to suggest that this has nothing to do with me and is only dependent on who i'm dealing with, after asserting my independence i have naturally gravitated once again towards the virtual spaces where one might meet the sort of man that i hope will make me want to simply bow my head, serve and obey.

container and content

Often when meeting dominant men off the internet the topic of the blog comes up in conversation. In this way what's supposed to be a log of something going on, an observation tool, becomes itself what's going on, the object of discussion and the element being observed. The container becomes the content.

Some people ask me not to write about them, or not to say things that will identify them. One man, whom i was tentatively in service to, once told me initially to stop writing it, an instruction that i promptly complied with, but later asked me to resume my writing as it would help him understand what was going on inside my head. This second order proved harder to follow.

Without any delusion of creative independence or artistic integrity, the blog is nevertheless a spontaneous outburst of thoughts, sometimes nonsensical (you might have noticed), that i like to freeze in these casual, irregular posts. I don't sit down thinking: what shall i write about today... In fact, most of the time it actually helps me make sense of confused thoughts that orbit the hollowness of my brain.

But being asked to write, if anything, inhibits me because i feel as though i'm writing for someone else, which makes it a dialogue, and a dialogue is generally less honest than a monologue.

I've met somebody this week, and although these days i'm careful not to trust my instincts too much, i really liked him. But we discussed the blog, and now i feel that if i write something complimentary it's going to sound dishonest, so i'll avoid discussing it at this stage.

rest

The blog's resting as i am. I'm on a break. If it's a voluntary one, i can't say. I'm not hostile to the idea of meeting someone new but i've grown somewhat tired of the business of online enslavement. Few people catch my attention these days, i'm unable to be excited about the cold calculating machine of online hook-ups. I'm always in touch with Dave and i curl up in the warm comfort of an interaction that is so uncomplicated and natural and i curse the distance that dooms the possibility of anything happening but also speculatively wonder if it's not the very ingredient that has kept this alive.

I've considered removing my online profile altogether but i suspect it would only end up being a temporary, short-lived suspension. I know people who do this all the time: they remove their profile, create a new one, remove it, then a new one and so on. i know that i can't completely remove this element from my life so why pretend.

But just as i'm writing this someone interesting has materialised. The name is promising. We'll see what comes out of it.

the beautiful south

On a night out with some people, i found myself chatting to this guy who kept telling me how the place was full of really hot babes. After talking about how hot i find maleness, i unexpectedly found myself knee-deep stuck right in the middle of it. My interlocutor kept pointing me in the direction of this or that hot chick as i kept wondering at what point i should mention that i wasn't exactly his target audience for this. Eventually i did. I didn't, though, to the other straight guy who elected to bond with me with a charming "i wish the fat chick would put her breasts away" and laughed as if he'd said the funniest thing ever. He was drunk.

I guess i'm more used to spending time with people who know i'm gay so i'm generally spared this kind of insight into straightness. But in the midst of a lot of people i didn't know, the good old rule applied: you're straight until proven guilty.

But out of my own environment, lost south of the river, my mind kept drifting back to L. It happens every time i'm in south London. This being his side of town, and him being a little on the lazy side, we would always meet here back in the days when we were getting to know each other. If there had ever been something proper between us, it would have made sense, upon separating, to split something we might have previously shared. The way things stand, we never really shared anything so leaving him the whole south side of the city strikes me as overkill.

Yet it's his. All of it is his playground. I can't set foot there without feeling that i'm on his turf. It's ok, i don't really hang around south london that much so this melancholic nostalgia hits me quite rarely. Every time i go back it feels so far and inconvenient to get to but on the plus side it definitely has an unmistakable taste of him. On my way home on the tube, with the music pumping loud in my iPod in order to block out all the friday night noise around me, as the train takes me back to a much more familiar part of town i feel L draining out of me as though my veins were emptying and my mental capacity starts to return. As my surroundings are familiar again i wonder if i still think maleness is so hot. The answer is yes.

love me like a lesbian

The close association of lesbianism and feminism, coupled with the fact that women are generally perceived as not desiring in the same agressive, self-centred way of the male gender, means that they could easily get away with a comment such as 'great tits' without it being perceived as offensive or objectifying in any way. The reason for this is not only that lesbians are already in the same camp as the object of their desire, therefore being perceived as less of an oppressor than the traditionally more mistrusted male suitor, but also that they are champions of an approach to appreciating the female form that is very different from the way men like to go about it. A woman will often be less concerned with the ideal of feminine beauty favoured by the media, preferring instead what can be defined as a more "spontaneous" female form, choosing what's womanly over what's clinically feminine, loving the woman as a a whole, a reality, rather than a concept or the sum of it's allegedly sexy parts.

Regular reader, you might be surprised to hear me talk about women. Dispair not, i have a point. The way women love women for what they are, as opposed to what they could or should be, made me think of the way that i, as a submissive, can love a man as opposed to the way a woman would.

When i say i'm attracted to men, i'm not simply talking about a man's physical attributes. I like the way a man thinks, acts, moves, walks, laughs. Everything that makes a man a man, is attractive to me, right down to the plain stereotypical. What's male is hot, in fact i fetishise those things that guys are generally given a hard time about. Yobbism, loudmouthed comments, slacking, drinking... all good. Even public urination. Alright, particularly public urination. Guys who want to quickly get off without reciprocating? Hot. A man who wants his cock to be taken care of while he sits comfortably on a sofa watching tv? Hot. Guys sitting at a bar, drinking and checking out girls? Hot. These kind of male traits are constantly being sneered at and ridiculed as being immature but boys will be boys, and boys they will be often in the way that it comes natural to them, rather than the way women fantasise that they should.

My point? Why on earth are genders attracted to each other??

booked

It's hard to define the borders between fantasy and reality when you deal in dreams and fantasies. I've talked to Mr Glasgow again and he's still the man that gets me the most. Maybe it's just because i've committed my soul to him that i can't seem to want to properly submit to anybody else.

I've been seeing someone recently, but it's very casual. There's no pretense that i'm his, that he owns me, etc. He has a very dominant personality, you put me and him in the same room and there's only one thing that could possibly happen. And that's what happens. But if he asked me to commit to him exclusively, i couldn't do it. Not that i see anybody else - although i must admit i've been trying to arrange a drink with somebody for several weeks now...

If i had to find a way to describe it, i'd say i'm his bitch. Well, i would be under the premise of our involvement being any more than purely casual. I do his bidding, i'm around to take care of what he wants taken care of, but i don't consider myself his slave at all, even though i allow myself to be overpowered by his dominance and manliness.

But my slave heart is in Glasgow and that's where it will remain, it seems. There's nothing to be done. Glasgow is the only man who gets my full unconditional attention. I don't seem to be able to get unhooked. He's the only one who makes me smile and cry. One nice word from him is everything and can fill me with joy, the same way that any inattention from him makes me feel hurt the way only he can.

Carrot and stick. Both are available in large amounts. What's missing completely is any opportunity to be face to face, to explore our dynamics and be who we are together in the same room. That's annoying when you think of it and when do i think of it? Every time he talks to me and he makes me wish i was hundreds of miles up north...

mal baisé

In the past, i think some doms have been impressed by my readiness to be walked all over purely on the basis of the fact that i was a submissive talking to a "superior". And i wasn't playing out a role even, i guess i was just the sort of guy who steps to one side to let someone bigger, or louder, walk past. These days things are a little different. Again, it's not as if i'm making a conscious effort in this respect but as my submissive self is experiencing a crisis of faith, i've started taking people's self-proclaimed dominance with a pinch of salt and i don't assume anyone is a true dom until i'm face to face with them and i can feel it on my skin. The other day i even went as far as giving someone a hard time over cancelling an appointment with me. It's not that people aren't allowed to cancel, but i don't like to be taken for granted. Not unless someone owns me. A man doesn't need to disrespect you in order to assert his dominance, and if i take it seriously when i arrange to meet someone, keep the evening free, tell my friends i'm busy, etc, i would expect the person i'm meeting to show me a similar standard of courtesy.

I sort of miss this feeling of humility, of feeling small. i stand by what i've written but re-reading it i can hear some readers think: you so need to be put back in your place and it's probably true...

let go, seriously...

There are times when you're with a dominant man and your mind starts to wander and you might end up considering how embarrassing it would be if Maureen from accounting could see you now as you're on all four and this guy is using your back as a footstool. These are the times when you might as well be killing time with Maureen from accounting planning the next company get-together because your mind is clearly not where it should be.

And then there are the times when Maureen from accounting doesn't exist, there are no company get-togethers and you couldn't even tell what your job title is because the comforting weight of this man's feet on your back, the area where his skin meets yours, sensing his relaxation as he looks down on you and imagining how you must make him feel is all that matters.

Understanding the cause of these very different states of mind is not always straight forward but the symptom seems pretty clear: when focus is key, your mind can be in it or not. For my mind to be "in it" it has to disconnect from everything else that isn't relevant in the moment and the only way that happens, in my experience, is when i manage to let go. Let go of worries, doubts, reflections, and i let my body respond spontaneously to the situation.

Now that doesn't happen all that often, to disconnect from everything else and let yourself go into blissful trust you have to be pretty comfortable with the other person. It definitely didn't happen in one recent situation I have found myself in lately with one man i was strongly captivated by. His zest and liveliness made him very fascinating to a somewhat quieter personality such as myself but it came, alas, with an unfortunate side-effect. He would constantly question me as to what i was feeling, how i was experiencing something and what my thoughts were about what was happening. Letting go was clearly not an option here as i was constantly called back to account for my emotions. I barely felt i had the time to experience anything because all i had to do was worry about expressing what, in the incessant verbalisation, i had no energy left to actually experience.

Furthermore, his vivacity made him fluctuate between this and another kind of verbal interaction that proved perhaps even more taxing: joking. How do you interact with a Master when you don't know if he's being serious or not? The kind of mental steps you have to take as a slave to let go of your boundaries and embrace someone else's desires to make them your own can't happen if, upon being given an order, you have to wonder: is he being serious? In fact, i really can't do it. In the headspace i get into when allowing my submissive self to come out, i take everything i'm given at face value. The words my Master speaks are understood to be honest and true. Final. Am i really expected to experience submission if i'm there worrying about throwing witty remarks back and forth with him and engage in playful banter? Is that really the kind of interaction that can lead to a relationship based on dominance and submission? Is it me who have to get a sense of humour, as he suggests, or does he need to get more of a sense of what it is to be in a position of authority?

When i was a kid, my father, who i never thought of as an authority figure, nothing compared to my gestapo-mum, used to drive me insane with his constant jesting. You could never get a straight answer out of him to the point that i would admonish him, aged 6 or 7, with what later became the catchphrase of my childhood: "Dad, can you be serious for once". Now, i really don't see myself going into slavery asking my Master: "Sir, can you be serious for once..."

semi-gods

The blog hasn't got updated in a while. I say that as if it had nothing to do with me, as if i was checking from time to time to see if something new had been posted. Well, that's partly true, i've felt very detached from all that for quite some time, my desire to be a slave has left me for the most part. It's too complicated, too emotionally involving. I keep wondering how such a drastic change may have come about and i honestly have no idea. I am generally somebody quite hostile to change but this time i seem to have closed the door to anyone new. It's only when i talk to Mr Glasgow that i recognise myself and my desires again, he's the only one who reminds me what it's like to want to wear someone's collar.

A few years ago, when i was, let's say, in love, or infatuated, with L, i thought this would actually never change, that i'd always be susceptible to his charms and it actually did go on for quite some time but looking back on it, i've realised it's happened. And if i have to put my finger on it, it probably happened when he stopped being this perfect semi-god and became a human being with flaws, weaknesses, idiosyncrasies. It sounds awful to say that, like i don't allow him to be human, but he's never let me know and get close to the real him, he always has this shield up and i guess at some point i must have felt i'd had enough.

Mr Glasgow is still a semi-god for me. i have seen some of his weaknesses but i've either chosen to ignore them or their impact hasn't been all that devastating. Clearly they've made me stop waiting for him after the whole commotion at the beginning of the year but when i talk to him we don't fail to notice that those same channels of communication are still very much alive and deep down i cannot hide i still hope that one day there might be more. Surely life is bound to put us within the same four walls once more.

plastic

The first time i heard the song Barbie Girl by Scandinavian trashy pop act Aqua, my kinkometer hit, well, orange... -ish. Yellow, not sure, i haven't worked out all the shades of alert, let's just say that i didn't fail to notice the kink potential of the tune.

Turning a person into a doll, that's only there for you to play and have fun with is a concept that most people who read this blog will be familiar with. Barbie tells us that life in plastic is fantastic, but is it really? Sure, plastic features are impeccable, faultless, a sort of idealised, everlasting perfection but a body encased in plastic, as the fetish is acted on by most people who are plastic-doll-inclined, has echos of imprisonment and suffocation in a dehumanising, objectifying way.

Boo-hoo, some of you might think. Ok, i do get the appeal of "modifying" one's body to remove its susceptibility to decay and turn it into a desirable, timeless plastic toy made to entertain but what i would associate with this are things like shaving or plastic surgery (more than sticking my human head into a plastic one) this way i seem to retain more of an element of humanity that i'm keen not to lose.



The idea also reminds me of a Japanese videoclip i watched where two seemingly baywatch-inspired, doll-like characters live their tragic, comic, plastic, hairless love story.

does age matter?

A few weeks ago, a mate came over to watch a movie. He's a friend i met through slave4master so he knows fairly well what i'm like. We'd tried the Master/slave thing in the beginning but he's quite a bit younger than me and the chemistry between us meant we naturally drifted towards a more friendly situation. When he comes over he normally stays over and when he does he often wants to get off before he drifts off.

The last time he was over i was on chastity orders so i made clear to him that i had no intention of having sex. How lost can we be in our own little worlds! I guess if you're a submissive on chastity orders, sure, no sex means no sex. If you're a 25 year-old top and you're horny, those words make no sense at all. So 5 minutes later he's on top of me with his cock inching closer to my face. At first i could only laugh. This was my friend, this young kid who comes over to watch movies and chat and now he won't take no for an answer. I tried again to resist his attack but he was just amused by my resistance and in the end i gave in. i'm always the one who gives in in the face of persistence.

So i allowed my lips to part and as he realised i had conceded defeat he transitioned from his active phase to simply relaxing enjoying his victory while i did my bit. i must admit i enjoyed it. In my mind i was feeling guilty because i thought that i shouldn't have been doing that, and that if i really wanted i could have stopped it but at the same time it was so easy to let go, to service a guy who's horny and wants to get off. There's only so much i could have resisted. When he was done i respected my chastity orders but that he was ok with and didn't insist. I enjoyed the transition from the energy of sex to the calm that follows it, knowing i had helped it come about but mostly i was fascinated by having witnessed the urge that comes over a guy who wants to get off, the unswerving drive and youthful and steadfast determination to stick his cock in places. i'm fascinated when i see this in someone and often a spur-of-the-moment quickie feels more intense to me than a long planned-out session.

Quite often 20-somethings have more of a quick and "repetitive" approach to sex rather than long sessions with final climax. Some subs take that as lack of experience or immaturity but i find it refreshing and endearing, even. I find exuberance charming and spontaneity attractive. However, when i was messaged today on gaydar by a cute 21-year-old who's quite keen to meet, i couldn't help but feel puzzled working out the age difference between us.

With age it's all relative and, on the basis of that, i tend to classify people in terms of a very relative younger, older or same age as me (i.e. a couple of years either side). Of these, i can't deny i have a penchant for meeting people who are about my age. Serving someone younger can be hot, on the basis of what i've said above, and flattering, too, but i guess there's always a sense that i shouldn't serve someone who's younger, that somehow it's not right. Serving someone older, more than just a few years, on the contrary, feels like it's too matter-of-fact, conventional, in line with the natural order of things: you look up and respect someone who's older than you so you follow their lead and submit to them. But the real mind fuck is serving somebody who's about my age. That's pure embracing of my submissive self. With someone my age, things could theoretically have gone either way, we would normally be on a par but as it happens we're separated by our very different natures. I can feel a stronger bond with someone my age, it's as if he is a part of me that's not in me, an alter ego, and in coming in contact with him i am finally whole. He fills all my voids and i fill his.

Well, this is as idealised as it gets. Things are generally not this clear-cut but i can't help but ebb towards this idealised perception of things in my attempt to make sense of myself and drifting out to wherever it is that i'm going.

under the train

Yesterday someone died in my underground station. A "person under a train", they say. i don't know if it was an accident or it was suicide but the place was swamped with emergency services vehicles: fire engines, police vans and even a helicopter. The event didn't make the news as far as i can see but the situation above ground was surreal with hordes of rushing commuters walking the streets looking for a way to get to their destination as the train service was suspended.

Surrounded by this chaos, i started feeling the weight of this death several dozen feet under that very ground. If it had been a movie, the camera would have moved high up over the ground taking the opportunity to symbolise the departure of this man or woman's soul billowing up into the vast emptiness above us as we, the living, would start looking smaller and smaller, befitting our superfluousness in a world where there are so many of us. From ground level, though, the situation was one of annoyance, of people asking each other what was happening and irritated over being inconvenienced by another day of travel chaos.

With a past delightfully full of suicidal thoughts that stretch back all the way to my teenage years and a charming penchant for making things about myself, i immediately imagined i was experiencing life after my own passing away, mesmerised by the ineluctable continuing of everything else. We didn't look all that different from a line of ants that continue to carry their provisions home past the ones that have been stepped on. Personally i've never really considered jumping under a train, or off a building or a bridge. I've never considered any jumping at all in this respect so the situation was not immediately relatable but this death was so near and so present, directly touching my daily routine, that i couldn't help but feel affected by it.

I don't think i'm ever going to be able to avoid experiencing this side of life so closely. They say that a depressive personality is a hereditary condition and with a great-grandfather who committed suicide, a depressive grandfather and a fun mum that i can always rely on for casual chit-chat about all things death and tears shed over breakfast, i have no problems subscribing to this belief in my enviable position as the next in line.

So, you see, when i'm told to enjoy my submissiveness and feel happy about it, it's not that i don't want to do it – i just can't. Such a strong experience will always elicit a deep and strong response within me and my way of doing it, my way of dealing with it is this, by allowing the pain to flow through me freely without the need to stop it but leaving someone else to ensure my safety and my wholeness. My need for a stronger man near me is to be able to seek refuge. From me and from everything else.

give peace a chance

We go through life piling up experiences upon experiences that in one way or another mold and define who we are. Every once in a while we come across something or someone that leaves a definite imprint in our mental landscape. Our heads are littered (literally) with events that we sometimes can't make sense of but somehow end up indelibly drawing the map of our minds.

Some time ago i read a story online on the nifty archive. I think this story has marked me quite dramatically. It's called "puppy love". It's about a guy, Pete, who over time discovers, then is overwhelmed by and eventually comes to terms with his submissive nature. All this, aided by Matt, his dominant counterpart with whom he gets involved in an initially undefined relationship that simply develops naturally around the spontaneous dispositions of the two characters.

i have to say, the thing that has struck me most in this story is how Pete retraces the same mental path over and over. In experiencing Matt's dominance and unwavering definition of how their unusual relationship is going to work, he goes around in circles submitting to him, experiencing the overwhelming flow of emotions his submission stirs up in him, finding joy in his owner's protection, then rationalising the unfairness of their relationship, freaking out about how he can let himself be subjected to this kind of treatment, feeling jealous of the fact that Matt also has a girlfriend, acting out to reaffirm his own independence, only to finally come face to face with Matt and re-experiencing the weakness in the knees and the calm of his surrender and find security again under his owner's wing. The whole story is a constant replay of this cycle marked by the peacefulness and happiness that Pete feels when with Matt and the desperate loneliness and anger he experiences when his owner leaves him to go off with his girlfriend.

This struck me because i find myself going through similar ups and downs that make it very hard to have much of a clue about what i actually want. And in the process i end up confusing those who come in contact with me with mixed messages and so much uncertainty.

Last night i made a bit of a fool of myself in one such situation, giving one signal one minute and an entirely different one the next. And i hate this feeling where i feel like i'm wasting someone's time with all this crap that's in my head.

Of all the things that Neil told me there's one that keeps resonating in my head: i don't give my submission a chance. i don't know if this is true. There's certainly other people who would firmly agree with him. I thought i was healed, that i wasn't afraid of ownership anymore. But i am. And there's this fear of disappointing, of taking a commitment i'll end up not being able, or willing, to keep, and again feel like a fraud, like i've wasted someone's time. So i keep gravitating towards the idea of ownership unsure as to whether i actually want to land.