I Want the World To Know ... or at least a select few.

So I've been telling some people that I'm kinky. More than just joking how I really like Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman. Er ... actually it's Julie Newmar I'm hopelessly horn doggie over. But really, I've been truly sharing for the first time in my life that I'm a perv with a select few friends. I don't tell 'em everything as there's the ubiquitous "ick factor" with some stuff. But I've been telling them more than enough that they get I'm a submissive man who wants to be with a dominant woman.

Generally, this process has been going very well and I'm feeling liberated and supported. But I had lunch this week with a vanilla woman friend who I've been randy over for some time. She of the Mahwah Kiss. She's definitely a "top" in the street. Smart, bossy, sexy, and hot. Anyway, I tell her I'm having problems in my marriage and she says, "I don't want to pry but what's going on? In other words, I'm prying." So I tell her in a nutshell the main issue is we don't have sex. Upon hearing this, my oh-so-hot friend goes off and says, "Come on, men need sex!! That's part of the marriage vow. You get a vagina to play with."

Okay ... but not wanting to misrepresent myself or my situation I say there's a bit more to it. Like? Well, I say, I've got some pretty kinky sexual tastes. Like? Well, I say, I like to bottom to a woman top. And she says ... "That's not so kinky ... you want to be on the bottom and have her on top?"

Now, I had been totally admiring her high heels, tight black skirt, form fitting wrap blouse and most of all, the tell tale gathering of her black stockings at her ankles which bespoke the real deal instead of the less enticing pantyhose. So I was a little taken aback at her complete naïveté. "Well, it's a little more involved.", I confessed. "I like the dominatrix thing." I blurted.

"You mean like whips and crops?", she so innocently inquires.

And just like that my sexual attraction quotient dropped like the Dow Jones Industrials Average. We chatted a little more about it. She was cool but so not interested. "Whatever turns you on." "As long as it doesn't involve children and animals." Sheesh!!

I gotta figure out a better litmus test to avoid the canned analysis about how it's all due to my domineering mom and the sexualization of losing TV privileges. But on the total upside, I really thought for the first time that I was looking for someone who truly shared my interest in kink instead of trying to chase and mold a "vanilla-top-on-the-street-bottom-in-the-sheets" kinda girl into my perfect domme. That's really been my lifelong mistake.

So even though it's a bit of a cliched anthem, I leave you with this, dear reader. Don't 'cha think her gloves are waaay dommy?

I Wanna Live in the World

Despite my best and persistent efforts to fashion a working compromise in my marriage, things just seem to be getting worse. For me, I've been able to envision a way that we could stay together, embrace the deep comfort of a twenty year relationship, and still get various needs met outside our marriage. I've been very careful to be explicit enough to have something to work toward but not so "honest" that I'm cruel. But for her, it all just feels like rejection and humiliation. I don't mean it to be. I love her very much. But I can't go back to surreptitious subsistence.

In ways other than kink we are very different. Who knows why after so many years of a life together it just seems to be unraveling. It's not just my increasing comfort with my perviness. It's not just my draw to flirtation and sexual attraction outside our union. It's not just her shame at our increasingly precarious financial situation. Maybe it's hitting a limit on how much we can share each other's lives and our respective dreams for a path into the future. Maybe we need some room to figure out just how much we can be together.

While it is deeply sad, I can't help but feel slightly giddy with hope. The freedom to make new friends and craft a life without all the lying and sneaking around has a cleanly captivating allure. I don't kid myself. At my age, the likelihood that I'll find Mistress Right and live happily ever after is pretty remote. But as a connoisseur of the greyer shade of grey in human interaction, maybe I don't need Mistress Right to be happy.

Maybe right now, like Jackson says, it's enough to hear a voice calling the prisoner inside who's the captive of my doubt, a voice which feeds all my dreams of breaking out ... and taking my chances - alive in the world.

Pro vs. Pampered Lifestyler

In chatting about her upcoming travels on the Max Board, the iconic, extraordinarily lovely, and oh-so-funny Domina M drew a distinction between the professional and the "pampered lifestyler". She posited she'd be "okay" - or on the sunnyside of legal - if she had her submissive pay for her hotel and played with him at her leisure. She seemed to define this form of interaction as "pampered lifestyle". I love this term. FWIW - and it is not worth legal advice - I agree with M that she's unlikely to get jammed up if her "compensation" is a nice corner room at the Marriott.

But more than legal niceties, her term "pampered lifestyle" seemed so accurately descriptive of the relationship I have with the domme I love. For each of her visits during the past year I've sprung for her hotel. I've loved doing this as it allows her to stay in town, have a base of operations, and I get to be told to strip naked so I don't wrinkle my suit when I bring her coffee in the morning. We also have romantic dinners from heaven and at the end of our lovely evenings I pick up the tab. That's just Chivalrous Dating 101. I'd been searching for a characterization of our thing together. Normally I don't pay for my friends hotel stays when they visit from out-of-town, but paying the bill at Kink Hilton didn't really seem like green in the tribute pouch either. The reaction on Maxville to this relationship concept was, as usual, facinating.

So thanks M for defining what has slightly perplexed me for the past year. Long live the pampered lifestyle!