Death Of A Dog - Birth Of A Future

His name started as a joke. My wife kidded she wanted to introduce us, "This is my husband Advo and my dog Advotey." The name stuck. Many people thought it was the height of self-centered, narcissistic vanity that I'd named my dog after myself. Advotey's name was also my father's nickname.

I inherited the legasy of an absent, alcoholic father who terrified me as a child with guns and untrained hunting dogs. My uncharacteristic mid-life outdoorsman odyssey was an expiation of these sins. My dog was my guide.

My once strong and noble hunter had been dying for over a year. Wracked with the effects of Cushing's disease his powerful back legs were wasting away, his handsome head was boney, and his once thick lusterous coat was thin and marred with bald spots and warts. Though he was recovering remarkably well from the Cushing's, two weeks ago he had his second violent seizure in a month and I knew it was time to help him die.

For fifteen years he'd guarded my soul, retrieved my spirit, and happily licked clean my wounds of day-to-day human life. It's the deal we make with a dog. They love us - period. They trust us to do right. In that bond we are rescued from mediocrity and become heros to a wagging tail.

Dogs are pure D/s creatures. They dominate or they submit. He would dive into a tangled thicket of sharp thorns, completely oblivious to vicious bloody stabbings, to recover a small quail and then obediently deliver it to my hand. I spent years training him. He was a soft dog. You could not be too harsh with him. He served and he lived to please.

He is my model of the noble, strong, courageous submissive. I miss him horribly, but am comforted that for all he gave me, I held up my end of the bargain.



Aarkey and I had spent the day in my new office grunting and groaning together what turned out to be a massive desk that threatened to eat the space whole. He claimed I was overcompensating for something. Wise ass.

Anyway, I'm a tenant in the beautiful downtown suite and my new landlords were throwing a holiday party that night - my reason to come down and work the room.
We cleaned up as we could but tiny white bits of styrofoam packing littered the plush deep green hallway carpeting outside the office. I was told there was no vacuum cleaner.

My next door neighbor is a partner in one of the firms and she serves as the office manager. She came to the door dressed for the party in a short red mini-dress, black hose, black heels and a clingy black sweater.

She bluntly chided, "Advo, this has to be cleaned up," as she pointed to the minute white particles. She glared at me and walked off.

Aarkey and I looked at each other. "Dude, she shoulda put her hand on her hip," he suggested. "Yeah", I giggled, "and pointed at me and then at the floor."

I went out into the hallway and picked up every last little nib of white. Apparently, Aarkey's wife got quite the chuckle from our first day at the new office story.

My spirit dog romps loyally with me as the future tugs me forward with heartache, hope and maybe a few laughs along the way.

Fleeting Questions

I had dinner with my wife Friday night instead of dancing with a domme.

What's with that?

Truth be told, I have the dregs of a nasty cold and didn't feel much like playing Fred to my dommy dance partner's Ginger. My wife is leaving town for ten days or so and I just wanted to be close to over two decades of intimacy. The value in shared history, however marred by conflict, is truly comforting.

How do you figure?

I had a date last night with my new love interest. I re-texted our restaurant rendez-vous and added a "be there or be square". She replied she was too hip to be square. I added that her hips were most definitely not square. Truth be told I was too nasal nasty to be make-out material. But we had a wonderful talk about our unexpected connection. After dinner we walked arm in arm through Times Square to Eighth Avenue. She kissed me goodnight on my mouth through her soft leather glove as I wriggled excitedly telling her how hot that made me. "We'll try it with a veil next time", she whispered. She shoved me toward the subway commanding me to go away and walked abruptly off, leering over her shoulder at me as she disappeared into the holiday crowd of an early winter's eve.

Where does she fit?

As I write this my older dog is pacing my snappy new Far West Village loft apartment, unable to relax, occassionally stopping, tilting his head into the air and plaintively, softly, howling. He's trying to tell me something. He's old, he's tired, he hurts. I just don't know what he wants. He's so boney and small from the effects of his Cushing's disease we've been battling. He's a such a good boy.

How long will he remain with me?

Fleeting questions. The answers just out of reach.

Gonna Take A While For This Egg To Hatch

Somehow Thanksgiving just doesn't inspire my perv side like the week between Christmas and New Year does. But despite all life's current challenges and difficulties I am very thankful. I have lots of new kinky friends. I get to go have Thanksgiving dinner with the same folks I've done the holiday with for twenty two odd years and my wife and I will eat together and be happy to see each other.

I have a kinky dance partner and though I know the studio and instructors are just hustling us, they all say we're hot.

And then there's the new crush girl who is cooking dinner for 20 and called me the other night from the grocery line just to say hi. And even though my condo deal in Miami went south and I won't be going to Art Basal with Ms. Mah Wah Kiss; I have my license to practice in the sun.

I'm to bring soda, near beer, and cigars today and on the way back, my playlist produced this goodie which made me think of my kinky new crush girl. Sometimes I'm just a teenage girl.

Holly Came From Miami FLA

Upheaval, cataclysmic transition, adjustment as agonizing as it is thrilling. But at bottom, it is all about change.

A few months ago I sat in the Fort Lauderdale aiport, writing my blog having come up short. Today as I write, I'm a sworn member of the club (I'm told there's a secret handshake), I have an office, and I am reviewing a lease for a huge, cheap, sleek, apartment with a free parking space. For a Manhattanite - this is shangri-la!! My dream of being a bi-east-coastal big shot is upon me. Now the trick is to get work.

On the other hand, my wife has been diagnosed with a horrible neurological condition that may in fact lead to an utter dissembling of any remote quality of life and cause the most horrible of swift, but torturous deaths. We find out more just after the first of the year.

I could talk about riding waves or the best of worst times or worst of best times. But figure if I show up each day and reach for the strength to be present; I'll be here to deal.

Not much kink. Just a lot of life with its fractured and frustrating flights of fancy and fear. I just f'd the f out of that, huh?

Snapshots

Me...I'm learning how to lead on the dance floor and she's trying to learn to follow. It would be hilarious if she'd relax and admit she's a domme. We're actually getting quite good together, though I've given up thinking there's any chance of sexual combustibility.

But on Wednesday night when I got up to offer the other one, the new blind date, the wall seat at the little local neighborhood restaurant where everyone seems to already know my name she said, "Of course I'd like that spot, and you should immediately sit here", she smiled and pointed to the outside chair. Be still my heart! Senorita Kinky did pre-screen!

Our conversation just flitted and flowed from this subject to that one. She asked if our mutual friend had told me anything about her and I said only that she was beautiful. It made her eyes sparkle and her glossed lips curve into an appreciative smile.

"So do you do both roles", she asked.

"You mean am I a switch?" I asked. "Well let's put it this way, I'm actually learning to lead on the dance floor. Does that count?"

She laughed.

I yattered on.

"Well, I have this dear friend who thinks it's a team sport and you should choose a side," I smirked a bit. "But life is change, who knows. Stranger things could happen."

She held my hand as we waited on Hudson for a cab to take her home. I put my other hand over hers and softly ran my fingers around her fingers. I lingered a bit. As the cab pulled up she took my face in both hands and kissed me, just left of my mouth, long and slow. I helped her in, shut the door and began the two block walk home.

I reached for my phone as I passed by the Louboutin boutique and to my surprise there was a message.

"You're supposed to wait and watch as the cab pulls away. You are out of practice. Naughty, naughty."

Somos novios? Hmmm...maybe I'm jumping the gun just a bit. But maybe, just maybe, I'll get some practice one of these fine evenings after all.

Sometimes A Heart Is No Place To Be Singing From At All

For years I told lies to satiate powerful sexual desire. Through three long term relationships; two marriages and a serious five year girlfriend - I just heaped lie after mendacious invention after bald faced, flat-out fib on the pile of pursuing personal perversion. Now as I begin a difficult struggle to rid my body of a new, inadvertent craving; I realize I was an addict. For me, the white hotness of the secret sneak to the forbidden was an irresistable narcotic.

By saying this I make no accusation of enabling. Most prodommes totally rock. Some of the women I saw helped me so much. One has become the dearest of friends who will have to mercilessly drive me off if she wants to dump me. I am hers.

But I can also be another's. And even another's. Because there's room in my life. And just like the benzos will be gone, I am mostly free of desperate double crossing deceit. Secret sex has become merely private. It's my business.

Ms. Mahwah Kiss worries that I'll be "caught". She worries that someone will "out" me and I will be "discovered". What? The New York Post will find my blog and do some sort of salacious story about how a respected lawyer is actually a perv? Could my livelihood be affected? I guess so. But it's who I am. This blog and the open references I sometimes make to liking "controling women" have taken something I used be ashamed of and made it into a creative celebration. Welcome to 2010. I say bring it.

Bring it...and I'll deal.

That's why I was so disappointed to be lied to this past week by someone I'd hoped wouldn't have to be like me and hide. Look, I understand. It's supported by every right in the world. But it made me sad.

Sad for all the lies I'd told my wife. How I had repeatedly gaslighted her and denied the incontrovertible. How she'd believed me; until the next time and the time and again after that. My thirty three year surreptitious stealth eroded any semblance of intimacy.

Do I "man-up" by separating and dating kinky? For me, I have no choice. I choose me. I choose to get off my lovely mommy helpers because I miss the anxious, nervous, quivering little guy who said "I think I can, I think I can" often enough to become a successful professional and a proud perv all in one.

Do I risk?

Hell, yeah I risk!

But this is life affirming risk worth taking. We are gorgeous, glittering, outlaws. Why constantly hide all that beauty? I'm not notifying the media mind you. Reasonable precaution is mandatory and wise. But neither do I always screen, veil, and shroud. I don't guiltily inter the marvelous anymore. But that's me. And I'm feeling good about it these days.

"But all at once the world can overwhelm me, there's almost nothing you could tell me, that could ease my mind"

A Road Not Taken

I was talking to the new shrink. The one that's going to help me get off the azapammy pills. It totally and completely pisses me the utter fuck off that I've become emotionally and physically dependant on prescription anti-anxiety meds and sleeping pills. He said the ironic thing was that I probably hadn't needed them in the first place. But now it's body chemistry to cut them back and wean me off gradually. With all the 12 step knowledge I have and the almost thirty years of sobriety from alcohol I've maintained, this just infuriates the crap out of me. Mind you, I'm not abusing, just taking what's been prescribed. But,I want off.

It is what it is.

The good news is he says it should be pretty straight forward. The bad news is it will take a frustratingly long time.

I had a handsomely compensated hour and forty five minutes to blabber on about my stuff to him. Anyhow, I'm telling the shrink about my kink. I attributed a lack of compatibility on fetish/bdsm as one of a number of causes of the breakdown of my marriage, the loss of which has ignited a repetitively explosive amount of dread and forboding in me.

The shrink asks, "Why didn't you just find the dominant woman of your dreams and ride off into the sunset." Literal quote, I kid you not.

I told him I was ashamed. Or used to be ashamed. I told him I'd gone to a T.E.S. meeting in the early eighties to try to meet kinky people. Who is Tess he wanted to know. Took me two passes to educate him. Anyway, I had run away as people seemed kind of judgemental that I'd spent a fair amount of time with prodommes at that point. I'm sure I was being overly sensitive.

I told Meds Doc I have friends now. Kinky friends. Friends who set me up on dates. Friends who call me when they haven't heard from me. Friends who I'm sure will be concerned and upset for me about this most recent development. Wonderful, kinky, creative, real friends.

Searching for the sunset is all fine and dandy but it was not the road I took. Nothing wrong with what I did. But my choice did fracture a life into a compartmentalized secret.

My wife hurt her knee this week and I had to rescue her from our place in the country. The hospital had put a brace on her leg and I told her she looked very Helmut Newton. But this time her comments about did that turn me on and was I one of those who is turned on by quadriplegic women weren't even delivered with much venom and the bite just seemed de-fanged.

Maybe there will be a sunset ride out there yet. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying cavorting about on the open range and seeing where the trails may lead.

From Cliche To Costume

I hate Halloween. Every year I feel the pressure to release my inner child and come up with the perfect costume. I never can manage to quiet the voices of criticism, sending my eager little kid to the corner all sad and disappointed that he doesn't get to trick and treat.

This year I've been invited to one Halloween party so far. At Ms. Mah Wah Kiss's loft. She's going as some Chinese cartoon devil girl villain. Who carries a whip. She said she was either going as a "DominAtrix" (pronounced with the accent on the non-existant A) or the cartoon villian, but was concerned that I not go crazy if she dressed as a domme. I love that she thinks my capacity for cruel denial is so low. It's so cute.

I was sinking into my usual "I'm-just-not-going-because-I-can't-figure-out-a-costume-and-I'm-going-to-eat-a-worm" funk yesterday morning. So I told my self, "Self, buck the fuck up ya baby!" and I started messing around with internet searches. I wanted a fetish-theme costume. So I began to search and look and there's really nothing original out there. Besides, it's not a fetish party this one. In addition to Ms. Kiss's shindig, maybe I'll either be invited to a fetish one or go to one of the public ones. The public ones sound very much not my scene though.

So I needed a get-up that would pass, but say something about who I am. So I thought, what's cliche? A waiter, a cabana boy, a Roman slave? All so oh ho, ho, hum. Then I thought what is cliche about the domme/slave relationship and yet outwardly positive? The cliche is that of a cowering, wimpy submissive. The positive twist is a brave Lancelot or Galahad. So maybe I'd go as a knight! Fearless and loyal and courageous - but kneels at his Queen's feet. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Boooring!!! See what I mean about the nasty little peanut gallery in my brain?

I thought, so what do cartoon dominatrixes say to thier partners?

"You worm!", she'll snarl all dressed in an overstated leather body suit; black thigh high boots, blah, blah, blah.

Hmm...a worm. Hard to walk, hard to dance, no panache.

"Pig", she sneers. "Come here you dirty pig."

That's it!! I'll go as a proud, in your face, Dirty Pig. So I immediately went to Ricky's and got a nose and a pair of huge pink sunglasses. I added pig ears that come up out of holes I cut in the $5 bowler hat, and a prominent corkscrew pink tail. The look is prurient porker Elton John imitator meets a Clockwork Orange. I'm adding a tight white man beater, baggy black pants, and black braces. Some wash off tatoos. Add my black on black, white soled Nikes and a cigar to chomp on. Top it all off with my electric pink bow tie with a chunky D-ring hanging off it. I tie my own you know.

Presto! A dirty, edgy, sexy, rock'n rolla, bad boy pig.

"Hey baby! Can ya strap it on and make me squeal like the dirty little piggy I am?"

Hmmm, how many times can I get slapped?

This character allows license to say completely obnoxious things.

"This little pig don't want no roast beef, sweetheart. He wants to roll in the muck for you, doll face!"

"Yo, what about 'choo and me go to market, if you catch my drift, sweet cakes."

Really. I totally need a fetish party for this outfit/persona to be appreciated and appropriately punished.

But the persona gives license to do and say things that should suffer immediate castigation and decisive discipline. Even vanilla girls will want to beat me up!

Proud Pig, Dance Pig, In-Your-Face Dirty Pig. This little piggy likes it rough!

Diana

I used to slink into the deeply sexual seediness of the old, pre-Disneyland, Times Square to ferret out bdsm porn. I mostly sought out the contact magazines. I felt melded to this secret underbelly of hot bdsm sex. There were days I thought of nothing more. Somehow I managed to graduate, get a job and get sober during the late 70's and early 80's; but all I really truly wanted to do when the need hit was to see prodommes. It was an irresistable impulse. Completely and utterly beyond my control. I felt horrible, racking guilt at my complete lack of control. I was a bad, bad, boy for wanting this. And this was the essence of hot. Being bad - being secret - being a double-life agent sneak - made it all the more forbidden and all the more gut wretchingly, achingly, dick-hardenly hot.

A prodomme friend talked about how she got way too many emails where the guy just put his dick on the table and expected - no demanded - in a language that only remotely resembled English, that she deal with it. I used to do that all the time, whether by letter, phone call, or much, much later by email. I liked to think I was charming and facinating, but I was just a major league, presumptuous pain in the ass.

I exhibited, within the bounds of the comparatively reasonable, the worst attributes of clients. I no-showed, I was a vertible cock spammer when I discovered email, I called and wasted time promising a call back and never coming through. I sessioned twice or three times and then disappeared - I'm sure leaving her to wonder if she'd offended me, done something wrong, and what had happened anyway. I gave bad client.

But when the drive was clean, pure, lust and I connected? When there was a chemistry with a beautiful, experienced domme? The scene was was virally sexual, beautiful and deeply fullfilling.

Diana was one of the those dommes.

It was the early to mid 80's. Houses had not hit the Scene. I was an avid reader of all the Matriarch productions. A tall lithe Russian domme named Sasha had caught my eye and I somehow managed to write to her at a P.O. Box and got a contact number. The process of making the appointment was sex itself. There was just something about being asked over the phone when I'd last sought solo relief and was I rubbing one out while we spoke. Made me boil over with such inexorably driven desire that I just could not ever say no, when the need hit.

Years later, a domme friend said it was like "Cat People". You couldn't help turning into the huge, primal black cat.

Diana's studio at the time was on the south side of 23rd Street between Park and Third. Years later I visited Venus's studio which was in the same building, only a floor below. Diana's place was at the top of a seemingly endless, vertical staircase climb. But I thought I was seeing Sasha. When she met me at the door, she looked a little different than her pictures, but she was hot so who cared. It was definitely going to work.

I saw her pretty regularly for about two years. After the third session she confessed that her name was Diana and Sasha was an entirely different person. Diana really introduced me to small stints of chastity as she preferred I come to her with at least three days of no orgasm. She showed me how much more desperate, submissive, and compliant I became without release. She play pierced me. She teased me mercilessly. I found two picture books in the bins of a dimly lit Times Square smut shop dedicated to only her. I made cut-out montages and brought them to her. I was deeply connected. But not in love.

Then one day when I called for a session, she was gone. I was bereft. I tracked down the real Sasha after many failed attempts. She said Diana had left town but promised she'd get my teary, heartfelt, plea to know where she was to her. I never heard from Diana again.

Maybe it was the first time I truly realized the power of the client/prodomme relationship. I couldn't imagine life without her. And yet I've never heard from her or anything about her. Though there are dommes from my past I wonder about -- she has not become one of them.

Such is the nature of so much secrecy.

But there was something about being tied tightly to her simple bondage chair as I'd watch her pull up her tight, little, black ribbed dress high over her hips. She'd watch me. Stare into my eyes. Look down at my involuntary, iron-risen, reaction. She'd sidle over to touch my face, to whisper in my ear some reeking obscentity. She'd sit on my knee. If she released my hand would I show her, she'd ask? Would I show her how much I wanted what I could never have? Would I present her my honey? Did I want this?

Could I beg?

Could I give a her just a tiny little piece of my heart?

What do you think?

Red Soles

She and I and her friend walked down the block towards Hudson Street in search of breakfast at sunset. Her attention was drawn to the shoe boutique window that was a major selling point in support of my move to the new neighborhood. The store changes its display regularly. The window that drew her attention held two shoes; a sneaker-look shoe in a red, white, and blue sequins and a skyhigh pump in the same design.

It pleased me immensely that the sneaker seemed to hold no interest.

She caught up with us.

"Great shoes!", she enthused with a soul satifying blurt.

"You know the store, right?", I asked.

With her blank look I explained it was the Louboutin boutique. This sent her scurrying back to the window with me thinking, "She doubts a shoe perv?"

She came strolling back with a big smile and allowed as to how I was absolutely right, explaining to her girlfriend that Christian's delights were the absolute it shoe, always identifiable by the fire engine red sole on the bottom.

Huh, ya learn something everyday. I've been walking by that window every day for almost two months and never noticed each hot and heavenly pair sported bright red soles.

Made me want to lick my tongue that very shade.

Familiarity

Scene

In the bathroom of the beachside hotel She and advo shared for Labor Day weekend. The door remains open as he sits to pee. Normally he stands. She is compulsively insuring there is no sand on the tile floor as she walks a towel around him. He tries to concentrate on the task at hand.


advo: I can never get it all out when I sit. I'm always coming back.

She: Same thing happens to me when I give golden showers standing up.

Oh, the iconic poster graces my bathroom in my new apartment in the Far West Village. I like the familiar.

But if a girl wants you to win her heart, and you're not sure what to do if you win it, should you try?

Yessssss!!!

To all of you who wished me well.

Thank you so much!!

I passed.

Roman Holiday

If you don't enjoy whiney bloggers then perhaps you should go to the next entry on your reading list since I plan to bleat and moan a bit in this post.

Go on, admit it.

You like hearing a nice droney little whimper every now and then if only to feel superiour and say to your self, "That little bitch ought to buck up."

So I've called Ms. Mahwah Kiss like seven times since I got back from Florida and have gotten no meaningful response. When we were more casually acquainted, she'd drop off my radar for months at a time. Then we'd hook-up by happenstance and have dinner or coffee, then go months without seeing each other. But in these emotionally charged times I need more than this from a friend and she's just taken a complete powder.

She-Who-Visits has called me a couple of times in the evening this week and I've been out play dating. Practicing up for my Monday night real deal. I think it's the height of rudeness to take cell calls during dinner. So I didn't answer when she rang. She'll often call and either not leave a message or snark a little, send her love between the lines, and hang up. But on Thursday night she left a message and specifically called my outgoing voice mail dispatch whiney and unprofessional. Then unequivocally stated she was "officially giving up on me."

Now I know she probably doesn't mean this. I've called, texted, emailed and she hasn't responded. I tried her at lunch on Friday and she actually answered.

"Not now", she spat into the phone and abruptly hung up.

This, I suppose, is the downside of liking mean girls. Sometimes they are mean to me when I least deserve it. She knows this is the weekend before the Monday release of exam results. Mr. She sleeps on the same bed of pins and needles that I do. I thought it was particularly cruel of her to announce she was cutting me off just before the last exam watch weekend.

But what? I expect this personality type to be low-maintenance?

Finally, my wife is off to the West for ten days. She suffers a horrible limbo status; she knows she has a serious medical problem but awaits a veritable barrage of test results. This sends her scurrying compulsively to every doomsday Web M.D. diagnosis site on the internet. She's professionally concluded with a high degree of "scientific certainty" that she is about to die. Nothing I can do or say helps. I try suggesting that it is interesting that her obsession with death has coincidentally arisen practically simulataneously with our separation. This, might I say, astute, observation is immediately dismissed in a hail of vitriol. She is certain I believe she is simply an hysteric. As completely selfish as it sounds, I'm actually relieved she's gone for a little while.

Now watch, she'll die and I'll feel years of deep post-mortem, guilt ridden, remorse.

Finally, my oldest dog - my fifteen year old heart and soulmate dog - has green pus infected, bloody, abscesses on his back. Formerly a thorn and thicket tough, pheasant flushing hunter; he can barely keep up with me on our very moderate morning runs.

No wonder I bought a case of rock lobster so the restaurant could serve my Monday night birthday dinner date her favorite arthropod al fresco. That and I want her to tie me up and make out with me.

For some reason, this all made me think of the scene in the HBO series "Rome" in which Atia whips her slave Castor just for the hell of it. No sex, no punishment. Atia of the Julii is just going through a rough patch and she decides to whip the shit out of her loyal, devoted, protective, personal.

Perhaps that's what comes with the turf submission. Doesn't mean I can't whine about it every now and then. Here's a clip from the show about the slaves of Rome. Start at the 1:35 mark for the Atia/Castor profile.

I love Castor's line after he's taken an innumerable number of Atia's best.

"Will that be all, Domina?"

Crustacean Quester

Okay. I promised I wouldn't write about the good date. But I am a deeply flawed individual. My need to share and compose the written word sometimes trumps tact and good sense. I totally understand people, especially girls I'm sweet on, not wanting to become characters on my blog. Frankly, I don't know for sure she's even looked at my stuff so maybe I'm living dangerously - flying precariously under her radar. Oh the utter thrill of it all. Until it comes crashing down around my ears because I'm a self-centered lout who cares only for a good blog story that a handful of people may, or may not read.

We went on one date and I really like this woman. So we've arranged another. I've done the asking. How un-subbie, no? But I've loved it. So she has a request. Outdoor seating and lobster. I am dispatched to find the perfect spot. A no brainer, right?

Mind you, on our first date all she asked for was al fresco dining and in my utter haste to both please and find the perfect, romantic little Manhattan hideaway, I chose a restaurant that had closed. So she took the opportunity to add a reminder to the most recent task that I should keep in mind it was important to select a restaurant that was actually open for business.

I love her already, right?

So I conduct swift research and immediately find a swank Greek joint on the East Side in Midtown that has a nice outdoor patio and serves lobster. I triumphantly email her and trumpet my quickness and enthusiasm, but promise more choice, in the off chance that I have unexpectedly missed the mark - little likelihood though there may have been of that.

She emails me back and allows as to how it looks like a lovely place but I have completely missed the challenge of the quest. It's not just any old lobster. It's lobster tails.

Okay, I like lobster as much as the next foodie, but don't all lobsters have tails? Claws and tails and lots of other extraneous, spiney, but essentially inedible stuff.

No, as I ultimately learn in a series of very teasingly dommy emails, what my devious date wants most is rock lobster tails. I learn these mutant crayfish have no claws and are harvested primarily in Florida and California. It is the rare Big Apple bistro which serves them. Indeed, after I located a fish monger in the Chelsea Market which sold three sizes of these elusive arthropods and tried to convince a restaurant with a charming garden to let me BYOL, my date confessed that despite scouring Manhattan for years, she had dug up only a measley few places that served rock lobster tails, none with a garden. Thus, she knowingly sent me off to attempt the impossible.

Is she perfect or what?

However, she has bestowed major brownie points, gold stars, and profuse praise for my inventive persistence. Hey, if Artie at the fancy little Greek spot gets his supplier to deliver rock lobster tails for our date Monday night, haven't I just pulled the substantial gourmand equivalent of Excalibur from it's cold stone for my fair lady? Isn't this just the best D/s foreplay ever?

Somebody pass me my nose guard and the tanning butter! My mussels are flexin' and my flipper is 'a flippin'.!!!

Where My Heart Won't Break Me

Tampa International Airport feels clean and efficient; like a pleasantly homogenized slice of Gulf Coast southern gentility with a hefty helping of mid-Western work ethic thrown in for good measure. She's flight had landed early, though I had been there for a good hour, jump beaning from my skin at the thought of seeing her again after a ten month hiatus. The main terminal hub is serviced by pairs of swift, smooth, space-agey trams that shuttle passengers on spokes of monorail track to the departure and arrival gates. The trams ran like pairs of modern metal relay racers ferrying packs of travelers to and fro.

From my watch post I could see the delivery duo for the Carribean arrivals slide in and out. I had to hop back and forth to eye each influx of deplaners. For a good half hour I eagarly jitterbuged back and forth to make sure I caught the first glimpse. And finally, there She was. She came right up, dropped both bags to the floor, gave me a huge hug, and said, "You're the only person I know who I can leave and take up with as though we've never been apart".

The next morning in the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico, She later confessed she thought she'd seen a dead body in a wet suit.

She-Who-Visits is a world class, technically trained, and vastly experienced diver. She is strong, hard bodied, and has the nutty brown tan of an island girl. She'd been twenty feet down, scouring the bottom of the sea for her treasured shells. Coming up She thought she'd seen an arm encased in the black neoprene of a wet suit floating akimbo, attached to a lifeless body. Shocked, she said she'd almost inhaled water with the sucked gasp of terror. She'd been trained to save people. She knew she had to retrieve the body and assist in the notification of the bereaved loved ones.

"There's something under us," She whispered. I felt something slick and smooth brush my leg. "I'm standing on a ledge", she said in a voice that sounded apprehensive. She later confessed to complete horror and, not wanting to panic me, she struggled for control. She was facing shore and I was facing the open ocean.

All of a sudden I saw a broad black back streaked with white break the water's surface and roll gently in a slick hump back into the warm, thankfully oil-free Gulf.

"Manatee!!", I shouted gleefully.

"What..." She asked, sounding slightly dazed.

"It's a manatee!!! No, it's two!", I cried happily.

And She-Who-Visits and I frolicked with two gentle sea cows for a few magical minutes. Underwater, one looked at me with placid dark round eyes and I reached out and petted a docile, briney, bovine, nose.

One of the things She and I have always shared is being married. But this visit, my leg of that stool was broken. I was deeply shaken, ashamed and mortified that at times I had to make an excuse to go to shore and cry, hidden alone in the trees or behind sunglasses as She dove for her beloved ocean treasure. The pain of my separation was actually invigorated by seeing my dear friend who had provided so much solace and sexual acceptance over the past four years we've known one another and I've struggled with middle-aged matrimony.

With friends I can wear my emotion like a bothersome badge. I told She about my dating, which she blessed, though I thought she was a little miffed I didn't seek approval beforehand. I told her how broken hearted I felt to not be able to share tales of marriage with her. We talked that one day we might not play, but would remain friends. She talked alot about her life with Mr. She as she always does. It was alternately comforting to hear her tales of married life and heartbreaking to see my marital leg of our stool; detached and in the deep grass of an uncertain and yet-to-be completely defined separation after twenty two years of mitered and mortised joinder.

And though She swore this would be a vanilla weekend, it was not. Seasoned diver and power shopper, She spotted a DSW as we meandered in town. I practically swerved across three lanes of on-coming traffic to satisfy her squeal of delight. Apparently, there are not many stores on her island paradise. As a gift to the domme and dear friend I love, I bought her a pair of black sling backs. Later that night, our last together, she let me tougue clean and smell them as she sat on the ottoman, tanned legs crossed, smiling wickedly down at my grovelings.

But I sensed a distance. Later, in the aftermath of play, she accused me of whining like a dramatic little girl and overplaying my role like a novice dominatrix. We've played many, many times together and she's never expressed such displeasure. I know she thinks I talk too much, a problem solved this visit with a sweaty running sock. But something in her tone belied not a problem with my sub-style, but one of a more She-centered, personal nature. I mean what self respecting, red-blooded, manly, submissive doesn't wheedle and whine and beg? No, her inflection and annoyance fortold perhaps a problem in her life or that we just weren't as connected this time around.

On the drive to Miami across Alligator Alley I told her I had always admired her for protecting her marriage, for loving Mr. She, and a for being a good wife. I told her I never wanted our deep, one-of-a-kind, lightening strike relationship to threaten any aspect of her union.

She said she thought our relationship would evolve and change over time with the twists and turns of life.

She told me that our previous goodbyes had made her want to run. My morose sadness at our parting had badly burdened her. But my life's twists and turns have changed me and changed her in our four years of friendship and play. She is no longer my only real connection to a kink life. I now live with privacy, but more openly. So this time, I could really say goodbye to her without feeling an overwhelming loss and trust that there will be a next visit, there will be more surprise phone calls, and we will be bound to one another in the unexpected and unpredicable kink kabuki of our amazing dance.

Because like my first kinky day dream of a girl on a bike tying me up and trundling me off, She takes me down to the railroad line.

Vanilla Visitation?

She-Who-Visits arrives today in the Sunshine State and we are heading for her favorite shelling spot in all the world. As Earl stormily stomps its way up the eastern seaboard, the coast is clear Gulf-Side. I'm excited. To say the least.

However, She has allowed as to how this is going to be a "vanilla" weekend. Ahh...yeah. Whose vanilla weekend? She's already given me a list of stores to line-up and Google Map for our trip south to her shrimp-shaped atoll. She knows I love to search and organize for her. Just following her around J.C. Penny is deeply devotional for me. So while we may not play and she may simply ignore how horribly horny I'm feeling, such disregard will kindle and inflame my kinky soul. So as someone recently said, it's a "Win-win".

While she's a woman of her word, there's a glint of quixotic, hopeful, glee in my squinty little subbie eye that She will relent.

Even if she sticks to her guns and never once intentionally sends me to sub-space heaven with just a glance - it will be deeply reassuring during a time of such turmoil in my life to see one of my dearest friends in all the world after a ten month absence.

Yo, Peaches! Just call me Herb!

Advo Dates

My, my...that didn't take long now did it. So far I've been on two dates. One was so good I'm not writing about it. I really liked her. Gotta be cool fool.

The second one was last night. She was one of the clamoring hordes of dominant women who crave a date with me from my Craigslist ad. One of two clamorers. The other one, a Ms. Cindy Rella, wanted to know what business I was expanding. I wrote a very nice answer confessing my penchant for the pursuit of a license to be Mr. Miami Vice Mouthpiece. I wondered if her last name was Italian. She never got back to me. Something about having to meet a Ms. White and some ornery dwarfs.

But last night's date was with a real deal domme. Very sweet, age appropriate, smart, and funny. But at best we'll be friends, and I doubt even that. She has a demanding, competitive business, a vanilla guy at home who knows about her daliances and approves, loads of friends, and is looking for "the one true submissive".

She described him as someone who she could keep in her closet to bring out whenever whimsy created need. She was funny and playful about this fantasy but it was her ideal. The other type of guy she liked was one who just went with her flow. No complaints, no negotiation, no bleating or whining. She also said she had little sexual connection to bdsm. If you clean my house, you wait on the corner with a mop and a bucket until I give you permission to come up. She said 95% of all her house boy applicants failed that test.

While this particular test is one I could easily pass, she and I have very different views of our "ideal". Hey, I've given up a marriage, a beautiful coop apartment, a neighborhood -- a life -- to be out of the closet. Please don't put me back there?

Plus, I'd like my dominant to love what I bring to the party. I envision a shared life, not one where I'm on 911 standby.

Plus, there's the sex part. I like the sexah-sexah. Sorry, but bdsm is all about sex for me. Plus, it has been so long since I've had any that I am truly a born-again virgin. I should just all Jonas-Brother-Up and instead of experimenting with taking off my almost twenty year old wedding band, buy myself a purity ring and own it.

Nah, I'm on the prowl for a domme who wants me. With all my quirks and imperfections. Somebody who loves stockings and heels and retro-lingerie. A girl who I'll love to serve, especially when she wakes up in a rumpled t-shirt with bed hair and a bleary eyed look.

I'll know because she'll smile when I bring her coffee in the morning and rub her feet at night. And I'll agree she's always right ... mostly.

Although Labor Day is around the bend, it's still Advo's Summer of Love.

Ana

Her ads in DDI and other bdsm publications of the time were striking. Tall, dark, and rail thin, her hips flared in the simple black corsets she seemed fond of wearing. Sometimes her thick black hair was down, wildly entwining her shoulders as she brandished a cane, almost saying, "Call me, and we'll see how much you can take." In other photos her hair was severerly tied back in a bun, completely hidden by her riding helmet. Instead of jodhpurs and a white shirt, she wore a skin tight, black body suit and real riding boots. I recall being facinated by how such a slender woman's hips burst so curvaceously from her waspy waist.

Her name was Ana Hunt.

Long before I called her and made an appointment for a little slice of heaven, I was riveted by her simple, challenging ads. She oozed sex and experience. I had just turned forty and she was, as she eventually told me, "my senior". After being every kind of lousy, unreliable, bothersome version of wanker/no show client known to domme-dom, I finally made an appointment on a cold November weeknight when I had been out of town all day and had a custom made excuse as to why I'd be late home.

She had a beautiful, private studio in a brownstone in Chelsea. It was dark and each room had wonderful wooden bookcases filled with leather, hard cover, volumes on any subject one might imagine. She had a slightly European, not of this country air to her. She was at once welcoming and menacing - inviting but simmeringly sadistic. I had taken to writing out an explanation of where I was and what I was looking for from my domme. I was often so overwhelmed by desire and nerves that I'd find it hard to articulate my ever-so-demandingly-client-centric wish list. I delivered my creative top her from the bottom entreaty on my knees as she watched me; an amused, barely tolerant, grin pursing her full, red painted lips. When I finished she sat silently.

"I understand you," she said softly. "You write very well."

"Here," she beckoned as she stood. I took her extended hand. "Let's start you out over here in the next room".

She led me from what felt like a wood paneled, library-living room, into a darkened bedroom. The bed, however, was a massive, antique, wooden bondage table. Four huge posts extended upward from each corner. The table was lusterously polished but appropriately worn from the struggles of those captured in Ana's thrall. The four vertical anchor points strained vainly toward the ceiling.

"Go on, sweetheart", she entreated me indulgently. "You know how to lie on your back for me, don't you?"

Like a memory that drifts unexpectedly into focus, I'll wonder every now and then what ever became of Ana Hunt, world class domina, gone now - never to come back.

Gil

This post has nothing to do with kink, She, dommes, rope, or sex. Half this blog is about how music drives my feelings, hopes, and dreams - as half of all my posts are music videos. This is a post about music.

On the way to work this week I've been reading a story from the August 9th issue of The New Yorker about Gil Scott-Heron entitled "New York Is Killing Me". It was such a raw, painful article for me to read as I was just a huge admirer and fan of Scott-Heron's in the '70's and early '80's when he was at the peak of his extraordinary musical talent. I saw him perform once in 1977 when I lived in San Francisco. He was produced by Clive Davis and Arista records and wrote "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", "The Bottle", "Winter In America", "We Almost Lost Detroit", and "Home is Where The Hatred Is" along with just a host of other incredible songs that meant the world to me in my twenties. Some call him the grandfather of hip-hop and both Kanye West and Jay-Z have sampled him. He has a new album entitled "I'm New Here" and there is apparently a resurgence of interest in his work.

Gil Scott-Heron is also a crack addict and the New Yorker piece chronicles how this horrible disease has devastated his life. The interviewer and author, Alec Wilkinson, met with Gil on a number of occasions in his apartment in Harlem and the prose captures the essence of a soul trapped by addiction. His description of Scott-Heron clutching his propane torch will haunt me for sometime. My brother became addicted to crack in his early-forties and committed suicide.

His girlfriend, Monique de Latour, does a poigniant and melancholy voice-over to her photos of Gil, now 61 years old, on the New Yorker website. It all made me very grateful that somehow I got sober and have managed to stay that way. Here's Gil Scott-Heron who the article says is one month clean from crack.

Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie

So I've decided that among the strategies I shall employ to meet people in "The Scene" is a sensibly placed and meticulously screened Craiglist ad. Inspired by a chat with a friend, here's the text. You can find it in Manhattan - Strictly Platonic

Are you a dominant woman? Do you enjoy fine dining and worthy conversation? I offer an evening of smart chat and good food. I promise only one thing – I’ll pick up the tab for the two of us. I’ve separated from my wife, moved to the Far West Village, and want to explore "The Scene" in real time.

I own an expanding business, am fifty-seven years old, and I’m in great shape - usually. I’m an experienced submissive looking for friendship - mostly.

I write an award-winning kinky blog and I’ll give you the link to check me out before you agree to meet me.

Whether you lifestyle or drive a toll road, dinner is on me. What’s to lose? And the rest, as they say in NOLA, is lagniappe.

Okay, okay. I promise to be careful and watch out for crazies. But it could be fun, no?

Here's the link: Eat Out On Advo!

Equis ... Noventa Y Seis - Punto Tres

Free at last from the grip of agonizing among A through D. Narrow it down to C & A ... sweat. Can I remember whether an easement appurtenant runs with the land or whether a partially performed oral contract for the sale of land supplies consideration. The clock is ticking away my 1.8 minutes...pinch me, slap me, beat me silly. It's finally over!

Now I can get down and dirty - the only answer choices are the B & the D.

I love the new digs. I can actually finish the finishing touches. Ms. Mahwah Kiss pronounced my Overstock.com metal frame platform bed one a woman would happily share. However, she made me put away some of the decorative things I had out. Like the beautiful glass pumpkin I had in the bathroom.

"It's nice. If you're twelve," she snorted derisively. "You've lived with women for so long, you don't know how to make your place look like a guy lives in it."

"You've got a schlong," she declared. "Decorate like it."

She loved Julie.

So as I bask in my first weekend free of the haunting need to pick the a to d; I plot. Spoke to She this morning and we may spend Labor Day weekend at her favorite little Gulf Coast shelling atoll. Closer to home, I'm going to check out munch schedules, class offerings, and get a lesson on how to make sense of the vast kinky ocean that is FetLife.

August has such a debauched feel. As I walk back to my new place from glorious grocery shopping at Chelsea Market, I use the Highline as my path. There's a covered section between Sixteenth and Gansevoort where they've preserved the tracks. As some of you know I have a thing for dommy girls, kidnapping by bicycle, and boxcars. I notice all the places I could be lashed - left to strain and struggle for a glimpse of toe cleavage, the glint of a back seam shine, or the click clack of concrete meeting her heels.

Oh, and I'm polishing my Spanish. And finding a salsa class. Blaring 96.3 FM in the truck yesterday morning, while puffing on a fine Dominican cigar, I felt the romantic pull of a spicy, staccato Puente or a sonorous Celia Cruz son. BDSM to a hot Latin beat ... August esta aqui, mami!

With A Little Help

Sunset on my latest effort at a license for a place in the sun. Thanks to everyone who sent me kind words of support. This time around it caught me by surprise how badly I want this. For a future, for a business expansion, and just because. I faced deep, roiling anxiety and came out yesterday feeling good. The lady sings a September song, but until then I content myself that in the middle of life storms that batter some well worn sails, the seas momentarily calmed and the sunset -- gloriously. It's gonna be all right.

A Dreamer Holding Sand

Yesterday my wife and I closed up our coop and handed our keys to our favorite doorman. One last time I gazed out the amazing corner bedroom window with the majestic view of the Hudson River streching south along Riverside Park. I said goodbye to an era of my life. Goodbye to my home and goodbye to my marriage.

I feel the excitement of adventure and discovery entwined with the knotted pain of loss. And though I sobbed uncontrollably all alone last night; choked, snotted echos filling my brand new apartment; tonight, I am home.

Carol

It has been a tumultuous emotional time. It's only been a little over a week in the new place. Other than living in back of a Haight Ashbury cafe off the Panhandle and in a month-to-month garrot in the pre-gentrified Mission back in the early seventies, it's the first apartment I've found and rented by myself. Certainly my first NYC adult guy apartment. Adult that is if you count a five foot poster of Julie Newmar on the wall as adult.

It was my birthday on Wednesday and Ms. MahWah Kiss took me out to the veranda at Cipriani on Wall Street for lunch. I was talking about putting some beautiful vases on the false ceiling soffit overlooking the sleeping alcove and illuminating them with strip lighting.

"Oh no", she decreed. "That whole area? A man of your proclivities? That area has all sorts of acrobatic potential. You're putting vases on top? There will be shattering."

I collapsed, hysterical.

But Ms. Kiss's cautions and place-of-my own memories have triggered reminisence.

The eighties in the West Side nineties. As Subdued reminded me a year or so ago there was this section of Screw Magazine called "Helles Belles" where prodommes advertised. Back before DDI took off and became an almost alt artiste journal. A domme named Carol used to visit my Upper West, rent-stable abode. The entrance to the massive living room was framed with wide, thick, ornate, sturdy, wooden molding.

I affixed eyebolts up and down either side of my very own pre-war whipping post. They were tucked on the side and not particularly obvious, but deliciouly effective. Carol would arrive in a tightly tailored suit smartly accessorized with a tote bag full of goodies. We'd get right to the business at hand.

She'd lash me tightly to my ornate corner cornice and proceed to alternately tease me into a drooling frenzy and then viciously beat my obliging eagerness until my ardor began a slow, disappointed surrender. Then she'd go about a knee weakening re-envigoration of engourged attention, only to attack yet again. Used to do three hour sessions of this and only this. Such a Johnny-B-One-Note.

To my delight and horror, I'd look like a piece of blackened cauliflour the next day.

And ya know? With this new place? I'm gonna learn to dance if it takes me all night and day. I got my eye on you baby cause you dance so good.

Fencing With Fetish

So all my posters have been delivered to the new place. The photo of Julie is massive. I truly feel fourteen. The one above is entitled "Conquistatore Ambizioso". It just seemed perfect when I saw it.

I have high ambitions too. For so much of my life I've felt like the plucky little fencer in a duel with an overpowering desire. My strategy was all surreptitious stopcut, instead of direct reposte. There's a sexy salle out there.

En guarde!

Look Over Yonder

Here's another one of my new living room pictures. Can you guess?
My first domme.
Hunkered over the TV in 1967, I felt a common tingle shared by many a subbie bretheren at the sight of her.

An homage to the past. But the sun is a'rising, most definitely.

Celebration

I was antsy earlier in the week. Couldn't sit at the desk. So I called Ms. Mahwah Kiss for coffee and cookies. We sat in Duane Park in the baking sun eating mini choco-chips, me sucking down iced caffine.

"You have to celebrate", she proclaimed with absolute certainty. "Posters. Do you like posters?"

This goes on the wall. The living room wall. On a stretched canvass. Hell, I don't wanna grow up.

One For HMP

Because he said he liked my Popeye reference.

Hey, does Olive Oyl ever wear a black retro waist cincher and full fashion back seamed stockings?

Breathplay anyone?

Truth And Consequence

The truth is I'm just plain kinky. All kinds of specific kinky, but as Popeye is fond of saying, "I Yam What I Yam." Still, I sometimes wonder how I got here, perched on the precipice of a leap of faith so scary and uncertain that some days I'm either reduced to a rolled up little ball in the corner or a shuddering, sobbing mass of guilty regret. The truth is I'm kinky - but what are the consequences.

Friends and readers are excited for me. Lots of new adventure ahead. But thirty odd years ago when I had my first session with a pro domme, I never in a million years would have predicted where I am today. I suppose it's true about life in general. If we could chart a certain course it would be less nerve racking but a lot less exciting and adventuresome.

My solution for years, through three long term relationships - two marriages and a five year girlfriend - was to sneak out to pro dommes. It worked so well for such a long time. What changed? Why can't I just happily scrape together tribute and slip out for a heavenly night of tightly trussed fun?

The truth is I've changed. I've accepted my kinkiness in all it's infuriating beauty and frustrating splendor. The consequence is I just have to take this leap of faith. As painful and as scary as it is, it's all about free fall.

Sweet Dreams

As I once again submerge into constant study during most all available free time (whatever that is...) I also do little things to keep my eye on the prize. I take the little man down from the zoomer thingy in Google Maps and wander downtown Miami. I scan Craigslist ads to scope out the residential and commercial rental markets. I compare virtual office packages. Somebody said it was the modern day equivalent of a med student studying for the boards. A hundred times he writes; Dr. Advo, Dr. Advo, Dr. Advo. Wait a sec, that has a kind of catchy ring to it. Maybe more like a Spiderman villan though.

As for my kink dreams I'm thinking classes, munches, more active involvement in FetLife, and perhaps working on my creative writing some more. When I take my virtual Googlemap Man down from married life and drop him single and sort of available in a public play fetish party he feels very out of place. I suppose I still really want to go to a fetish party but can't imagine playing publicly. Someone once said to me that I wanted to go to a fetish party so badly because I'd never been to one. Dreams and reality diverge, she cautioned. But then she added she enjoyed them if she went with friends.

My kinky little GoogleMaps Man has some good friends now and wants to make some more. All in good time. Hey, everybody is looking for something.

Al & Tipper

So my shrink asked last week how the Al and Tipper break-up made me feel. Isn't it just so New York City that a perverted, bow tie wearing, seersucker be-suited, subbie-lawyer guy talks to his gay shrink about the Al and Tipper Gore bust-up and can relate it directly to his life? Al and Tipper comfort me. For real. On the outside didn't they just seem so perfect? A little oh-so-sacchrine sweet, but a picture of somebody's form of the ideal, don'cha think?

And today's Styles section article about long-term marriage? I was once talking to a way-uptight colleague at a professional cocktail function about Sunday Times reading habits and confessed to going straight for Styles. I fear I was immediately written off as a total lightweight. Anyway, the article talked about what makes long term marriages survive. The author posits that one of the hallmarks is an active involvement in each other's lives. Trying new things together cements the history of the past with an excitement about the future.

Made me think that the decision my wife and I have made to try a life apart is fundementally sound. We really have grown apart. We do very little together and her dreams for the future and mine do not spark with the entangled balm of mutuality. And yet this Friday we viewed each other's new apartments together. His in the West Village/Meatpacking District and hers on the Upper West Side. I'm jealous of her back yard. Always wanted private, urban, outdoor space. She said I could come over and smoke cigars - outside.

But as we walked together from my place in the neighborhood that raises my "cool factor" with its mere mention, we passed the Louboutin boutique just a scant two blocks away. All I said was, "Gotta love Christian!" when we passed a window display that makes this fetishist's heart race.

"I'm sure you'll meet some bimbo who will just love those things," she spat. "But you'll have to buy them for her as well as pay her hourly rate."

It was hot, humid, and hazy on Horatio. I was tired and ill-advisedly shot back.

"Why don't you just keep all your negative crap to yourself? Really, that's just totally disrespectful."

Now I begrudge nobody a hard-earned hourly rate and have happily paid my money down on more occassions than I care to add up in these challenging times of fiscal frustration. But I thought the moment captured where I am these days.

I really do look forward to a future where I'll stop at a window like that with a woman who will drag me from the street into the store and try on pair after pair whether we buy any or not because she loves them too. I mean you don't even have to want to lick a length of skyscraper heel to love Mr. Louboutin.

In the end, what's most reassuring about Al and Tipper is not that they are paddling the misery boat along with me in a river of broken dreams, but that they are optimistic enough to separate in their sixties after forty years of seemingly picture perfect marital bliss. Like my pal Aarkey, I choose optimism, baby.

You watch. One day I'll write about how I got dragged into CL's little corner shop by my way cool dommy girlfriend who just has to have the Frutti Fruttis in black python, with the black flowered lace. We may not run into Tipper, but we'll sure be havin' a party.

Oooo...maybe Veronica will yell at me for not using Sam...

You Lookin' At A Winner!

Client Nine And A Half has won "Best of the Web" from the very kind folks at Sex Forums. I get my honorary badge and my copy gets featured on their site. Who knew the meanderings of a coming-out kinkster would win recognition.

I'm alerting the media. Oh wait...this is the media. I'm really not familiar with the site, but I love the badge.

It's going straight to my head. You know you lookin' at a winnah...

A New Chapter

I've finally found my new home. For a year at least. I'll be living in the West Village/Meatpacking District, fittingly just a stone's throw from the old Hellfire Club. I never went to Hellfire. My perv provenance is client based rather than scene-player based, but I like the thought of living so close to such a venerated, back-in-the-day kind of place.

As I wrestle with sometimes overwhelming emotional strangleholds to find a perspective on this new chapter, I reach to try. It's all so confusing and difficult. But I content myself that come September I'll move on from the opening paragraphs of the tale and be able to see a bit more clearly.

For now, I just try to be myself and not fall to pieces, as I look at sleeping alone and living with the pain.

An Expanse Of Bay

The black car flew across the causeway from St. Pete's to Tampa Airport. The bay here is a massive, horizon bending expanse. A spirit freeing sight. Worries, fears, terrors take wing and fly free to glide on momentary release. I remembered our trip to her little shelling atoll along a south bound ribbon of highway. Now threatened by an ugly, oily invasion; I sent an entreaty to ocean gods to keep it safe. She-Who-Visits loves it so. It is a safe haven. There, we will meet again and I'll be hers - if only for three days.

Whack-A-Mole

The other week I was sitting in Thursday morning therapy talking about losing my marriage, leaving my home, retaking the bar, trying to get business, struggling with debt, firing an employee who wasn't working out, being chided by She-Who-Visits about how I'm not dealing properly with my impeding separation, my never-ending search for a rental apartment in Manhattan, and on and on and on.

My shrink stops me and says, "Your life seems like that game at carnivals. What's it called? The one where mice pop up and you try to hit them."

"You mean Whack-A-Mole?", I grinned.

"Yeah, that's it. Whack-A-Mole. Your life right now is a game of Whack-A-Mole."

And you know what, no matter how quick I am, how hard or sincerely I whack away, or how often I hit the little squinty-eyed subterranean bastards, they all keep coming back for more. I know this is supposed to be a kinky blog, but right now I just feel completely whacked out.

Today, I looked longingly in the window at the Louboutin store on Horatio and thought to myself that there was nothing about the way I feel that a woman wearing a pair of those shoes and wielding a nice cane couldn't fix with a few little whacks of her own.

Here's to whacking! Here's to Christian Louboutin! Here's to the ones with the high heels and the red bottoms. Hit me slowly, hit me quick. It's nice to be a lunatic!

Hiccups

As I sit here in Fort Lauderdale airport, early for my flight home to NYC, I think I have the hiccups. As I snuck into the comments to my last blog post, I had a glass half full result on my exam. Passed the state part and flubbed the national part. Thus, I must retake the national part and pass it come July in order to bask in the sunshine of a new state license. Hiccup.

My lovely little loft apartment? The one with the private patio in the back that Ms. Mahwah Kiss offered to grow basil in? Well when the broker showed it to me it had an air conditioner in the upstairs bedroom. When I attached a rider to the sublease asking the owner to warrant that the appliances actually worked, the broker said she was "forced" to tell me the a/c unit was improperly installed and could not be used. Ever. How was the place cooled in July? By ice blocks? Hiccup.

On two successive nights after my exam result I had the most intense bdsm sex dreams I've ever had. In the first, I was at a debauched party in a glitzy but dilapidated hotel. I was there with one of my favorite pro dommes of all time. She still works and we occassionally email, but I've not actually seen her in a few years. Anyway, she and I were together when all of a sudden two angular, tattooed, pierced, and gorgeous creatures with tits and cocks grabbed me and threw me on a table. As one yanked my pants and underwear down and the other readied to take the plunge, I called out to my old domme to please come watch. As if on cue, she turned her back on me, entered an elevator, and left - not even looking at my predicament as the doors slid closed. Hiccup.

In the second I bottomed to a middle-aged woman and a middle-aged man in two separate and distinct dream sequences. You know the dreams, right? The ones where the people are different but it's obvious to the audience that they're your mother and father. Anyway, in the first scene I was being rhythmically flogged by a lanky brunette. All about the back and shoulders her powerfully wielded, multi-strand cat inspired little red nicks to blossom perfectly and profusely. In act two I was watching an outdoor sporting event while sitting next to an older and physically imposing man. The guy put his arm around my shoulder as if to pal around and then began brawnily dragging me close. He reached across my chest and tried to pinch my left nipple. Though I was uncomfortably aroused, I tried vainly to pull and strain away from his burly bear hug. Hiccup!!

As I wait for my JetBlue flight back to LaGuardia I think I'm gonna hold my breath. Or maybe I'll drink a few quarts of water. Quick! Somebody scare me!

Hey Veronica, this one's for you. For Sam I'll make an exception to my ridiculously OCD rule that my music video selections must have performance.

Baby Steps or One Giant Leap?

So maybe I've found an apartment. West Villagey-Chelsea-ish; cool first floor, one bedroom loft with my very own little outdoor patio. In an only in New York real estate sort of deal, despite the fact that I'd only be signing a one year lease, I have to get passed by the coop board. So I've spent the weekend compiling every last little bit of financial flailing and ghost writing personal recommendations. And tomorrow I hear about my examination exertion. Nothing like the judgment of others that will have a dramatic affect on what my life will look like over the next year.

I saw the apartment this past Tuesday evening and made an offer by text from the street five minutes after leaving. I went back on Thursday and wandered down the street, only to discover that there's a lingerie store on the block. I took a picture of the sign and emailed it to She.

I also emailed the link to the apartment listing to Ms. Mahwah Kiss. She emailed back that she'd come over and hang with me on the patio and grow basil. We'd had brunch last Sunday. Ms. Kiss had wickedly waved a pair of rubber, medical gloves at me when I picked her up in her Tribeca loft. I told her later that I'd wondered if she had a clue how purely erotic those gloves are for me. She said she figured it might make an impression. Later in the week Ms. Mahwah teased me by saying she'd bought a pair of leopard platforms and every guy in the store couldn't take their eyes off her feet. Tell me about it.

So when she offered to grow basil on my new patio, I emailed back that basil grows best when tended wearing rubber surgical gloves and leopard platforms.

I forgot to delete these emails from my Crackberry. Uh-oh...

And of course, on Friday night the wife and I had a rare, nasty, fight. We've been much more friendly recently, but this fight was bad enough that I fled the apartment to give us a much needed timeout. Didn't take the Blackberry. When I got back my wife demanded snarlingly if She-Who-Visits was "my whore" and she hoped that Ms. Kiss and I had lots of fun tending basil with her wearing rubber gloves and leopard print platforms.

Need I share that the wife had breeched the BB and emailed herself my emails.

So I did something I've never done before. I told her a bit of the truth about my kink life and have actually lived to write about it here. Mind you, I'll wake up dead if she ever finds this blog. But I told her I'd met She at a conference and we'd become very dear friends. I told her that She is in a kinky relationship with her husband and that she had helped me to feel better about who I really am. Without giving names or identifying information, I told her I had made real friends with guys who were kinky too. And I think she believes for the first time that Ms. Kiss and I are really just good friends.

And you know what? I think my wife had a bit of an epiphany. A modicum of an appreciation for what I've gone through and how much progress I've made in feeling good about myself. It's not going to save my marriage, but I think it made us better friends. Now who knows what will happen the next time she loses it, but for now I'm glad that one of my deepest secrets, my relationship with She, is revealed in a bit of its truth to my wife.

Now...about the basil. I have it on good authority that tending it in black, retro-lingerie while wearing rubber surgical gloves and leopard platforms makes the spice particularly pungent.

Or maybe something in a nice dommy cheerleader's outfit would make it zesty, peppery and piquant?

A Long Time Comin'

I have this routine in the morning. I'm an early riser. I'm up by 5:15am for a cock-crow run with the dogs through the park and by the river no matter the season or the weather. But before I go, I make coffee. I grind rich, dark, oily beans for a combination of a decaf and high-test drip brew along with a shot of espresso. These days I'm into Irving Farm beans. There's a couple of Irving Farm cafes in Manhattan and one in Millerton, a little Dutchess County berg with a great movie theater and the coolest sporting goods store around.

I was introduced to Irving Farm coffee by a pro-domme with whom I had a deliciously disasterous frolic. Sometimes, as I mill my perfect morning infusion, I'll absent mindedly and fondly flash on the frilly little red, yellow, and white apron we bought to accessorize my service that was hung on a hook in her kitchen and never used. Or her asking the Meatpacking waitress to top up my glass from the Voss bottle - tinged the faintest of golden. Or pleading with her to slash yet again and harder at my urgently offered upper thighs with the rough leather horse crop, as I deleriously wriggled on the polished pine strip floor of her Horatio Street studio in the throes of a two week stint of on-my-honor chastity.

I love a good cup of fine coffee in the morning.

But it's a ritual of process and transition, my morning routine. From sleep I spend fifteen minutes of labor over the literal daily grind. And this morning as I write these words I really have to remind myself that my life is in complete makeover mode. In a little over a week I learn my bar exam fate from the gods of grading. In four months I'll be in a new apartment. There's nothing like looking at real estate in Manhattan to make you feel like an inadequate slacker who has utterly failed to attain a remotely respectable level of financial firepower.

This week I was out at a work related meet and greet and met two attractive, divorced women. Despite a fun chemistry with one, my fet-detector told me she was clueless about kink. I woke up this morning festering that I'm just flat-out undatable. Who wants to deal with a workaholic, aging hipster of a submissive, who comes to a romantic little restaurant with a separation agreement, a domme in the Caribbean who he adores, and huge pile of debt. Oh come on! It'll be fun. You'll see.

But the french roast rites of an April dawn hold aromatic promise. After the grind, the exertion of the run; the stretches, crunches, pull-ups and downward dogs - I get my reward. I just have to keep the faith because ready or not - a change is gonna come.

Underneath It All

I suppose I just should have been flattered that the lunkhead, twenties-ish, rental apartment broker chose a fifth floor walk-up as the first apartment in the West Village he'd show me to be my new single-guy home. Nothing like a dark, dirty, postage stamp sized, fifth floor walk-up in the Village for $3500 a month to make you want to move to Miami. I figured he was doing a bullshit broker bachata - letting me see dreck to soften me up for a kill shot in the fancy full service building at four stacks a month.

At the urging of friends and shrink I've expanded the search for my aging kink-boy bachelor pad to include neighborhoods other than the FiDi. While I'd love to walk to work and I've found a great building, the Wall Street area does button up early and, save for the tourists, is pretty dead on the weekend. So I'm having to put up with broker shennanigans. Spare me.

To boot, I've decided not to go see She. I may not have shared that She lives on the same balmy beautiful island where twenty years ago this fall, my wife and I ran away and were married at sunset, on the beach, with our bare feet planted firmly in the sand. I figure at this stage, the downside risk of being caught is just too great. If I can manage to get one of these snake oil selling brokers to get me a decent apartment, in a few months I can go visit She with a clearer conscience and less chance that I'll turn an amicable separation into the battle for Bastogne

But I'm really sad I'm not going. These days I'm either sad that I'm separating or sad that I haven't seen She in going on five months. Plus, other than her unexpected and totally sweet invite, She is in the throes of what I've come to think of as seasonal disconnective disorder. Sunday will be a month since we've spoken. It's hard to do anything but email her as she's always shooing me away from g-chat or a quick phone conversation while she's working. One would think she is the executive assistant to POTUS. Mr. She's car is permanently kaput so they're car pooling in the morning and She can't call me. She doesn't do email or text much and has said it makes her uncomfortable if I call when Mr. She is around.

I guess the thing is I've been here before with her need to disengage. It seems if I just suck it up and focus on other things, She cycles back. Try as I might though, underneath it all, my little insecurities begin to croak and bleet like a chorus of spring tree frogs until they reach this unbearable cacophonous, crescendo of doubt and need.

But I abruptly shake myself and say, "Snap out of it, fool." Life is good. Just around the corner the loutish purveyor of rooms for rent will show me the coolest one bedroom loft with a little terrace on the Lower East Side. I'll pick my way through early morning tenement streets lined with hip restaurants and hot bars for a run along that other river. I'll find a little local coffee joint where they make my extra large red eye to mainline caffeine with my endorphins. And one day soon She will whisper something incredibly hot and dirty in my ear and all this festering puzzlement will be worth it.

Or maybe one night there will be a certain someone across the bar in that new little local joint I eat dinner in twice a week ... I know some real bad tricks and I'm in need of a little discipline.