I Ask You...

What would Valentine's Day be without another installment of the adventures of Advo and She-Who-Visits?

Ahh, Valentine's Day. I must just be one of those guys who doesn't have a feel for the day. It always just seems to me like such a made-up Hallmark holiday. Forced romance - now there's a fetish for you! There's such an outsized expectation for such little actual payoff. Plus, there's never anything in it for me except downside. On the one hand, expectation is sky-high. Anticipation leaps from romantic prospect like a nasty jolt from a TENS unit to the sincere offering of effort. If I succeed, I've managed only to do what's expected, whereas the dial-turned zap of failure looms large, always ready to electrocute everything.

Wait a second. I sound like I'm enjoying this a bit, don't I?

Last year I totally missed She's boat when it came to Valentine's Day. I remember the horrible feeling when she called and asked me where her flowers were. It literally took me months to paw dig myself out of the doghouse. I vowed I'd change things this year.

So I started early as I related on a previous post and began sending her store bought Valentine's cards which I personalized and customized. Sometimes I'd paste some song lyrics into the card. On others I would find images of places we'd been or restaurants we'd eaten at and I'd add them. I had fun and some of the cards were really pretty well done. So I sent them off in batches with the total card count coming in close to the day of the month upon which this wretched holiday falls.

I loved making She her cards. I felt the whole process bring me closer to her every time I did one of my little arts and crafts offerings. I pasted an image of a death-by-super-chocolate souffle we'd shared at Capsuto Frères with a description about its "precarious rising" and admonished her to refrain from peanut gallery comments about other such similar "risings". I glued in Patti Smith lyrics about love's angelic, lustful disguise. I made lots of x's and o's.

Then I sent her flowers on Thursday, just to make sure she got them. Red roses, circus roses (red with yellow and orange tips), and yellow callas. My message was about how flowers were fleeting, furiously fun, and completely evanescent. Beautiful, like our time together.

Thursday I was home, cramming more law into a brain that feels it is leaking the Rule Against Perpetuities, Promissory Estoppel, and the Homestead Exemption from every orifice of my tired, tired body. She wrote me a nice email in which she proclaimed the flowers just lovely, but She allowed as to how she liked the cards much better than the flowers. Soooo much effort She praised. "I just loved them!"

"I love pleasing my Valentine", I replied

"Then you should have sent a plant", she answered

Oh, She, you really love me. You met me halfway!

advo-i-am

A Feeling ...

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I've had a feeling recently that one of the things that has drastically changed for me about my kink is that my life has integrated with it and it has integrated with my life. A couple of fresh, up-to-the-moment, interactions recently reminded me.

First, MTO posted a piece on her blog about "Summoning". She wrote about the appeal of just snapping her fingers and a guy would appear - summoned - to do whatever it was she wanted or needed. She talked about how this is something of a recurring guy fantasy and something that held a draw for her too. But the practical realities of the day-to-day always seemed to intrude.

I commented that I'd had this recent reverie that I had packed it all in, moved to She's island paradise, and become her butler/gofer/general dogsbody. MTO's reply included this remark;

...part of what makes any play partner compelling, at least to me, is the fullness of his life. That he brings something to the table besides adoration and service. I absolutely believe that one of my most valuable attributes as a Domme is that I’m more than just a domme.

Later in the week, I was talking about missing She with my shrink and how I was tired of the remaining secrecy that's attached to my relationship with her. Shrink said that my relationship with She is so much broader and richer than just a "kink thing" and what more would I want anyone to know? Isn't the rest of my relationship with her just private? I mean, my wife knows that I have a happily married, dear friend, who's name is She (I mean her real first name - the wife snooped a pretty vanilla but heartfelt email on the BB - so she knows She's first name), and who lives outside the country. Do I really need her to know about the kink stuff?

And with those two remarks it really dawned on me that I actually live a pretty well integrated life. I can't tell you how much better it feels than even three or four years ago when pretty much everything I did about perviness was hidden or secret. Private doesn't mean closeted away. It just means private.

Anyway, for what it's worth, I totally agree with Ms. Troy Orleans. What makes for interesting play partners, friends, and people in general is a fullness of life. Just a feeling I got...

Can You Say Fergie?