The One

As the ordeal of examination gradually drifts into the past, the future stretches out like a lazy, calm river pool. Around the corner could be rapids leading to a precipitous waterfall, but right now I'm just floating along enjoying the scenery -- content not to be trying to figure out the riparian rights of the people I see waving to me from the banks.

Do I rent or do I buy? Will it be the FiDi, the UWS, or the East Village? Will I go visit the Sunshine State this month or next? Tough questions, but someone's gotta answer them. Ms. Kiss and I were sitting in the late winter sunshine yesterday talking about these pressing issues as I had sought her counsel about the rent or buy question. She's got a banker brain and I do not, thank you very much. We got snagged on property division.

"Your wife should not have a future interest in any apartment you buy. Are you crazy? You're getting divorced! When you meet someone and are living with her in your new place, how do you think she's going to feel when you have to give half of the apartment sale to your ex-wife?"

You know the catagory on Facebook or online dating services marked "It's complicated." I don't think Ms. Kiss gets that catagory. I've spent the past 30 odd years of my life in dedicated, long term relationships or marriages. I know alot about the clinches of committment. I suppose what I'm looking forward to most about my impending separation is my new single life. I know very little about being single. No doubt it will be an "it's complicated" bachelorhood. But that's the allure.

Unlike Ms. Kiss, who is and should be looking for Mr. Right -- I'm looking for a life. Part of the life I hope will be meeting new friends, some of whom will be kinky. I recently wrote to Yin and asked to be favorably considered for an upcoming "Writing Cage", which she'd advertised publicly on her blog. I don't want to have to lie and sneak around to read my writing at such a cool event if I get asked.

I'm not looking for the one. I'm looking for a life.

Well...maybe Ms. Kiss and I could visit Madame Ruth...

Come Down Off Your Throne

I finished my marathon study and test taking about ten days ago. It's nice not to be haunted by the compulsive need to memorize restrictive covenants, the Supremacy Clause, and servient estates. Wait...that sounds kinda kinky. I miss it. Oy...

Anyway, during my effort at becoming the poster boy for "the-more-you-know", my friend Ms. Mahwah Kiss was very supportive. I think she felt very guilty for saying that she was certain I'd flunk when I told her I was forcing my fifty-six year old brain to memorize the Rule Aganist Perpetuities again. After I finished the little two day, twelve hour, pop quiz; in a fit of generousity borne of remorse, she offered to do something "non-kosher" with me to celebrate. She made it clear that "non-kosher" meant kinky.

I think I've related here on "Client Nine" that Ms. Kiss is an example of my life long penchant for being overwhelmingly attracted to "tops-in-the-street-but-bottoms-in-the-sheets". She's whip smart, very snarky, really hot, and all about telling me just what she thinks I ought to do. But she doesn't have a real, honest to goodness, pervy bone in her very lovely body. She's at best, which is very good I must imagine, a spicy creme caramel. Or a scrumptious vanilla sundae with some chocolate sprinkles and Heath bar crunch mixed in.

I knew this was a bad idea, but I just could not resist sending her the link to yesterday's RopeShare event. I thought, "Okay Ms. Kiss. Let's see ya put yer money where yer big, sexy mouth is." Plus, if ever there was a non-threatening kinky thing for a non-pervert to enjoy, it's a RopeShare event. I love RopeShare.

I got an email response from her that just said, "Oy Vey!" I thought this incredibly fitting as the class was to be taught by Lolita Wolf, who calls herself "The Leather Yenta." It seemed somehow both politically and religiously correct.

However, when I saw Ms. Kiss this past week she was incredulous that I'd asked her if she might consider going. "A bondage workshop?? Are you crazy??", she practically gasped. "I'm worried I'll get all kinds of porn spam just for clicking on the link." I assured her she was safe from perverted spammers bent on forcible conversion to Semitic or, heaven forbid, goyisha kinkdom.

"Maybe a movie.", she whispered sotto voce.

"Have I got some movies for you!", I crowed.

"Oh I bet you do. On second thought, maybe I'll buy you a nice root beer float," she smirked.

With chocolate sprinkles on the ice cream, no doubt.

I think I'm just going to have to figure out how to date kinky in the upcoming months as I separate from wife and home. This conversion business is for the birds and besides...somebody holds the key.

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?