Ink

Thanks, Sting!

While I sat listening to the titilating tintinabulations of Sting, I got an idea for tattooing. An idea that I think might fly.

Chains. Chains all over. Lotsa chains. Chains of Love, specifically. That's the theme. Chains of love. Like a giant charm bracelet. The chains will encircle or be attached to other images that are important to me, images to mark significant points in my life, those moments when I came to a greater understanding of love.

Like Jacob Marley, only different. Marley told Scrooge that the chains he was forced to wear in the afterlife were forged when he walked the earth, all of his stinginess.

I remember really early in my life coming to the conclusion that love hurts, love ultimately causes pain. Hide my heart. That was what seventeen year old me decided.

Well, that didn't work.

Mostly.

Love does always ultimately end in pain. But love calls us to the things of this world. Love binds us. Holds us. Love hurts. Just like chain bondage.

I've bottomed in all the scenes that I do as a Top, but chain bondage is the big exception. ('Cause I'm the best there is, Bay-bee!) But in a way, I have. I get the scene from the inside even though I've never been chained up. To be held so tight, and so totally, but steel, which is practically eternal. And the chains hurt.

Recently, Lolita mentioned that she had heard Guy Baldwin in a workshop opine that most people drawn to S/M have abandonment issues.

Okay. Now, my immediate reaction was to discount it. It's the issue I have with the whole project of psychotherapy. I mean, does anybody not have abandonment issues? Okay okay okay. So probably there are Buddhist monks that don't have abandonment issues. But I think all the rest of us have abandonment issues. Abandonment issues are what ya might call part of the human condition. So... like... if everybody has abandonment issues, does anybody really have abandonment issues? Thus, it's no surprise that there were a lot of heads nodding in agreement when Guy said that. Everybody was thinking, "Gosh. I'm into S/M, and I have abandonment issues. So it must be true."

Okay.

But to quote the Saturday Night Live skit 'Godfather Group Therapy,' "Vito, you're blocking."

An' maybe I am.

'Cause maybe that's what it's all about. One sure, solid relationship. Permanent as a steel collar secured with a padlock. Maybe that's what we're all looking for. The one who won't go away. The one who will always be there. The Sir who won't send us out the door. The boy who won't leave home. For good. For good. There certainly is an irreversible aspect to many of my fantasies.

But this raises a troubling issue.

Ultimately, it won't work. It's not gonna happen. We fail one another. Our burning burning love grows cold. We leave to pursue other opportunities. Or get left behind. Good, smart people do bad, stupid things and disappoint the people who care about them.

So, if that's what we're hoping to get out of S/M, doesn't that mean that we're all setting ourselves up for heartache and disappointment?

Doesn't seem that way to me.

I mean, sure. I spend enough time here and elsewhere wishing for Him. The Sir who will collar me or the slave who will belong to me. And I've sure heard that from just about everybody else I know. Huh. Maybe that's why we're all such suckers for the internet. So much easier to think "This Might Be HIM!" when we're dealing with the phantoms we encounter there.

But I haven't met many bitter and disappointed men who have walked away from S/M in disgust, hurt by the futility of their search.

Maybe it's the old Bait and Switch I've thought about before. We go out looking for HIM, but we find him. One good man, or at least, a man who can hold it together for a night or a weekend or a summer or a decade.

"S/M is the quest ofr excellence in ourselves and others." that's the quote with which I began this weblog. And perhaps it could be taken as the theme. Maybe that's the kernal of wisdom here. After all, we're not made to be excellent. Because we're not excellent. We're earthen vessels, but sometimes we contain pure gold. And maybe we get just enough gold to sustain us.

Chains of love.


Plus, I think it'll look really cool.

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