Been having a great email correspondence with the man responsible for Bound and Determined that have given me many fresh insights. Recently, we discussed Tops who take a shamanic approach to domination, as opposed to those who... uh... don't. I think it's the equivalent of the uncanny (from my perspective) ability to have physical intimacy absent emotional intimacy. In the realm of vanilla, that is the road of frustration. There I'd be, planning my life around someone I had met in a bar and known for all of forty-five minutes. But in S/M, a scene in and of itself can be powerful and transformative. I think that mostly it comes down to genetics. Having sex without emotional content is a sex-linked phenotypical expression.

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Kick ass day tomorrow. At 8 a.m. I have to be at a Legislative Breakfast. (Like Grape Nuts, no legislation is generated, and the danishes cut in quarters and tepid coffee couldn't be anyone's idea of breakfast.) Then, from 7 p.m to 9 p.m., I'm attending some dreadful meeting about the Inclusive St. Patrick's Day Parade in Queens. (Big News! The Mayor has announced he'll be marching in this one.) I'm not Irish. I'm not from Queens. I'm not the Mayor. I guess bringing along what we used to call a 'free-reading book' in junior high school to either event would be bad form, right?

Boss Sunshine continues to be warm, appreciative, and enjoyable. (Don't kick the football, Charlie Brown!) In a meeting today, I mentioned the advocacy work I had the opportunity to do recently with clients of the Division of AIDS Services. (Now called HASA, but it will always be DAS to me.) I used to do a lot of that back in the day and became very good at it. Need approval from DAS so they'll cover the rent for your $1200/month studio? Not impossible with me on the job! So Boss Sunshine said, "And that's why you did such a good job making the DAS Legislation happen." It was an off the cuff comment, but one that had me charging full speed towards the football. You see, when I worked for Boss Sunshine before, I was, in fact, sort of the architect of this bill. I brought together a wide swath of advocates and service providers, and together we brainstormed on what the elements of the bill should be. Then, I worked with the lawyers on the City Council to turn those ideas into ironclad legislative language. And then, we strategized to get a majority of the Council as sponsors, get it voted out of committee, get the support of the leadership, and make it impossible for Mayor Giuliani (who had tried to eliminate DAS outright a few short years before) not to sign the bill into law. And, at that time, the Council was just starting to flex their muscles with the new powers granted to them by the revised City Charter. Previously, they had pretty much just renamed streets. It was the first piece of Omnibus Legislation that had ever come out of the Council. The resulting guarantee of basic services is a model that's been subsequently emulated in other cities. It is actually one of the accomplishments of which I am proudest.

Now here's the deal. Legislators don't give credit to their aides for things like that. The credit and the kudoes go to the legislator. Maybe I'm putting too much onto this, but to hear Boss Sunshine give me the credit took me by surprise.

Don't kick the football, Charlie Brown!

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