Letter to severus

So what happened? I guess the answer is obvious. You're a flake. Which surprises me. You sounded fairly genuine on the phone. That's one reason I'm surprised. The other reason is admittedly a failure of imagination on my part: I can't imagine what it's like to be you.

Because I can't imagine how you can do this and still feel good about yourself. Maybe you have what you think is a good reason for putting yourself out there, making promises and agreements that you know you will not keep. Like you've got some disability, or you're married and closeted, or you're very very afraid.

I'm going to go out on a limb: you're wasting your life. You're not being honest with yourself, and what you want, and where your heart is. It doesn't have to be that way. I hope you don't let too many years go by before you make some changes. Or else you'll look back and have nothing but phone numbers and jpegs and frustration and emptiness, and nothing in the way of connection and love and friendship that you could have had. That's no way to live life.

Here on the other side, it's really good. It's a world of men who care deeply about one another, who take care of each other, who hold each other in their hearts. I have found men who approach each other clothed only in their deepest, most heartfelt desires, making themselves vulnerable, showing that part of themselves that the world never sees, a golden, beautiful, true, and primal part of themselves. And what they find when they do this is that they sprout angels wings and get to soar.

I'm using pretty high-fallutin' language to try and grasp this, but that's only because it is so very beautiful, and the beauty of it exceeds my abilities to put it into words.

Tomorrow, I'm going to meet up with a young man of 18 years of age. Given his age, he's at the beginning of his journey. But in another respect, he's pretty far along the way. Because he is who he is.

We will meet, and talk. I'll ask him what he's hoping for, and what he wants. I'll ask him about his fears, and we'll discuss them. I'll be careful not to dismiss them, because they're important. When you fear something, that means that you have a lesson to learn there, and I don't want the lesson to be lost.

Then, we'll get in my car, and we'll drive through the Holland Tunnel to where I live in Jersey City. We'll be doing a scene that's not much different from what you and I talked about. Although, because he's never been whipped before, I'll proceed very slowly, and take special care. I recognize that I'm representing Everyman in this scene. His experience with me will color all of his subsequent experiences. And so I want it to be really really good. I want him to fly. I want him to taste joy and ecstasy. I want him to want more, and to see what he wants as being a good thing, not something shameful or self-destructive.

And afterwards, I'll take care of him. In a sense, he'll be mine forever. My responsibility. It's a big thing to take on, like having a child. He may need a little care, or a lot of care, but I'll do everything I can to make sure I deliver.

What do I get out of it? I see myself as being entirely self-serving. I like taking a man and making him helpless, taking away his power, and then causing him pain. It gets my dick really hard to hear him singing his birthday song (as Bruce Springsteen put it so well ), offering up his back to my pleasure. It's a gift. But with every great gift comes great responsibility. You wanna dance, then you gotta pay the piper. But the payment in this case is something I get a great deal of satisfaction from, as well.

Again, you're going about living your life in the wrong way. And it doesn't have to be that way.

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