Do you really want to hurt me?

Cool! Welding class is cancelled next Wednesday. That means that I'll be able to head to NYC and attend the GMSMA meeting. Methinks I see the Divine Hand (that would be the leathergods, and not the Almighty) in this. Pourquoi? Because the topic that night is 'From Top to bottom and back again.' Or maybe it's, 'From bottom to Top and back again.' But basically, it's about comparing and constrasting the two poles (another electricity metaphor!) of the S/M experience.

How salient for me! (Thanks, leathergods!)

Let me recap some. So I'm writing (or not writing but sort of writing, 'mulling' at this point) this book about S/M as a spiritual discipline. I've got over a hundred pages of thoughts down on my trusty iBook. And then I met PunchPig, who in addition to doing a great scene, is also a writer and a literary agent manque. PunchPig agreed to take a look at my manuscript. He liked it, but had one fundamental criticism: it was all about being a Top, and that is only half of the story. PunchPig wanted to see the other half.

Uh huh.

So I did an outline. I sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote, and sent the outline to PunchPig, who was noncommittal. At Inferno (it's coming, I swear, I haven't forgotten), I attended a workshop where the S/M scene was described from the standpoint of Ego Defense mechanisms drawn from Freudian psychology. Without getting too deeply into it--if only because I couldn't do that brilliant idea justice--in an S/M scene, the bottom's defense mechanisms are breached, one by one. Listed among the defense mechanisms was humor. It struck me later that that's what I was doing with the jokey tone of my writing on the experience of being a bottom.

So. Something was going on there. What wasn't I wasn't facing? What was it I wasn't owning up to?

Thinking hard about it, I came to realize that I had this fundamental belief that there was something pathological about being a submissive. (Wait! Before you direct your browser elsewhere and never stir my hit counter again, read on!)

On it's face, this makes no sense. I mean, the world is full of people who would find it pathological to get off on blood, bruises, and tears, the way I do. So why, in my way of looking at the world, do I think that's fine, but there's something dodgey about getting off on being sliced, bruised, and crying?

I guess it could be that I have a shakey and superficial sense of my own masculinity. In our culture, dominance has male associations, and submission has female associations. But maybe not. I mean, I love getting fucked, and have no problems owning up to that. And, I have nothing (Nothing!) but respect for bottoms. I've seen feats that can only be described as superhuman. And I know all about the endorphin high, and the intimacy, and the specialness of the bottom experience.

So why do I have this... this... thing that there's something wrong with being a bottom?

Also at Inferno, I had The Interesting Conversation in the Beverage Tent. I had just bottomed in a scene, and so I was all juiced and perky. One of the guys I was talking to said something like, "I thought you were exclusively a Top." I started to list my bottom experiences: I've been whipped, I've done face punching, I've had my ass strapped, I've done endurance bondage, I spent a night in a cage, I've ingested the contents of my Sir's bladder...

Particularly when I described the face punching scene, one of my interlocutors clearly blanched.

"Heck!" I said, "I'm a Power Bottom!"

But I wasn't really. I've bottomed, but I didn't really get bottoming.

And then I heard an offhand comment that Diabolique made, explaining to a relative novice (compared to Diabolique, we're all relative novices) why he hadn't made a peep when he was getting whipped so severely by the Man from Munich: "I wanted to give myself completely to this man that I loved and not hold anything back."

Wow.

I wanted to give myself completely to this man that I loved and not hold anything back.

I
wanted
to
give
myself
completely
to
this
man
I
loved
and
not
hold
anything
back.

I wanted to give myself completely to this man I loved and not hold anything back.

What's that like?

I want that.

I want to find out what that's all about.

I want to be a bottom.

So whatever the pathology thing was all about, I'm over it. No Victorian pronouncements are going to hold me back from visiting that place.

And then, along came this whole I Want A Dad thing.

At Inferno and afterwards, when I would flag, I would flag black left and hunter green right. Heavy S/M Top, and boy seeking Dad. This is a little confusing, no? One boy, noticing what I was flagging, said, "So you want to find a Dad and whip him?"

Uh... no.

So guess what? The next time I flag, I'm gonna flag black and hunter green on the right.

See that big bald bottom over there with the bushy stache?

That would be me.

And if anyone with bottom-pathology issues is aghast at this development, I'll just say, "I'm doing research for a book I'm writing."

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