It’s that time again…

In The Doubtful Guest by flagg3 Comments

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I’m writing again.

This time, I want your help. If you have a tale that would fit with the type of experiences I am describing below, please let me know – I want to interview you for possible inclusion in the book. No one gets named who does not want to be.

There is no instruction, here. Only scars.

This is not wisdom from an expert, or sage advice from someone who knows something special.

This is an accounting of mistakes, some of them funny, some of them terrible… a collection of blind alleys and dead ends. Most are mine, some are shared by others, but they all have something in common – we were all striving to get somewhere, to learn something – something that was important to us. Something which promised to define us, if we could only reach it. Something sacred.

Dominants are not encouraged to share our errors- not with those under us, and certainly not with each other. So, all too often we fumble along blindly, afraid of looking weak or foolish to our peers or partners, trying to embody the myth of infallibility like toddlers shuffling around in Daddy’s huge shoes.

Once we have made a move and we manage to make it work, often we will cling to it, wading out no further than the shallows we know, one trick ponies, soon to grow as tiresome as rabbits from hats, in danger of becoming cliché. Many Tops seem to live in terror of the looming possibility of failure, especially where our peers and partners are concerned. Mistakes are bad enough- but mistakes where someone might see? Oh, no. No, no, no. We often spend more time worrying and being afraid than we do acting, paralyzed by the daunting prospect and looming threat of embarrassment as if we are all at our first school dance, milling around the gym.

This is the fumbling towards the sacred, the road of excess that leads, one hopes, to the palace of wisdom. This book is about the various ways I have screwed up, made a fool of myself, and hurt people who deserved better.

This is about what I was lucky enough to learn from those times, those accidents, those people. These are my scars.

Without them, I would be nothing.

New Years

In The Doubtful Guest by flagg9 Comments

New Years is special for me- it is my Mother’s time, spiritually (And how often are you going to hear me use that word in public?) A time for rebirth.

That’s exactly what last night was.

I terrorized a lovely stranger, watching her shake and stammer and ask the dark for her Daddy. Delightful.Even more  so to tell her that her Daddy was not here, it was just us. That there was no safety net, and no place to go but down.

I was among my closest pack and some friends, and spent the heart of my evening leaving scarred bootprints in a mind that wanted them, needed them. It’s been years since I felt this whole, this alive. I forgot all about my health, my leg, my limitations. They were gone, and I was doing what I was made to do. I was content, sunning myself like a great black snake digesting it’s prey on a hot rock. Quiet. Content. At peace.

Again. At last.

Coming home I found a note from someone who still, after time and distance and a lot of pain, holds me in the regard I hold most priceless, and who I will always miss, every day.

"What rough Beast, his hour rolled ’round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem, waiting to be born?"

Too late.

He’s here.

Happy New Year.

Xmas joy redux

In The Doubtful Guest by flagg2 Comments

From The Twelve Terrors of Xmas, by John Updike, illustrated by Edward Gorey:

3: Santas Helpers

Again, what’s really going on? Why do these purported elves submit to sweatshop conditions in what must be one of the gloomiest climates in the world, unless they are getting something out of it at our expense? Underclass masochism one day, bloody rebellion the next. The rat-a-tat-tat of tiny hammers may just be the beginning.

That, and two new, gleaming, wickedly sharp, spring – loaded implements of joy and dubious legality (but quite certain lethality) bring a smile to my face… and like the man says:

"Why so serious?"

Ho Ho Ho.
 

How Humiliating

In The Doubtful Guest by flagg8 Comments

So, I go straight from blood scrubbing to TES on Tuesday – presenting on Humiliation, Degradation and Objectification.
Anybody gonna be there?