Winter Blahs

Winter, even the extremely mild winter we're having, seems to put a bit of a damper on sex in general and BDSM activities, specifically. I'm wondering if some mild form of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) might be in play. Has anyone else noticed this?

Fires of Venus 2011

Fires of Venus 2011

Fires of Venus is a unique in the pagan community. It is a festival devoted to one deity, and, since Venus is all about Love and Sex, those things are included in large measures as well. This festival consists of a ritual that spans three nights built around the idea of fire circles. You know, those pagan festival events where a bunch of dancers cavort around a huge bonfire to drumming? The work of the ritual shifts somewhat from night to night and year to year, but always involves loving better, removing the barriers to love, and becoming closer to Venus and to love. It is always intense -- the most intense, most personal spiritual work I’ve ever done. It takes place in a campground in Maryland that I go to for several other events, including FSG. It’s cabin camping with hot showers, flush toilets, a dining hall, lots of indoor event space, and lots of woods.

I’m a priest of Aphrodite. I haven’t quite pinpointed what Venus is to me. Is She Aphrodite under a different name? Is She a sister or cousin of Aphrodite? Essentially, are there one or two individuals involved? I’ve decided it doesn’t matter. As long as the work and insights I gain pertain to my own Path of Love, then it doesn’t matter. I devote myself to Venus for the duration of the festival and then continue afterward with Aphrodite as my patroness.

This year’s Fires was amazing on multiple levels, as usual. Spiritual, physical, emotional, mental, sexual, friendships, lovers, community. Last year, I was an assistant Keeper, part of the ritual staff. This year I was an attendee, and therefore had no extra duties or  meetings to attend, other than those I wanted to go to as part of the ritual process. This meant that I could fully engage in the work of the festival, and also that I had more time to rest.

Last year, my wife, G, and I arrived just as the Thursday ritual was starting. I had duties in the Temple of Surrender, but G was overwhelmed by the transition from mundane to ritual and had to retreat to her cabin for awhile. This year I arrived on Wednesday night, so I had all day Thursday to settle into the festival.

G couldn’t attend this year, because of her daycare business. I spent the weekend with a long-distance lover, D. It was the longest we had ever spent together, and we really got close.

Master of Ceremonies and high priest of the rituals in the past was ill and could not attend until Saturday night, and then only a little. The rest of the ritual staff made adjustments and took turns performing the role. Everything worked wonderfully.

When you sign up for the festival, you choose a tribe to join. The tribes are associated with the various aspects of the ritual. I was in the Surrender tribe again this year. In this context, Surrender has a distinct BDSM flavor. I decided that Surrender was the best choice for me, because I surrender to Venus and Love at this festival and in my life, and I also have a knack for helping others surrender as well.

Some highlights of the festival for me:

• Being at the camp is like coming home for me. I’ve been coming once a year for ten years, and recently started coming an additional two times a year.
• Sleeping late in the morning. Breakfast at the dining hall is scheduled late (945a to 1045a), since most of the hard work takes place from 9pm to 3am. Few classes are scheduled in the morning too. The coordinatrix is good to us poor late-night wretches.
• The food in the dining hall was pretty good. Buying our dinners meant we had more time for resting and hanging out.
• The Chrysalis, a pallet wrap mummification with caterpillar-to-butterfly guided meditation done in the Surrender Tribe on Thursday. I helped wrap several people up, since I have experience doing it. I also got my hands bound over my heart. Through the meditation, I set forth my intentions for the festival and the work with Love and Venus ahead.
• Crying at some point in every ritual through the weekend, even the ten-minute closing ritual. This indicates both how deep the work was.
• Take a Risk -- Thursday’s ritual. The randomly distributed Risk I got was not a big challenge for me. “Go to the Gratitude Zone in front of the drummers and have an orgasm, either real or Meg Ryan-style.” I went to the zone and shouted “Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” after suitable warm-up moaning. So, since it wasn’t a difficult task for me, later a bigger risk presented itself. Suffice it to say that I’m usually not an exhibitionist. I jumped in with both feet.
• The Fire Circles. A few years ago, fire circles were only somewhat interesting to me, mostly for watching naked tits people bouncing around the flames. I wasn’t comfortable dancing or drumming. Since then, I stopped judging myself, and started dancing like no one was watching. I love dancing around the fire now. I often do it till I’m exhausted. This has bled into mundane life and dancing in clubs.
• Naps. The schedule contains an hour of Quiet Time before a late dinner. D was busy with Keeper duties during this time, so I often went to sleep to be well-rested for the evening’s activities.
• Taking a Breath - Friday’s ritual. This ritual was an excellent breathing meditation that energized the chakras. Working our way up from the root to the crown, with drumming and rattles, incense, and Aurora’s wonderful voice. I was energized, and Venus came to me.
• Kissing the Keeper of the temple of Affection. Mmmmm.
• Having the time to reconnect with a bunch of my long-distance friends that I don’t see enough.
• Making several new friends. I got a ride to the airport from one couple from Nebraska that I later discovered knows my other friends from KC. I got to know someone I had met at FSG, but had no time to talk to at that event.

Breathplay

A couple of years ago my wife, G, and I went to Shibaricon. We were just beginning the exploration of our kinky side. I knew a little about my own kinks, but not much about those of my lovely spouse. After one of the classes, she asked one of the presenters to show me something that she'd seen him demonstrate earlier in the day when I wasn't around. So we went out into the hall, and he put an arm around G's neck and puts his hand on her mouth, using his pinkie to close and open her nose for breathing. I could see her strong reaction. Then he had me try it on her, and she completely melted in my arms. That was our first exploration into breathplay together.

Until that time, I had actively avoided it, and probably would have listed it on my hard limits list. I was afraid of breathplay. I'd heard too many news accounts of people who died from auto-erotic asphyxiation.

Sometime later, when she suggested we go to a local talk on breath play by Lee Harrington, I got the message -- she wanted to investigate this form of edge play. The 45 minute discussion of safety at the beginning of the talk helped a lot. After this, I would occasionally put my hand on her throat during sex and apply very mild pressure. This had the desired effect, so my interest was piqued.

Then we went to a class at Northern Lights Kink, a local hotel BDSM event. The presenters, Jim and Jerith, had a comprehensive class on breathplay with some awesome demonstrations. Again, the safety tips peppered through out the class were very good at reducing my fear. Afterward, while we were in the hotel room before dinner, we tried just putting my hand over her mouth and nose. She immediately relaxed against me, and when I released her, we kissed passionately. She was very turned on by it, and her reaction was very arousing to me. That’s when it finally clicked in my head.

This week, we went to bed with the intent of just cuddling and falling asleep. Instead, I tried something out on her -- I covered her mouth and closed her nose with my fingers early on as foreplay. It took a few tries to get a good seal, but I got it right, and G reacted well. We played with her breath for about 10 minutes, and then had one of those “These speakers go to 11” sexual encounters. Not bad for ‘just cuddling’.

Relationship Post Mortem

I had an insight yesterday that makes me feel much better.

I had a big breakup early this summer from a long distance partner who was very important in my life. We saw each other every 4-6 weeks, we had plans for the future, we were working partners spiritually, we were solid.

Many factors seemed to contribute to the breakup, mostly involving a completely lack of time for me on her part, due to expanding her business, spending more time with her child and parents, and a new local relationship in her life. I just couldn't get enough talking time with her between visits to maintain a strong heart connection. Then I traveled 1000 miles to spend a Beltane festival with her. She told me when I got there that she wanted to spend the time with her new partner instead. I'm flexible and I dealt with it, though it hurt like a mo-fo. I asked a friend if she wanted to spend the festival with me. But after the weekend was over, I broke up with my partner, much to her surprise.

I have said from the beginning that the reason I broke up with her is that she just couldn't find an extra 20 minutes a day to talk to me. I've also said that it isn't just having a new partner that caused all the problems, but that the whole cluster of time sucks did it.

Her friends have complained that she has no time for them either. That she has broken plans that had been made a year ahead of time. And most of them have said that the new partner was the cause. I have told them that he was not the only factor.

She has said that any friend that would abandon her because of a lack of time must not be a very good friend to begin with. This has made me think about how bad a partner have I been to break up with her, just because she has no time to talk on the phone with me. I beat myself up for being shallow and selfish.

My revelation is that for her friends, the lack of time is from a variety of choices in her life that have sucked away all her time -- work, child, parents, and new partner. But for me, our relationship could have weathered the lack of time. What our relationship couldn't survive is how being with her new partner changed her and therefore changed our relationship.

When we were together, she was a strong, independent, open-hearted woman who lived in the present and was engaged with the world. When we were together, we were totally with each other. After four months with her new partner, she became a withdrawn, co-dependent, closed off woman who lived in the fear of her past. When we were together, she was no longer Here and Now, but somewhere else. She changed. Our relationship changed. It became something I no longer wanted to participate in. For my own happiness, I broke it off.

Without the changes in behavior, we would still be together now.

What this tells me is that I made a good decision to break up, and that it wasn't because of the selfish reason of not getting enough attention. I can stop blaming myself.

This doesn't mean I blame her either, or him. It's just something that happened. People change when they have new relationships. It's no one's fault.

It's similar to the dissolution of my first marriage. My first wife and I went through five years of Hell of an extremely difficult pregnancy, a medically complicated baby with handicaps and many surgeries, and my wife's cancer. When we came out the other end, we both were different people and our relationship had fundamentally changed, and not in a good way. We divorced.

I don't blame her or myself for that. I certainly don't blame my son. It just happened and it's no one's fault.

Northern Lights and Kinky Nights

My wife, Wisteria, and I went to a new local kink con this weekend, Northern Lights Kink. It was a hotel event, and we took over the entire hotel and bar/grill. This was a first time event, but obviously these people have run some kind of hotel events before, because everything went nearly flawlessly from a participant standpoint. I know these kinds of events often have circumstances that occur behind the scenes, but in this case, if anything happened, it never reached awareness of the event goers.

They had 230 registrations, though I’m sure a few of those didn’t make it. The event was set up in the usual manner for these things. Classes during the day, play space at night. We had the whole hotel, the only outsiders being the hotel staff. All but 3 rooms of the hotel were rented.

Friday had a BBQ and Meet-and-Greet that we couldn’t attend, and then play time. Saturday had 4 class sessions, Sunday had two. The 5000 sq. ft. of playspaces (one small quiet space and one large noisy one) were spacious enough for the number of attendees, making for a minimum of wait time for equipment. The range of equipment was excellent, going from the prosaic St. Andrew’s Crosses and spanking benches to the magnificent 15’ x 15’ steel pipe jungle gym and 20’ x 20’ wrestling mat.

Some outstanding presenters were there including Lochai and Lqqkout in the rope bondage area, and Jim and Jerith from Chicago presented on edge play topics. Other presenters included Jack Rinella and Jazz Thomas, as well as local experts. The classes were excellent and entertaining. Lochai was wonderful, making his sub moan and gasp practically on command, while he explained how to communicate your intentions with rope. The next class with Lochai and Lqqkout was also very good, where one tied while the other talked about the issues with having dual rope tops. A session called Sublime Predicaments taught by Captain Bea and Ben was very informative, detailing the elements needed to go from good to transcendental: discomfort, fear, imagination, and arousal. Their use of power tools to generate fear in an safe, well-controlled environment was superb. The breath play class by Jim and Jerith was extremely well-researched, giving details of the respiratory system, and the demonstrations on Jerith of choking, strangulation, and carotid blood play, including passing out three times, were riveting. Their other class on adding fear to scenes was just as well-researched, with an amazing demo.

In the playspace, we mostly watched. I saw some things I’d never seen before, like a waterboarding and a few severe takedown scenes. Some really talented riggers did suspensions, and watching Lochai be sensual and loving in a floor work rope scene was not what I expected. I did some hair and biting play, but otherwise was very happy to observe. One thing no one seemed to know how to do to my satisfaction was violet wand play.

The dealer area featured four excellent vendors, selling violet wands, floggers, corsets, fucking machines, single tails, and riding crops. I’m lusting for a solid-state violet wand that was very reasonably priced, and a full-sized flogger. My current flogger is small. Wisteria got fitted for a corset, and saw two she liked. The hotel was very decent, and the hotel staff was accommodating. The pool, class rooms, and playspaces were clothing-optional. The con suite was well-stocked with food, and stayed open until an hour after the playspace closed. The food plan was good, though standard. Wisteria found plenty of things to eat.

My one complaint was the coffee at breakfast, which often included an unsatisfactory amount of grounds. Thankfully, the con suite had better coffee and better additives, including the hazelnut syrup. We had a wonderfully fun weekend. All in all, we definitely plan on going again next year.

Lessons of Love #1

So, I've started working on a series of things I've learned about love, from experience, from people I respect, and from the Gods, This is the first.

Be Present

The past is the past. It's gone. Yes, it affects us, but if we let the past paralyze us, we can't move forward. If you have issues from your past that get in your way, find a way to work through the challenges, whether in therapy, ritual, or the intervention of deities. Then forget about the past.

Worrying about the future is worrying about stuff you make up in your imagination. The future doesn't exist yet. Worrying about possibilities has a tendency to bring those possibilities to reality. Certainly you can worry about your current state, but don't worry about what-ifs. You can prepare for bad things without worrying. Put money away in savings in case you lose your job, get disability insurance in case something terrible happens, but don't focus so much of your energy on that thing that you stop having fun.

Stay in the present. Be aware. Be connected. Focus on the people you are with. If you get caught up in the past or the future, a little focused breathing, being mindful of your breath, your body, your surroundings, will bring you back to the present. When you are with your lover, focus your whole being on them. The interplay of the Now is what's important for a happy life.

If you can leave the past behind and stop worrying about the future, living and loving come much easier.

A great book, a mere 96 pages, is True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist monk.

Reconnecting

About three years ago, I broke up with a woman I was dating, mostly because my life was extremely full, since I had a wife and a long-distance primary a 1000 miles away. I didn't feel it would be fair to not be able to give her as much of my love as I could. It was not an easy breakup, but we ended on friendly terms.

Fast forward to last fall. We started chatting over IM and reconnected. Over the next several months, we found we still had strong feelings for each other. This spring we decided that we wanted to start dating again. We okayed that with our spouses. The weekend I was going to okay it with my other partner, we ended up breaking up.

Our first date since reconnecting was just drinks and appetizers at a local Old Chicago. The second date was dinner and a movie (Hanna) with making out in the theater and the car. She was worried that we wouldn't have the old magic we had the first time around. She went through lung cancer while we were apart, and she was concerned that I'd be repulsed by her scars. We went on our third date this week. I rented a hotel through Priceline ($35). We had dinner and  five hours of hotel time. Her worries were unfounded in fact. We still have the old magic.