A Place To Draw Blood Laughing ›

1. Again?

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Yes, although at the time I said I’d probably never do drabbles again, I am taking the 200/words a day challenge up again. (I think I might only go 25 days this time, instead of 50.) I’ve found that I keep losing post ideas, in my bed or on the street or in the folds of our very squishy couch. I feel a sort of obligation to this space, as though I don’t want to release any of my thoughts until they’re fully formed and ripened. I’m trying to loosen that death-grip, a little bit. It is part of an ongoing project I have to trust myself more.

It seems strange to say that I don’t trust myself, but it’s true that I can see my own weaknesses, and they worry me. One that occurs to me tonight, as I sort over password requests and Fetlife messages, is that I am not an immediately good judge of character. I never have been; it takes me quite some time to solidify my understanding of a person. (This is one reason I like blogging, where I can mine the characters of people from the tunnels of their archives.)

Until my opinion settles, I always give people the benefit of the doubt. This is usually okay. Sometimes it is not. And it worries me. I alternately worry that I trust too much and not enough. I worry that I’m going to get myself hurt over and over. Then, I worry that I worry too much. Then I generally laugh at myself, until I am all right again.

Here, Now, This

Friday, December 5, 2008

I’ve been thinking recently about the defining questions in my life. I came about this backwards; I was confused and vaguely melancholy for a very long time, pulled every which-way like a glob of sticky taffy. I kept asking myself what I wanted, and harping on myself for not being able to answer the question.

For one thing, I have not yet sorted what I want to be from what I want to have. Everything is all mixed up, and in the meantime I look in the mirror and feel as though my skin is quicksilver and my eyes are changing color.

I want to use power tools and cook scones, and date women, and date men, and date everyone in between. I want to be a woman who wears suits and a boy who wears skirts. I want to start a PR business, and live on a sailboat, and bike across the country, and be a fashion designer, and run conferences the right way ’round. I want to be a country singer, and a travel writer, and a sex god. I want to make the world better, and I want to make the world work. I want high, rounded breasts like doves hung from my collarbones, and I want a girl with long hair to go exploring over. I want shoulders and arms like a man - like my first kinky boyfriend’s shoulders, triangular and etched in the hard flesh of military life - and I want a man to fuck who has those shoulders, and also long hair, and also the thick softness of a good life tucked into the curve of his swelling hips, ass in the air. I want people who love to cry for me, and with me. I want everything. I want to know who I am.

The thing is, the question is wrong. It is too simplistic for subtlety of planning, and to big for specific action. It is the question of a girl nestled in grass looking at stars; I am not that girl, right now.

The questions I should be asking myself are cleaner, crystallised.

Questions like these:

Do I want to integrate my queer identity with my professional career? How would I do that? What would it feel like? How would it hurt me, and how would it help me?

How should I manage my personal brand? How much energy should I invest into it, and is it worth investing in when split into two halves? Right now it is spinning and wobbling like a cloven coconut, and how do I put it back together without spilling all the juice out?

Should I keep up with my art? Should I focus on developing my design skills? Should I take up photography again, and does that mean I should buy a proper camera? Is oil painting worth my time; is any non-digital medium going to satisfy me?

What kind of work do I want to be doing? Is writing enough for me, or should I be looking into how to integrate my writing with activism, education, organization and social media? How do I do that?

How much of my activism is based upon my location and the people around me? Are the things I want still the same when I am by myself, alone?

Which of the hundreds of thousands of projects I conceptualise are worth developing? Should I be drawing comics, drafting book ideas, building websites?

What do I want to say to other people, and what is the best way to say it?

Where am I strongest?

These are better questions. I don’t have the answers, but these are my current thoughts. This is where I am, today.

Can a Cock Shot be Submissive?

Friday, November 21, 2008

In case you haven’t heard yet, Maymay and I have recently launched Male Submission Art, a new blog focused upon showcasing and crowdsourcing images of beautiful male submission. Thus far, the project has been not only successful, but a whole lot of fun. I open my email account to find massive files and link-fests, my favorite people sending their favorite porn? Amazing.

One of our first contributors sent us a range of very eclectic, very sexy photos, many of which were immediately re-blogged. Among them, ze sent a photograph of a bound, erect penis: essentially, a cock shot. Exactly as ze described it in hir email, the bondage is beautifully done. The man’s penis strains, his stomach muscles are tensed, his skin flushed with trapped blood. It is, undoubtedly, a beautiful cock in bondage.

When May and I sat down and opened the email to look through the images, the cock caught our attention.

“Should we post that?” I asked.

May shrugged. “My instinct is yes.”

“Hmm,” I said. “My instinct is no.”

We have yet to resolve this between the two of us, so I thought I’d throw it open to a bit of discussion here, and find out what you, the audience of the blog, think.

Can a cock shot be submissive?

I can explain, to some degree, why my initial instinct was to say no. The reasoning is threefold.

Firstly, because I do have a personal wariness around cocks that should be acknowledged. I am not a big fan of the penis, in general. I find the entire contraption a little off-putting, and wont to spit acrid goo at me. And where erotica is concerned, they’re just not to my taste. I have thousands of images in my porn collection, and not a cock shot to be found.

Secondly, because I do see a tricky distinction here between masochism and submission. I have often identified scenes that focused intensely upon the weapons and gear of kink as sadomasochistic, but not as D/s. This is another instance of the nuances between top/bottom and dom/sub, many of which are fluidly defined from person to person. A person in pain is not submissive. A person in bondage is not necessarily submissive either. But how to convey that distinction, merely a matter of attitude, in a photo?

Following from that point, the third: I’ve realized that I make a connection between character and submission. That is, for me to feel that a photo portrays an instance of beautiful submission, it must first convey a person who will enact that submission. An amputated body part is not, to me, enough.

In my gut, this is a matter of emotional connection. I have no emotional connection to this particular body part. As such, while I find the photo evocative and masochistic, nothing about it says submission to me. The cock has no eyes to cry with, no lip to quiver, no knees to kneel upon, no body to hunch, to protect, to evoke my dominant instincts. I do not care about it, beautifully bound though it is.

But perhaps this is an unfair bias I’m inflicting upon the Male Submission Art audience, to shy away from cock shots and their ilk. In all honesty, I don’t know. I know my personal tastes run deep, and are often counter-culture. We don’t have enough suggestions yet to get a truly fair sampling of what people are interested in.

So tell me. Can a cock shot be submissive? What do you think?

Sans Weapons, Sans Gear

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Maymay reviews for Eden Fantasies, and last time around he and I sat down and picked out something resembling a cock case. It’s a strap-on with a hollow center that he can wear over his own penis during sex to essentially give himself an eternal, non-stimlating erection. Sounds delicious, no?

But when it arrived, all shrouded in bubble wrap and cardboard, I laughed aloud. I had failed to realize the essential flaw in this sexy plan: the thing is fucking huge. It is the size of my forearm; I feel vaguely as though it could be used to skewer a donkey.

Needless to say, at this point in time I have no intention of having sex with it.

So it’s sitting on our dresser now, alongside its case, my library books, and glasses cleaner. Every once and a while I pick it up and wave it at my boy. I’d attach it to the strap-on harness, but we don’t have a ring big enough to hold the monster.

Eventually I’ll find a place for it, somewhere in our teak box between the nylon and the hemp. The box is overflowing these days, as the weapons and gear of our sexuality gather to us.

I like that we still work without the toys, that we are still kinky naked, with nothing but our hands and mouths and tongues. Last night I wrapped my arm around May’s shoulders and held his wrists in my hand. With my other hand I cupped his cock, and stroked the tip of my thumb up and down the length of him over and over, until he had tears in his eyes and he whimpered like an angry child. He still had his t-shirt on, a soft cotton thing that smells like Old Spice. When I stopped he was angry, although I saw him try to hide it. His frustration was very sharp, and he thrashed on the bed and whined.

I rested a little while, while he struggled and pouted at me, his hands writhing inside mine. I closed my eyes and drifted toward the very edge of sleep. But I could feel the scene still in the air, like ending a concerto on an open tone.

“I like you like this, when you feel owned,” I said to him. I like him when every breath on his skin thrills him. I kissed his ear, his neck, pulled down his collar and licked his collarbone, pulled up his shirt and dragged my teeth against the barbell through his nipple. I kissed down his stomach and when I put my lips to the head of his cock he shrieked, almost sobbed into the pillow.

When he came, arching his ribs so that he stood off the bed like a bridge of flesh through the air, he shot so far he hit his own neck and shoulder, white streaks all over the thin cotton. And as he came I couldn’t help but think of water guns.

“Ah ga buh,” he said, when he could say things again.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” I smiled.

“Buz ugu ma.” He slurred the sounds, closed his eyes, long fingers sprawled across his sticky belly.

“I think I have broken you. Have you forgotten how to speak?”

He nodded. We giggled a little, and when I pushed him off the bed to shower he walked in zigzags, holding one hand to the wall to keep himself upright, all fluid, heavy limbs.

NaNoWriMo: The First Few Words

Sunday, November 2, 2008

It’s National Novel Writing Month! Have some shiny pseudo-fiction, on me.

1. He is like direction

This is him, my boy.

He has legs round and firm as rubber balls, with monkey toes, long, grasping, narrow. He has little frog fingers that are skinny, the knuckles pressed together in strange places, and when I call him my frog-fingered boy he puts them to his face and covers his eyes. The pads of his fingers are thick and white, like silver coins. He makes me pulverized and strange.

He stands in our kitchen washing the dishes with his belly pushed out against the sink. He scuffs his feet, turns his toes pigeon-angled in. I come up behind him as he washes, and run my fingertips from the hard knobs of his collarbone to the backs of his thin hands. I do it to see the goose-bumps. I put my arms around his waist and press my face into his back, my feet flat and strong and bare on the tile floor.

He has, like a pufferfish, found a crack and puffed himself up to fit my life. He is wrapped around my lazy days with all the grace and wriggling charm of an octopus. He has the sleek softness of little harbor seals and the dry tenacity of a pit bull puppy dog.

He has a big hooked nose like a mountain, like his father. It is a family nose.

He has skin like vanilla ice cream. I tell him this over and over, while I tongue my way down the dinner rolls of his ribs, the mound of his ass where it swells from his legs. He has chili pepper lips and hair and ears and secret places. I like to split him in two with my tongue.

My boy is like direction, my east, my sunrise, my north, my compass. He has the push and pull of magnetic insistence.

This is me.

I have a body like circles with a bird’s neck. I swing low when I walk. I walk like a boy, sit like a boy, cock my head and wear my hair like a boy. I like things that cling, cotton that sticks to my curving trajectories.

I leave trinkets in my wake, books, drawing pencils, a sock, a bit of yarn, a leather coin purse, a pearl earring, a knife. I put them down and he cleans them up, and then I come back and can’t find them again.

I think in layers and he thinks in lines. I speak with subtext and he speaks without. I feel things hard and short, he feels things hard and long. I float and he swings.

Some nights, when it is hard to focus, I open the window to the fire escape. I sit on the bed and thread temporary needles through the skin of my arm. I know how to do it so it won’t leave marks; I have practiced many times, on many people. Sometimes when I have a job the next day, or the day after that, I will be careful. Other times I pull the needles out hard and at a slant, so they make double bruises like twin purple grapes. I like them. They make me laugh. I like to leave marks to show where I’ve been.

I was in a plane crash when I was five. I tell people this, and I tell them I remember the bumps, metal, the green sparks. But I don’t know if I do remember those things, or if I painted them into the gaps later on. This is what I do; I tell lies like they’re true. I don’t know which of my stories are real any more.

This is me. And this is him. This story is about the things he does to me, and the things I do to him.

In Giving Gifts, Attitude > Activity

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

There’s a new post over on Axe’s blog that has pulled out some immediate, visceral, negative reactions. I suggest you read his post in order to put mine in context, but as a brief overview, he relates a story about a dominant woman who expected him to take her shopping, and assumed he would pay for her. The comments condemn this woman as an asshat, a dishonest prat, and a whore.

Okay. I think this deserves another look. I want to talk about the giving and receiving of gifts.

What’s the issue in Axe’s scenario? Is it that she wanted him to buy her presents? Because I have to admit, I love being bought presents. I have expensive tastes, sensual obsessions, and gifts give me the warm fuzzies. In the right context, gifts turn me on. The idea of tribute turns me on. The idea of making Maymay pay for his orgasms definitely turns me on.

Don’t worry, I will not be offended if my blog stats have halved when I wake up tomorrow.

But is that really the issue? Or is it that she assumed he would buy her presents, bullied him and attempted to coerce him?

Let’s be absolutely clear. I don’t think there’s an intrinsic problem with giving presents as a form of submission, or receiving them as a form of domination (or tribute). And making the logical jump, I don’t think there is an intrinsic problem with financial domination, when done responsibly. I do think, however, that the attitudes surrounding these kinks are far too complicated to leave it at that.

Sometimes I make Maymay buy me things. It gets me off. I think it gets him off as well. It also causes me a welter of confusion, guilt, worry and self-doubt, the likes of which not even sadism can rival. Seriously. There is no other kink I claim that can make me feel like shit.

I suspect that giving money to fiercely independent women is a recipe for disaster. It’s certainly provoked some personal shipwrecks for me. Being paid for, given gifts, or being financially spoiled makes me feel weak. And ashamed, and dirty. And all sorts of other crap that I don’t think I should have to deal with. I know that I am not these things: weak, shameful, unclean.

I also love giving gifts, but I have never stopped to consider that giving Maymay a gift might make him feel bad. There are some deeply gendered issues in that statement. And I have managed to ply arrogance from its negative connotations and embrace it as a tool and a perspective, but I cannot seem to do the same with being spoiled. I can’t get through the issues to find the guilt-free good.

When we talk about financial domination, or the giving of gifts, there seems to be a feeling of general distaste. There is talk of advantages taken, and services exchanged, and it’s all layered over with the still-lingering residue of the dirt that has been culturally ingrained into the concept of prostitution. Money is too dirty an issue for us all to play nice.

We can talk about the exchange of power, and of control, and of pain. But we can’t have a conversation about the exchange of money without that knee-jerk distaste. And where does that leave women like me? The stigma of money has influenced my life in so many directions that I can barely speak about financial exchanges coherently.

And frankly, that pisses me off. Not only because it messes with my potential enjoyment of a kink, but because it messes with my future as a professional in any field of business.

What if, in some possible future, I quit my job and am financially supported by my partner? Should I feel ashamed? The way I am right now, I couldn’t bring myself to be supported willingly by someone else. And I think that’s a pretty crap attitude, on my part. I don’t like that my intrinsic worth as a person is so wrapped up in how much money I can make, or my ability to pay off my debts. I find the perspective short-sighted, and self-damaging.

Let me bring this back on track. I will say spoil me. That’s right. Buy me gifts. I love gifts. (If you can manage to spoil me and not make me feel like shit, you’re probably a miracle worker. Or Maymay.)

But I will never, ever expect that of anyone. I can barely accept gifts as it is. I have worked very hard to be gracious when people give me things, and honestly, I’m not very good at it. Gifts make me feel indebted, because for me, feeling indebted is safer than feeling spoiled. Feeling indebted and uncomfortable is a better place for me than feeling like a silver-spoon, rich-kid brat.

This says realms about me, and my relationship with money, and my relationship with myself. This is a terrific example of how my personal problems fuck with my sexuality. It’s probably the best example I have, because it is the most irrational trigger.

Taking money from others makes me feel like a bad person. It makes me afraid I will turn into the woman Axe wrote about.

It’s not just my personal hang-ups that keep me from embracing this kink. It’s that we rarely take the time to acknowledge the distinction between taking money as a kink and being a spoiled bitch, or a whore. Because if you go play in the comments over on Axe’s post, you’ll notice that no one explicitly condemned that woman for trying to pull a non-consensual scene. They condemned her for expecting to be bought gifts. Those are two different things. The first one is the real problem. The money clouds the issue.

I find it critical that we draw a perspective between the kink and the attitude. Attutide is greater than activity. I kink on gifts. I do not feel entitled to gifts. I consider inappropriate entitlement to be shameful, and non-consensual scenes to be wrong.

Only my attitude excuses me. Only my attitude separates me from her.

It hurts me that because of her, and people like her, and because of my issues regarding money, and because of the way the scene treats money, I can’t claim this kink in good conscience. It hurts me to have to say that a part of my sexuality makes me feel ashamed. That my work to act responsibly, consensually, and wisely is not enough to break that prejudice down in my bedroom, and in my mind.

Protected: That Dull Thud

Thursday, September 25, 2008

I Have Been Trying

Monday, September 22, 2008

I have been trying to write a story. I have been trying to write a story about a scene I did with the Boston Boy late during one of the last play parties in New York, before I flew away.

I’ve been trying to write it down, but I can’t remember how the words should go.

The Boston Boy is short, not small. Thick in his legs, round like apples and then broad like bodies of water. He has dark curling hair that twists into his ears and twines around my fingers.

Where was Maymay, the night of that party? I can’t place him in my mind, which makes me think he was at home. This piece will explain why I will never write a non-fiction memoir; I fill the gaps of my life in with fictions I create from the vapor of nothing, because the gaps themselves are huge and dark and frustrating. Last weekend I walked down the street with Maymay and said that I felt sad, and tried to explain my reasons. He turned to me and said gently, “That’s the same reason you were sad before we moved, six months ago. Don’t you remember us talking about it?” And I had to say no: I remember sitting, I remember words in my mouth, but I don’t remember why I was sad back then, in that anonymous time six months ago. I barely know why I’m sad now.

I remember the Boston Boy closed his eyes tight, and closed his face up as well. When he was finally against the wall of Rob’s little bedroom with his shirt on the floor at his feet, he stood perfectly still. I remember I ran my hands over his body.

“I’m sorry I’m so quiet,” he said, and his words came out odd in my ears. “I know you like it when there’re noises.” I think that I told him it was all right.

And then there is a gap. Trying to fill it with fiction makes me lonely, so I’m going to leave it unfilled.

Later, I grabbed the meat of his shoulder and wrestled him down onto the floor. He went down easy, and when I sat on top of his chest and pinned his elbows to his sides I could feel the muscles of his arms flexing and relaxing as he grabbed at the waistband of his shorts.

“What are you doing?” I leaned over him softly.

“Just trying not to fight back,” he said.

And I remember I asked him what he meant, and then I said, “Let’s try that, then,” and I kept hitting him.

I hit him until he wrenched his arms from under my body, flipped me easily and pinned me to the floor. I struggled a little, then looked him in the eyes. “All right,” I said then, “that’s enough.”

And I remember he threw himself backward, put his back to the corner and curled in a ball with his hands over his head. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He cried it in something that sounded like fear. I almost melted away.

And then, another gap. Writing like this makes me frustrated, makes me miss the golden sheen of the bubble I’ve capped over my time in New York. I don’t know if capping it makes things better or worse. A few days ago Maymay and I sat in a cafe, and I said maybe I want to move back to the States. No more guesswork, no more tentative movements or subtle disconnections. My life feels faded, fragile, incomplete.

“Let’s go to San Francisco,” I said.

I remember toward the end of the scene with the Boston Boy I pressed the pointed tip of a knife between his eyebrows, and he sank against the wall and made one low noise, without opening his lips at all. I remember deciding that noise was enough, and I remember it so clearly because I keep it wrapped in my head in a bit of tissue paper, that one beautiful noise.

I’m trying to write it down now, how the scene ended. Did we sit on the floor? I think we did. Did I put my arms around him? I hope I did. Some of this piece was fictional, but my hope in that hypothetical moment is real.

Casanova

Friday, September 19, 2008

No, not the romanticized idea. The man. Giacomo Casanova.

I’m utterly cheating on this post. I admit it. At least this cheat is words, instead of the rambling audio journal I’ve been picking up in random moments. Do ya’ll need to hear my musings upon the deliciousness of guacamole? I think not. Obviously guacamole is delicious.

I walked into a little bookstore in the Rocks and picked up a slim black paperback with a rose etched on the cover: Of Mistresses, Tigresses, and Other Conquests. The inside cover informs me that this is a selection of excerpts from Casanova’s unfinished 3,600 page memoir, Histoire de ma vie.

And I took it home and started reading, and ridiculously, laughed out loud sitting alone on my couch. Because Casanova? A pre-computer-age sex blogger. Definitely.

Here are a few choice excerpts that pushed some of my blogging buttons:

If, dear reader, you examine this preface well, you will easily guess its purpose. I have written it because I want you to know me before you read me. Only in coffee-houses and inns do we converse with strangers.
I have written my history, and surely no one could take exception to it. Still, am I wise to present it to a public I know only in the worst light? No. I know it is foolish. But since I need to keep myself busy and to laugh, why should I refrain from committing such a folly?
…
In recalling the pleasures I enjoyed, I relive them, while I laugh at the pains I endured and no longer feel.
…
What depraved tastes! And how shameful to acknowledge them without blushing! This reproach tickles me to laughter. Thanks to my coarse tastes, I am so shameless as to believe myself happier than the rest, first of all because I think my tastes make me more sensitive to pleasure.

And for a little something extra, some 18th century T&D action:

With a trembling and timid hand, and watching her with eyes that begged for mercy, I untied the six wide ribbons that closed her dress in front, delighted that she did not stop me, and found myself the happy master of the most beautiful bosom. Time was running out. She was obliged to allow me to devour it after contemplating its charms; I raised my eyes to her face and there read an amorous sweetness that said to me, be happy with this, and learn from me to suffer abstinence. Driven by love and all-powerful nature, and in despair because she would not allow my hands to roam elsewhere, I did everything I could to guide one of hers to the place that might persuade her that I deserved her mercy; but with a strength greater than mine, she would not move her hands from my chest, where there was nothing of interest to be found. Nonetheless, this was where her mouth landed when her lips left mine.
Out of necessity or the fatigue of spending so many hours without being able to do anything more than continuously swallow our mingled saliva, I fell asleep in her arms, holding her close in mine.

Dating Guidelines

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Today I want to talk about FetLife.

As I mentioned a while back, I have found FetLife to be primarily a good resource, although the site occasionally regurgitates the problems of the kink macrocosm into my email, which drives me mad. I have yet to really gain personal (distinct from professional) value from any social networking site, mostly because I end up being more annoyed than amused.

So I don’t read the digests, and I don’t browse the groups, and I don’t join the discussions even when they do drive me mad. XKCD brilliantly illustrates my view of the inherent futility in this sort of argument.

But I’m still on Fetlife. Why? Because I still hold the at-this-point-very-tenuous hope that through FetLife I might manage to find someone to date.

Because FetLife is designed for social networking rather than dating, I don’t have the patience to try to find possible partners through it for more than half an hour. I can’t, for example, see everyone who lives in New South Wales, is under the age of 35, queer, and into having sadistic women beat on them. Who is funny enough to make me laugh, and smart enough to make me think, and sexy enough to make me come, and honest enough to make me comfortable, and honorable enough to make me trust.

I sort and sort, and then I give up. Half an hour is not enough, and I don’t really have the time for a full-blown campaign.

I don’t want to imply I am content with (or politically aligned with) sitting back and trusting that the presence of my sexy young dominant vagina will bring in dates. I think I should do some work in the dating process. But I don’t know if I want to do that work on FetLife. I’ve seen nothing to imply that my efforts would be rewarded.

I debated, for a long time, advertising here on this blog that I’m looking for dateable folks. Once upon a time I did mention this in my contact page, but I’ve since taken it down. I’m still not sure about that decision. I’m not sure how I feel about advertising my availability at all.

But while I figure this out, I still get messages on FetLife all the time. I am privately messaged about twice a week, and although I have made a few new friends, I don’t see dating in the cards any time soon.

Most of the messages aren’t bad, persay. But at the same time, these messages consistently betray their authors as unsuitable dating potential. For example, I won’t respond to people with empty profiles. And (sorry, anonymous man I’m about to criticize), I won’t date you if you’re trying to cheat on your wife. While it’s nice of you to put that in your messages up front, it’s just not going to happen. And I find it a little insulting, but how were you to know that?

How were you to know I won’t be the other woman? Or that I won’t reply to one-liners, or that sexual advances from strangers freak me the fuck out?

Do you see where this is going? I am debating becoming one of those people with guidelines. I am actually debating whether or not I should spell out a number of suggestions to people who are interested in speaking with me.

Look, call me crazy, but I think if you’re interested in my profile you might click through to my blog. And I think that my blog might give a pretty clear picture of who I am. And I think that once you’ve got that picture, you might be smart enough to figure out how to approach me on your own. I don’t think you need a guidebook to my brain. Although I suppose if there’s an interest, I could write one.

I have to admit that the practice of outlining dating guidelines on a website or a profile is one of my annoyances. It annoys me that people do this. It annoys me that I’m considering this, because it implies a kind of arrogance I don’t appreciate.

And most of all, it annoys me that this is even necessary. Because yes, I can see how it might be necessary. It saves time on both sides. It heads off the cycle of hope and disappointment. It would stop that little pang of sympathy and guilt when I get a polite, sweet message and all I have to say is, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Or if I have nothing to say at all.

So is it ruder to give guidelines up front, or ruder to never respond to the messages I receive? Should I head the hopefuls off at the pass? I’m wary of this idea, because honestly, how am I to know who might read those guidelines and decide not to contact me? I could accidentally end up cutting out someone who’s genuinely interesting.

Keeping the nebulous possibility of that person alive is worth dealing with a bit of stupid guilt and a lot of random messages. But I do wonder about the hopeful people on the other end of the wire, waiting for my words to appear in a little black square. I wonder who they are, and what they’re like, and what brought them here, today.

A Place To Draw Blood Laughing

1. Again?

Here, Now, This

Can a Cock Shot be Submissive?

Sans Weapons, Sans Gear

NaNoWriMo: The First Few Words

In Giving Gifts, Attitude > Activity

Protected: That Dull Thud

I Have Been Trying

Casanova

Dating Guidelines

Public Service Declarations

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