Time to Get Real

Most New Year’s resolutions are laughable; forgotten and ignored before the Superbowl is played. But my primary resolution of 2010 has not only endured but has reaped real results. Quite simply, I resolved to lead a more reality-based life.

Let me give you a specific example. I had been grossly overweight for some time. Some of the weight slowly accumulated in the many years I worked in sales and marketing and traveled constantly. For a six year period I managed our company’s business in Canada and lived in various Intercontinental Hotels, mostly in Toronto, for 10-15 days per month, with all the attendant room service breakfasts and client entertaining that includes. Then, in 2007, after a brief brush with cancer, I had a total thyroidectomy – including the four lymph nodes in my neck. It’s quite sobering to have body parts removed and not be replaced with anything! (Anyone interested in knowing more about this episode can email me, and if I know you, I will be happy to give you the link to my “medical blog”). But while the operation, recovery and subsequent cancer treatments all went in stride, I had a very hard time adjusting to my new regime of daily doses of T4 thyroid hormones – necessary to replace the hormones normally created by the thyroid gland. As a result, my whole metabolic system went haywire -- it took a full 18 months for the correct T4 dosage to be found and for my body to fully adjust to it. I blew up like a balloon in those 18 months. Really scary. When the dust finally settled, I made several half-hearted and thoroughly unsuccessful attempts at losing weight, all the while fantasizing about being thinner. Well, my new credo in 2010 is to recognize the reality of a given problem and then do something real – with intent – to effectuate change. As a result, I have lost over 50 pounds this year and am still losing at a rate of about 6-8 pounds a month as I slowly settle into my ideal weight. As I reflect on this success, I’m still stunned at how easy it was to do. All it required was a real recognition of the problem and the intent (and correct methodology) to do something about it.

I have applied this same reality-based thinking to all of my personal relationships as well. Many of you know that I have enjoyed a very complicated and rewarding personal friendship with a well-known NYC ProDomme. I began seeing her for monthly sessions several years ago, and after a couple of years of increasingly intense and enjoyable sessions, she asked me to meet her at a downtown bar for a drink The occasion was her impending trip to Europe and my impending trip to the operating table. Starting with this sweet good luck clink, our relationship slowly transformed from a strictly professional provider/client acquaintance to…well, something else. What that something else was could never be properly defined. She had no interest in collaring me (which I would have readily accepted) but yet held me in higher esteem than a regular client and was willing to spend considerable amounts of personal time with me. She frequently joked that I was so unique that I was in my own category. And while I craved a closer relationship with her, I understood why that was not the case and considered myself very, very lucky and proud to have the wonderful friendship that we did have. Over time this friendship took many dips and turns and last year sometime, without warning or announcement, I was seemingly put into the proverbial ice box. I really thought I had done something wrong, and my timid inquiries were rebuffed as inappropriate requests for personal information, which they weren’t; I was just trying to figure out where I stood. Well, I’m a little slow sometimes, and at long last it finally dawned on me that where I stood was nowhere, that the closeness she once shared with me was absent and was replaced with...nothing. I had to take a hard look at this. The reality was that I was pretending to be collared by her. And for a while I think we both enjoyed this pretending: she got the occasional benefits of having an additional collared subject without ever having to do the deed and without dealing with any of the messy shit that normally come with the territory. But as time passed, sadly, there was less and less of that, and I became acutely aware that my diminished status with her was making me unhappy. The cold truth of the situation is that I am no longer an important person in her life, and that is something I just had to come to grips with. So after much discussion, some of it heated, we recently agreed - as she put it so well - that neither of us was being the kind of friend that the other person wants or needs right now. That about sums it up. For her, I‘m quite certain she has not wasted even 5 minutes of thought on it, but for me it was a difficult and painful process. Ultimately, it was all about accepting reality and behaving accordingly. I am sad beyond words at what has happened, and in fact my shrink is worried that I have cavalierly thrown away something precious and important, but for better or worse, my personal development required moving off the dime, and I saw no other way that movement was going to occur. But this is my head speaking; I have a ball-gag on my heart at the moment…

I would be remiss if I did not reflect for a moment on that wonderful friendship we once had. At play, she tapped into a vein that very few Dommes ever found, and once she found it she was able to go back to it at will almost every time we got together in session. Nobody else in my long experience has been capable of such a thing. I’ve been playing for over 30 years. The thought that I may never have anything like this again – a real possibility - is truly terrifying. But the fact is, I have not sessioned in over 6 months precisely because I felt too vulnerable to play with her anymore. Sometimes it’s tough to keep it all compartmentalized when your heart is always in your hand…. Finally, I’ll also miss the amazing level of communications we maintained over the years. Being two writers, our best mode was always the written form, and some of our email exchanges are truly classic; the most intense disagreement giving way to new learning and understanding. I will miss that, too. More than I can express.

I Have a New Domme

My personal trainer, that is.

When I decided this winter to get very serious about shedding weight, I realized I was going to need professional assistance. As it turns out, there is a very nice (and very private) specialty gym a block from where I work and the owner, Doreen, was willing to work with my very tight schedule (basically I can only take off from 3:30 - 4:30 in the afternoon). Originally I wanted to take yoga classes, but Doreen immediately told me that for the time being I was too stiff and out of shape to join any class. Instead, I work alone with her three days a week – very expensive, but worth it.

Some of what we do is pretty hilarious. My tight hamstrings have been a life-long problem, and to loosen them up we do a stretching regimen that includes her tying me down to a…well, there’s no other way of putting it…a bondage bed. She always apologizes profusely…meanwhile I’m working like crazy, making sure my dick doesn’t get hard. I mean, that would be embarrassing. The sessions always start with her walking on me to “break up” the muscles, and, well, I have always loved getting walked on.

Last week she determined that my IV bands (long thin muscles that span from the knee to the hip) were too tight and needed to be broken up. Seems a lifetime that included playing ice hockey, baseball (in a catchers crouch for hours on end), skiing and fencing managed to get my musculature all out of kilter. This work on the IV bands (shit, sounds like an audio / visual thing) is being accomplished by awkwardly rolling my side over a foam roller - repeatedly. Hurts like hell! OMG. Last Friday she forced me to do it for 15 minutes. When the session was over, I was a walking endorphin machine. I mean high as a fucking kite. Just like after my very best BDSM sessions.

Well damn, who knew?

Question for a heterosexual man

My buddy Serverman asked the men in MaxFisch how they would feel about another man participating in their play. This was my response:

Serverman, Great question! I have several thoughts swirling in my head, so sorry if my answer seems disjointed. Many years ago at Club O (how's that for dating myself? ) I was put into suspension by a Mistress friend of mine, and while she was chatting with someone else, a male Dom simply decided it was OK for him to start whipping me. Whoa, I lost my hard-on in a nanosecond and finally got him to understand that he was violating my boundaries (he did have the class to apologize profusely afterward). Perhaps because of this incident, or maybe not, I have a visceral reaction to male Doms, and the reaction is not a good one. To keep my post positive, I won't elaborate further.

Secondly, I have had several experiences with Dommes topping me and another (or several) males. Sometimes this has been a fun experience, other times not so much. Just recently I was in a lifestyle situation with a Domme and one of her regular play partners. For some reason I was on edge the whole time and did not allow myself to enjoy what should have been an amazing experience. She and I talked about it at length later and agreed that there were several factors involved, including the fact that a man whom I just met earlier in the day was participating (there was no direct interaction between him and myself).

Finally, I'll divulge something a little more personal. There are several gay people in my family. While I have always considered myself purely hetero, in fact that is not totally true. I have always recognized that there is a bit of me on the other side, but it is something that I categorize like a piece of art on a museum shelf: periodically I'll take it down, admire it, say it's not for me, and put it back. Lately, however, there has been a slight change. While I'm fairly certain it will never happen, recently I have contemplated being in a bi scene with two people I know. Well, it takes three to tango, and there is zero interest from my friends, but still in a weird way I take some pride in having this thought. In a sense, I feel like a cherry has been broken, not because I have done something new, but because I have given myself the freedom to say, "yes, if by some miracle that situation presented itself, I would go there with no hesitation." So in fact, nothing has changed, I have done nothing new, but having this mindset makes me feel like some transformative experience has taken place. The interesting thing is that I have absolutely no desire to go there with anyone else. Thus, one could argue that it's all bullshit: I am allowing myself to contemplate something that has no shot of ever happening - a rather safe fantasy.

Who's the Dom(me) now?

I’m the Dom almost all the time. Except when I choose not to be. It’s almost always been like this, but is now especially pronounced since I have returned to my former (real) profession and am bossing people around almost every waking moment. Waitresses stop talking, freeze up and say through shaky smiles, “hi Chef, how are you today?” when I pass by. Wherever I go in the establishment, if there are other people there, they clear a path and ask what they can do to please me. My word is final, and everyone accepts that.

You would think all of this would make my dick hard, but it doesn’t. I do take satisfaction that everyone respects me and never sneers, grumbles or back-talks. That’s nice. And some of them actually fear me, which I find stupidly amusing. (My shrink, appalled that I would find projecting fear amusing, says I’m channeling my late father and continuing his tradition of toxicity. A little unfair, me thinks.) But if these people actually knew what made my dick hard, they’d faint.