Play Party III

I know everyone in kink is on their own personal journey and you shouldn’t compare yourself to people and blah blah blah. But I can’t help but note that all the other scenes at this party (and also most of the scenes I’ve ever seen anywhere, in my admittedly limited forays to kink events and sex clubs) comprised two people who seemed super attracted to each other, the top started doing stuff to the bottom (usually impact play), the bottom seemed to go to a far-off place and get all blissed out and mostly just moaned, maybe there were some little check-ins or kissing breaks along the way, and afterward the two people gathered up their stuff and went to a quiet place and snuggled a whole bunch while the bottom came down from their blissful happy place.

The time came for TA and I to play. Her body seemed strange to me; I could scarcely remember ever having wanted to touch it, or getting a happy response from her by touching it. Really I think our NRE (New Relationship Energy, that thing where you see a new partner through rose-coloured glasses) had started wearing off, through a combo of us having been dating for almost a year and, y’know, her repeated sexual rejections. So I frankly wasn’t very attracted to her in that moment. I think that may have been a bit of why I felt all weird seeing her naked at the party, too – my feelings for her are dying, this was the first time I’d ever seen her naked body from across a room just doing shit and not paying any attention to me (vs in my bed giving nonsexual snuggles if nothing else), and I felt this cognitive dissonance of “this is the body I’ve been lying around yearning for all this time? She’s just…a regular person.”

But I’d committed to doing this scene with her. And sometimes my brain makes me feel distant from someone as a self-preservation measure; perhaps, if I just bluffed my way forward, it would turn out that yes, TA had successfully leveraged the presence of an audience and gotten herself in The Headspace, and she would start responding to me in the ways she used to, and I’d be able to relax and get into it.

I secured TA’s arms to a hard point in the ceiling. I chose this over the St. Andrew’s cross because I wanted to be able to walk all the way around her, accessing whatever parts I felt like. We bantered a little bit, and she seemed like she was almost in the stuttering, aroused place that I guess might be The Headspace.

I forgot that TA is a squirmer. She simultaneously likes and fears pain. So when I began thwacking her tits with one of my paddles, she backed up away from me as far as the chain to the ceiling would let her. When I would try to slap her in the crotch, she’d reflexively bring her knees together to close off access. She could probably have still knee-blocked me even if I’d had her fully secured to the St. Andrew’s cross instead, mind you. The legs of the cross aren’t that far apart and she’s long-legged and bendy af. But at least she couldn’t have backed away. Still, though, having access to the front and back of her was probably worth it. It was pretty fun being able to walk all the way around her, thwacking her tits and thighs and ass with my paddle.

At a guess, we played for maybe ten minutes altogether, during which she asked me to stop maybe five or six times. Twice so I could carefully tip a water bottle into her mouth because she was thirsty and her hands were bound, and the rest were all just “wait I need a break from the pain for a minute,” sometimes in conjunction with her saying she was having a hard time staying in The Headspace. At one point I asked her a question and she answered it but then when I went to ask a follow-up she said that if I wanted to keep her in The Headspace I’d better stop expecting her to talk and just keep beating her instead.

And y’know…I get that it takes two people to build a kinky or sexy mood – I’m not expecting her to just entirely generate an interest in stuff without me doing anything to contribute to it – but the way she talks often makes it sound like she sees this mysterious fucking HEADSPACE as entirely my responsibility to summon and maintain…by reading her mind. She won’t initiate sex or kink, because The Headspace never happens on its own, only when someone else starts something up. Except sometimes when someone else initiates, The Headspace still doesn’t arrive. But if the other person aggressively keeps going anyway, that might make her feel objectified and that’s hot and then The Headspace will show up. Except when it doesn’t. And if it does, the other person needs to do fifty things at once to keep her there. No, not like that, she arbitrarily wants this other thing today.

Anyway, at some point in our scene I remembered that it helps TA take pain for longer if she has something to distract her from it (is being distracted a part of The Headspace, or is it a parallel phenomenon to it? I do not know), so I asked her a philosophical question to ponder out loud while I applied a riding crop to her ass. That did seem to help her settle into the pain and not be coming up out of it and needing a break so often, so I got a little bit of what I needed out of our playing.

Just as an aside, last week(?) she was telling me how she went on a date with a new guy and it went well so they got a motel room and he hurt her for a few hours. A few hours. It’s not the first time she’s talked about having huge marathon sessions with sadists – and I know they’re not going lightly on her, I’ve seen some of the welts and bruises and they’re heavier than anything I ever put on her. I would say she’s taken probably half an hour of fairly continuous pain play from me before at most. You know, back when she actually had any interest in playing with me. (And yes, I know to ramp it up slowly so the other person gets warmed up and can take more.) I kind of hate how cavalierly TA tells me about some of these adventures, like doesn’t she get that I want to be doing these things with her, too? It just feels like she’s rubbing my face in it. And I increasingly suspect that she’s just fucking obsessed with dick and can get in the motherfucking Headspaaaaaaace easily with cis men because they’re cis men. But who knows.

Anyway, at some point TA said she felt she’d had enough so I freed her arms, stood close to her for long enough to be sure she was steady on her feet and wouldn’t fall or anything, and then went back to the spot on the couch where I’d been sitting all night. I was abruptly super exhausted. An acquaintance sitting next to me asked how I was feeling after my scene and I said I was pretty wiped out.

And then it occurred to me that TA hadn’t come with me to the couch. I know she’s not a person who needs aftercare, particularly – she plays with randos in motel rooms and just leaves after, ffs – but I kinda need it. Or at least prefer it. Kink is an intimate thing to me and I wouldn’t want someone leaving right after without at least chilling and talking to me a bit, anymore than I’d want someone to come over and fuck me and immediately leave. It’s weird that TA didn’t know that and come be with me. She was so solicitous of me at other gatherings before, making sure I was comfortable socially and petting my head in passing and stuff, and those gatherings didn’t even have a potentially emotional thing like kink going on.

Then I got all up in my head again about the fact that we were in a big group of people. Did the other people know that TA isn’t a big aftercare person? Or would some of them think I was an asshole who’d wandered away from my partner at a vulnerable time?

So – partly for the optics and partly because TA’s aloofness worried me – I walked over to where she was standing gazing around the room and I asked “how’s your butt?” (her butt being the place I’d smacked the most). She curtly said “I’m not in a headspace to talk right now” so I went back to the fucking couch and tried to keep on talking to the other people there like I wasn’t feeling rejected and confused and shitty. The next time I looked in TA’s direction, she was chatting with a couple of people, so it seems she was able to talk after all. She later explained (unbidden) that I’d approached her right when she was figuring out the logistics of some party-related thing, and she didn’t want to talk until she’d come to the solution for whatever it was. So that’s…something.

In the meantime, though, I started slipping into some kind of shutdown. It was becoming difficult for me to move or speak. I think part of it was the big emotional roller coaster I was going through with TA, but a big part of it was just that the party was in full swing and it was very noisy and it was just too much.

I wanted to get up and go home, but the steps to accomplish this felt insurmountable (announcing I was leaving, gathering my stuff, saying some goodbyes…). People on the couch next to me were having a conversation, but not aiming any of it at me, I don’t think; I’m not sure if they noticed I was being distant and weird or not. I think one person briefly said some mouth-sounds to me that acknowledged that I seemed worn out, or something.

TA came by briefly. She asked me if I was okay. I wanted to say no, but I also didn’t want to make a scene or be a burden on her. I managed to say “I’m just a little overwhelmed.” She said that was understandable (was it? What was it that she thought she understood? That the room was loud? That I’d just done an act of intimacy with her that was almost entirely performative and then come to the conclusion that our relationship, in its current form, wasn’t working anymore?) and then began putting on the arm band that signified that she was a DM. “You’re DMing again? Now?” I asked. She shrugged and said that’s what she’d agreed to. So, she and the other DM had officially not left any time for us to chill out after the bdsm stuff. This was a thing they had decided was okay. Huh.

There was only maybe half an hour left before the party ended (remember, we were renting the space, so the 11pm end time was serious, not just a guideline) so I gave up on the idea of leaving on my own; everyone would be leaving soon enough, and their momentum would get me going. I sat on the couch and watched people play and tried to act like a human. Occasionally TA came by to chat with people around me and/or let them grab her tits while she kept an eye on the remaining scenes. Sometimes she absent-mindedly stroked my leg in passing.

And then things were winding up and TA spoke with some of her friends and determined that the one who’d driven us to the thing actually lived near me and could drive me home. TA herself would be driven home by someone else. I gathered up my shit and she hugged me and I left the dungeon with my driver and their partner.

Incidentally, in the car on the way back, the partner shyly asked if I’d be willing to top them sometime. Also someone else messaged me later to say it was really fun watching me play. So I guess the scene I did with TA didn’t come off as a big sad failure to everyone in the room. That’s…something.

The next day, TA texted me thanking me for coming out and confirming whether she’d be coming over on Monday as usual.

I texted her back saying that I was very happy she’d organized the party and reserved her playtime there for just me, but our play had felt “off,” I didn’t think it was a fixable issue, and I needed to kill any remaining hope I had of us ever fucking or playing again and just rebrand the relationship as one where We Don’t Do That Sort of Thing. As such, I wanted to spend my Monday lying around moping by myself as I retooled my expectations of our interactions, and probably resume our Mondays the following week in a clothed capacity (our usual pattern was for TA to be naked for her entire visit except for when we ventured out of my bedroom for dinner).

She replied with a heart emoji and nothing else.

Play Party II

Maybe a week before the party was to happen, I texted TA to ask whether blatantly sexual stuff was also on the table for her, or only BDSM play type stuff (I knew the venue itself allowed for sexual stuff). Make no mistake, I was just as nervous about trying to sex her up in front of an audience as I was about trying to beat her in front of an audience, and maybe ultimately I would have chickened out of doing it, but I wanted to at least know whether it was an option I could decide to do.

I had an idea in my head of strapping a dildo to my boot and dismissively ordering her to fuck it, perhaps while I sat in a chair and gripped her hair and told her what a depraved little slut she was (an idea I’d told her early in our relationship that she was super turned on about at the time). I suppose I felt like if the play party atmosphere got TA into The Headspace – if I could get access to the version of her I used to know, the one that got so stupefied with lust she could barely speak – then ordering her around sexually so the whole room could see her being aroused by me and compliant to me would undo some of my insecurity around knowing she was going out and fucking everyone else on Earth but me. I would show the whole room that she was mine, at least for that night. Because, as it stands, this crowd of friends were mostly or all people who have seen her play and fuck at the local sex club. They are in a position to compare how TA is with me to how she is with other people.

Anyway TA responded to me asking if she was up for sexual stuff at the party with “let me get back to you on that” but then she never did. Maybe this was a deliberate “soft no” or maybe she genuinely forgot I’d asked because the idea of us being sexual has become blah and forgettable for her. Either way I took the hint not to ask again. I’ve been through too much similar shit with The Dandy when we were going out and I finally learned my lesson.

But when I went to TA’s place so we could head over to the thing together, she had a bag of toys and stuff that she was bringing and I noticed there was a bottle of lube in it. Seems like she was hoping someone would get up in her holes. Just not me.

TA did reserve play for me, which I appreciated. She made no agreements to play with anyone else that night, and even refrained from playing with others for a few days beforehand so there wouldn’t be any pre-bruised areas I’d need to avoid.

But for some godforsaken reason she ended agreeing to, or volunteering for, DM duty for the first stretch of the party and our scene was scheduled for like two or three hours in. Which means that I – her faceblind, socially anxious partner – needed to basically fend for myself for a long-ass time at a social event full of people I barely knew. I was only at this thing for TA, and had our scene happened earlier on, I could have had the freedom to just leave after if I wanted to (I’d been afraid to go there by myself because I assumed the front entrance wouldn’t be super obvious (and I was right). I had, however, looked up some stuff on Google Maps and was confident in how to get home via public transit). Instead I was kind of trapped, waiting.

It wasn’t too bad. Some people were outgoing enough to come up and talk to me even though we didn’t know each other. And a friend of TA’s whom I’d met before eventually showed up and we chatted for a while. Also there were pairs of people doing BDSM play around the room pretty much all night, so there was always stuff to look at. I did feel a little bit alienated because most if not all of the other attendees clearly saw this party as an excuse to either dress up sexy or get naked, and meanwhile I’m awkwardly mid-transition and not willing or able to do either of those things. So it was a room of mostly transfeminine people frolicking around in lingerie or nothing…and then me, parked on one end of the leather sectional couch, wafting up testosterone stink in my sweatpants and oversized t-shirt.

TA, by the way, was one of the naked people. She stripped down immediately, before anyone else had, and it kinda turned me off tbh. She’d told me that she always ended up naked pretty fast at the sex club, so maybe I should have anticipated this, but like…it’s a sex club. Nudity is the default there. I assumed she got undressed quickly there to advertise her wares to the fuckbois, and to fuck them more easily. But her getting naked here, at a play party where I’d thought she was kinda my date, when nobody else was naked yet and we were nowhere near our scheduled playtime…that smacked of exhibitionism, to me. And I’ve had bad experiences with exhibitionists, such that when I know someone is a “hee hee, I’m naked, look at meeee!” person I brace myself for getting my consent violated*. (Plus I just find that kink tedious…yes, yes, you have a body, so does everyone else here, it’s not shocking or naughty). So, y’know. Bleh.

Also – and I definitely should have anticipated this, given the things she’s told me about her sex club outings with these people, but I am a dumbass – everyone was idly groping TA that night. She was coming up to them and soliciting it. And I…maybe I’m less progressive and more slut-shamey than I thought, or maybe I’m just jealous, but it bothered me a lot.

Evidence in support of “jealous”:

I’ve felt profoundly undesired by TA for a long time now. There was a point where I’d given up on us ever having sex or kinky playtime again anytime soon, but I would still sometimes kiss her or touch her in a sensual way or bite her a little bit, just because those things are fun and intimate in and of themselves. And she would immediately assume I was hitting on her and say “I’m not in The Headspace for anything sexual right now” (or “I’m not in The Headspace to play right now,” depending on what I was actually doing). And I would respond that I wasn’t trying to start anything up, just doing the thing as a brief standalone act. And I meant it! But I feel like “I wasn’t trying to doooo anything!” is probably the mating call of the Fuckboi Who Was Definitely Trying To Do Something, and I would get so worried that TA thought I was lying that I would stop whatever biting or groping or etc I’d been doing immediately lest I look like a big pushy liar. Also she developed a habit of saying, deadpan, “that’s my boob” or “that’s my butt” when I’d put my hand there, like she was confirming that I had indeed grabbed the body part I’d been aiming for. Which could have just been a silly ritual, but one day she let it slip in conversation that it’s a thing she started doing to people who groped her when she wasn’t, I guess, in The Headspace, to show her disinterest. So it would seem that it is indeed an annoyance cue.

Given all of this, of course it would suck to watch her gleefully go up to ten or twenty other people so they could slap her ass or honk her tits. I’m sure she would have let me do those things, too, that night, but she didn’t come up and put her body parts in my face to ask for a groping like she did with other people, and at any rate I’d felt consistently rebuffed for weeks or months by that point so I pretty much associate the sight of her naked body with my feelings getting hurt.

Evidence in support of slut-shaming:

Seeing TA naked in a room full of other people made me feel almost queasy. It also suddenly felt like our scene would be somewhat less special because a bunch of other people had been touching her instead of just me. These thoughts caught me off guard; I really thought I was above that shit at this point.

I…think my slight feeling that she’d been sullied isn’t entirely slut-shamey, though? Like…biting her tits is a pretty solid part of our kink repertoire together, and something I was planning to do that night, and I’d watched a bunch of people put their hands on them. Usually when I see TA she’s showered and come directly to my place. Or, fuck, maybe her live-in gf did god-knows-what to her before she came over for all I know, but my point is I can at least pretend that I’m biting pristine flesh.

I’m usually too low-energy and executively dysfunctional to wash fruit before I eat it, but if I just watched an apple get passed to me hand-to-hand along a lineup of 20 people, I’d be reluctant to bite right into it, is all I’m saying.

To be continued.

*yes, I know, #notallexhibitionists, don’t @me.

Play Party

The aforementioned play party happened recently. I have a lot of thoughts. They might be kind of scattered.

Other times that TA and I have attended social events together (by which I mostly mean parties that this one friend of hers throws) she treated me as her priority; she knows I’m anxious and easily overwhelmed in crowds and she made it her job to make sure I was feeling comfortable and safe. She’d usually head over to these parties before I did, but I would text her when I arrived and she would come out of her friend’s house to let me in. Once I was inside with the other guests, she would introduce me to people and only stray from my side if it was clear I was having a good conversation with someone and didn’t need her to be my security blanket. And even if she’d gone off to say hi to someone else, she was still apparently glancing over at me periodically to make sure I was still okay. I felt attended to; I felt loved.

TA told me she’d actually organized this night specifically for the purpose of us playing, because she’d been feeling like playing in public was the only way she’d be able to get into The Headspace <tm>* with me anymore. Because of that and because of the general pattern of previous social gatherings, I kind of assumed that I would be her focus.

Welp, first of all, because it’s a play party it was decided that there should be DMs (dungeon monitors who oversee things and double check that everyone is safe). TA appointed herself a DM, reasonably enough (and split duties with a friend of hers who had DMing experience). Which would mean that she couldn’t be glued to my side all night. Fair enough.

But then when I asked TA if I could carpool to the place with her (I knew someone would be driving her there), she said she wasn’t sure there would be room in the car. She knows that going to new places alone is terrifying for me, and she allegedly organized this entire party as a venue for us to play in, but she didn’t automatically assume that we’d head over together, and make provisions?

(On a side note, I have a ton of emotional baggage around getting rides with people. On many, many occasions, someone has promised me a ride to or from an event I couldn’t easily get to or from on my own and then later said “Oh actually never mind, these other people need a ride so now there’s no room for you in the car.” And that’s…I mean…that’s rude AF, right? They said yes to me first. And the ride was a necessity for me, not a nicety; these were always places that were ungodly far away from home and/or public transit didn’t go there or had stopped running. And these people were willing to cavalierly leave me stranded because I guess some people they liked more asked for a ride after I did. So anyway this whole “oh, we don’t know if there will be room for you” thing – coming from my girlfriend, no less – immediately gave me a whole bunch of insecurity and rage.)

And then I asked, well, if I made my own way over, could I text her when I was close and she could come out to street level to get me like she always did with her friend’s parties? Because I was scared that it wouldn’t be obvious to me where the entrance to the thing was and I didn’t want to feel lost or go to the wrong door or something. And TA said no, she would be DMing and doing other organizational stuff, I would have to find my own way in.

There did end up being room in the car for me, which is good because the dungeon space turned out to be, I think, just a regular apartment that someone had repurposed (I could hear the sounds of a tv from behind one of the other doors in the hallway); there wasn’t a storefront or a neon sign or anything like that, it was one unit in a big building. It would have freaked me out trying to find it. Also, though, the front door to the building closed and locked automatically, so every guest was texting TA upon arrival so she could come down and let them in. Or sometimes she would get a text and designate someone else to go down. My point is, I would not have had to totally find the entrance and the unit all on my own, and I don’t understand why TA (who had researched the location and would have known the setup) told me I would. If I had thought that I would have to go to the place alone on transit and find the specific unit all by myself, I honestly might have panicked enough to bow out entirely. Even though I’d paid $30 for my portion of the rental.

TBH I was tempted to bow out anyway.

Long ago, when I think we were still sometimes playing or fucking, TA started going to sex clubs to bang random dudes. She often did kink play there, too, usually with one of the crowd of mostly trans women that she went with. She invited me to come along, and I kind of wanted to**, but the sex club has gendered pricing and that pisses me the fuck off so I boycott it on principle. And so TA brought up the prospect of us playing at a kink party (these usually charge the same admission for everyone). I was into that – I liked the idea of showing her off in public as mine, and we talked about me leading her around by a leash all night and stuff – but I was too lazy to actually go looking for upcoming events to go to. Plus, like, these things always cost money and I’m cheap.

So a while later she came up with the idea of gathering a bunch of people together, including me, and splitting the cost of a dungeon rental. And I liked the idea. It seemed like it might not end up costing me any more than a pre-established play party would, but the space would be filled with queer folks and I would know some of them already, so it might be a more comfortable scene for me. So I said yes.

Since then, sex and play between us dried up entirely and TA stopped claiming it was that she just didn’t happen to be in the mood on the particular days she was over and instead told me outright that she has a mental block about me in particular but she hoped that being in a neutral space would get her over that and that having an audience would appeal to her exhibitionism and thus get her into The Headspace. So instead of this play party being an extension of the stuff we did at my place, as I had thought when I first said yes, it was a last-ditch effort to revive our kink life by using other people as a tool to hopefully turn her on enough that she could stand to play with me.

So now I dreaded this fucking thing because it had become an experiment to see if she could still be into me at all – and if the experiment failed, it would fail publicly. Also apparently TA had talked me up to a bunch of her friends and they were all excited to see what a great top I am. So, wheeeeeee! No pressure. 😛

And then in the weeks leading up to the party my attraction to TA kinda switched off and her body started to just seem kind of alien to me, which is a self-preservation measure my brain takes when I know someone doesn’t want me. It took a couple of years to get to that point with The Dandy but it seems the process has become more streamlined now. Or maybe it’s just easier to switch my attraction off with her because I was already so new and tentative about dating non-men, anyway.

But hey, sometimes it takes very little to bring my feelings back. Sometimes just a little bit of enthusiasm can do it. And so, with great trepidation, I stayed the course and gave the play party a chance.

This is getting long. I’ll continue this rant/story in one or more separate posts.

*And yeah, I guess I’m a typical guy here and she’s the absolute stereotype of a woman, but I’m baffled and annoyed by this mysterious fucking “headspace” she needs to be in. For me, just having a partner there who’s willing to play and/or bang is generally enough for me to decide that I’d like to play and/or bang. If I’ve had a shitty day or we’ve just had a fight, it might take a little longer for my motor to start up. But it almost always does. For TA, apparently all possible conditions for sex or play can be optimal but she still won’t actively feel like doing stuff unless I initiate it. Me putting myself out there to initiate sex or play is what summons The Headspace, you see. But even then, The Headspace might not appear. The Headspace is fickle. And if The Headspace isn’t there, there is apparently no possible way that TA will go forward with things.

**When she wasn’t fucking dudes, TA was usually in a huge cuddle puddle with her friends, and I’m kinda touch-starved and wouldn’t have minded seeing if I could get in on that. Also I do have a bit of a free use/objectification kink and I thought that possibly it could be interesting to watch TA get railed. I would frame it in my head as “I’m the one she loves, but I lend her out to others as a piece of meat.” Kinda hot.

Juuuust a bit more sadness

I’m still seeing that guy I mentioned a couple of posts ago, and the parallels between him and TA are sort of eerie.

Both of them initially approached me. Both were primarily interested in masochism (although TA obviously developed actual feelings for me later on). Both made it pretty clear early on that they were up for doing sexual stuff with me, but let me take the lead re: how much we actually did (or at least that’s how the new guy seems to be operating so far). Both of them recently started PrEP (medication that makes it harder for the body to contract AIDS if you’re exposed to it) because they like to go to sex clubs and bang a bunch of random dudes. Neither is particularly into kissing (TA will indulge me but the new guy has it as a hard no). If I’m being uncharitable, both seem like they’re willing to receive sexual attention but not so much to give it.* Both have called me attractive but I never catch them actually ogling me or anything so I feel like their attraction is based on something other than my appearance; possibly my topping skills, or for TA my personality in general. They’re both trans, and I think pretty “out” about it. They’re both multiracial. They’re both teachers for a living in some capacity. Like, what are the odds…?

I suppose the new boy needs a name. I’m just gonna call him Shirtless because he is comically anti-shirt. Like he goes without one every possible chance he gets.

So yeah. The first time Shirtless came over, I mostly just flogged him a bit. It was fun, but he’d told me biting was a hard limit and he wasn’t into kissing at all and boy did it quickly become clear to me how much of my topping goes to an orally fixated place. Like so many of the moves I wanted to make involved biting, and I had to keep stopping myself.

The second time, we branched out into punching. Also by that point we’d discussed some stuff and he said actually he would be okay with trying out a bit of biting to see how it felt, but it would probably take very little tooth-pressure to make him tap out. That suited me fine – I don’t need to bite someone hard, I just really really like the mouthfeel of flesh between my teeth.

Shirtless is really into feeling forced/overpowered. I can’t help wondering if it’s because he’s fairly new to pain play – I think a lot of noobs start out that way, because we’ve always been taught that hurting people is bad or mean or a punishment and so that’s how we contextualize our kinks. I was all about “forcing” people to do stuff, at first. I grew out of it later on; at some point I realized that I could just say to a masochist “hey c’mere so I can hit you” and they would, because we both liked it.

But yeah. Shirtless wants me to, like, order him to stand facing the wall so I can flog him and then he’ll say “no, fuck you” and I’ll have to “overpower” him and drag him to the wall by the hair or whatever. TBH it wasn’t clear to me at first that he was even talking about roleplay, but once we started, he was for sure not actually resisting me with all his strength. It’s all an elaborate ruuuuuse.

And it’s fun, up to a point. But two things bother me about this setup: 1) I find it exhausting to have to put on a bunch of bravado and “fight” to do the shit we both wanted to do anyway and 2) I think for me the big draw of SM play is seeing the raw, exposed version of someone that they usually keep hidden. Overwhelming them with sensation until they’re beyond caring what an onlooker would think and are just in the moment, grunting or moaning or crying or whatever happens to come out of them. And Shirtless seems to do the opposite – he seems to put on a persona as soon as play begins. He’s said that he wants me to beat him until he cries, and the last time we played he behaved like he was crying a bunch of times, but it was just his face scrunching up, no tears. It’s possible that this is just the closest he can get to crying (some dudes are like that) but I kinda doubt it.

So yeah. Last time he came over he contrived to taunt me and I contrived to be like “Oh yeah? Well I’ll show you!” blah blah blah violence whatever. And over the course of a few hours I punched him, bit him, paddled his ass, and made him show me his blowjob skills on one of my dildos (he loves sucking dick so much that he’ll do it to total strangers, so I assumed he must be good at it. I wanted to see. It was a fun view and he seems very dedicated to his craft). Play ebbed and flowed and we had conversations in-between. At one point I pinned him down and went to bite his inner thigh (he had stripped down to his boxer briefs pretty early on) and he was like “Argh no biting on the thighs” and even though we’d agreed ahead of time that I would ignore any kind of “no” from him and only stop if he said “red,” I automatically did stop. Which is good, because he was actually being serious. I think I must have noticed a change in tone from his usual “please don’t throw me into that briar patch!” schtick.

But yeah I went to bite his thigh and he said no and I pulled back immediately, without having actually bitten him yet, and since he had seemed alarmed and said no so vehemently I was worried that I might have hit a trauma trigger or something. But when I asked if he was okay, he said “yep, I’m fine, it’s okay, you didn’t know” and invited me to keep playing (but obvs in other, non-thigh-bitey ways). This, too, reminds me of TA – how she just unflappably holds her boundaries. And I was relieved to not have freaked Shirtless out, and honoured by the trust he placed in me.

Sometime later in the evening, after more biting and punching and whatnot, I surreptitiously noticed a visible wet spot on his boxer briefs. Uuuuurrrrgh so hot. After playtime wound down to a natural-feeling close, he took a Kleenex from the box by my bed and shoved it down his underwear to mop himself up.

On a side note, Shirtless straight-up uses words like “pussy” and “clit” for his anatomy and if he’s turned on he’ll refer to it as getting wet. And he says that having a penis seems like it would be cumbersome and he was never interested in it. He doesn’t want bottom surgery and he doesn’t pack. And I appreciate all of this so much. To be clear, I understand why a trans guy would want to use “cock” instead of “clit” for his anatomy; at one time I thought I would end up doing that, myself. Weirdly, going on T seems to have taken away a lot of bottom dysphoria for me, though, and I tentatively think I’m okay with my junk the way it is. And it feels validating to meet a trans dude who feels the same way. Like, it’s always nice to get proof that there’s no one right way to be trans.

Anyhoo. In previous text messages, Shirtless had said things in passing like “we can’t do anal stuff when I see you because I just started PrEP and it’s giving me diarrhea” or telling me it would be hot if I teased his clit during play, so clearly he was pretty fine with the idea of sexytimes happening between us in some capacity. And I’m not against this. But I’m shy and worried that I won’t know what to do. And actually maybe I do have some bottom dysphoria because my own clitoral erections have kinda freaked me out for a long time now, and I’m worried that I’ll feel squeamish about touching someone else’s. I did actually tentatively go to finger Shirtless through his underwear that night but sorta chickened out. Maybe next time.

Oh and as for what I said about him maybe being willing to accept sexual touch but not give it – maybe I’m totally wrong. I’m just thinking about how he didn’t actually touch me when we played aside from grabbing my wrists and stuff to “fight me off.” During ebbs in play when we were just lying on my bed talking, I would sometimes run my hand over his arm or chest (he’s so fucking hot, Jesus Christ) but he never did anything like that back. It was never like we were cuddling or anything. It was very much him staring at the ceiling while allowing me to caress him and that’s it. Although he did give me a goodbye hug at the end of both visits.

Between the lack of touch and the way he kind of insists that we do an elaborate roleplay of me “making” him do stuff, I’m feeling a bit like a service provider. I’m having fun, too, just…I think the feeling of service providing will eventually outweigh the fun unless something changes.

I gotta say, I’m kinda confused by Shirtless’ vibe in general. He clearly doesn’t think of us as dating (as evidenced by him telling me he doesn’t wanna make out with me, he saves that for people he’s dating) which, fair enough, we have pleasant chats but I’m not head-over-heels or anything so it’s reasonable to expect that he isn’t, either. On one of our visits he rolled his eyes and complained about how this guy he recently had a date with is practically stalking him. What constitutes “practically stalking”? The guy texted him the next day eager to see him again. Which…is not far off from how Shirtless acts with me? Maybe there’s some nuance to the nature of the text message that I’m missing. But Shirtless texts with me a bit almost every day. When he heard I’m on Instagram he immediately wanted me to add him. And his birthday is coming up and he asked if I wanted to help him celebrate by beating him (I did) and so he made plans to come over on the actual day. Not near his birthday. On it. To me these are all things that indicate that a person really must like me and want to make time for me, but on the other hand he’s explicitly said that he doesn’t think of me as a potential romantic partner really and he doesn’t touch me back particularly or even stare at me like he finds me physically attractive.

So I don’t get what’s happening here, but I guess I’ll ride it out for however long it lasts.

I’m kind of dying to have someone in my life who thinks I’m hot and is really really keen to kiss me and touch my junk though. It’s kinda fuckin’ ridiculous that I now have two people I see regularly who seem to be into me and yet don’t or won’t provide this (and had a three year relationship before that with someone who also would not provide any of it). Kissing and junk-touching used to be so incredibly standard in my dating life. Sometimes I was even fending dates off from kissing me or touching my junk because I didn’t know them well enough to feel ready for it yet. And when I rebuffed them they would try again five minutes later, that’s how eager and insistent they were. That was too much and I hated it, but it was a thing that happened. And now my experience of dating is so different that it feels like my memories of fending dudes off must be a wacky story I made up.

*I mean these days TA doesn’t want to receive, either, but…

Sad Too

TA didn’t answer my “if we decided to be in a D/s dynamic for a day could I demand sexual stuff as part of my authority, and if so, would you end up being turned on because you were being objectified and etc” question for a few days, so I prompted her via text.

She texted me a “placeholder” message that she had a lot to say and she was going to word it as nicely as possible but was still afraid I’d take it the wrong way.

The message that she eventually sent me had two basic components:

(1)

She has a mental block about fucking or playing with people she’s close to. Strangers are easy and fun to do stuff with and she sees it as an escape from her problems, but unfortunately she and I have entwined our lives to a point where my problems are her problems and therefore sex and play aren’t an escape anymore.

TBH this didn’t come as a surprise to me, particularly, because even before we met she told me that she was incapable of having sex in her home because it feels like a fetid clinical depression nest. She has a girlfriend she lives with and considers her soulmate and they haven’t fucked in years, in large part because home doesn’t feel like a place where fucking can happen. And it seemed like my place was starting to feel like home to her – she knows where things are kept, helps herself to things in the fridge, has “family dinners” with me and The Dandy, etc.

(2)

She has a mental block about doing sexual things to me/for me because she’s afraid she won’t be good at them.

That one caught me somewhat off-guard. Like it’s actually hilarious how alien and irrelevant the concept of her being bad in bed is to me. For years now I’ve become accustomed to having to get myself off during partnered sex (with rare exceptions) because my partners wouldn’t, and now my body has become more finicky and I’m not sure another human could get me off anyway no matter what they did. Also as far as I’m concerned the baseline for “good in bed” is “takes direction well and is enthusiastic” and TA is lovely in that capacity.

Like honestly when I imagined being dominant over TA in ways that encompassed sex, I pictured directing her to do stuff for me that I enjoyed and getting a lovely rush of power because she was obeying me. If I got off from whatever I was demanding of her then it would be a pleasant surprise, and if I didn’t I’d either finish the job myself or just forget about it for the time being. Historically, I was never an “oooh, play my body like a fiddle and learn to ascertain my body’s constantly changing whims until your magical, creative touch brings me to majestic peaks of ecstasy” person, I was a “do this repetitive motion for a few minutes and I’ll come” person. And lately I can’t seem to come from anything but lying on my stomach and humping my vibrator, which is not a thing another person can help with per se. So the idea that TA would have to have skills and finesse and whatever in order to get me off never occurred to me. Like just do what I’m asking and either my body will respond or it won’t, and if it doesn’t, that’s my body’s problem.

Also not all of my daydreams about being dominant even involved TA doing stuff to me. Lots of them revolved around me ordering her to let me do things to her. “Get on your hands and knees, I’m gonna put this dildo inside you and watch you squirm around on it” kind of thing.

Anyway.

TA is in the process of arranging for a group of people she knows – including me – to pool our money and rent a dungeon for a few hours: our own private play party. She put forth the idea ages ago, when our sexytimes were starting to grind to a halt but hadn’t entirely stopped yet. And after our little text discussion about sex and dominance, she confessed that she came up with the play party idea mainly so the two of us can play. Because she still wants me, she just doesn’t feel like she can do certain intimate things with me at my place. Or hers.* But if we’re elsewhere, it becomes an escape again, and also she’s a gigantic exhibitionist so having an audience will turn her on and get her rarin’ to go.

So I’m gonna go to this thing, because I miss playing with her.

But here’s the thing: I’m not an exhibitionist. I’ve played in public with people a time or two before because the play space had equipment that I don’t and I wanted to take advantage of that, but I had to kind of forcibly ignore the fact that there were people watching us, and the fact that we were in public made things feel more showy and less intimate to me.

Also TA has apparently gushed about my skills as a top to all and sundry (which, don’t get me wrong, so flattering and adorable), and this other woman she’s seeing who’s new to topping is excited to watch what I do and maybe learn some stuff(!). So now I’m feeling a bunch of performance anxiety. And I hate that the first time we play in aaaaages is going to be in front of a crowd of people in a place I’m not familiar with and can’t easily improvise in the way I can at home. And I hate that I probably won’t feel like we can do anything blatantly sexual together – even though the venue does allow it – because that feels way too private to me to be sharing with a roomful of people. Like even if I’m fully clothed and the sexual stuff only goes in the one direction, strangers would still be able to observe my style of doing things, and that’s painfully personal to me.

There’s also the fact that my sexual interest in someone eventually evaporates once I know I’m unwanted. It kind of has now with TA, since she explicitly said that she feels she can’t fuck or play with me anymore (unless we’re at some neutral location that is not where either of us live). I still think she’s beautiful and I still like seeing her naked (she’s kind of a nudist when she’s over) but her body no longer holds the potential for me to touch it in all the ways and elicit moans etc, and so for me our chemistry has kind of…died. And I guess I’ll be expected to resurrect it on command at the play party. I mean when I first expressed enthusiasm over the idea of a play party, I still held a spark of hope that one day I would in fact get to fuck my girlfriend again, so I wasn’t in this “gotta resurrect my dead sexual feelings for a night, I guess” predicament. But now things are feeling a bit odd.

What I really especially hate in all of this is that I have this big heteronormative mental block where I’ve never really believed that anyone but a guy could be into me (and now that I’ve started transitioning I’m kinda convinced that nobody could be into me…). I think that’s why I believed I was only into guys for so long – it’s an extension of that thing where I won’t let myself be sexually interested in someone who doesn’t want me back. And then TA and I somehow started dating, and I felt really tentative and still kind of disbelieving about it, but she told me she liked me and she clearly liked me doing sexual and sadistic stuff with her and I liked it too and suddenly it’s like the whole world opened up. Dating or fucking women and other non-man genders suddenly seemed possible to me, and that was amazing.

But now TA’s and my relationship is kind of officially sexless and it’s really hard not to think this is proof that I am fundamentally unfuckable to everyone but dudes (but also probably dudes at this point).

Also, just for the record, I fucking hate the feeling of yearning for someone who’s right next to me. I’ve already had entirely too much of that feeling with my ex husband and The Dandy. Feeling it again with TA is just…devastating. But as I said, my sexual feelings for her are starting to shut off.

I did debate breaking up with her, but I still have the romantic feelings, and I like the naked snuggles. And she’s made it clear that she loves me and hopes I’m in her life for a good long time. So I figure, why throw the baby out with the bathwater?

I sure do wish I had someone to fuck, though.

*TBH I reeeeeally wanted to suggest that she just…fuck or play with me at my place anyway. Because it seems like that would break the mental block, right? Just *do* it and realize that the chemistry is the same as it always was, and maybe that would break the curse. Just *do* it, and maybe the reactive desire would kick in once things were in motion. I genuinely believe that this could help, and that getting past her hangup about my apartment would benefit both of us, given that she claims to still desire me. But saying “hey what if – and I’m just spitballin’ here – you fuck me even though you don’t want to” would just sound like I was being a pushy asshole. Also I don’t think I could actually go through with it, if she didn’t start seeming responsive and happy very very early on.

Sad

For a bunch of weeks in a row, TA visited and I would kinda-sorta start putting the moves on her and she would indicate that she wasn’t in the mood and we’d just snuggle and watch Bojack Horseman.

TA says she’s a “responsive desire” person, meaning she’ll often get turned on and get into it if someone else initiates sexytimes, but she doesn’t generally ever feel horny on her own such that she would be the one to initiate.

This is unfortunate because I used to be an “active desire” person – meaning I’d get horny and actively pursue sex – but my drive has become…maybe not entirely reactive, but muted enough that it’s pretty easy to ignore. Like I used to get so randomly horny that I thought I’d die if I didn’t orgasm right away, preferably with a partner. But these days it’s more like if I’m hanging out with a partner I might feel a vague interest in gettin’ it on but that interest isn’t usually intense enough to be able to overcome every possible issue or distraction anymore.

Oh you know what, it’s not that my sex drive suddenly fits the profile of “reactive desire,” it’s that my biggest sexual turn-on has always been reactions – if I start touching my partner and they moan, it amplifies my horniness like tenfold. The difference, now, is that my baseline arousal level is so meh to start with that a tenfold increase just bumps me up from “I think that I might like to have the sex” to “yay, yes, we will have the sex!” whereas in my 20s and 30s my libido was like a constantly burning bonfire and even just hearing someone give a sharp intake of breath because I’d touched them just right poured gasoline on the fire.

Anyway.

TA’s whole “reactive desire” thing kinda freaks me out because sometimes she likes for someone to respond to her initial “meh, I don’t really feel like doing kinky stuff or sexual stuff right now” with “well too bad because you’re an object I’m using for my own gratification” type things, and just start doing shit to her. Sometimes, a bit of force and objectification gets her past her ambivalence (and keys into her kink for being objectified) and then she’s turned on and good to go. But only sometimes. And if you think it’s awkward to ask for sex or play and be rejected, try putting on a persona that you’re an unstoppable force and soooo badass and you’ll just take what you want, and then being told “nah.”

Like, I wasn’t super comfortable pushing past TA’s ambivalence in the first place, but if she always happily played along with my domly-dom shenanigans then I could have gotten into it. But nope, it’s a shot in the dark every time.

And it was all just too fraught for me so I stopped taking that tack.

After that, my forays into trying to initiate sex or play looked like me affectionately biting TA or rolling on top of her and kissing her neck or something, and looking for signals that she was into it. When her kinky side wakes up, she instantly acquires a stutter and can’t seem to think straight; I used to be able to get her to that state just by tugging on a fistful of her hair or wrapping my hand lightly around her neck. But lately (for the past few…weeks? Months…?) she hasn’t gone to that headspace; she either doesn’t particularly respond to my overtures at all, or else she’ll explicitly tell me she’s not up for being bitten that day or whatever. And then I think at some point she told me that she just isn’t in a sexual headspace lately in general*, so I kinda resigned myself to the thought that nothing spicy was gonna happen between us for the foreseeable future.

Recently we had a discussion where she told me she’d never thought of herself as submissive per se – only a masochist – but upon reflection she thought she might be submissive but just never found someone worth submitting to.

It’s certainly not up to me to tell someone how they should identify, but I must admit I’ve wondered if she has a submissive streak. At the very least I think that if she decided to submit to me she’d do it in a way that rang all my bells, whether she got some big sense of fulfillment from it or not. I’ve bossed her around a bit in bed before and unnnnnf.

We’d actually talked – way before that discussion – about the possibility of her submitting to me for designated periods when we were together. And she had said she liked the idea of coming over and knowing that I would be the one making all the decisions.

So with that in mind – and also previous convos about TA sometimes being propelled into a sexual headspace by someone taking charge and demanding stuff – I asked whether she thought that me being the designated dominant for a day might get her past her ongoing sexual ambivalence. She said she’d need to think about it and get back to me.

This entry is getting long. To be continued.

*How can she say that she has reactive desire and also isn’t in a sexual headspace lately when she’s been going out to sex clubs once or twice a week and fucking as many randos as possible and also often doing kinky play? I am not sure. Does it bother me that she’s seemingly fucking and playing with everyone on Earth but me? You betcha.

Sad news

Bastardcat passed away today. With help. He was pretty old and had a compromised immune system in the first place and then his health took a rather extreme turn a couple of days ago. It became obvious that it was time.

I was looking at old posts here and I think I got him shortly after I started this blog, although I didn’t mention him until the end of this post (from 2009!). He was a rescue and the vet estimated he was about two years old when I got him, so I can’t say that this blog covers his entire life span. But it covers the whole time I had him. Which is comforting, in a way, the fact that I chronicled his entire presence in my life to at least some extent. But it also feels deeply unfair that a stupid fucking blog is maybe going to exist forever while the best cat in the world* only got to exist for about a decade and a half.

*Every cat is the best cat in the world. Don’t @me.

Update:

The new boy did end up coming over, and in a timely fashion with periodic update texts along the commute. And we talked and then I roughhoused and flogged him some and it was SUPER FUN.

Although in a case of super unfortunate timing, our building had a fire scare just as he was arriving, which meant the elevators went out of service (and it’s a high rise and we live high in the air).

Hilariously, The Dandy had also recently ordered food and the food guy had to drop it off with the security guy who sits at the front door. So he happened to take the stairs down to get his food from the front desk just as my new play partner arrived. I had texted each of them a photo of the other just in case things lined up that way, and they did recognize each other and they took the stairs back up to the apartment together. My backup plan had been to either take the stairs down, myself, and either keep the boy company until the elevator was back up, or take the stairs with him. I’m glad I didn’t have to do that, though.

Both The Dandy and the new boy are friendly and effortlessly chatty people, so this situation was probably barely even weird for them. I find it adorable, picturing one of them recognizing the other and tentatively saying hello and then them getting embroiled in conversation as they climbed the stairs.

A new prospect. Maybe.

The queer dating app I’m on lets people make posts about whatever (some people talk about what they’re looking for, some people just vent about random shit, it’s weird) and you can “love” these posts if you want or else click the person’s username to see their profile and/or send them a message.

Maybe a week ago or something, a trans dude posted about having been recently flogged for the first time and liking it a lot and hoping to find someone else to do that to him. I don’t really consider flogging part of my repertoire (I tried it once with a borrowed flogger and it was…okay, but took a lot of concentration to do well) but I was generally in favour of this boy with the HOT AS FUCK profile pic being hurt for funsies if that’s what he wanted, so I hit “love.”

And this was enough to make him write to me. 😀

All he said was “hi, I saw that you loved my post” and I parlayed that into a conversation as best I could. He didn’t ask me any questions about myself, which is a pet peeve for me, but he cheerfully and prolifically answered whatever I asked him.

And listen: I am backed up for sadistic play. TA has a busier work schedule this term than last, and comes over after work for an evening a week now instead of giving me a whole day. And she’s not in a headspace for play when she’s here.

Also I have considerable angst because I’m not used to dating a woman and it’s somehow ingrained in my brain that nobody but a man could actually be into me, and TA has the kind of “reactive” sexuality where she might start feeling like sex or play if someone else initiates, but she’s not likely to feel like it out of the blue and initiate for herself. But also it’s not like she’s gonna say yes every time someone else initiates. So like…the only way for sex or play to happen is for me to put myself out there and maybe be rebuffed. It’s hard.

This guy on the app is, well…a guy. Who messaged me first, on the flimsiest of pretexts. Plus he’s trans so in theory he’ll be fine with what my body looks like and respect my stated gender or lack thereof (I wouldn’t trust a cis dude to do those things).

So my pent-up horniness and yearning to be intimate with someone who smells like testosterone and/or has a stereotypically masculine sexuality got me being more bold than I normally am these days and I asked to meet him for a beverage (hoping real hard that he’s better at conversation in person than he is online).

A couple days later we met up and talked a while over hot chocolate. He still didn’t necessarily ask me a lot of stuff, but he listened if I volunteered anecdotes, and he was super pleasant and chatty and easy to talk to. And did I mention hot as fuck. I was open about finding him attractive and being willing to slap him around sometime if he was up for it. He slid his phone to me so I could put my number in it. And I think it was later that same day that he texted me telling me his work schedule so we could work out a time for him to come over for beatings.

Yesterday was supposed to be the day. I was a bit worried he was gonna be a runner, because he expressed anxiety a couple of times about maybe getting lost trying to find my place. But when I did the ritual “we still on for tonight?” text he did say yes.

Annnnnd then a couple hours later he begged off, saying a friend from out of town was unexpectedly around and wanted to have a drink, and he barely ever gets to see this guy so he really wanted to take advantage of the opportunity.

I’m scarred enough from all the flaky people I’ve had in my life that I immediately wondered if this guy was even telling me the truth, but whatever. He did reschedule for the next day and he did send me a few cheeky texts throughout the night about how he kept picturing me doing stuff to him.

It came up, though, that he doesn’t especially like kissing/making out. Which throws a pretty big dent into my plans. 😛 I asked him if it’s that he doesn’t like it in general or if he just doesn’t like to combine sexual stuff with BDSM stuff and he said “I guess I like to save kissing for someone I’m dating.” Okay then. Ouch.

But he is down to do blatantly sexual stuff. Which I have angst about because I have so little experience with vulvas. Also the idea of fucking someone without kissing them is…a little sad, to me? Plus I’m not sure my body knows how to orgasm with a partner anymore. Preliminary attempts with TA were…awkward, perhaps because I’m mid-transition and my relationship with my body is a bit weird, perhaps I was fresh off her telling me she’s not attracted to my genitals. I keep holding out hope that if I’m with a dude (or at least someone who seems like they really want to touch my junk), muscle memory from decades of fucking men will kick in and I’ll be able to come easily. But I don’t know. And I don’t want to end up feeling like a service provider, getting my partner off but not getting off myself.

This is all moot though because for all I know he did cancel last night out of anxiety and will end up cancelling again tonight. I texted him a “hope you’re having a good day! See you in a few hours?” a while ago and he hasn’t responded (but he’s at work and probably can’t be on his phone).

If he bails again I think I need to cut him off entirely. No three strikes rule. Two strikes is enough to make me kinda hate someone and not want to see them again.

*Rageface*

My friend V used to be pretty reliable but lately she’s pretty flaky and flakiness drives me batshit crazy.

On one hand, I think it’s anxiety making her like this. She’s developed a fear of public transit, for one thing, and this makes her have a hard time leaving the house and take forever to get places. Apparently sometimes she has to get off the bus numerous times just to collect herself and then get back on another one to continue her commute someplace.

On the other hand, she holds down a part-time job she commutes to, and to the best of my knowledge she doesn’t fuck that up. She just does whatever she needs to do to get there at the appointed time. Why can’t I be that important? Why is seeing me apparently never considered important enough to put effort into, for anyone?

Anyway.

V’s roommate (who is on disability so she’s typically at home all day) is about to go visit family for the holidays, and V hates leaving their cat alone all day. Yeah, I know, he’s a cat, he’ll be fine. But she was hoping I could come by on at least some of her workdays and hang out in her apartment and catsit. In fairness he does get fed at 5pm every day and V’s shifts end at 8pm or something so his schedule does get shaken up some if I don’t go over. And anyway this cat is fucking adorable and when I’m at home I spend most of my time lounging around watching Netflix anyway so I might as well do it at V’s place. I did it before, a few times, in the summer.

Last time I babysat, I went over one day before V left for work so she could let me in and leave me a set of keys. That kinda sucked though because I had to get to her place for 11am (which meant waking up at 9 to allow for showering/eating/dressing/commute) and I am emphatically not a morning person. This time around she suggested I see her sometime before the roommate leaves, and get the extra keys so I can come and go at my leisure when the time comes.

I don’t have full-scale panic about public transit like V does, but using it does tend to exhaust me. Sometimes to the point of an autistic shutdown or meltdown, if it’s really loud or crowded on there. And V’s place is over an hour away from mine, on a bus route that’s legendarily shitty (buses are supposed to come every five minutes, but usually it’s more like there’s nothing for 20 minutes and then three buses finally come all in a row and they’re all absolutely packed. There used to be another route to get there but the main street nearest V’s apartment has been under construction approximately forever so buses don’t go out that far anymore.

Also – after weeks or months of barely having anything going on – I actually have some stuff on the go this week. TA is off work for Christmas and we can finally go back to her coming over for a whole day at a time instead of a quick few hours snatched here and there. She’s coming over on Monday. Hopefully I can fit in a quick run to the gym beforehand, but we’ll see. I had a date recently with someone new and it went well, so he’s coming over on Tuesday night; I’m not really a person who can handle doing more than one thing in a day, so schlepping to V’s place (probably at fuck o’clock in the morning, as I believe she’s working that day) to get keys and/or hang out with her cat and then schlepping back and then entertaining company is very much not a thing I want to attempt. Also I was gonna use Tuesday afternoon as my backup slot for working out if I didn’t manage it on Monday. Thursday I have a doctor’s appointment that’s in the opposite direction from V’s place. Wednesday I’m free, but going to V’s at fuck o’clock in the morning on the Wednesday means I’d have three days in a row when I had to be up at one time or another and couldn’t just freely sleep as long as I need to, and that usually starts impacting my mental health.

I think it was this past Saturday that V texted saying I might wanna get her keys before she actually is working and whatnot, so I wouldn’t have to go over super early. I had my first date with that guy on Saturday, but before I left I texted back that I might be able to drop by after the date, if V is flexible and planning on being home all day (the date took place downtown, putting me at least halfway to her place, so it would have been convenient from a commuting perspective). But that it would sort of depend on how exhausted peopling had made me feel. Failing that, perhaps Sunday. I kind of dreaded having to forfeit my Sunday to this stupid errand (I know, I know, but I’m low-energy and spending over an hour traveling to her place in the afternoon just to turn around and go right back would leave me kinda done doing shit for the day) but whatever, I wanted to help out my friend.

By the time my date ended there was no word back from V, so I texted “I haven’t heard from you so I’m just gonna go home. Hopefully we can work something out for tomorrow.” She did text back “sorry, I just saw this, yes today works for me, or tomorrow would be fine too except I do have to go out for a bit” but I was almost home by then and no way was I turning back at that point.

Once I got home we texted about this some more, with her saying “actually, I do have to run an errand tomorrow so maybe we can meet up downtown.” Downtown is more-or-less the halfway point between my place and hers, so that sounded good to me. Plus we could have a coffee someplace and catch up. I did have some reservations because she never seems to be able to hold to a concrete schedule these days and I hate waiting around in limbo.
But with misgivings in my heart I told her that as long as she headed out after say 1pm (because I sleep until at least noon lately) this should be doable. Like maybe she could text me when she was headed out and I would take that as my cue to start getting ready and by the time I was fed, dressed, and had arrived downtown, she would have finished doing The Thing, whatever it was, and we could grab a beverage together. She agreed to my terms.

And so I set my alarm for 12:30pm to make sure I was awake to receive her text the next day. I ended up having a hard time getting to sleep, and would have loved to have been able to sleep as late as my brain ended up needing, but I didn’t want to let V down.

So I made myself wake up at 12:30. And an hour or so later V ended up texting me that she wasn’t going to go downtown after all, she would be meeting up with a friend close to home, instead. I asked when she would be done; I was still fixated on getting those fucking keys so I could do her this catsitting favour she’d asked for. She said she’d be finished at 4 or 5pm. Which would mean I’d have to lie around the house for hours, waiting to leave (I usually can’t do anything productive when I know I have to be someplace later; it’s apparently an ADHD thing) and it seemed like there was a pretty big chance she wouldn’t be done when she thought she would and I’d end up either lying around some more, or I’d’ve left the house aiming to be at her place for 5ish and she would text “whoopsie, I’m gonna be another while.”

It was at this point that I suddenly remembered that she was the one who felt anxious about leaving a whole-ass adult cat alone for six or seven hours, so why the fuck wasn’t she offering to trek out to my place and give me the keys? Or at least meet me halfway? Why was the assumption that I would take hours out of my day to come pick up her keys so I could do a favour for her? Plus I have a low, low tolerance for going places and doing things, and I’d had my date yesterday and TA and also possibly the gym tomorrow so I would really rather let my Sunday be a peaceful day of no obligations.

I texted V that actually I’m having a low-energy day so I didn’t think I could go all the way out there for the keys.

Initially I typed out a request to at least come meet me and give them to me at a particular in-between location that’s way easier for me to get to and not too much of a pain for her to get to – but then I had a sudden vision of me waiting there for her as she sent periodic “whoops I haven’t left yet…whoops I missed the bus…whoops I’ll just be a little longer” texts, and I backspaced the fuck over all of that idea and just said I might have to get the keys some other time but also to bear in mind I have a fair bit of stuff going on this week so I’m not sure when I can come or how often I can actually catsit.

…Ah, I just saw that she texted me back, quite patiently and nicely actually, saying she totally gets it and she knows that the cat doesn’t need looking after, it’s just a thing that makes her feel better. So that’s cool.

The problem with me dealing with flaky people is, I know intellectually that they mostly don’t mind other people being flaky, too. But I can’t do that. I was so very trained that it’s rude and disrespectful of someone’s time to be late or to be vague with plans that I can’t do it. Also I need people to be punctual and concrete, and if they aren’t I guess I try to make up for it by being that way myself? Also these are usually people I actually like and want to see and it always feels like if I bow out of shit at the slightest tiny whim like they do, I’ll never actually see them.