I Want

I want you.

I want you to want me.

I want you desperate, and desperately.

I want to tell you no and have you ignore me.

I want to do bad things with you, things that we shouldn't be doing. I want you to do bad things to me.

I want to be afraid. Of getting caught, of falling, of getting in too deep. Of you and your twisted mind. I can't emerge from the water until I've been under it.

Make it last.

I want you to take what's yours, and what's mine. Ignore my silly arguments. Tell me how it is. Tell me I can take it or leave it, but the things on the table are what they are.

Push me. Challenge me. Make me.

I want to go where we aren't allowed. I want to be a breath away from getting caught.

I want to know that there are consequences.

I want you to take a stand.

I want to dare.

I want you.

Sparky Is Dead

I drove Shelby home from my own town the other night, and we had a remarkable stream of Productive Conversation the whole time. We talked about lots of things over the course of the hour-plus drive, but the moment that sticks in my head was something she said while making the point that she sees Aiden as a very mutable person who sometimes mysteriously forgets who he used to be.

"He asked me the other day, Skylar wants me to be more dominant and I don't really understand...how do I do that?"

For a moment I was speechless, before blurting out something like, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

Sir has forgotten who he was. My dom - uncapitalized not in error - lost the spark. I saw it going, but I actually managed to have a little faith for once and decided he was just doing it to tease me.

See where faith has gotten me. Maybe being a cynical bitch all the time would be less disappointing.

He made some effort this weekend in the direction of being rougher with me, but I don't know how he's going to pull this one out. If there's one thing in which I have to have absolute trust, it's that my Dom knows what he's doing and has a plan. If he's just lost and wandering, I'm not going to put myself in his hands.

The whole assertive, confident, cocky Dom thing was what made him so exciting in the first place. Adrenaline and intrigue are what I got hooked on. And without that...I don't think there's a whole lot of attraction left.

Shelby said she got over losing her respect for him. She says that about most disappointments - "Yeah, I was angry. And then I got over it." I don't have that. I can't just give up. If I really do lose all the respect I've ever possessed for him, it'll be over. If he's no longer interested in my submission, or in being my Dom, I'll be heartbroken. And I'll go away.

I'm worried about where it's all going. Maybe moving in with them is a mistake. At least I know where I stand with Shelby; she and I have a pretty steady boat most of the time. Aiden's changing just puzzles the hell out of me. I don't understand what happened, and honestly, I'm kind of afraid to hear the answer.

Of all the places I could've imagined us ending up, "slow boring death of passion" wasn't one of them.

Random vs. Seldom

As good as the sex is with Aiden, sometimes I realize it's become a little normal and I'm itching for that extra something...the pain, the fear, the "unpleasant" things that make it so much sweeter. I was prodding him last night via instant message, and he told me, "Random reinforcement, doll."

"I have a hard time with random when it's also seldom," I replied. Not every sexual encounter has to be kinky. Vanilla is a flavor, after all; it isn't a blank sheet of paper. But when it becomes a little sprinkling of kink on a background of vanilla, I get twitchy.

One of the things I found most exciting when we got together was the taste of upcoming exploration. Sometimes it feels like he's forgotten about that. That's when I poke and prod and get annoying and bratty, and eventually escalate to spanking him just to get retribution. He's so hot when he gets that angry glint in his eye.

Stepping Onto the Long Road

Mom had her first chemo treatment yesterday. We arrived at the hospital at 10am, had an appointment with the doctor, and then were led into the chemo ward. It was a long room with a row of recliners along one wall, in front of windows that provided some nice sunlight. It was quiet, most of the chairs still empty, and mom chose one in the middle, with a plastic teddy bear sitting on the windowsill.

A nurse named Ariana came over and explained the procedure. She accessed the port that had been installed last week, and the flow of hydration and various scary chemicals began. Over the course of about three hours, there were two bags of fluid, a dose of ativan, a dose of a long-acting antiemetic, two types of chemo, and finally an anticoagulant to clear the port.

It was simultaneously totally uneventful and completely terrifying. Long hours - about six all told - of sitting, talking with various people, knitting, holding mom's hand, and watching things drip in tubes. Trying to push away the thought that I'm sitting there being supportive, watching my mom get willingly poisoned. Alternately not feeling much, and occasionally biting down tears as thoughts of the year to come refused to be ignored.

We went out to dinner afterwards at a Vietnamese restaurant that she likes, stopped at a pharmacy, and then went home. I escaped upstairs and hid in my old bedroom for a while when we got there, having temporarily reached the end of my ability to be an upright, functional adult. I called Aiden, barely managed not to burst into tears in his voicemail, then just lay there being blank for a while. Eventually I returned to the public space, made some tea, and read a book.

By 8:30, mom was clearly flagging, and went off to bed. I encouraged her to wake up during the night long enough to take her assigned antiemetic, since waking up for a few minutes would be infinitely better than waking up puking. I finished the movie we'd been watching, then went up to bed myself. Picking up my phone, I saw that I had 9 missed calls and several Facebook and text messages from Aiden and Shelby. Apparently I had worried them when I left my phone upstairs to charge and disappeared.

We chatted for a few minutes before I went to sleep. I was grateful to find that Aiden had left me a voicemail. I needed to hear his voice but was crying too hard to call.

I was up at 6 this morning, headed back to work. Mom called to me as I was leaving, and I went to check on her. She was smiling and said she felt okay except for some stomach cramps, and she had taken her medicine as directed. I gave her a kiss and headed out on a long, cold motorcycle ride back home. She looks okay now, but I know this is only the beginning of a long trek through a valley, and it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I can smile through anything, and I will - she's depending on me for my positive attitude. But behind the face, I know I'm going to spend a lot of time taping up my heart.

The Itch and the Mustache

I have a three-year itch. I know, it's supposed to be seven, but try telling that to my high-energy, easily-bored subconscious. Status quo is not stimulating.

My latest need for upheaval centers around my employment and finances. I'm sick of this damn job, and I've got a plan to get out of it that centers dually around that inheritance check I mentioned and some lifestyle changes. I've been reading my way through the archives of a blog called Mr. Money Mustache (Financial Freedom Through Badassity) and charting my way out.

Here's my plan. I'm going to sell my car as soon as possible (yesterday would be great), pay off the loan, buy a cheap replacement car, and pour any leftover cash into my debts. When the Damn Check shows up, I'm going to pay off the rest of my debts (credit card and student loans), and invest anything that's left over. I'll keep working the 9-5 just long enough to build up a small cash cushion, then pay Shelby a few months' advance rent and move in with her and Aiden. I'm going to restart the webcomic I began in 2010, that by 2012 was paying me more than enough per month to cover the rent that Shelby requested.

Those are the major things. There are smaller ones, too, to help it all go forward. My motorcycle is finally fixed to the point where she's ready to be inspected, and I'm going to ride her as far into cold weather as I can handle. I'll install a 12V plug and get some heated gear (used, of course) and handgrips. She gets 60mpg...how can I not? I'm cooking almost all of my food myself now, and I don't really eat breakfast. I'm walking to work and biking to the grocery store. I'm telling Verizon to fuck off and replacing my phone with one from Republic Wireless.

I actually had nightmares last night that I bought things I didn't need, and felt a little silly when I woke up in a panic, trying to figure out how to return them.

I'm also geeking out about investing, learning about the different types of retirement accounts and rollovers and personal investing and interest rates and risk calculation, and and and...I love numbers. I really do.

The biggest day-to-day change will obviously be living with Aiden and Shelby. Shelby initially suggested the idea several months back, and I considered it lightly; it didn't seem like something I really wanted to do at the time. I saw it as an unnecessary upset to the relationship that would cause more problems than it would solve. I'm particular about my personal space, and I find it a difficult and time-consuming process to accustom myself to new roommates or housemates. I need my me-time to recharge, and I get grumpy and nasty when there's interference with that process. Even if Aiden, Shelby, and little Aiden were as quiet as my current roommate, it would still be three times the noise level I currently operate in. And none of them are that quiet.

Thinking about this potential issue yesterday, I had what appears to be a pretty brilliant idea, an image of what life could look like in this new situation, and now I'm excited. I have to separate my working hours and area from my non-working ones, and I have to be able to spend some time in my introvert bubble on a regular basis. I also know that I'm going to miss the mornings when I can get up early and have the house to myself...

...or not. If I combine those things, I can have all of the above. I can get up early, make my coffee, have the house to myself while everyone else is still asleep, and get started on my work. By the time everyone else gets up, I'll be holed up at my desk (what's currently a spare room will be mine for a drafting/music space). I can join Aiden and Shelby for breakfast, return to work when she goes to work, and then come out and be social when my work is done.

Have I mentioned I'm excited?

Mom

When I was sixteen, my mother came home one day with a scary announcement: she had cancer. One of her breasts was full of calcifications, a condition called DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ). A surgeon had told her she needed a mastectomy, but she wasn't comfortable with that and was looking for other options.

Her search for other options became a complete lifestyle change. She went from being a fairly normal suburban mother in terms of her eating and living habits to being what I would call a hippie-dippie granola bar. She explored and read and talked to people, and became a born-again health nut. The emotionally-closed mother I had always known suddenly started getting in touch with her feelings and crying at random, and while I certainly couldn't blame her, it made me uncomfortable.

Then she started trying to get me on the bandwagon, and I ran like hell. Good luck telling your teenage daughter, who's full of her own angsty drama, that the way you brought her up was actually all wrong and now it needs to change. It became a point of pride for me that I could hide any and all of my emotions, no matter the situation, that I was as solid as a rock and absolutely unflappable. She alternately told me that she appreciated my cool head, and that I was going to do myself damage bottling all my feelings. I stuck to my guns. I was in a place in my life where I had no close friends, so I had no one to share with anyway. I became the sullen goth girl who floated through the halls at school, talking to no one, sharing nothing, slipping quietly into depression while no one watched.

Mom went to energy healers and naturopaths, who acted like therapists and helped her to see that my dad's addiction was poisonous to all of us. (Duh.) He grew angry with her for listening to "those crazy people" who were blaming him for all her problems. I listened to both sides, refusing to provide opinions or emotions to anyone.

The next time I heard about the cancer was the following year. We were on a family ski trip to Colorado with my then girlfriend, Petunia. My mom had made an appointment with some kind of natural healer out there. I wasn't sure what they were doing, and mom didn't want to talk about it. I could never tell whether she was shy about her treatments or whether she was trying not to burden me with information she felt I didn't need. Either way, I never pushed. And I don't think I ever heard about the cancer again. That was nine years ago.

Two weeks ago, mom called me and said we needed to talk. She had bad news, and wanted to tell me in person. We made plans to meet for dinner the following night, and I spent the next 24 hours freaking out about what could be wrong. All I could imagine was that the cancer was back. That was the only thing I could dig up from the past for use as a clue.

I was right. It turns out that the silence I had taken to mean as respite had actually been ignorance. The cancer is back, bigger and badder and more of a threat. It was never actually gone. She chose not to deal with it, and my faith that she wouldn't have made such a stupid choice simultaneously came to light and was destroyed.

Some test results came in a week later, and there's good news and bad. The good news is that it's not metastasized, which had been a concern due to a swollen lymph gland. The bad news is they are still recommending aggressive chemo as well as a mastectomy. Her next step is getting a second opinion and considering her options, and the way she said those things put me on edge. She is considering whether or not to do the chemo. If she chooses not to, I'm going to have a lot to say about that. She ignored it once, and while it is her body and her choice, I'm not just going to pretend it's fine if she tries to do that again. Look what happened last time.

No Worth in Words

My friend Bruce's birthday is today, and we had a party for him last night. Food, games, cake, general hanging out. There were a few people in the group that I hadn't met before. They fit right in. And I came to the sad realization that I do not.

The people that I attract as friends are usually various forms of geeky. I'm a geek myself; computer programmer and communications technician. But those aren't the forms of geek I attract. My non-derby friends are all RPGers, video gamers, LARPers, Trekkies, and Dr. Who nerds. They're super awesome people and I adore them. They have lots of conversations that I don't understand, and I've stopped asking to be read into those conversations because there are too many and it takes too much explaining. At any get-together there will be some stretch of time where I sit in my corner and listen politely until the conversation moves on to something I understand. I'm fine with that.

But last night, the conversation never moved on. They went from geekdom to geekdom to geekdom, never hitting on one that interested me even slightly. I sat in my corner and listened politely for hours. Eventually I left, having decided I would rather be asleep, thinking I would've been better off staying at the pool party that I had left to attend Bruce's birthday (although I wouldn't actually have skipped out on his birthday party).

To catch up on all of their fandoms so I could actually participate in these conversations would take hundreds of hours of watching TV and movies and playing video games, none of which I have the remotest interest in doing. The self-reflection sent me looking for a mirror I can't quite find...what is it that I do? What do I talk about when I talk? I'm constantly busy, but how do I spend my time, if not on the aforementioned things? The answer seems to be derby...is there anything left in my life but derby? Have I become a dumb jock?

Firstly, the "dumb jock" stereotype implies a lie, that being a meathead makes you dumb. To the contrary, working out regularly and taking good care of your body actually improves your brain function. Logically, I know that I cannot have become a dumb jock.

What can I talk about? Derby, in great depth and at great length. Communications technology, with lesser depth and breadth. I've been working in the field for five years now, and I know I've learned a lot, but I still feel dumb in comparison to all the things I don't know. I ride a motorcycle, but I don't geek out about it; I just ride it. I shoot guns, but I don't discuss ammo types or barrel bores. A while back, I spent a lot of time studying relationships, and for a while I could've talked relationship theory pretty intensely...but not anymore (another post, another time to explain that one). I spin circus props but I don't study those either. I don't nerd out about cars, or comics, or movies, or computers.

I'm a doer, not a talker. I would much rather pick something up, take it apart, program it, modify it, make it into something else, throw it, chase it, break it and repair it, or just build something new. I don't want to sit in a chair for hours and discuss it.

Somehow this makes me feel really stupid.