Music as a reflection of the soul

As I continue to wonder where this started and how I ended up sitting on my bed, naked, writing this blog, I realized that during the holiday season, I gave myself one gift, an MP3 player.  Most of you are laughing by now.  Could I even figure out how to use it?  What would *I*, an "old lady" do with an MP3 player?

I've often said that music is a reflection of the state of my soul.  If I'm singing or playing the piano, making music of any sort, then there is joy in my heart.  In times of deepest depression, I could not play a note.  I could not sing a song.  It was as though all the music inside me had dried up and died.

Because my job entails a lot of computer time and great stretches of time engaged in minutiae, I intended the MP3 player to be a form of entertainment.  I use only one ear bud so I can be interrupted at any time by co-workers needing my attention.  I loaded all my CDs (the ones I could find) and downloaded other favorites and installed them.  After a few days, I found myself humming.  Some days later, I was singing quietly.  On one blessed day when I was alone in the office I sang for  8 hours.

While music may reflect my soul, it also has the ability to widen ones scope. For me, it was as though someone had breathed life into my heart again.  You cannot spend that many hours listening to 70s and 80s light rock, pop and easy listening songs without beginning to internalize the message.  "Sing, sing a song".  Is there any idea more beautiful?

I found myself singing to my very perplexed husband.  Not love songs, but songs of worship to our love.  As I sang, I found I could touch and be touched.  My heart yearned for his presence.  I wanted to be part of him again.  Like begets like.  As I desired him, he responded with the full force of his nature.  (Picture it - the Niagara Falls of love)  He loves me.  He has always loved me.  That I had spent over half a decade denying him the right (or privilege) of touching me, my body, my heart, my soul had caused him many hours of frustration and anger, but he never walked away.  He is a steadfast man.  In return, I had merely dripped tiny droplets of .... tolerance...for him.

To be wanted again, after so long was as though a feast had been laid before him and finally, after years of living on rice crackers, he was permitted to fill himself.  He scarcely knew where to begin but he was going to load his plate to the fullest in case I ripped it all away from him again.  The more he touched, the more I craved touch.  He found ways to trigger the beginnings of a deep need within me. 

None of that really explains my need and desire to submit.  I'm not a submissive woman.  I will hide or run rather than submit, but more often, I'll slice and dice someone dead with my ability to wield words as weapons.  In spite of all that, I have always, secretly, in the deepest, most hidden part of my soul, wanted a man who would be the leader.  I wanted a man who would take charge.  I wanted to submit to that strong individual.

And it terrified me.  I'm a control freak.  I don't relinquish control easily...if ever.  I admitted to him that I wanted to be dominated last night.  He laughed and said he wished he'd realized that 30 years ago.  I stopped breathing for a moment.

Thirty years ago, this wouldn't have worked.  I was emotionally wounded and didn't trust men.  I was more afraid of men than anything else.  That we ever had our first date was and is a testament to his perseverance.  We spent 3 hours on the phone while I desperately tried to think of an excuse NOT  to go to a movie with him  that he would accept.  I had already determined that I was NEVER going to marry.  I would never allow another man that close to me again.

I was a princess in an ivory tower.  On each level below my chamber, were stationed armed guards, ready to kill to protect me.  Outside my tower, in the bailey, an army of barbarians stood guard to keep all interlopers away.  The tops of the walls were manned by expert archers and cannons and vats of boiling tar.  Outside the wall was a moat filled with hungry piranha and crocodiles.  The land beyond the moat was riddled with landmines and was crisscrossed with razor wire.  No sane man would have risked all that to get to me, or at least, that's what I believed.

To ring the alarm bell, one must sense danger.  I wasn't afraid of him.  I just wasn't interested in him.  He was SUCH a geek.  He walked safely through all my security features because I didn't sense a threat to my safety.  Before I knew what was happening, he was at the door to my chamber convincing me to see a movie with him.

And I had fun with him.  We talked until 3 in the morning.  He went home but was back the next night.  We didn't leave one another for days except for a few stolen hours of sleep.

And the sex.  OMG, the sex.  The man is and was insatiable, but it was good!  I hadn't known what an orgasm was until we made love the first time.  I cried because I finally knew that sex was good.  Sex was pleasurable.  Frankly, until then, I hadn't figured out why ANYONE would want to have sex more than once.  If it wasn't painful, it was...nothing.  Just a great, big empty nothing.

Still, the scars of my past didn't leave room to trust anyone to the level of naked slave girl.  I could (and did) fantasize privately, but never did more than read the Gor stories to him.  He would turn me on by telling me that he visualized me as the girl climbing the steps to the auction block or as the girl tied down to be branded.  Damned horny sex, but I still wasn't trusting him.

There was also the fact that he had grown up with a very abusive step-father (the man held his family at gunpoint against the sheriff on one occasion).  I knew that he was not like his step-dad but I didn't realize that when you are raised with that model of behavior, you learn it.  What could have destroyed us before our second anniversary became an opportunity for growth.  He hit me once in violence and anger and I had him arrested and forced the issue all the way through the courts.  That they took me seriously was amazing in 1984.

He was mandated to domestic abuse training.    It was a long and arduous process.  It was a process that I wasn't sure would be successful.  A year later, though, I had my answer. A friend of his was having difficulties with his girlfriend and was feeling violent.  While I washed dishes and got our children ready for bed, I listened to him counsel his friend on appropriate ways to deal with anger. I was astonished.  He not only understood it, but he could teach it!

For the record, from that day until the day I chose of my own free will, to submit to him in this way as a slave girl, he never struck me again.  As in most bondage relationships, I expect that he will spank or lash me on occasion, but he told me today that my willingness to submit to him was a HUGE responsibility for him.  He feels completely responsible to see that I'm not in anyway emotionally, psychologically or  physically injured.  To him, it must always be a safe place for us to express our needs.  *I* must always be safe.

So how did we end up here?  Are we playing out some Gorean fantasy? (No, this isn't Gor and while we may use some terminology and ideas from John Norman, it isn't his Gor.) I think it started the night sex got a little kinky.  The rules in our house for anal intercourse have been consistent for 30 years.  "He who asks goes first."  That usually put an end to all debate.  The few times that we did try it the pain was excruciating.  Well, duh, it would be when your partner isn't ready and there is no lube.  Oi.

He wanted it (this was no great revelation to me), but what he was doing to my body was turning me on, it just wasn't quite working.  So, like the good geek that I am, I did some internet research.  Rule #1, as it pertains to anal intercourse, "there is NO SUCH THING as too much lube".  A little more research and some advice yielded the suggestion of some anal probes/toys and a lube that numbs the area.  That improved things, but my body still wasn't willingly going to cooperate.  It took another trip to the sex toy store and some thoughtful experimentation (which I may detail in a later post), to get close.  He was patient.

In a reverse of our previous stances, I was the one desperate to try it.  He could stimulate my body, but I wasn't getting the full impact of the pleasure that is possible, I could just tick my fingernail at the edge of it.  I wanted more.  I wanted it for him, but I wanted, needed, it for me.  I wanted to give it to him. I wanted to give ME to him.

I know these were the baby steps that took us to this place, I'm just not sure when relating a sexy fantasy became a driving need within myself.  As we talked about him being a Master and me being his slave and submitting, it was as though a switch were flipped and it was more real than anything else for me.

We could have been married another 30 years, happily having lots of  vanilla sex.  This is probably not the only way to do this.   But suddenly, I wanted to relinquish control to him.  I wanted to turn it all over to him.  I wanted the power in his hands.  Because he loves me so deeply, I KNOW that I can trust him.  I trust him enough to spank me and not brutalize me.  Could he get seriously kinky at some time?  Could he set in motion a chain of events that will make me uneasy?  Probably.  In fact, I hope so.  Trusting him means believing that whatever path he leads me on, he will not abandon me, lost in a forest, he will be safely at my side, guiding me through.  I don't have to question if I'll make it safely to the other side.  He will ensure that.  I only have to worry about the steps that will take me from one side to the other.  However kinky or weird or bizarre it might be, if I allow him to lead, I'll find sexual pleasure and fulfillment.  WE will find sexual pleasure and fulfillment.