I come here for balance, I think. Sometimes anyhow. When I’m feeling a bit off, a bit askew, this place is my touchstone.

I wrote that, and then I thought, ”What the hell do I mean by that?” So I had to look up “touchstone” to see if it meant what I wanted to say. I was surprised to see how many nuances of meaning it has. The first definition is: a piece of fine-grained dark schist or jasper formerly used for testing alloys of gold by observing the color of the mark which they made on it.

Ok, that’s not what I meant. Here’s another definition: a standard or criterion by which something is judged or recognized.

Oh, wait, that’s not what I meant either. WTH. Do I even know what I’m talking about?

I wandered through various definitions of touchstone, til I found this one:

What is a personal character touchstone? A touchstone can be a personal symbol or emblem that represents your dream and that helps you to stay on track and stay true to your vision. Throughout the centuries, indigenous people on every continent have used ‘medicine bags’ in a similar way.

THAT’s the one. The meaning I was looking for. Whew, I am not losing my grasp on language.

I think I scared myself with my last fantasy, the one I started here. I still have a couple of posts in drafts, but haven’t revisited it. It felt like the training was progressing rapidly into a much more extreme version than I was comfortable with.

Not in terms of physical extremes, at least I don’t think that’s where I was headed. But an extreme psychological submission that freaked me out just a little bit. Yes, it turned me on a lot. AND that doesn’t make me feel better. I’m sure you’ve read stories where the Dom says, “you liked that, look how wet you are!” Like that proves it. But…

You might already know that research shows that women get physically aroused by just about anything sexual. Yes. We get physiologically aroused when presented with sexual material regardless of whether we feel a subjective attraction to it. This article talks about some of the research: How Men and Women Experience Sexual Desire Differently.

One theory about why women respond by getting wet when we’re not necessarily interested in the sexual activity is that it’s a protection if we get raped. Check out this article: Why Do Women Get Physically Aroused and Not Even Know It. Granted, that’s Psychology Today, which is not always the best source. But I remember reading about this research back in grad school, so I tend to believe it. When he says, “you must like this, look how wet you are…” that doesn’t actually mean a damned thing.

Sometimes, I wish I’d never read that research.

And then I find myself writing a post about a woman who invites a Master to hurt her because she wants to please him that much, and I think, “wtf am I doing?”

K.C. Perrin wrote a lovely story recently about a monthly training day in the life of a young D/s couple. Mostly a sweet story. Much milder than anything in my last training story. But still, at the almost end, he says this:

She’d cooked for him, stripped for him, pleasured him with her mouth, offered her body for him to play with and accepted her punishments as part of her lessons and still, all she got in the end was a sore red bottom and a stern warning not to forget her lessons for next time.
Yet when Elliot finally stopped, when he placed his hands on her stinging backside, straddling her legs as he massaged her backside, Sophie felt like it had been worth it.
This pain, this burning sensation, was so much more exciting than just some kisses and cuddling.

I’m left trying to wrap my mind around this odd dichotomy. Even knowing what I know, I can’t walk away from this lifestyle. Mentally, that is, since actual kink is non-existent. But that is what I’m attracted to. So maybe some women get aroused and aren’t attracted, and others are. I dunno.

Well. In other news, things are going pretty well for me in many ways. I haven’t gotten slender or rich, but I haven’t gotten fatter or poorer either, so there’s that.

I’m feeling oddly disconnected from people.

I swing from moments of feeling like I’m on top of it all to moments of feeling like I’m drowning.

Ha, a good, hard spanking would probably make me feel much better…