If you like pina coladas...

I was tired of my lady
We'd been together too long
Like a worn-out recording
Of a favorite song
So while she lay there sleeping
I read the paper in bed
And in the personal columns
There was this letter I read...

Bob was just out of college and living near the city when he finally had the courage to answer one of the personal ads that he'd seen in the local alternative paper. The keywords that caught his eye included "firm" and "discipline" and "corporal", and the ad looked a little less threatening than some of the others. It turned out to be from a woman about ten years his senior who had a predilection for spanking and paddling. Bob enjoyed a relationship with her for several years, eventually discovering that he preferred to be the spanker. He learned to appreciate the rhythms and the sensual feel of flesh under his palms. Bob kept up his relationship with her right up until his marriage.

"If you like Pina Coladas
And getting caught in the rain
If you're not into yoga
If you have half a brain
If you'd like making love at midnight
In the dunes on the Cape
Then I'm the love that you've looked for
Write to me and escape."

Bob's wife knew about his interests, and at first seemed to share those interests, herself. They settled into a middle-class community just a few minutes north of the fictional home of Rob and Laura Petrie, and Bob found a job with a well-known financial firm. Rotary Club, Junior League, and not long afterward, PTA meetings took up most of their social time. Life looked pretty well.

Over the next couple of years, though, he found her interest waning as often happens when newlyweds slowly become an "old married couple". Bob found fewer and fewer outlets for his interests and alternated between asking her - almost to the point of nagging, and long periods of sexual disinterest.

I didn't think about my lady
I know that sounds kind of mean
But me and my old lady
Have fallen into the same old dull routine
So I wrote to the paper
Took out a personal ad
And though I'm nobody's poet
I thought it wasn't half bad:

As Bob's wife became more involved with the kids and local clubs, she apparently lost any interest in their spanking play. Bob became more and more depressed over this, and at some point stopped talking to her about it because he was tired of feeling frustrated and hurt. Unfortunately, it also meant that they would stop talking to each other about the rest of their relationship as well. Their level of intimacy - emotional as well as sexual - declined.

"Yes I like Pina Coladas
And getting caught in the rain
I'm not much into health food
I am into champagne
I've got to meet you by tomorrow noon
And cut through all this red-tape
At a bar called O'Malley's
Where we'll plan our escape."

At some point Bob began picking up alternative papers and looking through the personals. He really hadn't any intention of carrying out anything nefarious - he just wanted to remember what it was like to feel young and sexy and desirable. He just wanted to recapture some of those fading memories of the fun times he'd had. He just didn't want to forget...

And at some point, he couldn't help himself. He placed an ad.

He got a response. A woman who wanted to meet in the next town. He replied, assuring discretion and explaining his own situation. No sex. Nothing long term. No strings. Just a desire to meet, talk, and if agreeable, to take her over his knee for a few minutes.

She agreed to meet him. They set a date and time to rendez-vous at an out-of-the-way bar. Bob left work early, drove to the restaurant, and walked in. He looked around the crowded room and spotted her instantly. She was looking at him, waiting in a booth near the back corner.

It was his wife.

So I waited with high hopes
And she walked in the place
I knew her smile in an instant
I knew the curve of her face
It was my own lovely lady
And she said, "Oh it's you."
Then we laughed for a moment
And I said, "I never knew."

And just like that it was over. One house, two cars, three children, and fourteen years of marriage.

She had set him up.

In a perverse twist of fate, an example of life not imitating art, but parodying it, Bob's wife did not suddenly rediscover her sexuality. She did not have a secret fantasy to spank or to be spanked. She was not trying to rekindle the spark in her marriage. No, she was tired of the charade of a marriage. She no longer wanted to be with a husband who had no interest in her, who would only accept a relationship with her on his own terms.

It would be years before either of them would understand that this is exactly what the both of them wanted; each would only settle for their own idea of a relationship, and instead of compromising or negotiating, they fought. Sometimes passive-aggressively, sometimes bitterly, but never with the idea of creating a situation in which both of them would feel loved, cherished, and respected.

This scenario is the nightmare that many of us on the vanilla-fetish edge fear; that our desires will end up destroying us, that our love-mates will become our enemy, that one small piece of our lives will upset the balance and ruin our hopes and plans, separate us from our home and children, perhaps ruin our reputation with our families, friends, work associates.

I met Bob long after this happened, after his wife moved halfway across the country, after the children had mostly grown up without him in the home, and after he had several more failed relationships because of his fear of opening up about his interests to them. He now compartmentalizes his relationships in order to avoid the pain; he sees some women romantically, and some for purely fetish interests - and never the twain shall meet.

Maybe I'm still too close to Bob's situation for perspective; our own marriage has only recently gotten a toehold in the escarpment of intimacy after some years of drifting apart and we're both moving carefully. I've found myself at times wondering where the hell my libido is vacationing because in the course of rebuilding our relationship I've had to - or at least I've felt that I've had to - put some of my sexual concerns into the background while we deal with other issues.

I don't have a happy ending for this. No pithy comment or words of lucid wisdom, except perhaps an acknowledgement that sometimes even when we think that we're communicating, we forget that we need our ears as much as our mouths.

That you like Pina Coladas
Getting caught in the rain
And the feel of the ocean
And the taste of champagne
If you'd like making love at midnight
In the dunes of the Cape
You're the lady I've looked for
Come with me and escape

Rupert Holmes
Escape (Pina Colada Song)

How do I get my partner to ...?

It's a truism that one of the most asked questions on any sex forum is "How can I get my partner to...?" And while I'd venture to say that it's one of the most asked questions on any forum, I'm going to deal strictly with sexuality.

It probably goes without saying that one needs to keep the lines of communication open, but that's pretty easy to say from the safety of my comfy chair. For those of us who are already wresting with the idea that we have kinks in the first place, it's doubly difficult to open these discussions up with partners that we, through years of association, believe will be horrified, sickened, or run screaming into the street. That said, however, we also need to understand that not talking about them certainly isn't going to get us anywhere.

Unfortunately, when some of do initiate the conversations, we - and this applies mainly, although not exclusively, to men - often get it wrong by addressing exactly the kinds of things that our partners least want to hear, often ignoring the most important things that we should be addressing, such as our thoughts and feelings about the activity. For example, on the chastity and orgasm denial web forums I often see questions like "How do I convince my wife that she should use a chastity device on me and get her to enjoy the control that it will have over me?" And unbelievably, so many men read the websites promoting the "benefits of keeping your man in chastity" and are stunned when their wives or girlfriends don't seem to care about having their man "under control."

First of all, if you are already having a problem in your relationship, then understand that bringing up a kinky desire is not the way to start improving your emotional intimacy. If your wife won't even discuss sex, let alone your kinks, then you have a serious communication problem that you need to solve before you move on to other things, be it chastity or bondage or golden showers. Until the both of you are talking to each other, you won't "convince" her of anything, except that you're being insensitive.

Too, even if you can manage to begin a conversation, understand that not all women have some fantasy of being a dominatrix to a chaste male slave husband. To many people, the very idea of it is "kinky", and as we all know, nice people don't do kink. Who else but a sick perverted kinkster would want a few hundred dollars worth of plastic or metal wrapped around their cock and balls?

On the subject of chastity devices, most of the chastity-oriented websites point out the many benefits for the partner, saying in essence: "Your husband will worship and you and adore you because he'll want to please you so that you'll allow him an orgasm."

Yeah, okay.

When you present it to your wife, are you pointing out how she could order you around and assign points for when you cook dinner, wash her car, make breakfast, do the shopping, give her a massage, etc.? And she still didn't go for it? I wonder why not? I'm sure it's not because she was thinking, "That big jerk! Why doesn't he do those things for me NOW? Why do I have to indulge some kinky fantasies in order to get him to be more attentive?"

See, so many of the websites have all these rules about earning points, scheduled releases and orgasms, and all sorts of things that actually make it a real pain in the ass for someone who doesn't care for those kinds of game in the first place. A woman who isn't naturally dominant or who doesn't have much interest would probably ask "What's in it for me that I shouldn't already be getting from my partner?"

Anyway, my point is that if you're not already communicating intimately, then you have an issue in your relationship that needs to be addressed before you try to involve your partner in your kinks.

Kink-timacy

I get questions. You get answers.

People read my stuff on the various web boards, Usenet groups, and Yahoo groups, and because (I hope) they perceive me to be articulate and sensitive, they email me. These are usually people who tend to "lurk", that is, read those groups without breaking their anonymity to post. They are also usually men. And they usually email to ask me about chastity and orgasm denial, or sometimes about introducing kink to a vanilla partner.

I am fairly articulate and sensitive, and because I'm also very introspective - and very handy with tools - I tend to research something until I'm, well, maybe not an expert, but certainly in the intermediate class. When my wife and I decided to use OD and chastity play as a way to have some compromise between my desire for D/s kink and her desire to have nothing to do with whips and chains, I set about reading as much as I could. Eventually I stopped asking questions and started answering them, especially in several Yahoo groups where I've logged well over 1,000 posts on those topics in the last several years.

I'm frequently asked about introducing some kind of kink to a more vanilla partner, and more often than not the person who has emailed me is already pretty worked up about the entire situation. I feel badly when this happens, but I well understand - I've been there: got the T-shirt, the postcards, and the henna tattoo and hair beading at the sidewalk vendor. And I'm going to share the gist of some of those emails and my responses in hopes that they will offer some support to others walking down this road.

About two years ago, someone wrote that his desire for some kind of femdomme kink was so strong that they could no longer keep it to themselves, but that his partner had no interest - in fact, refused to discuss his desires at all. He was concerned that by bringing it up he had ruined their relationship.

Let's get this straight right now: "Kink" does not ruin your relationship; rather it is the incompatibility, the inability of two people to come to some understanding or reconciliation of the kink. Our own problem is that we so often face the kink issue alone, completely out of context of any other aspect of our relationship.

Your partner could have an issue with your job, your other family members, or certain other lifestyle choices, and you would either work it out or part ways with the understanding that not everyone is going to be compatible with each other. Unfortunately, when we deal with kink we often bring in other issues: Your partner doesn't always understand your kinks, and there really aren't any easily available resources for help and support. Also, so often in anger our partners will make us (or try to make us) feel ashamed, sick, perverted. Never mind tht they are usually reacting out of their own insecurities about sex, the problem is tht many of us are already wrestling with feeling perverted or sick - in part because we have nowhere to turn when we need to discuss our desires. And too often we're afraid that they will tell our family or friends; the idea of being "outed" creates anxiety and sometimes we again try to bury those desires in order to avoid the pain.

But if kink is something that's very important to you, then not bringing it up early in the relationship will end up being a relationship killer at some later point. And if the kink itself doesn't kill the relationship, then the slow erosion of your psyche will kill it later on as you draw away from your partner, from the relationship, and lose the intimacy that you need to stay healthy.

Take a look at this passage from "Getting Close" by Barbara Fast:

In building an intimate relationship, trust is the major structural factor. Once you have trust you can risk emotional honesty. You can open yourself to your partner and reveal the good and the bad within you [....] Because we are afraid to risk, we settle for mediocre lives...which are really quiet desperation. Risking intimacy is a difficult, challenging task but you must always keep in mind the fact that if you settle for a life with little or no intimacy, your life will be measurably impoverished as time goes by.

Unfortunately, many of us are ashamed of our kinks. Because we haven't brought up the subject with our partner early on, it seems like it gets more, not less difficult to raise the issue the more involved we are. Soon it becomes easy to imagine parents, relatives, cow-orkers, ministers, etc., staring at you and asking derisively "Ugh, what kind of sicko would want that?" and letting those feelings of embarrassment and shame over-ride our desires for something that's not normally shown on tv.

For anyone in that position, I'm going to recommend picking up the short, easy-reading book at Greenery Press called "When Someone You Love is Kinky" by Dossie Eaton and Catherine Liszt. It's written in plain, slightly humorous, easy to understand laguage for people who are vanilla at heart. It's meant to provide some understanding to people who have a kinkster in their lives. Perhaps you might consider spending the $17 on the book and giving it to someone that you've been dating for a while, with the caveat "Before this relationship goes any further, there's something that you need to know about me."

I know a guy who is into spanking, but he's really embarrassed by it. He goes between telling women right up front, or not telling them at all. The problem is that after dating for 6 or 8 months, he takes a huge risk: if he tells them and she flips out, then they've both just wasted 8 months, and there's a lot of hurt on both sides. But he can't bring himself to mention it early because he doesn't want to "risk" losing a potential partner. His thinking seems to be that someone who's emotionally attached is more likely to stick around; unfortunately his experience seems to be just the opposite.

And look, we have to accept that some kinks are going to be easier to deal with than others. As they go, chastity play is probably pretty mild, at least, if approached as a game. I think that most people can deal with kinks when they look at them as something "fun" to do, instead of as a lifestyle choice. On the other hand, if you don't get that out of the way soon, then you're just begging for emotional heartache. I've read posts in other groups from people who have decided to get their kink issue out of the way by the third or fourth date. This way, if the potential partner isn't interested and they can part as friends.

Indiscrimination

Orgasm Denial and its cousin, Chastity Play, are kinks tangentially related to BDSM, although they are often practiced by folks who consider themselves to be "vanilla". OD can be practiced as a simple "tease and deny" game, which makes it appealing to both men and women who either don't or won't look at the underlying D/s dynamic.

And for the moment, we won't look at it, either.

A few years ago, my wife and I were negotiating some kind of sexual play that would satisfy my own desires for D/s, yet wouldn't make her feel ridiculous by squeezing into leather corsets and shouting orders (my jokes that it's not the "shouting orders" part that makes her feel ridiculous is usually met with a cold stare). As we talked about what might work, she mentioned that she used to enjoy it when I wore one of my home-made chastity devices because she liked the idea of being in charge of when I would get to have sex (further jokes along the lines that she's usually in charge of that anyway were again met with cold stares). Having a machine shop to play with allowed me to build a device that was a cross between the vaunted CB-2000 and a Stallion Guard, although it was uncomfortable to wear for long periods. Accordingly, we purchased the (at the time) new CB-3000. I've made some modifications to the device to enhance the comfort and security for long-term wear, but in general it has worked well for us. It does not create unsightly bulges under street clothes, and once my body adapted, I became able to wear it for very extended periods without removal.

But this isn't about our experiments in "enforced" chastity.

I subscribe to a number of web groups dealing with Orgasm Denial and Chastity Play; at first because I was hungry for information, and later because my own research and experimentation allowed me to pass along some tips, tricks, and thoughts on the idea of chastity. I've become a fairly regular contributor in about a half-dozen groups, and as I read the posts that come in looking for support or answers, I've noticed a trend that disturbs me a bit: the chastity groups seem to attract "Do/me subs" who, despite the fact that they rarely have a significant other in their lives, are only too happy to pass along their ideas of what chastity, orgasm denial, and general submissiveness "should" be, seemingly without regard for how relationships tend to work in real life.

I confess that after seeing this for several years, I'm still amazed that men write to these web groups professing their indiscriminating desire for a woman - apparently any woman - who will keep them permanently "locked up (the vernacular in the Chastity community for being kept in a device), and "forced" to dress in women's clothes, to be a "sissy maid", to have them take other lovers, and to be humiliated in dozens of other ways that would surely end a more "normal" relationship in a New York minute. Generally I avoid comment - there's an unspoken rule in the kink world that one does not jump all over another person's kink, no matter how distasteful it may be to you. After all, what would your parents or grandparents, your pastor, or your cow-orkers say about your own kink?

But the other day somebody posted a variation of the above-mentioned messages in several of the groups to which I subscribe, which read in part:

I am going to be honest and blunt to the point

I have decided to spend the rest of my life in pursuit of one goal and that goal is to live for a womans pleasure and in such a way to maximize her pleasure and happiness to the actual exclusion of any for me....I think the best phrase to simplify this thought is that I dont have to cum as you cum for the two of us....looking for someone to help me achieve this goal and who might be selfish enough to have it as her own goal....anyway ..would love to talk to you ....

Leaving aside for the moment my pet peeves of bad spelling and grammar, I read this several times trying to get into the mindset of someone who would post this. Then I tried to get into the mindset of someone who would want this for themselves. I gave up, and then gave in to my first impulse. I posted a response, for which I'm expecting to get my wrist slapped by the group moderator:

I read this and all I could think was "How sad for both you and this undetermined woman."

What you've essentially done is to post a personal ad saying "I don't care who you are as long as you indulge in my self-denial kink."

Seriously, while you use all the pleasant and flowery terms, the fact is that you're merely offering yourself up to pretty much any woman that comes along. How would an offer like that make any woman (or man) feel special and worthy of such an offer? It smacks of someone who has so little self-worth or value that they don't seem to care who takes them up, so long as they get to fulfill their own little fantasy with some nameless mistress.

I can't imagine what would motivate a woman to take you up on this.

I've been flamed in the past for responding to messages in such a way as to rain on somebody's parade. I don't know what came over me, but I just had to say it. I'll admit that this is partly fueled by my own enjoyment of this kink as something that can stay on the vanilla/kink border; and that the men looking for indeterminate women to humiliate them will eventually become the majority in this community, turning off the couples who are looking to try something new to spice up their vanilla sex lives. I've corresponded with probably a couple of dozen newbies who had questions about denial and chastity, but did not want to get involved in any BDSM. I think that reading posts like the ones above would probably scare them off.

Lately I've been reading the similar reactions to the Domme-less subs from other bloggers, including the ever-articulate Richard Evans Lee who seems to be as tired of the men who can't separate their fantasy D/s life from the real world as I am. It makes me think that perhaps I need to take a break from the web group world in order to regain some perspective.

By the way, this post represents the first departure from my Live Journal blog. I had been mirroring the LJ posts here, and I may continue to do so, but I will probably keep this web log for the more specialized topics and the more kink-related topics

This won't hurt a b... Ouch!

My friends from SSG keep asking about pictures. Here's the scoop: Quite a few months back, I thought it would be cool to get a frenum piercing for my birthday in June. I sort of chickened out, but only by a little. I checked out the various online groups and forums to find which studio in the area was most reliable. I settled on one, Green Man Studios (greenmantattoo.com), and late on Thursday afternoon my wife and I drove to West Hartford.

Here's my slightly edited Usenet post about the experience:

Okay, I'm crazy. I finally did it. This afternoon, about 4 pm. It's obvious that I'm hitting the middle aged crazy mark.

The wife and I drove up to a place in West Hartford that had been recommended on several online groups and by word-of-mouth. I had 3 to pick from, but frankly, driving by one of them really put me off because the location was kind of icky. I'm sure it adds to the atmosphere, but I crossed it off the list. I flipped a coin between the other two.

The woman at the desk took down some info, including needing to see my driver's license to make sure that I'm old enough and don't need my mom's permission. ⁽¹⁾ We went to a clean and professional looking room upstairs, where I immediately had to ask for the men's room. Five minutes later I was okay. Funny, I wasn't nervous until then.

We went over some of the choices, and I opted for a 10 gauge, 5/8" (16mm) stainless steel barbell. She said it was a pretty typical size and shape for a frenum piercing.

My wife was very interested and supportive, but not enough to opt for her own. Maybe next year. ;-)

For the technically minded, it was kind of interesting. She used a surgical clamp to hold the frenum (actually, about a 1/4" lower) skin, and spent a minute making marks to make sure that it ended up straight; that is, perpendicular to the axis. Despite the almost 100º heat outside, I had shrunken up as if I had just taken a dip in the Arctic Ocean. Geez, it's only a little piercing, nothing to get nervous about. Right?

So as I'm trying to regain my nerve, my wife pipes up to ask when I could get a PA or a few more to make a frenum ladder. As they start chatting, I interrupt to mention that maybe it would be a good idea to just let me get through *this* one first. Geez.

I vacillated between watching and closing my eyes, but it was hard to get a good view because I was leaning back against a medical bench. After I was cleaned and prepped, she took a needle that was shaped like a large, thick hypodermic (without the syringe part) and held it in position.

"Okay, take a deep breath, and let it out."

Inhale. Hold. Exha... "Ouch!"

"Okay, we're all done. That wasn't so bad, was it?"

I pried my fingers from around my wife's hand, and took another breath. It did sting, but it was less than a second. I nodded that I was okay, and said something to the effect that "I'm forty eight years old and I just pierced my cock. What the hell was I thinking?"

She gave me some instructions on aftercare, which I was pleased to see was pretty consistent with the stuff I'd read online and in some of the other groups. I spent the rest of the evening trying to keep things comfortable. It was probably four or five hours before I got the nerve to pee, and happily, everything looks fine. I've got my sea salt and other cleaning supplies, and except for some general soreness, I seem to be fine.

I was gonna take a before and after pic for my interested friends, but I figure that some are already feeling faint just reading this through there fingers.

Next up: maybe I need a tattoo!

⁽¹⁾ Remembering my mom's reaction when I pierced my ear back in 1979, I'm pretty sure that she'd refuse to give permission for getting a stud through any other part of my body. Interestingly, back then I was on the wild edge because I had an earring. Now I'm way behind the curve... although I'm pretty sure that none of my over-40 friends have one, and most of my under-30 friends don't either. I'm also pretty sure that most of my friends, no matter what age, would freak to hear this; I'm kind of conservative appearing and acting nowadays.

Okay, I guess I'm gonna actually have to take some pics before I can even discuss posting them.

Welcome to The Tao of Tom (Me)

Okay, I've had a number of false starts to this thing, mainly because I already write quite a bit elsewhere, and there's a limit to how much I can talk about myself.

This is intended to be a very infrequently updated blog. I will mainly use this to post notes and pictures that I wouldn't normally do in other venues.

A special welcome to my friends at the Usenet group soc.sexuality.general (ssg) who normally have to put up with my meandering writings, my dry humor, and my intolerable puns and limericks. I think that this would be a more appropriate place to post those pics that I keep threatening to make public.. my own, especially.