Tribal mentality

Over the years, i have witnessed many long term partnerships, commitments and marriages crumble. So many times, the explanations given for the dissolution of these relationships focus on money, ambition or political/cultural identities. I think this is hogwash. What we are talking about is a coupling, which at its root is a sexual pursuit. Either out of embarrassment or convention, we do not pinpoint sexual incompatibility when we cite the demise of a relationship. It was:

• We didn't see eye-to-eye on money issues
• He was too thrifty/she was too much of a shopaholic
• I couldn't see where he/she had a plan for their future
• Their position on reproductive rights troubled me

I'm not suggesting that these are not real or important matters, but in my experience, a great number of these issues had a sense of intractability due to the fact that they concealed deeply flawed sexual alignment. For each story about how this person's endless and frivolous online purchases exasperated the other, i've witnessed the self-medicating, cosmetic purpose of these shopping sprees - to cover up the fact that their root, physical needs weren't being met (and perhaps even being shamed by their partner). The reasons for this have become increasingly clearer over the years.

Sex is how we intimately connect.

And I don't just mean how we connect with our sexual partners.  For the extent of my life, I've felt like an outcast. I have a healthy amount of friends, those i'd call my social compadres. All but a very small number know about this site. I have been faced with concealing this side of me to mostly everyone i know. And yet, i have been incredibly blessed to meet people with whom i'm able to share this partition of myself like i share with those of you who visit. Initially, we chatted about our respective engagement in the SM world, and then...our conversations resumed a normal, conventional discourse. In fact, to anyone who observes our interactions from the outside, the conversations we have are incredibly (and perhaps, boringly) normal. However, these people represent the folks with whom i get to be my most authentic self. I get to be my dominant self - no question - but i also get to be my challenged, struggling, uncertain and questioning self in ways that are liberating.

There's a lot of cosmetic manipulation that can make a life pursuing this kind of sexuality sound glamorous and profound, but if we never find those who make up our tribe, it never feels real.

The Dungeon

Eyes Wide Shut - Banned Orgy

We had to descend several spiralling staircases that carried us from the Burlesque Showcase room, through the Dance floor/Couples Room, to an external staircase that exited the old cathedral for a moment, finally delivering us to the bottom level - the cellar. Immediately, upon penetrating the low-lit chamber called "the Dungeon", you heard the song from the ritual scene in Eyes Wide Shut floating in from speakers throughout the level.

I walked arm and arm with my girl as we took a tour around the room. To our right several lounge chaise lined the wall, above them hung lanterns that sprayed the wall with stars of light. Following the cocktail bar against the far left side, we ventured into the area where the play equipment resided. As we progressed further, the rhythmic sounds of someone being flogged met our ears before the image of the naked girl with her outstretched, bound limbs greeted our eyes. A group of people had gathered to watch this corporal feast, as they gobbled up the moans and cries from the sweating submissive which sang into the air. We stayed for a moment, watching her Top switch between leather whips and hard wooden paddles, producing a gorgeous red tint to her upper thighs and buttocks.

There were many delicious visual feasts for our eyes to munch on, but seeing as she'd been standing on 6-inch heels for over three hours, my girl requested we sit to rest her feet. We resituated ourselves in the first chamber we'd visited in the Dungeon, finding a comfortable couch in the corner. There were others sitting in this area, and we soon found ourselves in polite conversation. While we were talking, a handsome blond man approached my girl.

"Madam, you are so stunning. May i please worship your feet?"

She looked over at me, subtly indicating our roles. He clued in very quickly and turned to me.

"Forgive me. Would you allow me to worship her feet?"

I nodded, and waved my hand in my girl's direction. He knelt at the base of her legs and very gingerly lifted and rested her right leg on top of his bended knee. With equal amounts of delicacy, he carefully undid the ankle straps to her shoes, and gently removed her custom-made patent leather heels. He wrapped his hands around her latex stocking-clad ankles, then slowly began to massage her fatigued tissue beneath the rubbery layer. With methodical movement, he kneaded her foot, every once in awhile bringing it to his mouth where he would softly kiss her toes. My girl relished the adoration, letting her head fall backwards in stimulated bliss. The entire time he paid her attention, he kept whispering to her how beautiful her feet and legs were, and how grateful he was to be able to worship them.

He had just finished his devotion when a gorgeous Italian girl tapped me on my shoulder. Through her pouty, sensuous lips, she asked me if i would allow her to also worship my girl's legs. Out of the corner of my eye, in a small little alcove off to my right, a couple was quietly, but hungrily fucking. I watched their undulating bodies for a moment, then returned my attention to the beautiful raven-haired signora, offering her my consent. Her method was different than the blond gentleman's. Where his touch was thorough and concentrated, her's was sensual and graceful. She brushed her fingers up and down my girl's shiny rubber thighs, barely applying any pressure. Each stroke traced a path that reached further and further up my girl's leg. The worshiping femme nuzzled her cheeks against her goddess' gams, closing her eyes in ecstasy, kissing their entirety. I adored watching her lavish attention on my latex doll. I've always found the idea of a girl servicing my submissive bottom in this fashion incredibly erotic, knowing that it wouldn't go any further than this.

I thanked her for her homage, and helped her to her feet, then dismissed her. I had an urge to turn the evening in a different direction. Earlier, in our tour of the space, i caught sight of a stripper's pole in the middle of the play area. With this in mind, when my girl returned from a brief trip to the rubbergirls' room, i rose, preventing her from taking a seat. I wrapped my arms around her, lavished her neck with miniature kisses, and then tapped upon, with purpose, her rubberized tush three times.

"Are you going to spank me?"

As a sign of confirmation, i walked in front of her, holding her hand, leading her to the pole. We weaved in and out of voyeuristic groups gathered around various devious activities. It was perfect, i thought to myself, because my girl had taken several dance classes, and one of her favorites was her pole dancing class. She excelled at seductively negotiating a floor to ceiling pole in 6-inch heels.

I gathered her in my arms, as we stood looking at the shiny, brass bar, and whispered into her ear,"I want you to give me a slow, enticing dance. Make me want to tear you down from that pole."

She stepped up to the pole, grabbed it with her hand, then took a slow revolution around it - the entire time she kept her bright eyes affixed on me. Swinging her legs around, she slowly lowered her body down the pole, straddling it the length of the descent. The longer she danced, the more spectators she attracted. But despite the growing numbers, her eyes never left mine.

I could barely contain myself. The crowd looking on, her fiery movement, the intensity of her concentration - all of it pushed my arousal to a peak. Without hesitation, i broke the barrier between performer and audience by approaching her as she swayed up there on the platform. I positioned my hands on either side of her hips, holding her still, both of us not moving at all.

I mouthed to her, "Turn around."

She complied.

I stepped closer, right against the pole.

"Grab the pole with both hands, and bend over. Point your ass out to all of those people watching you."

I moved behind her as she grasped her hands around the brass rod. Pushing her legs outward, i positioned her feet exactly where i wanted them. Her shiny backside beckoned me, but i tried to hold on as long as possible, letting this scene get as much maturity as possible. My hand flattened into a paddle shape. In my peripheral vision, i could see that several people had stopped to watch. This reality gave my hand a tremendous momentum as i swung it through the air and landed it on her rubbery cheeks.

"PHWAP!!"

She emitted a tiny "oof". I was immediately taken by how different it felt to spank her ass while it was tightly constricted under a thick layer of shiny latex. When i hit just one of her cheeks, the impact seemed to resonate throughout the entire area. It felt foreign. It felt artificial. It felt incredibly, incredibly erotic. I continued to spank her through the rubber, every once in awhile gazing out to the onlookers. I wanted to see if anyone felt a desire to give her a few swats of their own. Too timid perhaps, no one accepted my non-verbal invitation. Unfazed, i continued to shred into my girl's buttocks, enjoying the recoil her whole backside offered after each slap.

Slowly, as if the lights in the surrounding room were being extinguished, the background dimmed in my eyes. I no longer noticed those gathering. My hunger to inflict upon my girl had sky rocketed. I reached down at the bottom hem of her latex dress, and pulled it up, revealing her pale, sweat-soaked flesh. The aroma from her now freed arousal incited me. My hands acted without thought. They pinched, they clawed at the mounds of meat hovering before me. I spanked her repeatedly, skin to skin, while she clung to the pole. And then, abruptly, i stopped.

I had to. The next step would need to take place back in our hotel room. Over many, many hours.

The difference being

"I'm not like the other boys."

-Michael Jackson, in his video for the song Thriller

To follow this idea of us all wanting to be valued and accepted, this abuts right up against this feeling i've long held about myself. My difference. I'm not like others. I don't fit in and never really have. Even amongst my small nuclear family, i am set a part from them. My siblings and i get along, but they do not understand me. We are night and day and many cannot believe we grew up in the same house. I don't resemble my parents, nor do either of them feel connected to me. Both of them have said, in their own way, that they felt like i could've been adopted. Our world views are dramatically different. Even our political ideologies couldn't be more opposite.

Amongst my friends, very few of them know the extent of the power exchange that defines my relationship with my girl. Even then, i cannot speak to any of them with much detail before they quickly try to change the subject. If we venture outside of the horizon of my kink, i hold opinions on most topics that are not warmly received or come across as controversial. In large part, the massive contents of my thoughts remain stuck inside my head (except those i journalistically share here or other places).

Acquaintances have always perceived me as odd. A character. Not normal. And for most of my life, that is in fact the umbrella under which i roamed. When compared to others in my same gender, i haven't found much kinship there either. They hold different priorities (watching and talking about sports all of the time). Their reaction to the passing female stranger ("oh, i'd do her.") is incredibly incongruent with mine - i want to stare at her beauty, study it, possess it, but rarely is it my desire to fuck it.

As a result of this, i have developed very thick skin. It wasn't always that way. As a young boy, i was accused (take note that i use this word) by others of purposely acting against the norm: "You just like being different." I became immediately defensive at this accusation. I swore it wasn't an artificial cloak i wore, but they had me convinced that my difference was faked. Rather than attempt to silence the outcastedness, i just withdrew deeper inside. It was these times i turned to that young man that reflected back at me in that mirror on my floor.

In those times, i didn't see my difference as an asset. It was my handicap. It was what kept me from being a part of the world around me, and more importantly, finding what i needed to satisfy my appetites. It took a great deal for me to realize the worth in my deviant mind, and liberation finally came to me when i first explored SM with a girl i was dating.

Now, when i think about what so many misguided children used to say to me "You just like being different," i smile. It's true. Wow, how i wish i could've felt that way then.

In reflection

Throughout my life, i've often heard from others that i'm starved for attention. In many ways, this is true. When i'm at a party, i tend to be the one regaling everyone with stories and and having them in stitches. At lunch, the subject, if it's not on something general that we all can discuss, is usually about me and some aspect of my life. In public, i make sudden loud noises when i stretch, i don't mind singing a song at high volume, and i'll goof on my girl and say something like "No, i will NOT kiss you on the subway. God!" very loudly. When i was younger, i was frequently nominated to represent our class in school-wide speaking events and had very little problem presenting in front of large groups. I enjoy the spotlight, in fact when in it i feel a very similar sensation as when i'm being served by someone. But, to say that i'm attention starved, i'm not sure i agree with that statement. In fact, when you put that in the framework of my power exchange, it doesn't fly. I quite frequently give a great deal of attention to my girl - certainly it is in the service of my appetites, but it is also servicing her appetite to submit. It is her rump i spank, her dress code and look i manage, her limbs i bind, and her entire body i cocoon. This is not attention that is reciprocated. All of this had me pondering what exactly it means to seek someone's attention.

Is it merely just someone becoming your audience? That wouldn't seem to be enough, really. If they just stood there, blankly staring at you, not offering any emotional response or feedback. We want kind words, pleasing and complimentary words. We want validation, we want applause. We want to see evidence of joy created in the person, but even that isn't the root of what we seek. We want to know that we offer this person, the world, something valuable, intangible, unique. What are we really after?

Our reflection.

Attention from someone is the kindest mirror we could possibly encounter. I remember as a kid, i used to have a notebook-sized mirror i would take off my wall and put on the floor and pretend it was a doorway to another world through the ground. And i would visit with this person, and ask them what was in their world, and i would eventually come to learn that the world in that looking glass was the idealized version of the world i lived in. The "me" in the mirror was giving me the kind of attention i so often sought because he was ultimately validating me - in fact resembling me identically. I'd laugh at myself, make silly faces, but where i really enjoyed these moments was when i stared into the reflection of my eyes and felt a deep connection with that "self".

Maybe that's what attention gives us - a connection. Despite all these new, digital ways we can chain ourselves to people diluting our lives of interpersonal interaction, it hasn't made that desire to connect any easier or any less potent.

A bitter pill to swallow

If you knew me personally (had the pleasure?), it would be clear that i hold the position that our views on the world, our reactions to the world, and our behaviors in the world are all crafted by our senses (aka how we commune with the external). However most of you (luckily?) have never met me in person, yet it isn't a far stretch to assume that this same axiom can be gleaned from the archives of TransformHer. All of this makes the recent peculiar ordeal i've found myself in all the more transformative.

Over the past 24 hours, i have developed a very strange oral reaction when i've sat down to eat a meal. For the most part, anything i've eaten, be it a banana, a bowlful of cereal, a salad or an omelette, a flood of bitterness overcomes my entire tastebuds. This acrid, pungent fog fills my mouth and lingers long after i've finished the last bite of nourishment. For someone who already does not have the most amicable relationship with food, having a mouthful of sickening, stinging foulness isn't conducive to responding to an on-rush of hunger pangs.

But, my torment doesn't end there. No one i turn to can understand, or worse, empathize. I've spoken to friends, they can't relate. I've called up my dentist, and he's completely perplexed, having never had a single patient's sensory mechanism mistake a piece of garlic bread for a wafer coated in bitter earwax. Even my (incredibly understanding) girl must reside on the sidelines as i quickly gulp down food just so i can quiet my alimentary quiverings before my mouth overflows with nauseating discontent.

Eventually, this will pass. But, hidden in the aftertaste resides a thought that i have had many, many times (and was reminded of when i read a very eloquent post). We are at the end of the day, hour, minute, second completely alone. We are our own self-sustaining vessels that must choose how to navigate in a steady stream of other independently-helmed self-sustaining vessels. No one will understand what life is like for someone who occasionally chooses to go by the moniker 'Deity', nor will that same man understand what the other's life experience must be like. Rather, what we wait for, what we dream about are those brief moments of tangentially connecting - when another person's island briefly shares the same waterfront as ours.

I know that this bizarre sensual inversion has a conclusion. I do not take comfort in the acceptance in the impermanence of my current ordeal. Rather, i find great relief from the recollection this conflict has provided that the sweetest moments are not found in overly lengthy collaborations, but instead in those brief, encapsulated gifts of concentrated awareness and acceptance.

SadiststidaS

We sadists are mean with focus. We are also focused entirely on the means.

We punish with little regard, and regard our punishment with great delight.

We have long, unbending visions. Most times, our vision depends entirely on your flexibility.

We experience joy through the most perverse ways. We are most perverse where joy can be experienced.

We give pain calculatingly, even coldly. We calculate the pain we give by the respondent's temperature.

We snicker menacingly when cries arise. Crying is an unlaughable menace to us.

We torture as a way to connect to our victim. Our victim must be tortured in order for us to allow them to connect with us.

We chide and mock your suffering. Your lack of suffering mocks and chides us.

We seek your struggle and resignation, and only resign once you've stopped struggling.

We do not wince when exacting strain upon your body. Our bodies strain to hold back whenever you wince.

Our push grows in intensity the instant we see you first pout. The more you pout the more we push.

We tighten the knots despite your protests. Your protests only reinforce why we tie the knots so tightly.

We ask that you count the strokes across your flesh to impart order. In order to strike your flesh, we insist that you are aware of how many counts you've incurred.

We're assholes. We love your assholes.

Two faced

One afternoon, my secretary alerted me to the fact that i was to expect two visitors. She did not go into detail who these visitors were or what business they brought to discuss, nor did i inquire due to my frenzied activity upto that point. Shortly after, my phone rang, and going against custom, i answered. It was my boss.

"Have they come by yet?"

"Has who come by?"

"Well, i told them to come down and immediately interrupt what it was you were doing."

"Who?!"

"My daughters, for chrissakes!"

I sunk in my chair. I hadn't met them before, but i knew even then that i didn't want to entertain his daughters. I hung up the phone with him and immediately dialed my secretary, intent on instructing her to stall all attempts at piercing my quiet, inner chambers.

"Too late, Mr. D. They're here, right now."

"...send them in...i guess."

My door burst open, and in exploded the pair, like a ball of energy at full momentum in a long downhill descent. It wasn't until they looked me in the eyes did these two young girls stop in their tracks. They were six and eight respectively, and even in their nascent stage, i still could see the heartbreaking campaigns they would be destined to oversee. I'd heard all about these girls from my boss - he couldn't stop boasting about them, and rightly so. I did not look forward to their inevitable appearance because i knew, once they arrived, parading their magnificent "girlness", i would be prisoner to every demand they made. As was the case with them standing in my office, however, i offered them something that perhaps their own father hadn't prepared them for.

I've written before about the transfixing quality my eyes seem to have over the opposite gender. Without fail, i know that these overly fair, gold-speckled, blue eyes of mine will grab the unsuspecting female, and place her at a considerable disadvantage. Gradually, i've come to learn that it isn't just my baby blues that arrests these lasses in their forward progress, but in fact, it is the entirety of my face that seems to broadcast a signal that i'm to be trusted by every morsel of their being. The latest, and most profound example of this happened four months ago.

I live in city that attracts the trafficking of all kinds of materials, contraband and illegal in every respect. The most tragic and hardest to stomach of those items shuffled through this underworld processing plant is that of the human kind. I've seen entire rooms filled with row after row of indentured people, given the task of some quota to meet, only for that quota to help pay off the debt each individual and their attached family owed for their illegal transport to the "Land of the Free". However, i'd never had a firsthand experience with this seedy underbelly that slithers constantly under this metropolis that i love.

I was taking the East-side trains uptown, heading to a rather important meeting. The doors to the subway opened at 14th Street, inviting more passengers into our already crowded car. She stepped in, scanned the dozens of faces that occupied the subway, and of all of them, decided i was the one who would help her. She sat down next to me - forced her way, wedged her way into a seat next to me that didn't exist - and the first thing i remember thinking was how tiny she was. Everything about her was tiny: her head covered with long silver hair; her eyelids tight, thin, held together; her hands, which after a moment or two i noticed the piece of tattered cloth they held. She shoved the patch of fabric in my face, as if it was the most natural gesture in this dialogue between two people who didn't speak the same language. I looked at the piece of fabric, and saw that someone had written an address on it in permanent marker. They had written this address on rag, given it to this woman who clearly had just been cargo within the past 48 hours from all points East, and told her to make her own way to this place.

It took very little for her to hand over this textile message to me, with the hopes i'd be able to get her to the destination scribbled on it. I didn't recognize the address, nor did i believe the train she was on would get her to where she needed to get. I turned to other passengers, asked them, showed them the fragment, looking for any advice as to how i could direct her to the right place. No one had any idea, or if they did, they refused to get involved.

I handed her back her tattered treasure map, and gestured to other people on the train that she should reach out to. She outright refused. She'd determined that of everyone on that subway car, i was the one who was going to get her to where she needed to go. Now, mind you, because i understood how she got into this country, this city (illegally), i wasn't necessarily motivated to see her deposited at this random address waving in my hand. Who knows what tortures or pressure lay before her. But, what's worse, i thought, than an old woman who's only words came from the Mandarin language to be floating around this big, bad city?

I eventually convinced her to follow me off the train, up some stairs and made her wait as i took her address scribbled across this torn cloth to a station agent who helped me figure out which train and train stop this little Chinese grandma needed. I didn't speak a single word of her tongue, nor did she speak mine. The only reason, i've concluded, that she attached herself to me was due to the calming, arresting qualities of my face.

I've reflected on this matter numerous times since it happened. Did i do the right thing? Should i have invested more energy and resources to make sure this woman made it okay? Why, why of all the people on that very crowded train did she make a bee-line to me? It leads to me to question some of my own interactions with the submissive females that have passed through my life. I understand that on the surface i appear like a very trustworthy, if not downright innocent, individual. No one would pin on me the dastardly acts i commit upon the feminine campus, and i wonder if this has been the same mind frame that operates in those young ladies who entrusted me to treat them with kindness and respect, based solely on the kind qualities of my visage. I wonder if this serves as a comfort and a sedative as they gradually allow the entrance of my other face - to allow it to come into clear, and unequivocally vivid focus.

The third person

It all starts with words. To be more precise, it starts with the reduction of them. I slowly remove certain words from my manner of speech, she responds, following my cue. Her tongue takes to the incision, and suddenly those bits of her vocabulary are off-limits. I strip her of more verbiage, just like i strip her of her clothes, of her identity, of her freedom.

Soon, the language organically evolves into me referring to her in the third person. She is still there in front of me, but dramatically diminished. The notion of "i" or "me", the possibility of autonomy, free thought, disappears. What remains is less. Minimal. A casing.

And she responds.

Her body becomes flush with warmth, tingles spray across the surface of her skin, and her head fills with light effluvium. I see her breathing take on different labors. I see her eyes widen and yet sharpen at the same point. A crest builds between us, drawing from my chest an apparition, summoning another dimension.

That's when It takes over. I take a step back, and It controls the flow.

The presence, the existence, the pause, the stranger, the unknown, the shadow, the flame.

This third person, thing, beast rushes over the object in front of It, overwhelming the microscopic bundle that sits in wait. It will devour the tiny creature.

consume

engulf

and enjoy

again and again

"...I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience."

J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction

"That again, that she is. She is that again. All that is that, she is and will be and is expected to be, again and again. Beauty."

I walk this land, repeating this to myself. Over and over, wherever i go. One day, while walking along a country road, i encountered a farmer and his pig. This was no ordinary pig, i was to learn, unless you expect most pigs to be the kind that sing - which some of those amongst us do, however we usually expect in the end, whether they sing or not that they will end up as bacon on the farmer's plate. Not this farmer. This farmer loved this pig. True, the farmer ate pork and true he had thought of eating this pig who was juicy and round and perfect in every piggy way. But above all of this, the farmer loved the singing. He listened to the pig singing, letting the pig sing whenever it wanted to. The pig loved singing above all else.

Well, on this day, the farmer was discussing a serious matter with the pig. You see, the pig had become restless and frightened. The pig knew that the farmer would never eat it but couldn't help take notice the farmer's taste for bacon, his longing for ham, and the agitation and terror were just too much to handle. So the pig was asking the farmer if it could leave. The farmer protested and tried to reassure the pig, but the pig had made up its mind.

The pig left to go live with people who never eat pigs. This would make the pig feel more at ease because it believed it signaled a respect they had for pigs he currently lacked. The farmer felt empty as he watched the pig leave, for the song had departed from his life. I turned to continue on my way along the country road, but not before offering my condolences to the farmer.

"That again that she is. She is that again. All that is that, she is and will be and is expected to be, again and again. Beauty."

A year or two later, i happened upon this farm again. I had expected it to be under a deep shadow, but to my surprise it was as vibrant a farm as when i'd first encountered it. The pig had apparently returned. The pig's new home turned out to be a disappointment. You see, the people there didn't avoid eating pig out of a respect for the animal, but refused to eat them because they found them to be filthy animals. They would not eat our pig, thankfully, but worse, they outright rejected its song - no matter how beautiful it sounded. They called the pig "swine" and sent it away. After many months of wandering, the pig came to a conclusion. It offered it to me that day:

The only way I can truly be happy is to find other pigs that sing. But, as I found, there are so few of them in this world, I fear I shall never find them. Since I see more pigs on this farm than anywhere else, I rejoined the farmer and hope that one day, I will not be alone on the farm.

"That again that she is. She is that again. All that is that, she is and will be and is expected to be, again and again. Beauty."

Donne

NEGATIVE LOVE.

by John Donne




I NEVER stoop'd so low, as they

Which on an eye, cheek, lip, can prey ;


Seldom to them which soar no higher

Than virtue, or the mind to admire.

For sense and understanding may

Know what gives fuel to their fire ;

My love, though silly, is more brave ;

For may I miss, whene'er I crave,


If I know yet what I would have.

If that be simply perfectest,

Which can by no way be express'd

But negatives, my love is so.

To all, which all love, I say no.

If any who deciphers best,

What we know not—ourselves—can know,


Let him teach me that nothing. This

As yet my ease and comfort is,

Though I speed not, I cannot miss.

Revealer

I traveled with my girl over last weekend, leaving the city to celebrate a chum's birthday with a few hundred of his friends and relatives. The interesting thing about this gentleman, as is the case with a good number of relationships in my life, is that there is no rational reason for why we have such strong camaraderie. We are polar opposites. He is the East coast to my Western Mountain boy. But, somehow, we get along incredibly well. Most of the time we spend in eachother's company occurs one on one or with our respective partners. On the occasions that either of us have a gathering that involves our autonomous and separate collection of friends, an invitation will get extended to the other. Should the person accept the invite, they will come into a situation where they are surrounded by people they don't know, and largely cannot relate to. Such is the case this past weekend.

My girl, dressed in her newest vintage red polka-dot halter dress, and i arrived at the party and realized we did not know a solitary soul, minus the birthday boy (and his wife). We mingled. We chit-chatted. We jabbed. All of it completely meaningless. Anyone could've played my head-nodding part in the conversations i partook because the subjects never rose above the level of small talk. An hour passed, and i found myself exhausted (from the effort it took for me to show i cared about the stress this person experienced from maintaining his second home in the Berkshires) , and completely disinterested in pursuing any vein of dialogue. Only until the last guests left, and i had exquisite solitude with my host, did i find my spirits fueled and firing.

On the ride back into the city, i gave this much reflection. Was it snobbery on my part? Was it elitism? I didn't think so. I've had conversations with complete strangers on the subway that washed my soul with warmth. The solitary unifier amongst all of my most profound relationships is my ability to find a comfort at revealing and living out some aspect of myself. If i am clammed up, disconnected from myself, or conceal my basic properties, i grow numb to the exchange.

This principle comes shining through in my interactions with my friend K. When we gather, i will note the commencement of our appointment, and then four hours later, i will again glance at my watch as perplexion overcomes me at the expanse of time. We converse on so many subjects (most recently his purchase of a leather hood for his girl) that draw out of me a ribbon of stimulation for me to constantly chew on, i find i lose my perception of passing time. In fact, when you establish a profound connection with someone, when you reveal and offer yourself, you momentarily slip out of the gulf stream of time. In that instant, you feel connected to the universe.

That's what "The Lustful Quality" accomplishes for me. At any moment, when i face a vapid suction of beauty that this world so frequently presents, i gain comfort in knowing, that coming here, i can allow the mechanisms that i've formed inside of me to affect my civilized reaction to the ugliness a reprieve. Instead, i'm able to express myself while tuning into the harmony that runs through all of us (and that is so frequently distorted and overshadowed by all the noise our psyches endure).

We all, at the end of our line, want to feel connected. The sensation of connectedness gives us value, like we serve a purpose in all of this screaming, dryer-tumbling chaos. Like our life isn't just a meaningless passage of time. No one, after all, wants to feel meaningless.