“You’ve changed so much.”

I began to remove my clothes and he came up to me, pulling them off my body more quickly than I could.  I let him, watched him, unafraid.  No nervousness this time.

7 months and 4 days had passed since my first public scene with FM.  Really, that long since my first public scene with anyone other than my partner.  It was at my first big event.  I’d met him and felt something…Kindness?  Acceptance? I’m not sure, but I was brand new and I asked him to play.  It was an incredible experience that both terrified and exhilarated me.  I learned so much in that one scene about pain, about communication, about my body, and my tears. 7 months 4 days since he’d touched me…

I was thankful for his hands on my skin once more.  It had been so long since I felt his fingertips brush against my sides, tummy, and breasts. 

I call him Floggerman to my friends, or FM for short, when I write.  Or sometimes I just use his name, if I’m in close company.  FM and I lost touch for awhile after our first scene, and I assumed that was just the way of things.  My relationship with Red had continued evolving and took me places I never expected.  Some of it was beautiful, some of it terrifying.  All of it challenging. 

I met FM’s eyes, held my breath, and smiled.

My body, through play and experimentation, learned to receive pain, consider and evaluate it, and release it back into the universe.  I learned how to experience pleasure.  To believe I deserved it.  To revel in it, and then also release that back to where it came from.  This too shall pass…

His hands came down hard on my breasts: slaps, backhands, punches, in quick succession.  I screamed, surprised.  I remember smiling.  I might have laughed.  “How I’ve missed you!”  I don’t remember who said this part…

I learned to appreciate what is in front of me with full awareness that it may well eventually be gone and something else will present itself.  Physical pain and pleasure is no different than the emotional stuff. 

He turned me around and pushed me against the large wooden star.  One of the prettiest pieces of dungeon furniture I’ve ever seen.  My skin felt delicious against the cool wooden beams and I leaned my head into the hardness of it. 

He pulled my hair back, my face forced upward, and he dragged the falls of the first flogger against my cheeks and lips.  The yummy leather caressed me, and yes…I opened my mouth, sticking out my tongue just a bit, and tasted his tools as they hit all of my senses at once. 

I learned that disappointment stings, and betrayal thuds. 

The beating began then.  It wasn’t unlike other floggings in many ways.  There was rise and fall, a fantastic warm-up that lasted just long enough.  I sassed him and was my beautiful bratty self until he reminded me who was in charge of the scene.  Oh how I like being reminded!

I learned to laugh at myself and my situation.  Laugh at the “life or death” panic that sets in over things which are neither life nor death, and are always temporary.

I was reduced to tears, exalted by tears, many times in this scene.  He told me later he enjoyed being a puppet master, making me cry when he wanted, then stepping in, wrapping his arms around me, quieting my sobs and reminding me how to breathe, calming me…

Only so he could start all over again.  I handed him my puppet strings and let him dance me across myself.  Let him guide and control and overpower. I would revive my spirit and come back at him with teeth and snarl and he would quickly remind me of my place. 

I learned to love the bruises and to touch carefully the tender memories that still bring tears.  I learned to stand tall and round my shoulders and present a solid surface on which to be hit.  I learned to do this in love, too, only presenting my tender parts after they’ve demonstrated true aim on the fleshy bits.    I learned that sometimes too much really is too much and no one else gets to decide when that is.  Today might be a high pain, risky play, heavy play kind of day.  Tomorrow I may need rabbit’s fur and a cuddle pile.  And that’s okay.

Leaning in at one moment, he declared, “I win” and I knew he was right. 

A moment later, he leaned in to tell me “that was a fucking cheesy line” and we laughed at the truth of both statements.  This was our dance: Sass and tears, breath and laughter, over and over until my flesh burned, my eyes burned.

I remember hitting the ground at one point and he came to me, checked, then allowed me to claw and climb my way slowly back up the star, back to my feet. 

I learned that my safety is a big fucking deal and I can safe-word an entire relationship if I need to.

“You have changed so much.”

Those words again brought new tears and I relived the past 7 months.  I played through all of my perceived sins and mistakes regarding this relationship I’d lost.  Was I too insecure? Was I too needy? And with each thud of leather across my body I answered those questions.  I did the best I knew how to do, and now I know better.  Then, I was young and new.  I’d relied on a child to guide me and we’d both gotten very lost. 

I ran through the images in my head, over and over with each hit of leather: Smaller, prettier girls covered in his rope, his body melted into the bodies of a hundred others.  Me, sitting alone in a corner of a dungeon, knowing no one, watching him with everyone but me.  On my knees, his feet beneath my lips.  The service I gave.  The fear and drowning love.  The lies.  The promises broken, repaired, broken again like a shattered vase pieced back together over and over.  We’d run out of glue and had lost most of the pieces.  The water escaped. The flowers died. 

I learned that good scenes, like good love affairs, have rise and fall; crescendo and decrescendo. 

The image of a friend’s face questioning my sanity and my fear that I’d lost it.  The monster that appeared with no warning…

I learned I am beautiful, whether standing tall and proud, make-up perfect, hair flowing…or curled in a ball, sobbing, begging, aching.

Each hit of the flogger into my body beat these images, thoughts, questions to my surface until I let them go in a wail of agony.  I screamed and sobbed and lost my balance, drunk and unstable in this place I craved.  I rested my tired, broken body against the wood.  FM stepped in again, more than once, and wrapped me up in him, continued to remind me how to breathe.  I was reminded of my ability to control this pain, to control my reactions.  FM guided me through this process, the physical and emotional.  I’d regain composure, nod, and he’d let go.  And we’d do this some more. 

I learned to ride the waves.  I learned to feel what I feel and not hide it if I don’t want to.  If learned to communicate and assert, submit and be beautiful in it. 

I rode this wave with FM, this thing we created in this space, he and I.  I surrendered myself to what he gave me and in return I told him my story.

He read my body, my sobs, my laughter.  He learned how I had grown, the fires I’d walked through.  He sang my story back to me a thousand times that night and I somehow managed to walk away at the end. 

The scene ended as it did the first time.  When my body had enough and my soul had paid its penance, I simply fell to the floor.  And he was there. 

“You’ve changed so much since the last time.” 

Love, you have no idea.  But then again…I guess you do. 

FM has become one of my closest friends since that first scene now nearly a year ago.  He is one of my safe places…where I go when I need honesty and compassion, wisdom, or a good laugh.

Thank you, FM, for this.  For your love and friendship. And for all that is to come.