Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Catch-Up after Con (Me, Sam, Rubi)

So I haven't posted much lately. I haven't had anything in particular I wanted to say. But I feel like I'm supposed to apologize to the invisible internet presence or something. Hey, what can I say, I've been busy. Last weekend I went to a convention. It's a convention for kinky folks, and we had a blast. This blog isn't for discussing the con specifically, but I want to put down some of the interactions it created for my system. My jaw hurts from Sam being out so much; I don't realize how wide she holds our mouth until the soreness kicks in. But I know Rubi and Kiara got a lot of 'out' time as well.

<SAM> It was really an ideal weekend for me - lots of people to meet, tease, and play with. I wrote FREE HUGS on my belly and wore clothes that would show it off - and I got lots of random hugging, both from friends and strangers. And got to bite on several hot guys. And received some nibbling as well that was oh-so-sexy. I don't think I was overly bratty to anyone who didn't enjoy it this year. Last year I did overdo it with one friend, and had to apologize to him. Poor stick-in-the-mud fellow. I got the kind of play that really revs my engine, and got to share that scene with someone I like an awful lot. Okay, there wasn't as much sex this weekend as I was hoping, but there was a ton of fun.

<RUBI> Okay, so my scene on the final night of the con was damned hot. There's not many people we trust to handle playing full-out, but I finally got to tangle with one of them. I've so missed him; it's been a few months since we've played. And it didn't hurt that a couple of hot burly guys came over to help out making sure we got all the space we needed. Yeah, nothing wrong with being surrounded by strong good-looking men.

<ME> Kiara doesn't want to write about her time at con, but she did get some fun. I missed several of the events that would have been great for her, though. She didn't even get to color anything. But there was lots of cuddling available. Counselor and I attended together a roundtable on Mental Health & Kink. I guess the only downside I can see from a multi point of view was Jarett. One of the people we rode down with is someone that has been flirting with Jarett a little, and I was hoping he'd be willing to come out and interact with her more, but it just didn't happen.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Watch Out, I Bite (Sam)

Yes, I bite... literally... and frequently. I love to bite, and chew, and nuzzle, and lick. I'm not the only one; M and Rubi and even little Kiara will bite. I guess you could say we have an oral fixation. The mouth is a great sensory intake. When you take someone into your mouth, you receive all kinds of input. The smell of the person you're biting. The taste on your tongue, the consistency of the flesh under your teeth. And many people make the most delicious noises when they're being bitten. And maybe wriggle in your grasp while you're biting. The only sense that's left out is sight. It's a very intense thing to do with someone.

And there are so many different things you can say with a bite. There are playful nips, little quick bites to tease and flirt and to stir the attention of someone you're playing with. Defensive nips say 'ow, watch out'. Nuzzles with light bites let you relish the attention you're sharing with someone. Licks and small bites for teasing. Locking down on a bite can be a challenge, or a response to a challenge. Growling bites say 'this is mine'. Long lingering shoulder bites to make someone melt down into a pool of sensory overload. Hard vicious bites to defend yourself and discourage someone from messing with you again. Gnawing bites to bring comfort and security. Or just a lock to hold onto something while your hands are busy elsewhere. Punishment bites to discourage bad behavior. And sometimes, chewing and sucking bites to leave a mark just because you can.

We've been exploring a much more feral space lately, as a group, and biting helps us get there quickly. We've been feeling out different kinds of animals, and spending time really paying attention to other people that identify as ferals. Several of the Motel folk identify as various types of cats. We also have a hawk, a cow, and several bears. All of whom appeal to me/us, but isn't really a great fit. Then we got to studying coyotes. Pack animals, very similar in behavior to wolves, but more playful and less serious about status and threat. Coyotes like to hang around larger predators like bears and cats, and are more comfortable in urban settings than other animals are. They'll even mingle with domestic dogs or wolves easily.

When we found a feral space that we could slip into, we thought it would be like shifting into another personality - here's the six people, Silent One, and the coyote. But it doesn't work that way. It's closer to the headspace we slide into when taking a beating. Our entire group-mind shifts into a world that has a different feel, a different set of rules. It's kind of like starting up a video game, and you have multiple characters to run - the rules are different in this game-world, but you still have the same group of people running it. When I'm running our beast (and remember this is Sam talking now), I'm a playful beast, nipping and teasing. Kiara curls up small and gnaws to comfort herself. Rubi's mean in animal form too, biting hard. Counselor is still motherly and takes care of the other critters in our pack.

Recently M's daughter started a conversation with her/us about biting people. Turns out she's a biter too. No surprise there, I suppose...

Friday, April 1, 2011

Let's NOT Go To The Movies (Me, Lynn)

So it seems that watching movies may not be the best activity to promote internal peace for me. Earlier this week, I went to the movie theatre, and ended up having a pretty major mental break. Of course, it wasn't just the movie. Background first - a couple of my friends are about to get divorced. It's running fairly amicably, so far. They decided to go to the movie together, for some reason. Her... boyfriend, for lack of a better term, was going too. So when the husband called and invited me, I got the impression he might need someone there as a buffer, so I had to go. Well, I dragged along my boyfriend, and several other people showed up as well.

So there were several factors going into this thing - the tension between the divorcing couple, the tension between her boyfriend and her husband, and several people there that I had never met. Also, I had had a horrible day at work, so I was already feeling a bit tense and unhappy for myself. And I had had to reschedule plans already made for the evening in order to attend, which will often make me grumpy.

Added to that, my boyfriend expressed some concerns about me watching this particular movie. We were going to see Sucker Punch. If you haven't seen it/heard about it, it's got a lot of surreal qualities and abuse themes and it's dark and weird. And partly takes place in a mental institution. Remember my problems watching Dragonfly because it was in a hospital with the surreal feeling? Yeah, much much worse. So he was right; this was not a movie I should have seen.

Getting through the movie was a little twitchy, but not horrible. But when it was over, I just had a mental break. The last things I remember clearly were walking down the hallway at the theatre clutching my coke in front of me like a life preserver, and the clock in my truck reading 9:41, and a feeling like I needed to cry. The next thing I remember really clearly is going to work the next morning.

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This is Counselor, now, and I'll have to write the remainder of this post for M, as she wasn't participating in the rest of the evening. The movie made us - as a sytem - profoundly uneasy. It was too violent for Kiara, enough sex to attract Sam, enough violence to attract Rubi, girls in sexy outfits that tickled Jarett's attention, and a clinical setting that both interested me and made Silent One twitch. The movie characters seemed to dissociate between one reality and the next rather freely, which triggered our system quite severely.

When we left the theater, M had already made plans to go to a friend's house afterward. So her boyfriend left, and everyone else left, leaving her/us alone in the parking lot. We sat in our vehicle for a while trying to either cry and get it out of our system or recover, but that wasn't happening. So we went driving for a while; taking the longest possible way our friend's house. We went approximately an hour out of our way, and were still quite shaky when we arrived. Sleep was out of the question at that point, so pizza was ordered and a kids' movie was put on. Kiara finally emerged for most of the movie, and through her we were able to eventually sleep.

I am considering putting a hold on all movie-watching for a while, as this makes two movies that have triggered negative episodes lately. However, all that does is push off dealing with the issues. So the alternative is to wach some potentially triggering movies, deliberately setting off any negative associations, with some controls in place. Having a kids' movie handy to watch afterward seems to be a valid mechanism for overwriting the negative experience. I'd like to have at least two people with us that can deal with any alters that emerge, and watch the suspect movies early in the day when there is plenty of time to recover before bedtime.

It has been several days now since the movie, and we're still a bit weepy and on edge. We've not slept well all week, but it's difficult to determine which is cause and which effect. So we'll push through. We'll spend as much time as possible with positive people around us, and ask for some compassionate moments with those people. And we'll stay busy as much as we can. If things go really well, perhaps we can get a good night's sleep - or two nights, even. Then we'll see if our moods even out.