dear jc,
There is so much I want to say about the last few emails. I am very short for time right now so I will have to wait. I just want you to know I know exactly how you feel right now. Those emotions are so conflicting. Doc & I had a conversation similar not long ago, I will send them to you if it is okay with him.
I am still spent. I am not sure yet how I am going to face this day. I am sure I will compartmentalize, as I tend to do, and then deal with the emotions later today when I have time. Never in a million years would I have thought I would have been effected this way. I am on foreign ground here & not too comfortable with it.
Doc, Thank you again for this weekend. Words fail me.
quietly,
Cat
Thank you, Cat. I am glad our time together was good for you.
JC, I have some thoughts about your reaction.
When we take this journey, we tap into some very primal emotions. We flout our own revulsion to pain, the essential revulsion of any feeling person toward anyone's pain, especially the pain of another person. You are supposed to be worried and to be ashamed.
You are seeing first-hand how Cat and I negotiated her final punishment. When you said you wanted to come to Houston to get the strapping of a lifetime, I told you, hold on, it’s not that simple! You may think you want it; but you have to earn it, we have to build up toward it, not knowing if you will get there or not till we've actually tried. You have now been witness to the final stages of that process, the most critical ones.
I'm going to mention again what you both know, which is that not everyone wants this intense a punishment. And not everyone who wants it has the courage and emotional stability to pursue it. JC, you already have a reasonable sense of what a powerful experience this was; you've listened to the sound files and heard the despair, the agony, and the desperation that Cat endured. This is emotional dynamite. Dynamite can do either good or harm; it can cause injury, just as it can break through a rock wall to permit us to travel to the other side.
So I believe that at least some of your shame is because you are violating the social taboo against pain. I believe that you feel a measure of worry as well, because even though you know the happy ending (Cat has already asked me if she can come for a third visit), you know we were taking risks. There are good reasons why most people who enjoy a little kink in their sex lives steer well clear of this level of play. We aim to climb the mountain so wisely that the ever-present shame, fear, and danger do us no harm. We must be ever-aware of them or they will consume us. It's no sport for the weak of heart.
That's yin, the zone of darkness.
Yang is the ecstasy, Yang is the utter fulfillment we aspire to and can achieve.
My mission in these last few years has been to find people with whom I can take these hazardous journeys and by dint of hard work, experience, and dumb luck, find our way to those sublime heights and linger there a moment before we return to reality. We bring back to our jobs, schools, families, morning commutes and all the rest a measure of satisfaction that few can achieve.
These abstract words mask another reality of this experience: it is sexually exciting to a degree that few people can imagine. For us, to whom pain and loss of control are aphrodisiacs, this is the mother lode, this is our sexual core. This forbidden sexuality can be ours, we can drink of it abundantly. This is the frantic excitement you felt yesterday. It doesn't stay frantic forever, but when you are there, and you can satisfy it, it's wonderful.
Doc