Chapter 4: Dove explores DC

Over coffee with Sandra, who seemed in an exceptionally happy space, Dove recounted, “Our relationship, long distance as it was, kept evolving. Eventually, Howard sent me tickets to come visit him.” Dove blushed a little. “Did I just blush?”

“Yes, honey, you did. I’ll bet it was for a good reason.”

“I’d never flown far, certainly across the continent. I’d barely been outside the province of British Columbia. My trip here was only my second transcontinental one. Visiting Vancouver was huge, but I did it mostly because I had to take Dawn to the medical school hospital there. Her sperm donor didn’t help in the slightest. As I learned the rules of social work, I had his parental rights terminated. For that, he tried to shoot me again.”

“The flights were screwed up. He met me at National Airport after the normal closing time, about midnight. About the first thing that I asked him when we got to his place was “want a blowjob?” He thanked me, and said that really was reassuring -- but more than else, he wanted to cuddle me.”

“When we woke the next morning, he told me, in a rough dom voice, to lie back and take it -- and that he expected me to be multiply orgasmic. He licked and kissed me everywhere, and I don’t think I ever came as many times in my life, because I felt his affection and enthusiasm.

“Sandra, Howard, I have an idea. You’ve both experienced how Jill gets this otherworldly connection?” Both nodded. “I wonder if she would enjoy the heel fetish play? For that matter, I’ve heard her wondering about sex toys like dildoes, which variously can just be a tool, or can have the mystery of a fetish.”

“I think I heard Lucy and Germaine talking about that. We can extend it to include Jill. Maybe that will help Jill with her sexuality. I fully understanding that sexuality is about the people to whom one is attracted, not the acts, but I don’t want to worry about too much political correctness in terminology. I’ll simply say that I find Jill to be gender fluid--I don’t personally like the term genderqueer.

“Remember that traditional shamans can be gender fluid; I don’t know if that’s relevant here. The Cree, a band of which was near me when I was little, do have the idea of the two-spirit of multiple gender identities in one body. Their shaman might simply say that Jill is exploring and learning.” Jill smiled, in a way that showed her face relaxed.

“I won’t go into everything that followed, for the next couple of weeks, but I had an epiphany. I had certainly had good sex before. I had friendship. But I had never been cherished. That’s what he did for me, and I learned a new level of love.”

“He also played tour guide. At one point, I told him that I was amazed by the number of monuments and their ostentatiousness. It was very un-Canadian.

“He did point out that I had never been to Ottawa, but agreed that monuments there were much smaller.” She laughed. “At that point, he annoyed me because he’s supposed to be an American who knows little about Canada. He started making topical Canadian political jokes about Senator Stockwell Day, pointing out that he had created the Canadian Conservative Reformed Alliance Party before checking the acronym. It didn’t help when a different leaflet spelled Alliance as Appliance, and he asked if a toaster came with party registration.”

“What do dominance and pain, which I understand are separable, mean to you?”

“Excellent question, with no simple answer. I think it began when I had an intuition of power exchange, even as an exploited kid. Sure, men could force me to do things, but if they wanted my cooperation, that started to give me some power. I could then exchange it, to my benefit, but the abusers actually confirmed, in my mind, that the power was ultimately mine.

“I realized that for me, pain and pleasure intermingled. Pain is something I sensed, of course, but I sometimes could be at choice if I let it hurt me. In some sexual contexts, a particular sensation could be painful or pleasurable -- Howard is very careful not to damage me, because I can enjoy rough anal more than is safe for me.

“Oh, this isn’t strictly one-way. Howard doesn’t think of receiving pain as erotic, but he does transform some stimuli, which might be painful under other circumstances, as pain. For example, he likes to have a stiletto heel pressed into his thigh, which triggers a fetish. If the heel slips and starts to scratch him, he’ll yell OUCH!”

“Thanks, Dove. I will remember that, since I know he’s looked at my heels with interest, and, for that matter, I really feel sexy when wearing extreme ones. Without artificial modesty, my legs are good enough that I don’t need their shaping effect, so I wear the higher ones because I like them. It sounds like, though, that I should try explicit heel play.

“Maybe that also means I need to spend more time with toys, and use shoes as toys.” Dove leaned back and waved her heeled foot at Sandra. Both laughed.

“Interesting, Dove, that you speak of using submission to reduce the pain of hypervigilance. From what I’ve heard of Jill, her stresses are schizophrenia, not PTSD, but I wonder if even roleplaying submission might be relaxing for her?

“As a clinician, Sandra, that’s an interesting idea. I should discuss that with her. I could even begin by submitting to her.”