Drop

Drop sucks monkey balls.

I’ve never sucked monkey balls. I’ve never had contact with monkey balls. Fuck, I’ve been to the zoo, but I’ve never actually seen monkey balls. Monkeys at the zoo seem to get particularly modest when I visit their house. I wonder if they know I’m a pastor….

Anyway, this isn’t really about monkeys. Or their balls.

It’s about drop.

And drop is some hardcore bad stuff.

I didn’t experience drop after my first experience. The aftercare provided to me by the top was phenomenal. The follow-up a few days later was also super important in keeping me level. And, you know, I went to my bossy-boss and said, “Hey, head pastor of our church, let’s talk, because I like to be beaten. A lot. And I need to get some feedback on the wiggy-feeling-things going on and how I live authentically and with integrity and in relationship with my still-very-new-still-very-much-in-the-exploration-phase partner who might have a different understanding and definition of sex than I do, so….”

Process. Process. Process. It’s what I’m good at. It grounds me. It allows me to integrate an experience into my self-understanding and be okay with the experience, regardless of the positive or negative aspects that may been inherent therein.

Because I hadn’t experienced drop after this incredible first experience that was everything I could ever possibly have wanted in a first experience with a top who was everything anyone could want in a top as a newbie or well-seasoned recipient of pain, it never occurred to me that drop would be any kind of an issue when I experienced the Hot Seat.

Wikipedia’s BDSM Glossary page defines subdrop as “A physical condition, often with cold- or flu-like symptoms, experienced by a submissive after an intense session of BDSM play. This can last for as long as a week, and is best prevented by aftercare immediately after the session.”

So, I experienced drop after my time in the Hot Seat. It was not at all accompanied by flu- or cold-like symptoms, however. As one friend of mine put it, “It’s like hyper-intensified PMS.” I’ll trust her on this because I tend not to be highly reactive to the hormonal changes incumbent with PMS. I was, however, extremely highly reactive in my first subdrop experience.

An Aside: Apparently tops can also drop, and the experience is, fittingly enough, referred to as topdrop. Not being a top, I cannot confirm this, nor can I detail for you what it might be like. Wikipedia does not list topdrop in its BDSM glossary.

No flu- or cold-like symptoms. Bad. Bad. Badness. All kinds of badness. And without warning!

It was just a little electro-stim. WITH MY PANTS ON! No nakedness. No genital contact or stimulation. Just happy zappy over my arms and back and scalp. Not a big deal, right? In the immediate aftermath, I was feeling all energetically relaxed and happy.

My partner and I had discussed having phone sex later that night. The joys of living some 800 miles apart. When he called, I was on cloud nine. I had been looking forward to hearing his voice and connecting intimately and having a orgasm while he talked me through all the salacious things he wants to do to my body in that incredibly sexy basso profundo voice of his. Oh, shivers!

But it didn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. I was a desert. No worries, I thought. It happens to everyone, right? At some point? I mean…doesn’t it? My partner and I finished our conversation and went to our respective beds to sleep alone. He was incredibly understanding.

The next day I awoke feeling all fresh and happy and a little desirous, but no chance to do anything about it, because my partner was at work, and I certainly did not want to send him a text and ask for permission to have an orgasm when he was busy earning a living and whatnot.

No worries! I got up and after yoga and meditation, I turned my eyes to being productive myself. I wrote about my experiences in the Hot Seat and all the things I loved about, assuming that my genital desert the night before was behind me.

Then, I kind of hit a wall. I had a low-grade headache, mild depression hit, my attention span dropped to all but nonexistent. “I’m just tired,” I told myself, as I went about my routine, doing the laundry, baking gluten-free communion loaves, using the leftover egg yolks to produce two coconut cream pies that made three grown men weep with joy.

Later that night, my partner gave me permission to have an orgasm. As we played from afar, I just couldn’t get into the space I needed. “It’s never going to happen,” I bemoaned in a text.

“What’s never going to happen?” he asked.

“An orgasm,” I replied. “That’s it. It’s over. I’m a desert. I can’t get wet. I can’t stay wet. I’ll never cum again,” I sent in rapidly escalating frustration.

“It’s unlikely you’ll never cum again,” he wrote back. “You’re just stressed out. And worrying about being dry is making you dry. Relax. Seriously. We’ll take a couple days off. It’ll be fine. You’ll see.”

We went to bed.

I attended church the following morning, feeling relaxed, happy, confident, well rested; though I still had a headache. All was well until the middle of the service when I just felt a wave of panic rise within me. Meditation quelled it.

I spent the rest of Sunday in bed.

Monday came bright and early. What is with that particular idiom? Monday comes at the same time regardless. It can’t come early. It always arrives precisely at midnight. And I get up a bit before the sun, so it can’t exactly come bright. Regardless….

Monday morning I awoke and meditated. I got ready for the day and left the house.

Heading to my local coffee shop, I missed my exit and added two miles and five minutes to my commute. I started to panic that someone might take my usual seat and prevent me getting my work done in the area where I like to work.

Tendrils of panic like the wisps of fog rising from the river and burning off in the morning sun began to rise in my body. A deep churning in the pit of my stomach and racing thoughts about what I would do and how I could possibly manage to work if someone were in my seat at the coffee shop and maybe I should skip it and go somewhere else as I was going to be five minutes late, but there’s unlimited wifi all day unlike the other place that limits you to a single thirty minute session during their peak hours and sure that place is larger and a bit more spacious and sunnier but I really like not having to figure out what to do or hear the noise of lunch orders and okay, I’ll just turn into the parking lot of the coffee shop I want to go to anyway and I’ll just figure it out if someone is in my preferred chair.

All for naught. The coffee shop is void of other customers. I set up my station, get my coffee and settle down to work.

And I can’t. So, I play games and piss around on the internet for half an hour.

My partner sends me a text. “How are you this morning?” he inquires.

How am I? I’m not really sure. I’m “Overwhelmed” I realized.

“What does that look like?” he writes back.

I immediately burst into tears and sob uncontrollably as I write back. “I don’t know what’s wrong. But something is wrong. It’s just wrong and I can’t figure out what it is. I’m totally fine. Really. Completely fine, but something isn’t right and it’s awful and it’s worse because I can’t figure it out. If I could just figure out what’s wrong, I could deal with it, but I can’t because I’m find and nothing’s wrong, but its all just wrong,” I explain.

“Subdrop,” he explains. “Treat yourself kindly today. Go for a walk in nature. Eat ice cream. I’ll check in later.”

Ooooooh! Yes. Subdrop. It’s not at all what I was told it would be like. It’s not like the flu or a cold. It’s like college!

Throughout the first half of my college career, I suffered from a debilitating and undiagnosed panic disorder. It started out small, a panic attack here, a panic attack there. Nothing major. I would suddenly feel overwhelmed and terrified and disconnected; like I was inside of a bubble and all sound and images were slightly distorted and people could touch me through the bubble but they couldn’t. I couldn’t breathe and all I could think was, “I have to get out right now,” and I’d go tearing from wherever I was and make my way to my dorm where I’d curl up in my bed and sob and cry with overwhelming fear, because something was WRONG but nothing was wrong, until I couldn’t cry anymore and then I’d fall asleep and toss and turn until the next morning.

At first.

As my disorder progressed, I reached the point where I was having fifty panic attacks a day, I could barely leave my dorm room and I was not sleeping. At all. Like ever. On the eighth day of sleeplessness, I began to experience visual hallucinations. I don’t much care for hallucinations.

That was what subdrop was like for me. A slightly scaled back panic attack coupled with an inability to get and stay sexually lubricated and anorgasmia.

A little before noon, having finished my third cup of coffee, I packed up my belongings and headed downtown for a walk through the park. I petted a dog who was out for a run and approached with tail wagging and tongue hanging out. I sat by the fountain read a book. I meditated and breathed in the beauty of the day. I walked through the downtown area and delighted in the hustle and bustle of a metropolitan area, feeling “normal” for the first time in days and recalling why I love city living and how I wish I could stay forever in this place, and why I need to head downtown more often.

I walked to the local gelato shop and ordered a medium dish of half pistachio mascarpone and half chocolate gelato so dark it made my tongue hurt to eat it.

I felt human, centered, myself again.

My partner asked me how the ice cream was. I told him it was perfection, just what I needed, all was right with the world of me again. Then I apologized to him for the whole debacle. “I’m so sorry you had to take care of me today. I know that’s not what you were expecting.”

“It’s okay,” he told me. “I know you’re not normally like this. I didn’t expect subdrop to hit you quite so hard. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to suggest that you not participate in any more demos until I can be physically present with you. I don’t mind if you go to events, but I don’t want you to experience drop like this again and the best way to prevent it is adequate aftercare, which I can’t give you from 800 miles away.”

I agreed.

I mean, the reality is the only way to absolutely guarantee that drop never happens again is to never again play. But that would be the spiritual equivalent of an amputation and I simply cannot do that.

In some ways, it reminds me of a dear friend from seminary whose mother had an incredibly severe case of bipolar disorder that eventually led to her death. My friend has, for years, suspected that he might have inherited the trait, to a much lesser degree. He experiences highs and lows a bit more intensely than most people, it seems. There are days he gets out of bed and struggles to be productive. There are days when he gets more done than most. None of it, however, interferes with his ability to function in daily life. On the low days, the world is just cast in gray pall.

“I was talking to my therapist once,” he told me. “I told her, ‘To be completely honest with you, the lows are awful. They are bad. They are really bad. And sure, medication might fix them. But it would also even out the highs. And the highs are good. They are really good. And I’m willing to pay the price of the lows for the pleasure of the highs.”

Yep.

Subdrop sucks monkey balls.

But it’s a small price to pay for the pleasure of a good beating or a happy zappy or any of the other extraordinary delights I have yet to experience.