A Very Long Day

The Musician is with me wherever I go.

This is not a problem. I do not wish to run or hide from his presence. At times, however, acknowledging him and explaining the role he plays in my life can be taxing.

At these times, I usually know to end my day after any such conversations.

Except yesterday when I didn't.

My best friend was in town and wanted to meet Doc. So, the three of us had dinner Thursday night. Friday morning, I met up with her for breakfast. After which, I had coffee with the pastor of the church I've been attending and which I have been serving in the capacities in which I am able.

This pastor wanted to know as much of my story as I was comfortable sharing. His interest had been piqued when I extended my tearful apology and turned down the offer to read the morning scripture one Sunday a few weeks back. "The latter half of Mark 5 is the one scripture I cannot read," I told him.

So, this pastor and I spent a couple of hours in a loud coffee shop talking about the life and direction of the church, talking about my story and how it intersects with Mark 5, talking about my interests and how I can get more involved with the community in the future as time permits.

Then, I had lunch with my best friend before she began her 4 hour drive home. I had a relatively terrible lunch with her in an extremely loud restaurant that left my body feeling gross. I am convinced that something I ate had been cross-contaminated. Blech.

After lunch I headed to one grocery store because they had a decent price on whole, boneless, New York strip and I wanted one. I returned to Doc's, got the steak put away, started a crossword puzzle and put on a kettle for tea, hoping to settle my stomach.

Then, Doc and I headed out to a couple of other grocery stores for things that cannot be found elsewhere. The first store was loud and crowded. The second more so. I also needed to mail a package to Ichthy and buy a book of stamps.

While we made our way through the store, I took hold of Doc's shirt tail. He asked if I was okay, and I explained that while I was fine, I was feeling a bit anxious and would likely be a bit more physically engaged while we shopped, if he was okay with that. He indicated he was.

At the check-out, I looked at the Customer Service desk and groaned with resignation and increased anxiety at the length of the line. Doc suggested I head that way and he would take care of getting the groceries so that we could make our escape as quickly as possible.

I stood in line, occasionally checking on Doc's progress. When it was my turn at Customer Service, I told the woman what I needed. She weighed the package and grabbed a book of stamps. While she attended to that, I looked back at the check-out. Doc was nowhere to be seen.

I began to panic, searching frantically for him. It is not that I was afraid Doc had left and forgotten me. It was that I was afraid I would be swallowed whole by the anxiety I was feeling, and Doc was the one solid thing I could look to and touch and know that I was still on stable ground.

With a deep sigh of relief, I saw him standing to the side of the Customer Service counter patiently waiting for me. I paid for my stamps and we left.

Once back at Doc's house, we put away the groceries we would not be using that night and I began dinner: mushroom risotto with crispy bacon. God help me, it was a miracle.

As we sat down to dinner, I stopped. Everything seemed to hit me at once. I was exhausted. Worn out. Done for the day. I wanted to skip dinner, curl up in bed and cry into my pillow.

Doc asked if I was okay.

This seems like a relatively easy question. It seems pretty straightforward. It seems like the kind of question that has a pretty simple answer: either a person is okay or they are not.

The question and its answer are infinitely more difficult than a simple yes or no.

I had had a long day. I was exhausted. I had talked about The Musician and been incredibly vulnerable with a new person in my life.

I had had a long day. I was exhausted. My mind was full of thoughts and I was feeling a lot of things, many of which I could not get a clear idea of and which I could not understand because I had had a long day and I was exhausted.

But apart from all of that, I was fine. There was nothing wrong. I was experiencing feelings and having thoughts.

I do not value feelings as much as most people I know. Feelings give us neither truth nor knowledge. They are fickle and insignificant most of the time. Feelings come at the behest of our thoughts and are unreliable as anything other than signposts.

I knew that all of things I was feeling and could not put words to were largely a result of thoughts I was thinking and could not clearly organize because I had had a long day and I was exhausted.

I knew as well that many of things I was feeling were amplified by exhaustion and anxiety and were a result of distorted thoughts I could not immediately correct because I had had a long day and I was exhausted.

And because I knew all of this and because I knew that in reality, outside of my unclear and disorganized thoughts which were feeding mysterious and hard to classify feelings, I was perfectly safe and content and quite happy, I spoke the truest words I could find in response to Doc's question: I'm fine.

And then I asked him why he had queried.

"You're very quiet and you have an incredibly pensive look on your face."

Doc scored extra points for his use of the word pensive.

But the anxiety only increased now that I was doing nothing and though the risotto was delicious and though hot, creamy, delicious, homemade and blissfully gluten-free food made my stomach feel better, I had a hard time getting through dinner because I was having an incredibly difficult time just swallowing.

After dinner, Doc and I sat down to watch a bit of television. Because of some technical difficulties, we popped in season 2 of Buffy. About 8 minutes in, I asked if he could pause for a bit. My anxiety had simply continued to build in intensity and I was beginning to feel as though I had shards of glass embedded in my knuckles.

I asked if it was okay to take a shower. Sometimes running water helps. I sat on the shower floor, knees drawn to my chest, arms crossed on my knees, head on my forearms and cried and cried and cried while the water saturated my hair and ran down my back. When I could not cry anymore, I sat another moment, waiting for the shaking in my core to subside.

I got out of the shower, toweled off, threw on a several-sizes-too-large t-shirt and returned to Doc's side. After making sure I was feeling better, Doc turned Buffy back on and we finished the episode.

Technical problems now resolved, after Buffy, we watched John Oliver. In the midst of the episode I asked Doc if we could fuck when it over. He said yes.

So, after John Oliver, we headed to bed. I brushed my teeth. I flossed. I crawled naked into my side of the bed and waited while Doc brushed and flossed as well.

When Doc returned, we kissed. He touched me. But I was closed tight.

Doc kissed me and touched me and I couldn't accept it. I had nothing to offer in return. I did not want him to stop. I did not want to have sex with Doc. I wanted Doc to do sex to me. This was, quite evidently, not going to be satisfactory to Doc.

I could have said, "No." I could have asked him to stop at any point. Doc would have. He would not have been angry. He would not have even been disappointed. I would have cried and cried and cried. And Doc would have held me and cradled me and cared for me in that moment.

"Are you sure you're okay," Doc asked.

"Yes," I told him. Because really, I was. "Why do you ask?"

"You're reticent," he answered.

"You're really scoring big vocab points tonight," I told him.

"Because I'm using trisyllabic words?" he asked.

"Yes." And I kissed him and tried to invite him into my space. But my space was small and closed.

I tried but I could not get to the place or the moment where Doc existed. I tried to focus on the ways Doc touched me, caressed me, stroked me, kissed me. It was exactly what I wanted, it was exactly what I needed, and it was too far a distance between my brain and my skin - a chasm that could not be crossed.

I asked Doc if he wanted to fuck me and he said yes, but that he was would wait. I didn't want him to wait and invited him into my body.

He turned me over and took me from behind.

And I was in the wrong place. I began to cry.

Doc stopped. "Are you okay?" he asked again.

"I'm fine. It's okay," I said, my voice hitching.

"What's wrong?" Doc asked.

"Nothing," I told him. How could I explain?

Doc has read my vanilla blog. When we first started dating, I told a friend of mine how it was we met and how the relationship was going. I explained about how respectful Doc had been in regards to what he'd learned when read my vanilla blog.

My friend responded:

I pray this will continue in absolutely the right direction and that the H[oly] S[pirit] will keep your heart protected and your mind absolutely clear. I only say that because crazy cautious New Yorker-me has seen a few too many lovely people deceived by the person of their dreams, or so they thought. And this guy will know exactly which buttons to press with you because he has read everything.

How could I explain that as he fucked me last night all I could think was how wrong my friend had been? Because the fact is the only reason to press button and take advantage is because you have something to gain. And I? I have nothing to offer.

I expected Doc to slice me open and carve away the rind of inner self and to find Casu Marzu beneath. I have nothing left which is desirable or worthy. I expected Doc to cut me open and recoil in horror at what lay within.

Doc, however, said, "I want to keep fucking you. God, I want to keep fucking you, but only if you're in the right head space."

I tried, desperately, to keep my voice level and even as I asked Doc to keep fucking me.

He stopped, turned me over so that I was, once again, on my back. Doc looked at me and entered me and touched me and kissed me. He did not cut me open. He did not tear me apart at the seams as I had sought to do to myself earlier in my attempts to make space for him in the place of me that had retreated and shut down and closed off entirely.

Doc, instead, shone warmth and light into the terrified and hurting places. He reached out softly and gently. He invited me to come forth. He brought light and warmth and passion; in doing so, Doc unfurled the layers of protection and allowed me breathe into a new space of welcome and safety.

Feelings give us neither truth nor knowledge. I do not care how people feel about me. I care how they treat me.

Doc treats me with care, kindness, and compassion.

And when he fucks me, he makes certain it is not something he is doing to me, but something he is doing with me.

And we do it so well.

Canes and a Rubber Hose

This past week has been rife with anxiety.

Work was stressful. Home was stressful. Life was stressful.

I had an ultrasound Monday morning to see if there is any reason for the post-coital pain I experience when Doc fucks me hard in the missionary position. Late Tuesday I got the results: everything is normal. I'm perfectly healthy. Nothing to worry about and no reason for a follow-up unless the issue is persistent.

The issue is persistent. The only way to keep the issue from recurring is to explore all of the other positions in which Doc and I can fuck. Fun, to be sure. Still, it is frustrating not to have any clear reason for the pain and no way to address it other than avoid the stimulus.

The rest of the week proceeded without incident. Still, I was incredibly anxious when I left work on Friday and headed for Doc's.

I wanted to get to his place and I wanted to fuck.

And everything seemed to be going wrong.

I got stuck at work and left 10 minutes late. Due to road constructions and people who don't know how to drive, I got stuck at the intersection when leaving work and sat behind two cars at a stop sign for 10 minutes. Half-way to Doc's, I pulled off the freeway to buy gas. Half of the lot was torn up and under construction; half the pumps were out of order; the other half of the pumps were occupied.

I drove off without gas and stopped at the next station a mile down the road. I was more than willing to pay $0.02 more per gallon for the convenience of immediate availability.

All gassed up, I headed back onto the highway and hit traffic about 12 miles from Doc's. The speed limit is 70 mph. Cars in the right lane were traveling approximately 57 mph. Cars in the left lane were, for unfathomable reason, traveling at 60 mph. My frustration was high.

The final interchange before reaching Doc's house was a holy cluster fuck of everyone and their mother and a few semis merging onto and off of the freeway. I had to remind myself repeatedly that I was nearly at Doc's and I'd be there soon enough.

When I did arrive at Doc's, he opened the door, greeted me, asked if I needed help. I got everything into the house and put away the few groceries I'd brought with me for some baking and cooking this weekend.

Then, Doc kissed and I kissed him in return. "How hungry are you?" I asked him.

"Not that hungry," he responded and I started dragging him to the bedroom.

"I'll need to take care some things," Doc said, gesturing to dinner which was currently cooking on the stove.

"Oh," I said, slightly deflated. "I suppose we can wait until after dinner," I remarked, not wanting to make too much work for Doc.

After salad and spaghetti with meat sauce, Doc and I headed to the bedroom and fucked.

Doc started slowly teasing me, touching me, stroking me, caressing me. "Please," I begged him.

"Not yet," he said.

I was okay with this. Honestly, I was. But Doc would touch me one place and I knew if he continued for another couple of minutes, I would cum. Then, he would move and caress me somewhere else, building my sexual frustration and I wanted to just beg him to finally, please, just fuck me already; but Doc moved between my legs and began licking, caressing, and sucking on my clit, and I thought I might die as I writhed and moaned with pleasure. I was quite happy to forgo having his cock in me for a little bit if it meant more of this.

Finally, Doc began to fuck me and I came and I came and I came. I wrapped my legs around his waist and clung desperately to him while he continued to fuck me. Absolute perfection.

Afterward, Doc and I watched John Oliver and an episode of Buffy and we started watching Blacklist, which was amazing.

We headed to bed and Doc fucked me again.

Saturday morning, I got up a little after 5:30 and fed the cats. I climbed back into bed, but wasn't having much luck getting back to sleep, so I got up and read for a bit.

I also remembered that I had purchased some dry erase markers for my office desk and left three most boring markers at work and took the three most fun colors to Doc's. The markers have magnets on their caps, so I placed them on Doc's fridge.

Eventually, I went back to bed and slept a bit more. When Doc and I woke up, we fucked again.

When we left bed some time later Doc noticed the markers, he remarked that he'd have to get a tiny whiteboard. "I was thinking I could use them to leave you notes on your bathroom mirror. Things like, 'Would you like try using your belt on me tonight?' But then, I wasn't sure if you'd find that charming or be irritated that you had one more thing to clean in the bathroom."

"We could try that," Doc said. "I noticed you have a couple of other things in the bedroom as well." This is true. Two homemade canes and a rubber hose.

We had  breakfast and Doc got a few necessary things done while I read a bit. We had lunch and then after a bit, I made us tea in travel mugs and we headed out to a local orchard to pick pumpkins and what apples we could find.

When we returned to the house, we got the groceries put away and fucked again. This time, Doc started by inserting my beaded anal plug in my ass and then he began beating my ass, hips and thighs with the rubber hose. Eventually he decided the noise it made was too silly and switched to the canes. All of this was wonderful.

What strikes me is that I enjoy this; it is sexual; but I don't derive distinctly sexual pleasure from the beating. At the same time, the beating definitely gets me wet. Every single time. Unlike when the Professor beat me and I enjoyed it but didn't get wet at all.

Doc did this things where he'd alternate striking and stroking me with a cane. With every stroke and blow I got wetter and wetter. Though I knew that eventually Doc would want to fuck me, I had not expected it as quickly as it happened. Doc was in me and fucking me from behind and it was good. It was so good.

Eventually my legs started to cramp slightly and as I shifted position to relieve the cramp, Doc suggested we move to the bed, which I was more than happy to do. Doc continued to fuck me and then moved me to the missionary position, fucking me while I played with my clit.

Doc stopped. I was confused. "Are you stopping?" I asked, lost and unsure of myself. "No, I'm just giving you more room to touch yourself," he said, shifting us to the end of the bed. He reached for the toy box again, and pulled out a vibrator.

He continued to fuck me, with the butt plug in place, while he used the vibrator on my clit. I came again. Hard. When he was done, he cleaned himself up and washed the vibrator before putting it away. I left the butt plug in place and pulled on my blue jeans.

Doc made dinner and we watched the last episode of season one of Buffy before watching a second episode of The Blacklist.

We were both exhausted and slept through the night. Around 5:30 I woke up and headed to the bathroom, planning to feed the cats when I was done. Doc got to them before me. As he prepared their wet food, I filled their dry food dishes. Doc and I headed back to bed.

At 8:30, I asked Doc if he wanted me to start coffee (Yes, thank you) and Hollandaise sauce.

Doc poached the eggs while I toasted bread and fried ham. Oh, eggs Benedict.

My Hollandaise still needs work. It's too thick and too lemony. Next week I'm going to take it off the heat before adding the  butter and see if that helps in the process. I'm also going to use half a lemon and leave the rest for some other application.

After breakfast, while we were still seated at the table, Doc sighed. It wasn't a "happy, contented, well-fed" sigh (he'd already sighed like that a few times during breakfast) and it wasn't a "frustrated with this blasted machine" sigh (which he'd sighed the day before while upgrading his OS) and it wasn't a "I have so much to do to get ready for the coming week" sigh (which he's sighed in previous weekends). "You're having thoughts," I remarked.

"I was just thinking we should get these breakfast dishes cleaned up and we have enough time to fuck before you have to shower and head to church," Doc said.

I've never moved so fast in all my life, as I moved back from the table, grabbed the plates and forks and bounded into the kitchen.

"Were you thinking 'rinsed and in the disherwasher' cleaned up or 'on the counter waiting to be washed' cleaned up?" I asked.

"Rinsed and in the dishwasher," Doc said. I was a bit miffed because sex was on the menu!

We got the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher, I used the bathroom and brushed my teeth. Making love with Doc this morning was beyond satisfying. I felt things I haven't felt before when we've made love or fucked in the past.

I can't describe it, but the way he moved in me and when he came.... Shivers and happy sighs just remembering it.

Then, I showered and headed to church where I read scriptures and chatted about what the adult study group might read next.

After church Doc and I carved our pumpkins into Jack-o-Lanterns, I roasted the pumpkin seeds that Doc had carefully cleaned, and he made lunch. After lunch, we watched a third episode of The Blacklist. Then, I headed home for the week.

Thursday can't come soon enough.

Trusting Those Closest

There are things in life that frighten me.

There are things inside of myself that frighten me.

I am intimately aware of my brokenness and my rougher edges.

Because I am so aware of my faults and failings and because I want to be better than I currently am, I work tirelessly to deal with my stuff. I still have stuff.

The stuff I carry inside of myself doesn’t frighten me. Rather, it is the way I judge my stuff that does. Unacceptable is how I often feel about anger, bitterness, jealousy, resentment. Unacceptable is how I often feel about my tendency to withdraw or lash out when I am frightened or hurting.

I find other ways to sort through things and once I have everything clarified and polished, I bring it to the light in an effort to share myself with those I love.

Sometimes, sorting through things requires another voice.

This might be the biggest struggle and most damaging habit I have. Before I present my thoughts to the person who has the most right to know them, I often share them with someone else. I choose someone who can challenge me and ask good questions, questions that make me think about things in a new light or which clarify some of the fuzzy bits that are floating in the background. Sometimes, talking to an uninvolved party doesn’t even touch on the core of the issue that’s hidden behind the fog of feelings that are big and scary and unclear. But in talking about some of the feelings, I sort through them and the light of truth shines through – and this I will eventually share with the person who needs to know.

Before I met Doc, there was Ichthy. And before I met Ichthy, there was Mustache.

Mustache promised I could have what I wanted, told me explicitly he would give it to me, and then insisted I ask for it. Though it was the biggest relationship risk I could have taken with him, I did ask. And he turned me away instantly.

I could not tell Mustache either the truth that this was an enormous risk nor could I tell him why it was such an enormous risk.

Then, Ichthy called. I told him. I told him about Mustache and how Mustache had handled that situation; I told him what a huge risk it was and exactly why it had been a huge risk. It was scary and hard and painful to tell my biggest, deepest, scariest secret to anyone. Ichthy was great about it, even seeking more information and though it made me cry he tried to make something good of a very bad situation.

When I met Doc, even before we had decided to commit to a mutually monogamous relationship, I was able to share with him this secret that had become a bit smaller, less deep, and slightly less scary. I was able to tell him the whole of it, from the very beginning through all of the experiences that layered and layered and layered worse and more terrible facets of body loathing underneath and on top of my already fragile attempts at body acceptance and self-love.

I was also able to this secret to my best friend in all the world and share with her the reality of the resentments and jealousies I have felt over the years when the topic came up – because she didn’t know she was touching on some seriously broken areas or that doing so reminded me of awful experiences no one should ever have to endure.

Because of this, Ichthy has become my go-to for processing anything BDSM related before I approach Doc.

Last week, I wrote about penal substitutionary atonement. This is a conversation I had with Ichthy before I spoke to Doc. It helped me to clarify several things, which was good. Ichthy asked if I’d spoken with Doc about it and when I told him I hadn’t, he strongly encouraged me to do so. I had been planning to, but something in Ichthy’s tone made me think I had perhaps erred in my decision to process with him before bringing it to Doc.

This week, I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Ichthy has said some things recently that led me to believe I may have misinterpreted his level of interest in me when our friendship first started.

A month or so ago, a friend told me that one of our former co-workers had the biggest crush on me when he worked with us, but never pursued it because he knew I was way out of his league.

I recently went out to dinner with a different co-worker I occasionally socialize with who informed me that I am not even remotely average; I am, he said, completely atypical and this is a good thing. This is a really good thing. The way he said it led me to believe that if I were not with Doc, he would be interested in pursuing me romantically.

All of this is confusing because men have never pursued me. At all. Ever. In my entire life. This does not particularly bother me because there are very few men who pique my interest and I’d rather not have to navigate the muddy waters of rejecting men I know when I’m intimately familiar with the danger of rejecting the street harassment of strangers.

Confusion regarding men aside, the real issue, as I see it, is the way I choose to engage with people. I want to tell myself that I am motivated to give Doc the best, so I work through uncertainties of my own ideas and feelings with someone else before I present him the polished work. This is unfair to him. It’s also untrue.

I do want to Doc to have the best of everything in life. He deserves the best. Doc is the single most amazing man I know. Doc is open and honest; trusting and completely trustworthy. Doc is more willing to risk than anyone I’ve ever met and he really, truly, deeply believes that it’s okay to fail; it’s not okay to give up. When Doc encourages me to pursue my dreams in spite of my fears, he does so with an air of support that assures me success or failure, he’ll be there; his opinion of me isn’t predicated upon my success or perfection.

Here’s the thing – I’ve completely bought into my relationship with Doc. I’m all in. I’m committed to, excited about, and fully engaged (head and heart) in this relationship. And that is a terrifying thing.

I’ve come to realize that the reason I only share fully formed polished product with Doc isn’t because I think he deserves the best (though I do), but rather because I’m afraid that Doc will be as frustrated and confused by my initial attempts at understanding as I am. I am afraid that Doc will not want to invest as much energy in understanding me and my thoughts and feel as I want to invest in understanding myself and in understanding him.

Doc has done nothing to elicit this fear.

Ichthy has done nothing to engender this trust.

Except…. I am in an intimate, mutually monogamous, committed relationship with Doc and Ichthy is a friend. It's all about me.

I have invested rather a great deal of my heart in my relationship with Doc. I have invested much in my relationship with Ichthy, but not in the same way and certainly not to the same degree.

If all of my frustrating, unclear, confusing feelings and thoughts rooted in the unresolved stuff of my past freaks out Ichthy and he decides he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, it will hurt, certainly; but I will have lost a friend and a friend who probably wasn’t all that much of a friend in the first place if my darker secrets and sharper edges can frighten so easily.

If all of my frustrating, unclear, confusing feelings and thoughts rooted in the unresolved stuff of my past freaks out Doc and he decides he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with me anymore, it will hurt; I will have lost a friend, companion, lover. The stakes are much, much higher. The risk is much, much bigger. The potential loss is much, much scarier.

But the reality is, as things currently stand, I am robbing Doc of an opportunity to know me in ways that he, more than anyone else, has a right to know me. That is unfair to him. I am denying him an intimacy I want to give him while offering that intimacy to someone else. I am not okay with that.

So from this point forward, while I will still be friends with Ichthy and we will still talk about our lives and our jobs and our beliefs and our theologies and our struggles and our joys, I may not share the real deep me-ness with him in the same way; and I certainly will not share it with him first.

Doc will be the first to get the me-ness, the mess, the confusion, the feelings that I cannot yet identify or understand. Doc will be the first to hear about the stuff inside of me that scares me. Doc will be the first to hear my insecurities and my worries that what scares me might also scare him – and scare him away.

Doc will be the first and probably at times the only one who gets to see those parts of me that aren’t polished and pretty and perfect; but they are the parts that are real and important and lovely in their own way, if for no other reason than that I would choose to share them with him in an act of sacred trust – believing that Doc is the single most amazing man I know, believing that Doc is open and honest, trusting and completely trustworthy.

It is time to translate those beliefs into actions and begin actively, rather than passively, trusting Doc because I want to continue building and deepening intimacy with Doc. Doing so means being real and open and honest and trusting with all of the me-ness that is me, including the unpolished, unpretty, darker, scarier, sharper parts.

Letting Doc see and know all of me is an act of love and trust. And no matter what happens, it will be worth it.

When Soteriology and BDSM Collide

The problem with the soteriology of penal substitutionary atonement is that it glorifies punishment. Punishment is not just glorified, it become necessary. Because punishment is both necessary and right, when one does bad thing, one must be punished and this punishment is both right and therefore good.

The inverse must also be true. If something bad or unfair happens, it must be a punishment and if one is being punished, it must be for a reason.

This is a soteriology I reject with my whole mind; but it is the soteriology of my childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. After two years in seminary, I was kicked out of a small group at the church I was attending because I questioned this understanding of Christ's death on the cross and it's devaluation of the human person.

Specifically, the church I was attending was offering a course, "Christ-Life Solutions," to its congregants. I had several issues the course material, beginning with the poor grammar in the workbooks which made the readings damn near impossible to get through.

My issues extended beyond that, however, to the theology of the material itself. The overarching theme of the course was that we, as sinful human beings, are filthy, awful, irredeemable creatures without value or worth, completely unlovable as we are. We are deserving of nothing but God's righteous anger and punishment. But Jesus, who was perfect and sinless and deserving of nothing but God's love, was crucified to satisfy God's wrath against our ultimately sinful nature, and if we only accept Jesus and his sacrifice, then God will look on us, wearing the cloak of Jesus's blood, and finally we will find "His" favor and be spared the punishment we so rightly deserve.

Pardon my language, but this is FUCKED! The final week before I was kicked out of the small group the reading was one in which the author compared humans to a cooler.

Specifically, he wrote that he had once gone on a business trip. At the end of the trip, he had been gifted with rather a large quantity of high quality steaks. He loaded the steaks into a cooler full of ice, in the trunk of his car, and headed home.

He parked his car in the garage, unloaded his luggage from the backseat, and went about his weekend, in the southern United States, in the middle of August. Monday morning as he readied himself for work, he remembered the cooler of meat in the trunk of his car.

Opening the trunk, the stench of rotten meat hit him. He pulled out the cooler, carried it to the edge of his lawn opened it. The steaks had completely liquefied and there was a soup of rotten liquefied meat and maggots in the cooler. He dumped the content and cleaned and sanitized the cooler, and left it int he sun, hoping it would be deodorized over the course of the day. Returning home from work that nigh, the stench still stained the walls of the cooler. It was a total loss.

THIS, the author declared, is what humans, in their sinful state, are like to God. We reek of the stench of death and rot and it is so embedded in our nature NOTHING can ever make us clean. Except Jesus, if only we accept his sacrifice on the cross.

In the middle of the small group discussion that week as people talked about how meaningful this anecdote was to them, I seethed with anger. What kind of loving God would want people to value themselves so little? Wen it was my turn to speak, I said, "I'm sorry! But I'm calling bullshit on ALL of this! The Bible declares that God created humankind and saw that it was very good. I refuse to believe that anything can so change or alter the work of God as to make it completely other than what God declared it to be. If God called us good, and sin can make us so other than what God declared, how can God be the omnipotent deity we claim? If we really can, by an act of disobedience, utterly corrupt what God has called not just 'good' but 'very good,' how all-powerful can such a God be?"

I was asked to leave the group and not return.

I have actively rejected this soteriology. I have replaced it with a vastly different, more holistic and ultimately loving soteriology which I might fill out at some point. However, the remnants of my early Christian education remain. And, like a bad habit, kicked and replaced with a new, healthier habit, in times of stress, it is the default to which I return on an emotional level, even though intellectually I reject it completely.

Last week, I wrote about the panic I experienced when Doc sighed. It goes back to a terrible time in my life when the Singer died, and despite the unfairness of that loss and the unbearable pain, my early exposure to penal substitutionary atonement popped up and I felt that his death was punishment for some terrible sin I had committed and if only I could figure it out and repent, maybe, just maybe things could be made right.

So, even though I reject all of this, Doc's sigh, having brought it all back for a moment, and still aching from the loss, I knew deep down in the pit of my stomach where horrendously fucked up theologies that damage people still reside, I knew I am still deserving of punishment.

And so I was tempted to ask Doc to beat me. With his belt. I did not want it in a fun, sexy, exciting way. I did not want it in a way that would press me in ways that go beyond my comfort zone in a BDSM context. I wanted a brutality that was abusive and punishing and which would, ultimately, destroy my belief that I have anything good or valuable within me and which would confirm absolutely the fears first instilled in me by penal substitutionary atonement - that I am, in my essence, unworthy, without value, unlovable, and ultimately deserving only of abusive punishment and even death as payment for the sin of even existing.

Some part of me simply wanted to be destroyed to rectify the impossible to rectify sin of being.

This is one problem with penal substitutionary atonement. There are others, including the othering of in-group/out-group, the saved and unsaved, the one-size-fits-all theology that narrowly defines God's love as only for the few because they believe the "right" things.

It is rooted, I believe, in the mistaken understanding of sin as disobedience to God's expectation of perfect obedience to any number of mysterious demands.

Recently, I've been reading Marcus Borg's The Heart of Christianity. I agree with much of what Borg writes concerning the central tenets, the heart, of the Christian faith. I agree with Borg's treatment of the Christ event in the person of Jesus. I agree with Borg's discussion of the reasons for Jesus's crucifixion.

However, I believe Borg's treatment of sin is lacking in one profound way. Borg offers a number of common and historical understandings of sin, including: disobedience, breaking the rules, being bad, hubris, estrangement, unfaithfulness, or idolatry. In all of these, "forgiveness" become the response to sin.¹

Borg, however, offers biblically based alternatives to our single understanding(s) of sin and instead calls out: blindness, bondage, exile, closed hearts, hunger and thirst, lost-ness. The resolution/response to these is: sight, liberation, return, open hearts, food and drink, found-ness.²

What Borg fails to mention, however, is the actual meaning of the word "sin." Sin is an archery term that literally means "to miss the mark." As such, the correlate response to sin would be "correction." This understanding of "sin" as an all-encompassing term addresses all biblical notions. Blindness is corrected by sight. Bondage is corrected by liberation. Exile is corrected by home-coming. Closed hearts are corrected by opening. Hunger and thirst are corrected by food and drink. Being lost is corrected by being found.

Salvation, then, Borg writes, "In its broadest sense... means becoming whole and healed. The language of 'wholeness' suggests movement beyond fragmentation, and the language of 'healing' suggests being healed of the wounds of existence."³

Or, in preserving the term "sin" and radicalizing our understanding of what that means, the appropriate way to correlate sin and salvation - missing the mark and correction - is clearly seen. Salvation in a context of healing and wholeness is the correction of what went wrong, why we "missed the mark" in the first place. This entire process, then, can be understood as the work of reconciliation - the restoration of all things to their rightful state, the work God is doing in partnership with us, through the person of Jesus as experienced in the Christ event in which God is reconciling the whole of creation to God-self. And the WHOLE of creation does not leave room to exclude some based on their rejection of a narrowly defined orthodoxy.

I reject any theology based on in-group/out-group, exclusivity, or narrowly defined and often vague but no less stringently enforced rules.

This weekend, I explained the soteriology of penal substitutionary atonement to Doc. "That's fucked up," Doc said. Yes. Yes, it is!

I brought this up in the context of sharing my thoughts with Doc concerning the previous weekend. I explained that I was not asking him to beat me brutally, nor do I ever imagine doing so, no do I imagine he'd ever be comfortable with such a thing. "Mostly because if I did, I think the effect would be to validate that theology I've worked so hard to reject and replace," I explained. I like when Doc spanks me; I like the idea of him beating me with a belt or a rubber hose (thank you vanilla friends for thinking of me!).

I enjoy the idea of Doc hurting me, so long as he does not harm me. And anything that validates punishment or penal substitutionary atonement can only do harm. I am grateful that I can recognize that truth and that Doc, having little church experience and no training, can declare with even greater certitude than I, that penal substitutionary atone is FUCKED up. God bless that sexy, sexy man.

*****
1. Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 166.
2. Ibid., 168.
3. Ibid., 175.

Enough

I really hate the month of October.

There are things I love about fall - the colors, the flavors, the experience of the season (we all have our rites and rituals and pumpkin spice anything is a marker of fall and it typically arrives in October). There are things I dislike about fall - the ever shortening days, the colder and longer nights, the potential for sleet and snow, the tendency toward gray skies and drizzle.

It isn't the seasonal changes which October brings with it, though, that makes me hate the month.

It's the anxiety. Anxiety I'm usually not cognizant of until all hell breaks loose and I've just snapped at someone I love and they look at me as though I'm a total stranger to them. And in those times, I am a stranger to them. In those times, I feel estranged from myself. That's what anxiety does to me - it disconnects me from myself and from all of those around me.

The anxiety began earlier this year than it has before. Or perhaps I became aware of its presence much sooner. I wrote on my vanilla blog this past week about some anxiety I had been experiencing in my relationship with Doc, and how I had come to process and deal with it. All well and good.

Until I saw him Friday night and we fucked.

I arrived a bit later than usual due to some minor car concerns and a need to shuffle vehicles to make repairs happen.

When I did arrive, Doc was finishing up dinner - steak, medium rare, with chimichurri and broccoli. This man must adore me to feed me broccoli so often. *sigh* It's heavenly, really.

We were half-way through dinner when I asked, "What would you like to do after dinner?"

Doc gave me a look - perhaps quizzical, perhaps confused. "I'm just asking a question," I told him. No hidden agenda. Traditionally, we do a bit of clean up in the kitchen before watching a little tv. We nearly always get distracted and retire to bed before whatever show we're watching is over.

At this point, though, I've already had trouble keeping my hands off of Doc.

"We could fuck," he says.

"I like that plan."

And we did. God, did we ever. He fucked me and fucked me and fucked me. As I came, he came and it was exquisite.

After, we watched John Oliver and an episode of Buffy.

It was during the episode of Buffy that it happened. I was snuggled into Doc's chest as we watched. All seemed to be going well.

And then, Doc sighed.

Immediately, I was gripped with a panic so deep I could barely draw breath. A tear leaked from the corner of my eye. "I can't.... I can't.... I can't...." was all I could think, not entirely sure what I couldn't, just that I couldn't. I wanted to run away. I wanted to tell Doc, "I'm so sorry, but I can't," before fleeing from his presence.

This is ridiculous. And I knew, in that moment, that whatever it was in Doc's sigh to which I was responding was not as scary or as dangerous or as worthy of the fight or flight response as my body seemed to have going.

Was this because of the simultaneous orgasm we had shared not more than an hour prior? It was one fucking amazing orgasm and the intensity of the experience was profound, but to lose all words and thoughts and return to the base instinct of survival which so often means fleeing is not a reasonable response.

But Doc sighed.

That's what they told me when the Singer died. They heard him exhale, as though sighing, and it was over. The medical explanation was something to the effect of all muscles losing tension at the point of death, thus a final expulsion of air from the lungs as the diaphragm relaxes. The Singer died before the final "sigh."

My head resting on Doc's chest, I could feel the rise and fall as he breathed, the tempo of his breaths double-time compared to my own.

Doc is alive. But someday, he won't be, and that reality frightens me.

I do not love Doc in the ways that I loved the Singer. But I love them both and while the idea that - because sometimes things don't work out - my relationship with Doc might one day end makes me sad, the notion that Doc might die overwhelms me with fear.

Which is ridiculous. Doc is young, hale and hearty; he is a healthy eater and he exercises. He also seems to manage any stress well.

After Buffy had ended, we went to bed. Saturday brought morning sex, a day of baking (I volunteered to make the communion loaf - gluten free - for my church), a birthday party. I made chicken tarragon and oven roasted squash for dinner. We ate key lime custard and vanilla ice cream for dessert. We watched two episodes Buffy and headed to bed where we had sex again.

While I cooked, I would occasionally sit with Doc when things didn't require immediate attention. A couple of times, as Doc kissed me, he gripped my hair (pulled back into a ponytail) quite firmly. It made me so wet I soaked through my panties and it made the crotch of my shorts wet.

This time, Doc initiated anal sex in response to a request I'd made earlier in the week. It was absolutely heavenly, especially when I used a vibrator turned on high vaginally and rubbed my clit. It was so intense and so good I begged Doc to go down on me. He happily complied, but having used his hand to apply lube for anal sex, he took a moment to wash up before going down on me.

He jumped in the shower and began washing off. I couldn't keep my hands off of him for that long, so I joined him in the shower, asking him for the bar soap, working up a lather between my hands before washing his cock. I've never understood the appeal of shower porn. Visually, the appeal isn't there for me. Having stroked Doc's cock with sudsy hands in a shower, I have a much fuller appreciation for shower porn, as the tactile sensation of giving a soapy hand-job is fantastic.

After rinsing off, Doc spent a good deal of time going down on me and then he fucked me. Hard. And he spanked me while he did it.

Snuggling after, I told Doc how much I enjoyed smelling myself on his hands. Then I kissed him. "I love tasting myself on you," I told him.

"I don't understand men who wouldn't do that," Doc said.

"Me either," I sighed. "I taste awesome!"

Sunday morning brought more sex, coffee and breakfast after which we snuggled on the couch until I had to whip cream and Doc had to attend to a bit of work.

I'm left-ear dominant and snuggling, my left side turned in toward Doc, I rested my head on his chest. My left ear was resting on the lapel of his robe. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed in and out. I could hear the beat of his heart. It wasn't enough.

I pushed the collar of Doc's robe aside and rested my ear on his t-shirt. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed in and out. I could hear the beat of his heart more distinctly. It was not enough.

I reached into Doc's robe, pulling at the hem of his shirt. I shoved it up to his armpits and rested my left ear on his chest, directly against the skin, right over his heart. I could feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed in and out. I could hear the beat of his heart - his strong, steady heart. Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub. I could picture the ventricles and atria of his heart drawing blood in and pushing it out to the rest of his body. I could feel the strength of this fierce and good-hearted man. I was comforted.

It was enough.

World's Best Pizza

Simulatenous orgasm.