Tripping the life fantastic: real life is wilder than any book I’ve ever read

The life I am living to me is very different than the life I have known.  Things are happening to me at a pace which is beautiful and serendipitous.  Wondrous people are coming into my life at precisely the right time.  Everyone.

I find money on the street almost every day.  Mostly pennies.  They bring good luck.  I always pick them up if I can.  Sometimes dimes, nickels, quarters, dollar bills.  More.  A few months ago I found $1.27 in coins on the ramp of a parking garage in Manhattan.  Odd.  When I find money, the universe is telling me that I will have a good day.

In life, I try to plan my day.  I carry a daily planner in my purse.  I try to fill my days, and love to-do lists.  Over years, and in part as a response to ADD, a system has emerged and introduced categories.

I am a procrastinator, but also a doer.  So, while I feel that for me I am wasting time, or not doing much, friends, colleagues, acquaintances tell me that I am dizzying with output.  You won’t see that here much these days, but this is in part from doing the November challenge for writing a fiction book, and I am finishing a chapter in a cookbook which is due to the designers so we can get it approved for the look and feel of the whole book.  I should be more excited about the second book than the first, but I am not.

The exciting part of writing is the first time through.  The most satisfying time is the second time through, when you self-edit, figure out what you were trying to say, and start showing it with dialogue and more deliberate writing.  The hard part comes next, when you have to listen to other people, and you have to do all the bits that you know you should do, but haven’t done, either because they are hard or because they just aren’t fun.

And anyway, writing is about capturing a feeling, an energy.  At least it is for me.  That part is done by the end of the first two passes…well, enough.  It gets better and better with each pass, but it is less fey.

That might be why when I write a book it just gushes out of me…but then I have to sit on it for a long time before I come back to it.  A year, perhaps more.  And what usually happens is that a new one comes along and I start that.

Oh, the curse of being a starter, not a finisher.

In the past year, I have had a sex change and have given up any semblance of my former life.  Living out as a trans woman, attempting to discover what it means to pass through the world as a woman, has been hard and wondrous in equal measure.  Mostly it has been an incredible joy.

My friend mix has changed.  My lover mix has changed.  I find that I am meeting the most extraordinary women.  I keep wondering if “she” will be the one.  What am I thinking?  I am not even divorced yet.  But its okay, thinking about it is a real treat.  Considering every woman I meet and flirt with as “the one” makes life so much more playful.

Last week I had so much to do it was crazy.  Lord knows how many of you travel light when you fly.  I have never done light.  I paid lip service to it briefly during my former professional career, but not really.

On a trip to Chicago several years ago from London I flew with an old-time steamer trunk.  I wanted to have everything already in drawers and my suits hanging so I didn’t have to deal with all that unpacking and re-packing.  I was there for three days.  

When I was sent to do a three-month turnaround to South Africa, I had a suitcase for shoes, a suitcase for suits, a suitcase for trousers and informal wear, a suitcase for shirts-socks-undies, and a suitcase with “play” accessories.  Don’t ask.  But when the customs agent asked why I had diapers and a pacifier in my bag, I answered truthfully, “they’re mine,” and he was more embarrassed than I was, hesitating briefly. I could tell he wanted to ask ‘why’, before he closed the bag and let me go on my way.

Just as an aside, the more stressful my role has been in a professional setting, the more I have turned to age play as an outlet.  Throughout my life, it was something I did on my own.  Now, that has changed a bit, though it is a rare person that I would ever want to explore this with.  And anyway, my life has a different kind of stress.  And even more, becoming a woman has made all of my needs, hungers, wants, circumstances, situations change.

Well, I was so busy because I had 14 suitcases to pack.  Yes, I am not kidding.  Twelve needed packing to be sent from the West Coast to East, where they will join my car, be unpacked and stacked empty, with all the stuff loose so as to conserve space, and then the car will be loaded into a shipping container and all will be shipped home to England.  I am also travelling now with what was meant to be 3 suitcases in the hold but has morphed into four plus two carry-on bags. 

But I also had other things to do.

I got to work with some amazing Shibari teachers, and had two one-on-one lessons and two group lessons.  This is my favorite way of learning, as we go at a pace that I need.  I am finding that these particular instructors, well, two of the four, work with an “I’ll tie you first, and then you do the same to me, and whatever I do to you, you can do to me.”  It is a great way to learn and a great way to set boundaries, and to respect them.

Three of the four I had worked with before, and one is hands down my favorite teacher of all I have had all over the world.  The other was a bit hesitant on an energetic level the first time they taught me, but this time they went for it.  I spent time in rope with one of the most gifted riggers in the US, who is so good that she was able to listen to me describe the style that I am working towards, and then create on the basis of that style.  And she took me to my edge, which was new for me in the context of a class, and I was so close to squeaking out, “please untie me”.

I have vestigial claustrophobia from childhood which came from my mother’s unusual methods of punishment and a full-on panic in a cave.  This comes out at times when I am being tied, but breathing into my body and coping with my fear, surrendering to the stillness can help.  But it can get so close, too close, and I am conscious that I am healing inside from being taken to the edge.

And there is shopping, which is an endless source of joy.  Art exhibits.  Eating out.  Plus I was recovering from surgery.

What else did I do?  I met with a Tantric FBSM specialist (full body sensual massage) to both see what it was like and to wake up my yoni.  I went to the farmers market and bought mushrooms, went out for oysters, as one does, and just had a great time.

There were lots of errands, plenty of writing, and lots of socialising.

There were two people I hadn’t seen that I really wanted to see on this trip and we just couldn’t make it work, but it worked out after all when a shift happened in my diary.  That change meant getting to see them both, slotting in for lunch and dinner, respectively.

It’s weird when you read a true account of a porn story written by someone you don’t know and you realize you know everyone else in the scene, when I read about the real life adventures of an escort and discovered that the submissive man in the story was someone I have done a scene with, two scenes.  He is and was lovely, and this could have only ever happened to me because I am becoming a dominatrix.

On that point, the more I do this, the more I let life just flow naturally in that direction, the more it feels bound up with my identity as a woman.  I don’t want to be a female doormat.  And as a woman, a trans woman, I have to fight every day to be seen and accepted.  Every day.  I accept this, I always have, and find it oddly affirming to have to fight, but this also allows me to be much more conscious about the ‘why’ of everything.

And what I discover is that this community is small.

I approached a domme who isn’t mine, and with whom I was curious to explore.  But then I discovered that the domme I see and she know each other.  Well.  I had no idea.  I pulled out.  It isn’t that my domme would ever say no, or even show displeasure even if she felt it, but I have so much to be grateful to her for, that I couldn’t countenance it.

And this is strange too.  Because, I formally became a dominatrix in June of this year.  Trial by fire.  Several days of debauchery in an isolated setting.  I learned more in those four days about kink than I have ever had done to me.  A great experience and one to which I have been invited back again.

I have this thing about straight men smelling my pu$$y.   I want them to want to.  I find it very affirming.  It means that they will see me for who I am, plus I know how incredible it smells because of the weird diet I eat to make it smell amazing.  That is a small example of finding my sense of womanhood.  Very body oriented.  No?

Well, I was getting a bit overwhelmed with my commitments and a dwindling amount of time to get things done in.  But then circumstances conspired that a few things were cancelled, opening up new opportunities, and my life just fell together like the dismantling of a giant lego, only in reverse.  Everything clicked.

And I only booked one thing on the wrong day.  Sometimes that happens.

Another strange occurrence was to have met a domme, to have developed quite the girl crush on her, and then for her to take me in as someone she is mentoring.  After all that happened, and totally randomly, she and my domme posted a session of them working together.  A small world.  I guess I must assume that everyone knows everyone.

A few years ago I sessioned with someone who totally overwhelmed me.  We did everything I could have imagined, but all in one session.  E-stim, bull whipping, rope bondage with suspension, prostate massage, foot worship, talk.  More whipping.  More suspension.  It was a tour de force.  I chose not to see her again for various reasons, though now I have met her socially a few times.  But after that session, I saw that she was hosting an event with another domme.  And I won’t say what this other person does, but it will come out gradually over time as what she does is what I am called to do.  And after following her for two years I found the courage to write her and ask her if she would take me on as an apprentice.

We were on the phone the next day, and for the next year, she is my teacher.  I am very pleased, and this will mean working with her all over the world.  I start tomorrow.

Separately, as I bop around the world, I now carry my dilators in my carryon luggage, can’t afford to lose them.  They nearly always attract additional scrutiny by security.  The Italians don’t care, the Americans don’t care, the Germans don’t care, but the Brits open them up every time.  Every time.  

“What are these?”

“Dilators.”

“What?”

“Vaginal dilators,” said in my most Marilyn Monroe, breathy voice.  And if they haven’t put them down in a hurry, I add, “dildos” with a thrust of my chin.  That seems to do it just fine.

To this amusing cocktail I have now added two of my three vibrators, as they are battery powered, and we can’t have that sort of thing in a suitcase now can we? So, there is a real treat for the security agent between my various wands and dilators.  It’s a colorful life.