Song for lori

(Wow - two "nice" entries in a row - I shall have to pen something exceptionally wicked tomorrow...and, no, this isn't really a "song")


I noticed her almost immediately upon entering the main room। She was seated over against the wall, with a girlfriend. There are some girls that just catch your eye, whether you bloody want them to or not.

I strode resolutely past her, without so much as a glance। I was inordinately proud of myself for doing so।

The party was like most parties at the club - horrifically disappointing, depressing, and "What-in-God's-name-did-I-let-Charlie-drag-me-to-this-stupid-thing-for?". All these idiots strutting round in leather, introducing themselves as "Lord Domino" or some equally moronic thing. Dominatrixes and submissive men...God, that's just so wrong. I turned to Charlie and smiled cheerily - "Do remind me to kill you if you ever invite me to one of these soirees again."


I tried to move around enough to avoid much conversation - although I was minimally polite enough to speak to people I knew - and tried, here and there, to just enjoy the music, which was actually pretty good.


Eventually, it was late enough to make a polite exit.


But on my way out, I passed by her again - she was seated alone now - and this time I did not have the good sense to keep my gaze averted. Compounding my idiocy, I stopped.
"Hello." (Well, I didn't say I was terribly suave about the whole thing.)


Well-trained by someone, she immediately cast her gaze downward, rather than looking up, and somewhat quietly replied, "Hello, Sir."


"Yeah, right, then - You want to look up at me? I mean, I stopped because you have a nice smile, and now I can't even see it."


She lifted her chin, and beamed a heartbreakingly bright smile up at me. It was really quite disconcerting. Her eyes had an undeniable, utterly un-miss-able sparkle to them. A light.


I smiled/frowned back. "That's better. Listen..." Jesus Christ, what the hell was I doing here? "Here's the thing. You're bright - I can see that, I don't have to talk with you to know it. You probably have a decent sense of humor. You're obviously pretty."


I crouched down, to be eye-to-eye with her. "You don't value yourself enough."


Predictably enough, she had a somewhat puzzled expression on her face.


"What's your name anyway?"


"Lori, Sir."


"Mine's Maverick. Jack Maverick, actually. Lori - you know that U2 song that goes, 'And you give yourself away'?"


She nodded, then quickly said, "Yes, Sir."


"Yeah, well...don't do that." I looked at her for another moment, then stood up. "Right. Goodnight then."

"Good evening, Sir."


When I met Charlie at the doorway, he nodded his head back past my shoulder, and asked, "You just walking away from that?"


Annoyed, I growled at him, "You can't go picking up every Goddamned orphan on the planet."


Undaunted, he grinned and replied, "What? You busy with somebody else right now?"


"Hey, Charlie, here's a thought - Whyn't you shut the hell up and leave me alone? Come on, let's go."


He nodded past my shoulder again, and said, "Ooh - she just looked over here. You know, Jack, you're really gonna hate yourself if you don't go back and talk to that girl. She's really cute, you know." He gave a "thumbs up" sign over my shoulder.


I shook my head. "You know, you are really an asshole."


He laughed good-naturedly, and said, "But you, my friend, are like a pie. Crusty for about half an inch, but all gooey and mushy inside." He doubled over with laughter, terribly amused with himself.


I stood there for a moment, mildly fuming, then said, "I am only turning around and walking away from you because otherwise I'd have the blood of a friend on my hands."


The long and the short of it is, I really have no willpower or good sense। My life would have been much simpler if I'd been struck blind as a child...or if I just didn't notice certain girls. But, I wasn't struck blind, and I do sometimes notice some damned waif sitting along the wall in the heart of darkness. All right, all right - Yes, I wouldn't have it any other way, ultimately.
But I don't see how in hell that small fact should somehow prohibit me from at least being able to freely bitch about it.

Keep Me Not from Falling

Keep me not from falling,

Nor stay my hand from the flame,

For I wish this falling and this flame,

To fall forever, in a desire that burns away all but desire

Plunge me into the abyss,

Open my eyes wider and wider to beauty,

Until I am blinded by this bright burning,

Deafen me with her siren song,

Overwhelm me with fragrances of flowers and perfume,

Let my hands and fingers explore until they are numb

Keep me not from falling,

into the roaring whitewater rush,

Tumbling and turning me,

Pressing me further and further,

Till I sweat blood, and my heart bursts asunder,

For I desire nothing more than this falling into desire,

I wish nothing save this death which brings the only life there is...

Keep me not from falling into the glorious abyss of love.

We Used to Know How to Treat Women Properly

       I happened to catch an episode of the 1950's western, "Bat Masterton", today.  In it, there was a lady who turned out to be part of the outlaw gang.  At the end, the sheriff was puzzling over what to do with her, and said to Masterson, "Well, I hate to think about putting a woman in jail...but she should be punished."

       Masterson replied, "You're right, sheriff, she should.  And I think I can take care of that for you right now.  I'm going to give her what somebody should have given her long before now."

       He proceeded to take the lady into the jail cell, turn her over his knee, and give her a good, hard spanking.  I might add that she readily, meekly, laid herself down across his lap when beckoned.

       (I've no doubt she led a law-abiding life thereafter.)

       If you look at the pre-politically-correct films and television shows of the 1930's - 1950's, Gable, Bogart, and Cary Grant frequently slapped, spanked, and scolded their wives or girlfriends...and women all over the world swooned over them.

       Show me a woman that doesn't get regularly spanked, and I'll show you a woman who's neither happy nor well-behaved.

Night into Night

(this one's a bit long - it's an excerpt from my novel)

Tuesday, September 26^th

“I’m looking for attention,

not another question,

‘Should you stay or should you go?’”

-Kelly Clarkson, “Walk Away”

            I made one stupid, cruel attempt to push Helen away from me, even though it was already much too late for that and I should have known it.

            It hadn’t really been that terrible of a day, or night, except that the flashing thing happened to me with this lady at the hospital.  That always seemed to take a lot out of me whenever it happened, even if the flashes weren’t too bad.

            Bren and I had stayed late, as usual, working the after-hours crisis line.  Nothing much had come in really.  It wasn’t all that late, maybe nine o’clock, when we got this call from the hospital to send somebody over to meet with this lady that had just been delivered by the cops, after being raped in an alley behind one of the seedier downtown bars.  I rode along with Bren just because there wasn’t really anything else going on.

            But what happened was that the lady – they’d already finished doing that horrible examination they do (which, right this second, I’m trying to stamp out any memory of from my mind) – anyway, the lady insisted on shaking hands when Bren introduced us.  Touching them, in any way, sometimes even just getting too close to them, especially right after they’d been attacked, could trigger the flashes thing.  It didn’t always happen (thank God), and sometimes it wasn’t as bad as other times, but I still tried to avoid it altogether, as best I could.

            I explained it to Bren once, right after the third or fourth time it happened to me.  I told her, “It’s like a…Pop, flash kind of thing.  The pop is like one of those big, powerful strobe lights that really expensive photographers use, that just – Pop! – flashes out this blinding, white light that’s strong enough to completely illuminate a scene, even in total darkness, but only for a quick second.  And then the flash is like whatever image you’d see illuminated there.  I see it.  And it can be just like a couple of quick camera shots, stills, like someone going click…click…click, snapping a series of photos.  Or it can be closer to a kind of disjointed or slow-motion video – more continuous, I mean – like the way it is watching people on a dance floor that’s strobe-lit.

            “It can go fast or slow, or change.  Sometimes it starts slow and then speeds up.

            “But what I get, what I see, are images of them being attacked.”  Bren raised an eyebrow, and I impatiently waved a hand at her and said, “It’s worse than that.  I mean, that’s bad enough, but it can be worse, too.  Because sometimes what happens is that the camera angle shifts to their – to her, whoever she is – point of view, and I’m watching the whole thing happen through their eyes.

            “But then I’m not just seeing it, I’m feeling it.  If they’re being pushed down on the bed, I feel it, like I’m being pushed down – and I try to push back, but my arms are her arms and they’re not strong enough.  If the guy hits them or stabs them or something in the flash I get, then it’s like – wham! – I feel like I just got hit.”

            When I finished describing it to Bren, she just kind of stared at me and slowly shook her head.  “I think you’re taking the concept of empathy way too far.”

            “It’s not anything I do, Bren.  It just happens to me.  Believe me, if I could just turn it the hell off, I would.”

            Anyway, it happened with that lady in the hospital that night, when she shook my hand.  It wasn’t that bad, just a couple of quick flashes – Pop, flash…Pop, flash.  The only really bad part was where the guy banged my head – her head – on the pavement.

            But here’s the thing.  Whenever I got the flashing thing, they, the women, I mean, were in my head.  They could give me their nightmares.  And I really didn’t need anybody else’s nightmares, I had enough of my own.  Not to mention that it’s really unnerving to be having a nightmare where you aren’t you – you’re some girl.  That was a little too weird even for me.  And this probably goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway – the nightmares that rape victims have blow your average nightmare right out of the water.  That falling-off-a-cliff thing is like a good dream, by comparison.

            I went home after that.  Well, after a brief detour visit to Darci’s grave.  It still wasn’t very late, sometime before eleven, but after I got the flashing thing, I was just done in for the night.

            I didn’t call Helen when I got home, even though I was supposed to, had told her that I’d call whenever I got off work.  Instead, I just flopped down on the sofa and started knocking back shots of Bacardi, straight from the bottle.

            But after awhile, Helen just showed up at my door.  I didn’t answer the doorbell, but I’d left the door unlocked and she had a key anyway.  After a few seconds, she tried the door, and when she opened it far enough to see me sitting on the sofa, she very quietly came on in.

            Most girls would have yelled at you, started chewing you out for not calling.  And that’d be fair enough.

            But Helen didn’t do any of that.  She just came over to where I was, on the sofa, and knelt down on the floor beside me.  She put one hand, gently, on my knee, and with her other hand reached up and touched my face, also gently.

            “What’s wrong, Wyatt?  What is it?”

            I threw back another shot and welcomed it burning its way past the back of my throat.  “I don’t know,” I said, which was both true and not true.

            She covered my left hand with her own.  Fortunately, I had the Bacardi in my right, and was thus free to continue to overindulge.  So I did, tossing back another shot, even though my head was still rolling around from the last one.

            Helen was looking up at me – worried, anxious, the compassion in her heart rising up through her chest and neck until it blossomed into a blindingly angelic light that lay upon her face like a divinely bestowed veil.  (Sorry – I tend to wax lyrical when I’m diabolically hammered.)

            It occurred to me that perhaps the whole of my interactions with Helen had been a massive, ongoing hallucination.  That the terrible reality was that there was no Helen at all – rather, that this was my guardian angel, and, God damn me, I hadn’t known anything to do, any other way to interact with her other than to sleep with her.  Holy shit – I slept with my guardian angel.  I am so going to hell.

            Oops.  That last line had been spoken out loud.  It had gone from “entirely possible”, to “quite likely”, to “no flippin’ doubt whatsoever” that I’d had too much to drink.

            What the hell.  It’s not like it was going to kill me.  Not tonight anyway.

            Helen’s soft, small, little-girl voice interrupted my drunken stumble of thought.  “Please, Wyatt.  Tell me what I can do to make you feel better.”

            I smoothed her hair with my hand, then used it to make a dismissive wave.  “It’s nothing.  I just get…sad sometimes.  I’m all right.  I’m always all right.  Don’t worry about it.”  I set the bottle of Bacardi down on the coffee table, as if to reassure her that this mood of mine, whatever it was, was passing.  It wasn’t, but who gives a damn, so what the hell’s the difference?  I looked at her – Jesus, what pretty eyes – and told her, “I just need to be alone for awhile.  Why don’t you go powder your nose or something?  I’ll catch up with you later.”  It was a needlessly cruel turn of phrase, made even more so by the fact that I didn’t honestly intend to catch up with her later.

            Completely disregarding the harshness in my voice, she replied, “No.  I don’t want to go.  I want to stay with you.”

            “Thanks, sweetheart.  You’re swell.”  I’d have been Bogart, only I don’t think Bogart was ever quite this diabolically disabled by drink, not in the movies anyway.  I retrieved my bottle, and when I gestured toward the door with it, I kind of accidentally sloshed a few drops on her face.  She just flicked out her tongue and licked them from the corners of her mouth.  I felt bad, but apparently not bad enough to apologize, since I didn’t.

            My voice was possibly a bit softer, less completely unfeeling anyway, when I spoke again.  “Seriously.  Huh?  Listen to me.  Here’s the thing.  It’s probably somewhat best if you just let me alone for a bit.  Okay?”

            “You’re sure you want me to go?”

            “Yeah.  I’m sure.”  I wasn’t.  Probably the opposite.

            She finally said, “You’ll come and find me later, and let me know you’re all right?”

            I pointed the bottle at her, and nodded, as drunks are prone to do.  “Ya got a deal.”

            She stayed there on her knees for another moment, but then finally stood up, kissed me, and obediently left, with only a mumbled, “I’ll see you later”, to accompany her softly closing the door behind her.

            I felt abandoned.  I took another drink, and slowly shook my head.  “Jesus, I am one cold-hearted jerk.”

            The problem with drinking to try to avoid thinking about things is that you end up thinking about things anyway.  But your thoughts are just a slurred, disjointed ramble, that hasn’t a prayer of getting you anywhere you want to be.  Anyway, here’s what I can recollect of what lurched its way through my head that night.

            I’d had this…affliction, for lack of a better word, ever since I was I was about 12 years old.  I think it may have been some hormonally-driven something or other that arrived along with puberty.  There seems to have been some vague coincidence of time there anyway.  Then again, there’s every possibility that this sliver of psychopathology developed as a direct result of Mrs. Hagler forcing me to diagram sentences in the 7^th grade.  I do, quite distinctly, recall feeling that if I were forced to diagram one more Goddamned sentence, that I would strap myself to the side of a school bus in such a way that when the little, red “Stop” sign swung out and then back in toward the bus, I would be summarily decapitated.  The bus would continue rolling down the otherwise peaceful city streets, my lifeless, headless body strung up, crucifixion style, to the side of it.  And as it made its way through suburban neighborhoods, the older and wiser high school kids would point the attention of grammar schoolers to my passing corpse, and knowingly nod and pronounce, “They made him diagram sentences”.  And then, in a lower, calculatedly and mysterious tone, they’d whisper, “…Adverbs.” – spoken in such a way as to assure its echoing throughout the first and second grade crowd no less ominously than the word, “Frankenstein”.

            I even imagined that an editorial might appear in the local paper, suggesting that the state educational authorities “reconsider the emphasis on diagramming sentences, in light of the recent tragedy”.  And perhaps in the end, there would be sweeping and permanent policy changes that would save generations of 7^th graders to come from the inestimable torture of sentence diagramming.

            As for my long dead self, I would become in death what I could never have been in life – a hero, a martyr, symbolic of illiterate junior high school freedom fighters everywhere.  There would be bronze statues of me erected in school courtyards.  Unfortunately, since I’d be headless, these memorials to my contribution to western civilization would become irresistible targets for the prank-inclined mind of your average 12 or 13-year-old.  So I’d end up, in various places, having a balloon head, a clown head, the head of whomever the current President or hot movie star might happen to be that year.  And so, in the end, even as a heroic, legendary figure…I’d still end up being a joke.

            However, having not chosen to bravely sacrifice myself as a bright-eyed, innocent 12-year-old, my punishment, my condition, my affliction was having, instead, to live with a mysterious, persistent melancholia.  Perversely, I secretly liked the idea of being “one who suffers from melancholy”.  Everybody gets sad, depressed, whatever the hell.  At least, I guess they do.  But they’re generally sad about something – a missed opportunity, a lost love, a one-legged kangaroo.  What was a bit unusual about my clouds of melancholy, sadness, depression, significant unhappiness, was that they would arrive seemingly out of the blue, without any discernible cause, prelude, prior warning, or “damned good reason”.  I might even be especially enjoying something – a book, a bit of music, sex with a double-jointed gymnastics major – yet this nearly tangible fog of sadness would enfold itself around me like a huge, wet blanket, and hold me immobile, chained to a deep, dark lethargy of mind and heart, for a period of anywhere from an hour to a week (or more).

            The three prescriptions I customarily wrote myself in order to deal with these “attacks” were –

1 – Excessive intake of alcohol

2 – Read something terribly depressing

3 – Listen to sad songs.

As nearly as I can puzzle out, my theory was that by doing things designed to accentuate, to deepen and maximize the depression, I thought that perhaps I could blow it up – rather like a balloon – to a size so large that it would, necessarily, explode and float away.

            I don’t know if that worked or not.

            In any event, I was proceeding with the same unproven treatment.  I’d already pretty much taken care of the excessive intake of alcohol – at least to the point of having made a pointed note to myself to avoid attempting to stand up in any manner that might even remotely resemble “quickly”.

            I didn’t feel like reading anything, so I went straight to sad songs.  The one I selected initially was a Bette Midler classic, one that she languorously crooned like an old-time saloon singer, and that had been a popular “slow dance” hit when I was in high school.

“Do ya…do ya…do ya want to dance?

  Do ya…do ya…do ya want to dance?

  Oh, do ya, do ya, do ya, do you, want to…dance with me, baby?”

            I watched my cigarette smoke curl itself up toward the ceiling, as if drawn by the hand of God.  And I listened to Bette swaying and moaning about the kind of love that warms you in winter.  The kind of life-saving love that everyone dreams about finding.  The kind of love I didn’t count on ever knowing anything about, not personally anyway.

            Perhaps that (and not 7^th grade English class) was the source of my sorrows.  Or maybe it was the fact that I didn’t have enough money to feed all the cute, little kids that were starving to death in Ethiopia, that one could miraculously save “for only 18 cents a day”.  I had 18 cents…but I didn’t have 18 cents times about five million or something.  Or maybe…and look, I’m just talking here, just throwing something out there, all right? – and I’m drunk as a lord, I know, buckled, yeah, I’m aware of that…but maybe…maybe it was because the world, for all its considerable sins and horrors, was still so unbearably beautiful that it just broke your heart.  I don’t know.  But I do know that this is the world of the broken-hearted.

            I stopped drinking, and spent an hour pouring water and coffee down myself, along with popping a couple of Percocets to jack me up.  I didn’t want to kill everyone on the road between my place and Helen’s.  I didn’t look at the clock, because I didn’t want to think maybe it was too late to go.  I hoped that she’d still be up, but I had every confidence in my ability to bang on her door hard enough to rouse her if she’d gone to bed.

             When Helen opened the door to her apartment, I said, “I’m sorry.  I---“

            That’s as far as I got before she interrupted me by pressing a finger to my lips.

            “Shhh.”  She put her arms around me, and brought her mouth right next to my ear, so that I could feel her breath, warm on my skin.  She spoke feverishly – as if her need was greater than mine (although I doubt that was true).  “I want you to use me like a whore.  Empty all your pain into me.  Pour your demons into me.”  It was a bizarrely compassionate thing to say.

            Probably a scientific impossibility, but the notion still had an appeal to it, I had to admit.

Proper Care of Your submissive miss

       After wrestling with it for two or three hours, I was possibly two or three minutes away from finally getting a critical piece of software I'd installed to work properly, when there was a rustle of skirt in the doorway behind me.

       "Sir."  I didn't need to look round - I could feel her head bowed.

       I growled impatiently, "What the hell is it, Priscilla?  I'm right in the middle of something I'm about to slit my wrists over, and if you make me lose my train of thought, I might have to kill ya."

       "Sir, this wretched whore requests permission to take a bath."

       Still without turning round, I waved a hand back at her dismissively, and said, "Sure - sounds great - now take your rubber ducky and get the hell out of here."

       "Yes, Sir.  Thank you, Sir."

       I heard the sound coming from her, but I didn't want to hear it.  Damn it, I needed to finish doing this.  Awwww...hell.  She'd turned round, and was almost out the door when I spun my chair and stopped her.  "Priscilla!"

       She slowly turned herself back toward me, and bowed her head again.  "Yes, Sir?"  I could hear her lips trembling.

       "You're crying, Pris.  What are you crying about?  What's wrong?"

       She shook her head and mumbled, "It's nothing, Sir.  I'm sorry, Sir."

       I motioned impatiently to her with my hand.  "Come here, Pris.  Get the hell over here, now."

       She approached somewhat like a child fearful of being punished, knelt in front of me, and pressed her forehead to my knee - my left knee, if I recall correctly.  I said, "Hey, look at me.  What's wrong?"

       Her eyes were brimming with tears as she lifted her head, and intoned, "Sir, I'm a wicked, sinful girl."

       I confess that one of my many character flaws is that my usual immediate response to anyone else being ultra-serious is to be flip.  "Well, hell, Pris, I know that.  You think you could be a bit more specific?"

       As the tears spilled over from her eyes onto her cheeks, she said, "I shouldn't bother you, Sir.  I'm sorry."

       I reached out a hand to lift her chin, and said - this time, in all seriousness, looking directly into her eyes, "Hey, you.  Here's the thing, Pris...God save me from ever forgetting that at every moment of the day, you are the most important thing in my life."

       She managed a weak smile, as she pressed my hand to her face.

       It's not really important what Priscilla was crying about that night.  It doesn't even matter if it was nothing more than she'd suddenly become emotionally devastated over finding a deceased caterpillar on the doorstep.  What matters, the only thing that matters, really, is that - despite the fact that I didn't exactly "feel like it" - I attended to her when she needed my attention.

       That's what you do when you love someone.  And that's what matters.

Blinded by the Light

            One of my favorite quotes is, “The heart has reasons that Reason knows nothing of.” (Blaise Pascal)

             I could not begin to explain why I have fallen in love with that girl rather than this girl.  And my choices have been, alas, less than perfect.  But sometimes (the best of times, I like to think)…heart knows heart.

             Once in awhile, in the fog of this sometimes dark and dreary world, a light appears, as if straight from Heaven.  You see someone.  Your eyes meet.  You could be at a party, in a train station, just passing on the street, or in a crowded elevator.  And in that moment, before you have ever even spoken aloud to each other, your hearts have poured forth volumes of words.  So much so that it hardly seems necessary to even say, “Hello”.  Or rather, saying “hello” is all that is necessary…you’ve already said everything else worth saying, without saying a word.  Click – and in an instant, your life is forever changed.

             The magic of romance.  There’s nothing like it.  It’s a gift from God.  It’s obviously true that, “God is love”, because love is the most beautiful aspect of God’s Creation.  Isn’t love the very best thing to have?  To do?  To live?

             I’ll end with another quote, this one a song lyric from the group Whitesnake – 

“I’m just another heart in need of rescue,

 Waitin’ on love’s sweet charity,

 And I’m gonna hold on,

 For the rest of my days,

 ‘Cause I know what it means,

 To walk along the lonely street of dreams…”

Collars and Wedding Rings

       (Blissful sigh)  What girl doesn't look infinitely prettier with a collar round her lovely throat?

       Collars are, in relationships of Dominance and submission, roughly analogous to wedding rings in the relationships of...well..."normal" people. :)

       Personally, I believe in my heartless heart that the ideal relationship involves a girl gleefully receiving both.  First of all, girls just look pretty when they're adorned - that's why God invented jewelry.  Secondly, although there may indeed be some rough equivalence, I still believe that there are enough important distinctions between the symbolism of wedding rings and collars so that each should stand separately on their own merit.  The ring symbolizes love, a joining, commitment; a collar symbolizes submission and devotion in a way that a traditional wedding ring (especially these days) simply does not.  A collar without a wedding ring lacks the sacred commitment inherent in marriage; a wedding ring without a collar fails to fully convey a girl's position in relation to her husband.

       Technical note:  Guys, unless you're graced impeccable taste in these things, please, for the love of God, allow your dear lady to have some input on the design.

       Interestingly enough, in the world of Dominance and submission, there's some debate over whether a collar should be - like a wedding ring - offered...or whether, in a rather turned around way, a submissive girl should ask for a collar.  I exempt myself from this debate, on the grounds that I shamelessly admit to adoring a girl who begs well.  The rest of you, however, may voice your opinions freely.

Rituals

       Girls and priests have taught me the value of rituals  - that rituals root us, recollect us, and keep us mindful.

       It's a debatable point whether girls or priests have been most influential in this regard, but given the forum I'm writing in, I thought I'd talk about a girl.

       As was her custom and prescribed habit, Shelley knelt on her knees, naked, beside my chair, head bowed, placed the palm of her right hand on my thigh, and solemnly intoned - 

"Shelley is her Master's bitch,

 Shelley is her Master's whore,

 Shelley is her Master's slave."

       I yanked my gaze away from my work on the computer screen, looked down at her, and, surprised, exclaimed, "Christ, is it ten o'clock already?"

       A look of apprehensive alarm crept into Shelley's eyes - I had not responded with the prescribed reply to her statement of devotion.  I smiled at her, and said, "I'm sorry, sweetheart - I was just surprised by the time, that's all."  I paused momentarily and then gave her the desired reply - "Shelley is her Master's treasure."

       A delighted, and delightful, smile lit up her face, and her eyes.  I beckoned to her, "Come here, silly girl."

       She quickly scrambled up into my lap and put her arms around my neck.  I laughed softly, and said, "You really love doing that every night, don't you?"

       She grinned and nodded, saying, "I do."  She hesitated a moment, then added, "I look forward to it all evening.  It drives me crazy when it gets to be about ten minutes till."  Her eyes glanced downward, shyly, and she said, "And it makes me wet, too."

       I gave a somewhat bigger laugh, and kissed the tip of her nose.  "Well, sweetheart, let's face it...there are only a very limited number of things that don't make you wet."

       Infinitely pleased with herself, she nodded in agreement and - proudly - pronounced, "I'm such a slut."  A thoughtful look crossed her face then.  She pursed her lips before speaking.  "I really do like it.  It makes me feel...I don't know...safe, or grounded, or something.  It helps me remember who I am."

       Furrowing my brow, I thought that one over for a moment or two, and then said, "Hmm...yeah, I can see that.  I suppose it reminds me who you are, too."

       She giggled and kissed me.  "Shelley is her Master's treasure."

       I kissed her back a bit more intensely, and said, "That wasn't actually the part I was thinking about..."

       Before Shelley, I wasn't much into rituals.  She needed them, so I concocted some for her.  Since then, I have never neglected them in a relationship.  I heartily and unreservedly recommend them.