Isolation and Neglect

These kinds of feelings came sharply into focus in response to a question from Eileen. (I like to be asked questions.) All quotes are from her.

I’m curious, have you ever written about the abandonment aspect that keeps coming up in these fantasies you write about?

Hard to be sure since I haven’t finished writing this (and it is often in typing that I think) but abandonment isn’t really what I’m craving.

During infancy and early childhood my parents’ rotten marriage left impressions - simplistic, naïve, archetypal - that I eroticized. If you think this a sign of emotional illness please just go away and leave me alone. Tested within myself for years this has proven a fruitful hypothesis. It explains:

• Why I like femme guys, avoid manly men
• Why I can see myself enjoy hurting a male but not a female
• Inhibitions I’ve had to fight against
• My ability to accept the worst from lovers

My primary masochistic fantasy is inescapably a search to recapture a whipping my father gave me about age eight.

My father liked to go fishing, hunting, drinking and whoring. Those pastimes often kept him away from home. During my teen years when he was home lots more felt like Hell.

Given his sometimes violent personality and sheer physical strength his presence in the house left me feeling hopelessly helpless. Powerless. Trapped. Impotent.

(It is OK if you feel sorry for little Richard. But not for me. My peace with this was made long ago. I like who I am. Having known people with nice childhoods who grew up to be messes I’m comfortable with my origins.)

Human sexuality proves that if there is a god he is a Dadaist.

The D/s portion of my sexuality that craves control, helplessness emerged from early basic responses to my father. Hence I started fantasizing about it in elementary school.

… I was really just curious if that’s a specific kink for you or simply something that gets woven into your other thoughts frequently.

Bondage I latched onto with fervor the moment a drawing of a bound man came into view.

Labels for what I’m trying to describe now are so damned slippery - isolation, being ignored, forgotten, neglected - how to choose. Glad I don’t have to.

Not too long before meeting Charles I was negotiating with a top (using the handle Alpha Male). He told me there would be times when he ignored me. I replied that I might try to get his attention even if it meant I’d be - big masochistic sacrifice - punished. He thought that sexy.

The image of being put in storage as it were was a huge rush. A whole new realm of suffering swam into view. A vanilla relationship with someone else followed. BDSM dreams for a time forgotten.

As my BDSM component has evolved I’ve become more oriented toward surrender and emotional sadomasochism. If the two are twins I can’t say. Strong emotional S&M doesn’t entail the impossibilities of extreme physical torture. Given my oddball attempt to make my fantasies sort of doable (however unlikely) has perhaps stimulated some of that. I don’t know.

Isolation feels deeply humbling. Becoming desperate for attention is - to perhaps upset all of you - a mutant form of romantic desire.

All of this is a very consistent part of my fantasy life. (Noted in an earlier series of notes about “Perfect Fantasies” in the S&M Fantasies archives.)

In a very basic skeletal way I tried to capture some of all this in the Attitude Adjustment sequence in my Sketches archive. While I can’t write erotica sometimes a story is better for capturing the essence of a desire than exposition.

“Gosh, Richard, you’d never try something like this would you?” It does seem highly unlikely. My ideal top - who I don’t expect to meet - would have both the inclination and skills to pull it all off. With - of course - the necessary accommodations to reality. So I expect any form of it to remain in the land of wanking.

You wrote about being left alone in a room with blinking lights and noise.

The kind woman who gave me my first experience of being bound and blindfolded told me that one of the guys she saw regularly had a sleep-deprivation fetish. One she regularly indulged.

I have a very strong kink for cumbersome bondage: it is so disabling. Sleep deprivation took being made less able to a whole new level.

How to keep someone from sleeping - or at least getting adequate sleep without the top having to remain awake seemed an interesting technical problem. Lights that would occasionally flash on and off were a possible solution. Likewise a tape that replayed anything from the sound of you being whipped to - well just about anything - seemed a nice extra.

Anyway, as the ‘neglect’ fantasy evolved I added hunger and thirst and various bits from much older fantasies.

There is no new kink under the sun. My version is less common in my efforts to somehow trim it all back to plausibility.

Maybe one day I’ll tell you about one of my really nasty fantasies. Maybe not.