Name that sexuality! (Seriously, help her out.)
	I'm gay. Totally gay (and I don't mean happy)!
	Straight. Very straight.
	Bisexual, baby. Bring it on.
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Human beings are interesting creatures. We have all the base instincts of our predecessors - we fuck, eat, fight, crave shelter, feel territorial, etc. At our core, we are animals.

The thing that separates us from the animals in our past, however, is this omnipresent need to think things to death. Ninty percent of our lives is wasted in analysis; puzzling, mulling things over, debating, call it what you will. We spend a lot of time, A LOT of time, thinking about how things should be. We concentrate on the future - how I'm going to be rich one day or how I can't wait to finish this project because it will lead me to fame and success. What we miss, the most important thing of all, is living in the moment.

I know that sounds like a whole bunch of new age garbage. Most people disagree almost immediately with it; they're not willing to let go of their hopes and dreams and simply be. I'm not, at least not yet. But I hope to be in the future.

That's partly what my cohesive love of BDSM is. It allows me, if only for the day, to be solely in the moment. I'm living to the exact second - every stroke, every thrust, the loss of each strand of hair, every tiny spasm of my inner walls after orgasm - I feel them all as they're happening and I revel in each little intricate detail.

I'm trying to find balance in my life - ebb and flow, give and take, push and pull. I'm always better at one side than trying to understand both because I've been so conditioned to take life as a fight. I try to drag that other side over the invisible line in the sand instead of equally pushing and pulling. It's very un-Libralike of me. I'm hoping that I grow into my enormous heart someday instead of fighting so hard to hide it away.

The soothing embrace of darkness always leaves me feeling most creative. It's almost as though I'm wrapped in a cocoon, listening to nothing but the clicking of my fingernails on the keyboard. I can hear the words coming out, imagine them forming the end result instead of fighting against the background noise of neighbors, television, music, the cell phone, my daughter, etc.

The corner of my eye catches the colored reflection of the Christmas tree on my apartment colored walls (It almost pains me to type the word "Christmas," but it pains me from a different perspective to use the slang and unappealing grammar that is "Xmas."). In my chilly home, with the lights in the background, I can almost feel the spirit of the holiday. I'm not quite there, like I'm lying on my back wishing for an orgasm that I can almost feel but am not sure will actually materialize. That waiting is a killer.

My mother always told me to "fake it until [I] make it," but that's partly what has led me to become the cold and emotionless monster I am today. Strike that. I'm not a monster and I do have emotions and general warm fuzzy feelings, it's just that I'm unable (most times) to express them with any sort of grace or dignity. Crying feels like weakness to me and letting someone else see me so vulnerable, well, that rarely happens.

What I really want for Christmas is to be able to open up and feel the spirit of the season. I want to get caught up in life and forget my troubles. I'd like to be able to express my emotions to someone, just to call and say "I love you" in the middle of the day with no rhyme or reason, without the receiving party assuming there's something wrong. I'd really like that.

Writer's block... please hold.

I seem to be lost in my head a lot more than usual lately. It's almost as if a fog has rolled in, covering all my thoughts in a deep haze and clouding my judgment. I'm second guessing everything, the minor decisions along with the major ones, ripping my hair out in an attempt to feel something. I'm clawing my way upwards like I'm swimming through a closed off canal, poking my head up every few seconds to try to find a brief opening in which to gasp for breath.

Life comes in waves. My life comes in two types - painful and life altering. I barely have time to breathe before they come crashing back onto my shores. Usually I enjoy it that way; I revel in the intensity. This time it just seems, well, tiring. To be on on on all the time, always feeling, always thinking, always so always something... it just wears me out.

I'm taking a few days off from blogging to celebrate Thanksgiving with those closest to me. To all those who celebrate, I wish you all a very non-intense, comforting fat-filled holiday.

Still no snow. The temperature is continually hovering above that magic number despite my many persuasions. I'm beginning to get restless waiting; hoping that every tiny piece of cotton floating past my field of vision would change into something more like precipitation and less like garbage.

And, like it or not, the holiday season is here. Tomorrow I'll take my daughter to the local Festival of Trees. I've already cleared the spot in our living room where the tree will be put up, but am patiently and methodically waiting until after Thanksgiving to even get the box out. It seems like the holidays keep coming earlier and earlier each year - a holiday based on thankfulness (and, you know, the complete rape of the Native Americans) is being completely steamrolled by one that's becoming more and more about consumerism each year (Side note - I stumbled on this website a few days ago and can't get it out of my head. Just in case you feel like giving something a little bit more meaningful than Barbie dolls and slippers.).

I'm beginning to wonder if my loner nature is going to subside anytime soon. I've been treating it like a symptom, a temporary side effect of an undiagnosed disease, but it seems more and more as though it's metastasizing into my every day life. The holidays for me were about being with family and sharing the giving spirit, but this year it's more about getting through them and into next year. I hope it changes but, with everything, I have a lot of hope and very little realistic belief.

On that note, I think I'm finally able to get some sleep. I've been up all night watching episodes of Dexter... such a great fucking show. I'm all about antiheroes. Goodnight everyone.

I remember, once upon a time, when life was black and white. It consisted of right and wrong, good and bad, life and death and was more simple because of that. If I wasn't in before the sun went down, I was grounded the next day. If I didn't study, I got a bad grade.

I really miss those times. Life these days is complex and serious, resulting in many long and sleepless nights deciding between the better of two evils. It's always a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. There's simply no way around that.

Bear has been pushing for monogamy. He loves me, I know and see that, and wants me all to himself. I can't honestly blame or punish him for that; I am an insanely jealous person and would never be able to handle him dating anyone else, same sex or not. I love him too, more than anything.

But there's Phedre. We're friends, essentially, but our level of emotional involvement is way deeper than that. I have strong feelings for her and have spoken with her recently about Bear's desire for monogamy. Although we've never stated our feelings for each other out loud, I know that I'm breaking something that means a lot to both of us.

I'm hurting inside. What's new, really? I have a future with Bear, a marriage and a family, but can't seem to get her out of my head.

The wind is whistling past my windows, creating an almost musical whir over the sound of Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons" playing at a moderate volume on my computer. They say it may snow this evening, but I hope it holds out until the morning. Besides the unpleasantness caused by having to scrape ice off my car windows, one of the few joys of the season comes from catching the first snowflake on my tongue.

I don't mind that my life is punctuated by these fleeting moments of beauty and childlike abandon. I only wish there was a world where nothing else existed but those times.

I've had an old friend try to reach out to me recently. Lying in bed last night, staring at the ceiling in a vain attempt to talk my body into sleeping, I realized we have known each other for over 10 years at this point. He remains one of the few people that has been my friend for that long; someone I've allowed to watch me grow, change and make mistakes.

He married someone that I don't approve of, she's incredibly wary and jealous of me, and it's been over a year since we've had any sort of real conversation. I love this man, he's very important to me, and I've over the past year I've forgotten just how much he really does mean to me. I miss him and I hope that his attempting to reforge that bond means that he's willing to stand up for himself and let me back into his life. I'm not getting my hopes up, though.

So here's to old friends. Here's to hope. Here's to new friends - the ones I've met and the one's I've yet to meet. And here's to that first snowflake of the season.

I am an anarchist. I have no qualms about it and I make no apologies for it. In my heart and soul, I know that the best thing for society is for us to work towards a life with no government interference. I frequent a few local anarchist websites and was completely taken aback to come upon this news story from my own stomping grounds.

To give up one's own life for the cause is the ultimate gesture of commitment. Regardless of how this blog began, however, my intention is not political in nature.

How many things in your life would you die for? Not in theory, but in practice. Would you set yourself on fire to protest something that you believe is unjust and wrong? We all have people that we would take a bullet for, but an idea? How many people can honestly say that they'd die for an idea?

The unfortunate truth is that there are very few true American martyrs. There are, in fact, very few true martyrs at all. Real martyrs refuse to sacrifice other people for their own beliefs; they choose death to emphasize their cause. They believe something so strongly that they simply can't stand by and watch idly. They're active participants in their own life, oddly enough, by choosing to make their own death count towards something larger than themselves.

So, I ask again, how many of you are strong enough to die for your beliefs?

You may not believe in what Malachi Ritchsher believed so strongly that he would kill himself for, but you have to give him credit for doing what so many people can't... feeling something so totally that it consumes you. Rest in peace, Malachi.

*In case you missed the link in the article, this is all that was run in the Sun Times. Sick how many gratuitous stories we can read about murder, rape, child molestation and the like but how one man's suicide to speak out against something the government is doing gets relegated to a small story about a crazy man and nothing about the politics behind it.

There is a passionate anxiety to writing. People who don't feel the pull to create can't possibly imagine this feeling. It's an almost manic scrawling... the need to find any close scrap of paper to capture that perfect phrase that makes an appearance while in line at the grocery store. Some days, I feel as though I'm close enough to madness to prick my own finger simply to use my own blood as ink.

There are some thoughts that are immediately censored before they find their way onto a more permanent medium. My mind is full of darkness and anger just as surely as it is filled with happiness and light. My thoughts seethe in my brain, a blackened cauldron bubbling over a glowing fire of rage and bitterness. These are the thoughts that I can't give literary birth to, for doing so may ignite a small seed in me that chills me to the bone.

The angel and devil on my shoulders are very pronounced. It's an almost visual tug of war between them... do the right thing, the socially acceptable thing, or do what I want. Be the person that I want to be, world be damned, or continue to act in moral and upstanding ways that don't seem to suit me.

It's hard to live a life that's full of contentment when you're living it for other people. I'm so appreciative of the loved ones in my life that support me for who I am and what I want... not who they think I should be and what they would do in my situation. In my experience, people like that are few and far between.

Do I have a point? No. I'm writing just to write; the itch to create this evening far exceeded the fact that I have nothing to say. I'm trying to make sense out of a life that has been on hold a lot lately; trying to turn inaction into the right sort of action that will take me further along the road towards where I want to ultimately end up. The problem is, I don't know where I want to end up. Sometimes the journey is best part.

There was a small fraction of a moment, some incidental clicking of a second hand, that served as my awakening. Perhaps it was the rough scratching of the beige apartment carpet on the soft delicate skin of my left cheek or the way that each thrust brought with it another sharp slap of his hand against my already welted backside... it's really very difficult to tell. It may have not been physical at all, the way that repressed memories or the ignored knowledge of previous lives tends to take one by surprised at the most inopportune moments.

Sex is my poetry. Being close to people, intimately close, fills me with an undeniable sense of purpose. My partner and I communicate most effectively when we're connected in that sense; it's almost as though all those things that we set aside and ignore during the course of normal conversation suddenly don't need to be said. Everything between us returns to equilibrium.

I enjoy a life in balance. I like black, white and grey. I like happy, sad and neutral. I like pain, pleasure and, well, both at the same time. The nasty sort of pain and the illness that has precluded our sexual relationship has thrown a blanket over some of my more delicate senses. I've become less overtly sexual in nature... where we'd spend our weekends together ordering in and fucking all day we now rent movies and cuddle. I'm out of balance with myself.

This weekend was different. I've been used, abused and fucked within an inch of my life. I've made guttural sounds that shouldn't come from a human being. I feel loved, I feel beautiful, I feel closer to him than I have in a long time. I used to believe that my need for the closeness that sex provides was a flaw, something that made me weak and needful, but I'm reevaluating that.

For now, I'm satisfied.

Today is one of those days when I crave submission. I've been running around like crazy all day - I voted bright and early, went for a run at the gym, had a work lunch/meeting and then I worked again in the evening. It's 10:30 and I'm just now sitting down at my computer for a few brief moments of sanity regaining time before viewing the latest election results (too close to call, though it's looking terrifying Republican at the moment) and heading off to bed.

It's times like these when I need to let go and lose control for a while. I need to give in to that powerful urge to submit, to kneel at his feet and feel his pride, love and joy wash over me. It provides me with the ability to take time for myself and for my man, to center things around us and put the concerns of the rest of our lives and the world on the backburner to concentrate on the moment.

It's been months since we've done anything substantially D/s, and probably over a year since I can remember the last time I've felt satisfied for more than the afterglow with the amount that's in our lives. We've never found a healthy balance - too much makes me angry and withdrawn, too little makes me act out like a petulant toddler. Learning what D/s means in our relationship now that he's in so much pain has had to take a backseat to so many other more important issues for us.

It's just nights like these, as Lucero would say, that make him seem so far away.

If you'll excuse me, I'm off to bed. No visions of sugar plum fairies tonight, my darlings.

I may be without a real blog template at the moment, but I wanted to take a time out from my frantic hacking and remind everyone that it's your right and responsibility to cast your vote tomorrow. You may not think you're making a difference, but you are. You're shaping your state for the future, your future. You're influencing policy, helping put people in office who believe the same things that you do and will fight for them.

Vote tomorrow, and vote wisely. Do your research - don't just blindly vote democrat or republican unless you've looked at what that means for each candidate. I may be an anarchist, but until that is as feasible and maintainable for our society in practice as it is in theory my ass is getting out and marking that ballet.

Do your duty, people. That's all I'm sayin'.

*Comic courtesy of the best damn webcomic with stick figures out there, xkcd.

I'm going absolutely nuts trying to redesign this page; my fingers are sore and my brain is nearly dead. If anyone has any extra time on their hands and would like to toss me a template or something that I can just tweak a bit, add a header I've designed and stick up there instead of spending all my time messing with the HTML and CSS myself, I'd appreciate it. Be your best friend!

If I were a religious woman, I would pray for days like these. Wrapped in my favorite white chenille blanket (which, these days, seems more like a comfort "blankie" than a simple decorative piece of fabric), my hands pressed around the theoretical mug of hot chocolate that I dreamed of a few days ago, my mind anticipating doing next to nothing the entire day... life couldn't get more wonderful than this.

I'm planning a rousing day of closet cleaning, grocery shopping and movie seeing... next week starts that downward decline to the holiday season that spirals me into a constant whirl of activity and stress. Today, however, I am zen. I am peaceful and content. I am serene. And, I need to get laid? Where did that come from?

I was flipping through my "trunk o' naughty" at the foot of my bed last night (my girl had never seen liquid latex... which is a travesty) and the intoxicating smell just sent my senses into overdrive. I haven't been in there in months, and the combination of leather, robe, lubricant and latex that mingled with the sound of chain and sadistic implements rustling just rocked my world. I'm going to be turned on for the rest of the day.