Boys Getting Older

It's funny, you know.

I identify as a Boy, but not, perhaps, the way a lot of people think. To a lot of people, Boy implies being young, implies being little. Being a kid, both physically and mentally a little.

But here I am, slowly approaching the big 30. One could be forgiven for thinking, considering how I identify, that I'd be pining for my glory days, desperately trying to get back my youth, trying to be all hip and with it. Of course, that ignores the fact that I was never hip and with it, even when I was young, but it is true - During most of my 20s, I've very much missed my teens. I always kept thinking that I was running out of time, always trying to find ways of keeping myself in the same space I was when I was a teen.

And to be fair, I had a lot of "positive" reinforcement at the time. 17-18 was the time I developed my tragic twink backstory, going to gay sex lounges, meeting people from the internet, etc. I was a pretty boy, I got plenty of attention from older men, and I was absolutely fine at the time with that. When I broke up with my girlfriend when I was 22 or so, I was suddenly stunned at how much positive attention I got from men and women around me, (it was what made me realise that yeah, okay, perhaps I was attractive). It was a great boost to an ego that sorely needed it. But when I went online again, I realised that I was getting far, far less offers than I used to.

And that was when I first started to question the whole being young thing.

Oh, it still took a few years. I still had my freakouts, and I did spend a long time trying to recapture my youth. I had a savings account for saving up for Laser hair removal, I used to get regular waxings, I would insist that Daddy take me out to playgrounds so I could play. And there were milestones. When I sprained both my arm and my leg in as many months, My psych quite bluntly pointed out to me that it was a clear sign that I was not an actual kid - I had an adult body, and I had to respect that. I actually realised this a few months later, on a visit to a playground with Daddy, watching kids play and realising that I simply didn't have the ability to play like they did. As much as I might like to, I will never be a kid, even if I'm a Boy at mind.

And in the last few months, I've realised that I've stopped responding to the usual rises about me getting older. I've been noticing grey hairs (or, at least Daddy has), and it's really not fazing me. The idea of me getting older no longer fills me with dread. Hell, it doesn't really cause mild discomfort anymore.

I think I'm finally accepting that I'm getting older. I've stopped wishing I was younger, but then I guess a lot of that is because I've started to realise that my youth was not neither wasted nor particularly great. I've had a lot of life up to this point, but I wouldn't want to go back and live it again, even knowing what I know right now. I'm also much happier now than I once was, I'm much more comfortable where I am right now. Even if I fee like I don't have a lot of money, I'm typing this on my own laptop on my glorious couch in my beautiful home. I have a Daddy I love, truly and deeply, who I want to spend the rest of my life with, and who wants to spend the rest of his life with me, as well as a Boyfriend who's great to hang out with, who's hot and a nice guy, a job I enjoy, etc.

In short, I think I'm starting to understand that my life is getting better. I don't have to be young to enjoy it, and I'm really looking forward to what life throws at me next.

Talking about it

So, it happens.

Me and Sister have been interacting more and more, and while we've been getting along famously, there have been some... miscommunications. Most recently, I'd been starting to get a little uncomfortable with the way Sister had been touching and acting towards me. I was pretty sure it was just an intimacy mismatch - she was acting a little more intimate towards me than I felt comfortable with, but it had been going on for a while before I realised why I was feeling uncomfortable.

So, yesterday I decided to talk to her about it. I let her know that I wasn't comfortable with the level of intimacy. I was hoping that it would be a nice, easy discussion. But the conversation clearly triggered something with her, and she started crying.

And that's when things got a little awkward. I was trying to figure out what had gone wrong, why she'd suddenly broken down, but I think I was making a few mistakes along the way, and I couldn't help her calm down enough, in fact, I think I may have exacerbated the situation. It took Daddy intervening to resolve the situation to any degree, but to be honest I'm kicking myself a bit that I couldn't handle it myself.

But at least I got my point across. It shows I have a little way to go too - I really need to learn to identify behaviour that makes me uncomfortable much earlier, because confronting people after the fact is clearly not the best way to deal with this sort of thing. So, hey, a learning experience for us all, I guess...

Finding Service

Recently, me and Daddy have been talking about the services I give to him.

With Sister now being around our house more often, she's started to take over the cleaning of the house. This is leading to a few awkward issues, because part of my service to Daddy is taking care of the basic chores, such as putting the dishes in the dishwasher, and doing the laundry.

But, as has been a constant issue, I'm not good at doing these things unprompted. I'm so often not present, away in my head playing video games, or in one of my other hobbies, that I don't tend to get around to doing these chores until I'm asked. Sister is not the same - she's engaged in service for most of her attention, so she  sees something that needs to be done and does it straight away. Whereas in my case, service tends to happen when Daddy breaks me out of my attention, and points out those chores to me.

This often means that my chores are done long before I'd normally do them at the end of the night. Not an ideal situation.

But this is something that we've been dealing with for years. It's always been the case that I don't do things unless prompted (sometimes prompted several times), and I can't compete in service against someone who has the presence of mind to do things without asking.

Daddy has been talking about perhaps moving my chores to Sister instead, and to be honest that makes me a little anxious. When he mentioned it to me previously I reacted almost violently to it. The reason, really, is that I also want service in my life. Those little chores I do, even though they're not much, are as much about me serving Daddy.

And yes, there's plenty of other services I do. The fact that I work, in a job that earns a lot of money, is just one of those services, but it doesn't feel like service to me. I'd be doing it regardless of whether it benefited Daddy. And as a result of that feeling, I don't tend to feel like I'm in service to Daddy unless it's something I do for him at home.

Now that I've had some time to think about it, though, there are other things that I can do that help Daddy, perhaps even more than chores. Things like going out and doing food shopping, things like chauffeuring Daddy to events, like cleaning his car... The big things that I do for him that aren't exactly regular, but are there when Daddy needs them. The things that me being an able-bodied person means I'm able to do for him, saving him the energy to do things that he wants and needs to do more.

I think it's clear that I have to play to my strengths here. I'm just not going to be the sort of service sub that can be set up and left to their own devices. I think instead, I need to focus on being the sort of service sub that is able to get up and do things when instructed. I can do that, I've done that before. It means that I'm the go-to person when things need to be done now, rather than the person in the background that gets things done without thinking. The concierge, rather than the dogsbody, if that makes sense.

Perhaps that's a better way of distributing the service duties in a fair manner. As long as there's things that do need doing right now, and they happen frequently enough, I think I could be satisfied with that sort of arrangement. What I want is the feeling that I'm serving Daddy, and I want to do things often enough that I don't feel like I'm abandoning Daddy. I think I can go back to Daddy on this.

Screams are Not for Me

So, I've got something of a confession to make. I can't deal with screaming.

It's something I've struggled with for quite a number of years. For most people, of course, feeling uncomfortable around people screaming is a perfectly ordinary and desired reaction - when people scream, that usually means they're in trouble.

But that's not so much the case when you're a kinkster.

Because screams happen a lot at our gatherings, and in our homes, and they're not typically signs of distress. Indeed, for a lot of kinksters, they're a sign of getting exactly what they want. Screams of pain, of delight, they're all a part of our lifestyle.

But I don't deal with them very well.

It's reached it's biggest point now that Sister has started hanging around the house more, and Daddy has started playing with her more often. Sister has a much bigger appetite for pain than I ever did, and it means that Daddy can push harder than he'd normally do with myself or other partners. And she's not the kind of painslut that goes all stoic. No, she cries out, she screams, she yells.

And that makes it really difficult to stay present when the two are playing. It takes me back to bad times with my parents. It takes me back to times where I've been smacked or belted because I've done something wrong, and that is not a place where I want to go. Even writing this, I'm having to write around the emotions, because I don't really want to accidentally slip into those memories. It's a bad place. Worse, as I start getting closer to those memories, I start getting anxious about other sound, like impact noises, I start desperately needing to get away, because my calm's been broken, and I need to go somewhere where there's no kinky noises to put the shield back up.

So, if you see me in a quiet corner at an event, or at a kink party, or you see me being really uncomfortable, this is probably why. I do want to be part of events, and this reaction makes things hard for me. Feel free to distract me, or take me away from the scene, take me to another part of the party where I can talk with others and not be around the violent sounds. I'll be grateful, and you might just have saved my sanity for another night.

Steel

So, I think it's official - I think I'm into steel.

I've gone through a fair share of sex toys, most of them rubber, due to cost constraints. While I've enjoyed rubber toys, I've noticed recently that, no matter how much lube I use, I tend to find them really uncomfortable. And that's a shame, because I love being penetrated, but none of the toys I had were at all fun to use anymore.

Then, a few years ago, I went to Sexpo, and got an acrylic wand, just a simple insertable, clear and acrylic. I tried it once and oh my god, it was brilliant. That was when I started to realise that squishy was not the thing I wanted in a sex toy. I wanted my toys to be smooth, silky and hard.

This year for my birthday, Daddy offered to get me a toy, so I decided to get a steel toy, a Curve, specifically, from Metalworx:

And I have to admit I've fallen a bit in love with it. It's perfect for what I want in penetration - a good length, but not with too much girth, it feels great coming in, and sensational coming out.

Since getting it, I've suddenly been starting to look at other metal toys. I've been a fan of ball stretchers for a really long time, and while I've just been using a cheap leather one, I've been salivating over these steel weight/stretchers:

And now it's getting worse, because I look at things like steel manacles, and thick steel collars, and I gotta admit that it's starting to really turn me on.

It's a bit odd, that I've suddenly gone the entire way with this. I remember Daddy, many years back, saying how as well as rope, he often had a thing for chains as well, and at the time I said I wasn't interested (mostly because I was not into the idea of cold things all over me - rope was nice and warm, I like that!). These days though... I could totally go for being chained up in manacles. The thought genuinely appeals.

It's really odd how these kind of preferences can change so dramatically during your life.

Shoulders to cry on

Of course, there's more to being a big brother than playing games with your little sister.

Daddy has been dealing with some traumas from his past life, and things came to the boil last night. It's a horrible place to be in, having experienced this particular trauma myself. At times like these, you become really vulnerable, so Daddy wanted to hide with me in his room, but didn't want to hide what was happening from Sis, so asked me to let her know.

So, I went out to Sis, and told her that Daddy was having some big issues, and that she doesn't need to worry about it, but Daddy didn't want to hide it from her. This caused her some serious distress, as far as I can tell because she felt a desperate need to do something about what Daddy was experiencing, but felt like Daddy was holding her at arm's length.

Sis has been struggling with this concept, and I understand the difficulties. One of the hardest things to accept  is that there isn't always a way to take pain away from the people you love. It's a hard lesson, and one that took me a very long time to learn. And it still hurts sometimes, to see Daddy in such pain, to see all the struggles that he goes through everyday.


But that's not my job, and it won't be Sis's, either. I can't take away Daddy's pain, and Daddy neither wants that nor accepts that. Our job is to help Daddy through the pain, to be there when he needs us, to be the hug he needs, to be a shoulder to cry on if he needs it, and, occasionally, to remind him that it's okay to be in pain, and that we're here for him.

I spent some time being her shoulder to cry on, and helped her through her own crisis. It's a hard place to be in, but I know what it's like, and I wanted her to understand that the fact that I get to be Daddy's shoulder right now is just a matter of seniority, not anything wrong with her, and that she needs to realise that she's not going to be able to magically fix Daddy's issues with the world, and she just has to be able to support him, instead. Hopefully she'll realise that with time. And then, I went back to Daddy's room, and made sure that support was there for him right there and then.

Family

It's very common in the Leather scene to refer to your group of relationships as a "Family". I suspect, though, that most families don't quite take it that literally.

Me and Daddy's Girl have been slowly working out our own relationship between each other, and it's turning out to be a bit more... childlike than I expect Daddy has considered. I've been feeling very much in an Elder Sibling space with her, while she's been reciprocating a good deal. There's been a lot of tongue-poking, and a lot of childish ribbing between each other.

I say this because I'm not sure Daddy knew what he was in for when the two of us starting testing our bounds. There's been more than a bit of face-palming around our behaviour. It's worse because a lot of the time we do it while we're eating out in public. And I can't tell a lie - it's really fun to bounce off each other. It's almost a game-within-the-game - who's reaction is the one that brings up the face-palm.

I am a bit concerned that Daddy will eventually stop the fun, and tell us to grow up, at least a little. I mean, yeah, we're really childish a lot of the time. We could probably stand to be a little bit more adult. 

But then, there would be no face-palm. And that would be tragic.

Putting my Boots on

I wrote a while back about Daddy taking my Leathers away, for me to earn them back. I've now past the first step. Last week, Daddy gave me my Boots back.

It was a simple ceremony, in front of me and His Girl. He went into his room, after I'd put on his boots, and grabbed my boots out. He told me that he now felt that I had honestly begun walking the walk, instead of just talking the talk. He then gave me my boots, and told me to put them on.

To be fair, I'd been a little worried previously. I'd committed to earning my leathers, but I hadn't quite grokked what I needed to earn each piece. I know that Leather is not a set of unlockable achievements that earn you new clothing items, it's not like there's this set set of hoops that I jump through, and there's my reward at the end. There are certain elements of Leather that aren't exactly definable, that you only realise that you're following once you're well and truly on the path.

But with that said, I have sometimes felt like there hasn't been a great deal of guidance on the way. I've gone to Leather events, read book, talked to Leather people, but what my path is, and what my milestones are? It's been something of a mystery.

Now that I have my first item, I feel like I have a bit more direction now. I have some clue as to what I'm expecting, and that's a good thing to me.

A Gooooood Suspension

Suspension is the big thing that my Daddy is known for in the scene, but bizarrely I don't get suspended all that often. Some of it is the fact that "I can get suspended at any time", so anytime we go out to an event other people tend to take priority over me. The second reason is that I'm just not that great a Suspension bottom - I'm not particularly flexible, so I can't do a lot of the prettier poses, and I tend to "fight" the suspension somewhat - as much as I enjoy being up, and playing with my Daddy, I have a really hard time relaxing into the suspension.

Tonight, however, I got the chance to be taken up by Daddy.

He first looked me in the eye, told me that I needed to relax. He kept looking at me, willing me to relax, as I tried as best as I could. He tells me "You need to trust me", then he took his grey handkerchief and put it over my eyes, like a blindfold. He tied my arms to either side of the suspension frame. And then began all the ties, the harnesses, the lines that are needed to hoist anyone up.

I worked so hard on keeping myself relaxed through the whole process. Daddy had told me I needed to be relaxed, and so relaxed I would be. I would make him proud, I would be a good bottom tonight.

I kept myself still, while blindfolded, and finally, I felt him starting to hoist me up, body first then legs. I felt myself spinning around, as Daddy turned me around for all to see. I felt his face in front of me, his body touching my face. I tell him I love him, so much, and we kissed, in front of everyone watching.

Alas, the ropes began to bite into my chest, and I knew that, as much as I want to, my body cannot stay up much longer, and I told Daddy that I needed to come down. I wasn't up long, not more than a couple of minutes, all up. But as I get hoisted down, and as Daddy unties me and takes off my blindfold, the bright lights in my eyes, I ask Daddy "Did I do it? Did I make you proud?"

Daddy looked at me, and I could see the answer in his eyes before he spoke. "Yes, you made me proud". For the first time, I felt light-headed and floaty. This isn't my usual reaction to suspensions, but honestly, I don't mind. I like this feeling.

I help Daddy pack up his rope, and then go with him to a couch in the club. I hug him, hold onto him, I don't want to let him go. He looks at me. "Oh! I can see it there, you're having a feeling!". He's right, I am having a feeling. I've not felt this close to my Daddy in ages, maybe ever. When I think back on the feeling, I have to ask myself, is this what Daddy was wanting all this time? Is this the fabled "spiritual connection" that I could never seem to muster during our previous play?

But back in the moment, I'm not thinking about the feeling. I just want to feel it. I also never want to let my Daddy go. But alas, the feeling, the moment, it passes. Daddy and his girl start preparing for their play, and the connection passes.

Passion

Daddy and I were talking last night, and he asked me an interesting question: What do I think about all day? I had to admit that I don't exactly think of him all day, and this wasn't the answer he was looking for, because he thinks about me most of his day. It really highlighted a difference between the two of us, specifically that I'm not a particularly passionate person, and Daddy definitely is. Daddy is passionate about his goals and desires, and works so very hard to make them a reality, whereas I'm much more sanguine about my desires and goals. It's something that Daddy has had a lot of issue with, specifically that he's always concerned that my goals have changed significantly since we've been together, mostly because I've started planning my life around him. Now, to me, this isn't a big issue - I have goals and desires in life, but I don't hold onto them with any real force. If things in my life change, I'm much more likely to change my goals, rather than change my life to meet those goals. This has meant, of course, that goals in my life such as raising kids, having pets, going back to uni, etcetera, have all changed when things in my life have made these incompatible goals. I simply don't have a big connection to my goals. I like to have goals in my life, to know where I'm going, but what those goals actually are aren't a big concern to me. This is apparently different to how Daddy works - he couldn't imagine dropping his life goals for people in his life, to just give up on one goal and move on to another. He's kind of the opposite, more likely to change his life to meet his goals and desires. And so when he applies this thinking to me, he's thinking that he's forcing his life onto me, whereas I on the other hand am simply adapting my road to happiness with the world I find myself in. So, some readjustment later, and I think Daddy is slowly understanding that I'm happy to change my goals if necessary, even if he isn't. And to be honest, it's kinda good that it's this way around, the be perfectly honest!