i bought myself a new copy of Story of O yesterday. i threw my last copy away – dog-eared thing that it was – back when my daughter was a teenager because i was afraid she’d find it and read it.
Just looking at the cover makes me wet.
i read some of it last night – flipping through it randomly. i ended up at the part where O is taken to Anne-Marie’s and gets pierced. i didn’t actually get as far as the branding because, you know, there was no need to. laughing….
It was the loveliest self-induced orgasm i’ve had in a long time!
i’m curious to see how the book sounds now that i’m familiar with the lifestyle. i suspect it will read differently. Not that i can read a lot of it at one time… {giggles}
Anyhow.
i’ve been thinking still about the rules that LM and Sin talked about. You know, we’re all raised with them. What girls are supposed to do and what we aren’t. What men want in a relationship.
It doesn’t matter if we agree with them or not, if we’re good at following them or not, if we even get them or not; they’re part of our consciousness. i don’t think we can ever shed that completely. Look at the magazines when you’re standing in line at the grocery. So much of it is geared to figuring out what “he” wants and giving it to him.
i used to try to make myself smaller so he would feel bigger. That’s what they taught us to do. Don’t you remember? We weren’t supposed to be too smart:
“Boys don’t make passes/ at girls who wear glasses.”
That wasn’t about the glasses, it was because they represented being smart. Better blind than smart, right?
“Girls don’t call boys.”
That was a sacred rule. But even better – worse – than that was;
“They won’t buy a cow if they can get the milk free.”
My step-mother preached that one to me once. i was so righteously indignant, i thought i’d explode. This was in 1972 maybe, the years of making love, not war.
Sigh.
i’m actually a big fan of flirting, and can do it pretty well with a partner who enjoys it. And i like the rituals of courtship – open the door for me, help me with my coat, order dinner for me. i’ll slip into the warmth of that quite comfortably. Snuggled up to you, i’ll be happy to lean on you, my big man protector. i may even bat my eyelashes. And it’ll be genuine.
But i’m not so good at pretending to feel ways i don’t. Not so good at acting like i don’t care when i do. And ultimately, not any good at pretending to be less than i am to help someone else feel bigger.
And isn’t that the point of all those vanilla rules? To make him think he’s in charge? Meanwhile, the woman is secretly trying to manipulate him and be in charge herself.
Maybe part of the beauty of TTWD is that we can negotiate some of that. Maybe.
Sigh.
aisha 