In case you missed this post, I moved across country back in April, stayed in a temporary spot (with my parents … that was a whole thing) for 80 days, and FINALLY moved into the new house in Mashpee, MA, last week.

Needless to say, things are a bit unsettled as I start the process of establishing new rhythms and new routines. So it may take me a few weeks to start regularly posting entries.

In the meantime, feel free to peruse old posts, and please check out the other fantastic substacks in my recommendations list. has a great new post up about Merry Alpern. is also a favorite of mine, and their latest, Voicing Kink is Translation Before it is Courage is a great read. And of course, there’s always the incredible Love at the Edges by .

That being said, I am still answering chats, emails, and messages (although responses may be delayed).

Finally … just a little view into my world right now:

As overwhelming as all of this has been, it feels incredible to be where I’m supposed to be. I appreciate your patience as I calibrate to the new rhythms in this new space.

Kink on, my friends.

• Quill

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… and that’s a sentence I’d never thought I’d write ever.

Thankfully, we’re not staying here due to any financial or personal disaster. It was a question of practicality: we needed a place to stay after we sold our house in CO and looked for a new one in MA. I’m grateful for their generosity and the freedom it gave us to find our new house (we’re moving in next week), but it has been a challenge. Their home is beautiful and we had enough space for some privacy, but as we round out week ten of being here, everyone’s patience is running a little thin. My parents and I have a difficult history, but good therapy, my regular meditation practice, and maintaining good boundaries have kept things relatively tolerable.

I have to thank the kink community, and especially my former partners, for teaching me how to maintain those boundaries. Without that experience, I would have surely committed a felony by now, or put my head in the oven (most likely both). But a recent experience brought a lot into focus for me.

A couple of weeks ago, we took my parents to a concert and dinner for their 55th wedding anniversary. Normally, I’d now be chronicling all of the ways this went wrong, and all the childhood trauma it brought up. But, much to my absolute amazement, nothing went wrong. In fact, it went as perfectly as it ever could: excellent dinner, beautiful music, and generally good conversation. My parents expressed real, authentic gratitude for the day itself. It was one of those very rare, positive, and dare I say pleasant outings with my parents that I’ve had in my adult life.

The next morning, however, a raw feeling surfaced. As I was sipping my coffee in kitchen, I deeply felt that physical aversion that arises when I’m with my parents for long periods. As they puttered about the kitchen, chatting away about the previous day’s concert and dinner, I realized that I was out of spoons and needed to be out of that space as quickly as possible. My spouse and I planned a day of activities to get the two of us out of the house.

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Despite the exit strategy, I still felt a little disappointment start to creep in. The day before had been one of the best days I’ve had with my parents in decades; yet here I was feeling deep aversion and anxiety. But I centered myself, and began a short mindfulness exercise:

• I released the judgement I was feeling for not being in a better mood.

• I examined the way the emotions felt as physical sensations.

• One by one I started stripping away any meaning from sensations. I let go of the content of the narrative and just felt the sensations as they were.

• Instead of “frustration, anxiety, and aversion” I felt tightness, a constriction in chest, that feeling of heaviness and pressure behind my eyes.

As the sensations faded, I realized what I had forgotten in the moment: It didn’t matter that the interactions with my parents the day before had been positive. What mattered was duration, proximity, and intensity. With all the history we had, it no longer mattered if I was having a good time with them or not; just being with them took a lot of energetic and emotional resources.1

This was a lesson that had been reinforced by too many kink conferences where I tried to do too much — where I attempted to fill every moment with emotionally intense classes, scenes, or interactions with other kinksters. I’d invariably end up exhausted, causing difficulty with partners and/or massive drops.

At the last con I attended, I vowed to prioritize my sanity, and let myself off the proverbial hook by not feeling compelled to attend every class, or constantly interact. I set up boundaries for myself which included going back to my room or heading out to a restaurant on my own just to recenter and decompress. I had taken my cues from a few close friends who had done similar things at other cons. It turned out to be a great experience, and not only were the quality of my interactions with people beautiful, centered, and deep, but I found that my post-con drop was minimal.

Now, being at a con and spending time with my parents are very different, but working through the emotional intensity of each required basically the same approach: maintaining my boundaries and giving myself space. I needed to remember that even when our interactions with people are great (and especially if there’s a history or intensity to them), we’re still tapping emotional resources. Good, positive, and pleasant interactions are pulling energy from the same well as negative, challenging, and unpleasant ones; the latter just seems to sap those resources a bit more quickly.

The next day, I took a scenic drive, spent some time at a farmers market, and then spent some time by myself on the front porch while my spouse (voluntarily and consensually) spent time with my parents. It was just what I needed.

The kink community taught me that emotional resources are still resources. Even when we’re having beautiful, happy, and/or joyous interactions, we’re still expending fuel. Moving with this kind of mindfulness helped me in big ways that day, and has been helping me ever since.

Lesson learned, kinksters. Thank you.

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For me, polyamory means being in love with more than one person, not just “loving” people. I can look into a close friend’s eyes and tell them that I love them and mean it; but I am not in love with them. They are a big part of my life, but not a partner. It’s a question of intensity, really. And I know it when I feel it. And, for me, it’s not contingent on a physical relationship.

I am in love with my partners, deeply. I have been in love with those who are no longer partners. Regardless of the ways it manifests physically, I know it as a specific frequency and depth of our exchange, whether kinky or not. The common denominator with all the people with whom I am currently (or have been) in love is a very specific, ineffable feeling that pervades our interactions. It’s a warmth, a comfort, a safety. It’s a deep knowledge and understanding that they are an integral part of my life and my wellbeing, and that I am an integral part of theirs.

Finally — and most importantly — it is the fact that the presence of that love elevates all of my relationships and multiple aspects of my life. When my polyamory is balanced and healthy, the sense of wholeness and completion that results allows me to be a better person overall, and a better partner for everyone with whom I’m involved.

Sadly, in the quest to justify the ethics of our lifestyles and the choices around them, I think it’s becoming easier to feel beholden to labels and models of polyamory that may not fully represent the sometimes messy and shifting lived experience of our polyamorous relationships.

Some questions to ask ourselves:

• Are we practicing “relationship anarchy” to articulate a space in which we can create possibility in relationships, or are we detrimentally poking at and picking apart every stable aspect of our relationships out of fear that we’re somehow reinscribing patriarchal, heteronormative, oppressive patterns?

• Are our polyamorous relationships performative in the sense that they are “subversive,” but emotionally bankrupt?

• Is “kitchen table polyamory” creeping away from simply a model of polyam dynamics toward the ideal model, where those who happily, ethically, and safely practice varying degrees of parallel and solo polyamory are being made to feel a bit poly-insecure?

While the various labels and underlying intentions are absolutely legitimate and integral for establishing ethical practices in polyamory — serving as safeguards against the deception and dishonesty often linked to cheating disguised as polyamory or ENM — they carry an inherent risk. Similarly to how a kink community’s emphasis on “safety” can unintentionally marginalize certain consensual practices or flavors of authority exchange, an assumed concept of what is “ethical” within polyamory, despite good intentions, lead to the alienation of those whose relationships diverge from the kitchen table model.

I once heard someone (granted it was at a bar at a kink convention after they had a couple of drinks) call any kind of parallel polyamory where metamours aren’t hanging out with each other regularly as “barely ethical.” Is parallel polyam somehow less ethical than other forms simply because everyone isn’t doing major holidays together, or – gasp – are indifferent toward each other?

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If we’re the hinge in a V relationship, and not all under the same roof, is the love we have for one partner contingent on whether or not that partner gets along with our other partners? Throw power dynamics in to the mix and we’re adding a whole new level of complexity and potential complications.

It’s easy to see how the entire subject of love itself gets squeezed out of the mix. Of course, being a general douche-canoe to your partners and acting unethically is never excused by “but I love them;” but those of us in polyamorous relationships know that we will do the hardest things we’ve ever done to create the spaces for that love to work (and know that despite our best efforts, sometimes it still doesn’t).

It’s super easy for those of us practicing parallel or solo polyamory to say that metamours not having a lot in common and/or not wanting to be besties with each other isn’t a reason to shut down a relationship. But I do think that sometimes the voices who tend to get the most attention when it comes to polyam dynamics are those who are “living the dream” of absolute egalitarianism in their model polycule – right down to the fully negotiated chore wheel created at their kitchen table. It’s not for me to question whether or not their paradise is as they say it is, but I do pay attention to the quick mentions of the partners who have “come and gone,” or “moved out,” or “moved on” with about as much explanation given as the disappearances of Tiger from the Brady Bunch, or Ben from Friends (how annoying as that kid anyway?).

What I do know is that more than a few people in my own circles tend to not live with their polyam partners, or are living only with a nesting partner and/or have other partners who don’t necessarily get together as a group for mostly logistical – but also interpersonal – reasons. But the love they have for their partners is real, and enough to maintain enough transparency and communication to sustain them. The healthy polyam relationships I’ve witnessed are healthy because the basic needs are met, everyone is generally aligned regarding their wants and needs, and no one is trying to force anyone to like (or spend time with) anyone else.

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I think that the obsession that all of our partners MUST be friends, MUST hang out at least x times per year, and, finally, MUST be able to share all of the intimate details of our time together eclipses a core aspect of polyamory itself: a deep respect and understanding of our capacities to love. Is love contingent on whether or not we’re interested in the everyday goings-on of a partner’s relationship to their nesting partner? Or that we really don’t feel the need to hang out with them? Does that negate the love we feel? Do we need to know the details of exactly how a partner has scened with or fucked someone else to feel compersion?

Those are questions that I think we’ve all faced (and perhaps avoided) as we explore and maintain our polyamory. What level of communication is necessary for everyone involved to feel safe, fulfilled, and elevated by the experience itself? Are the Venn diagrams of our values and hopes overlapping enough, or not touching at all? Most importantly, is our polyamory enriching all of us in some way? Does it make us better for it, or does it leave us exhausted and constantly questioning ourselves, our motives, the motives of our partners and of our metamours? Of course, these answers are highly personal. But if it’s working, everyone involved should feel that polyamory is lifting everyone up.

For me, at least, it’s that that lifting up – that idea that the relationship elevates all of us – that is one of the most beautiful aspect of polyamory. But I don’t think we need to be around a table for that lifting up to happen. I think the presence of people in our lives that expands our capacity to love elevates us. I am a better person when I have multiple partners. I am more balanced. More approachable. I am more understanding.

God knows I’ve gotten this terribly wrong in my life: especially when my own insecurities, assumptions, and/or hubris got the best of me. Anyone who is oriented toward polyamory knows this pain and has — at some point — allowed fear and jealousy to distract us from protecting and cultivating the loving relationships we’re in.

Polyamory is hard enough as it is. Those of us who were born with this capacity for love know the pain of getting it wrong, but we also know how good it feels when we get it right. If our polyamory doesn’t fit into specific models, regardless of the intention behind them, it doesn’t mean our love or lived experience is wrong.

Just because there is room at a table doesn’t mean we should feel compelled to sit there.

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Back in the day, our play had been intense, sexual, and hot; but it was very definitely an itch that both of us scratched and thus satisfied. Our contact was sporadic after that. She would sometime be flirty in texts, but it never went further.

She once again shared how lonely she felt in her small town, and how distance and cost made it hard for her to travel to the nearest kink scene. Apparently her last breakup was difficult, and she was feeling particularly “othered” as a result. It just made her feelings of alienation that much more intense.

She then reminisced about our previous scenes. That was nothing new, but this time she admitted “sometimes I still fantasize about that scene and about you.” The conversation then timidly meandered around the possibility of playing a bit over text. She was looking for me to “instruct her” to touch herself, and/or “command” her to kneel or do some other protocol.

While this was definitely an ego boost, and it had been something I’ve done with her and others in the past, I wasn’t in the frame of mind to sext or to “teleDom” her. That being said, I could tell that she needed something a little different than just sexual release. This didn’t feel like a desire for simple titillation. I told her that while I wasn’t in the emotional space to co-create a fantasy or scene with her, I would be willing to just listen to her share her fantasies. I made it clear that I wasn’t going to direct or “command” her. But I did agree to just give her occasional “green lights” to continue. She enthusiastically agreed.

Then slowly, carefully, she revealed her fantasy in detail. There were moments when she paused, perhaps hoping for me add or ask questions, but I refrained and instead simply would text “go on” or “tell me more.” Yes, technically I was doing a “Dommy” thing by giving her permission to proceed, but I was comfortable with keeping the exchange at that level. I was just giving her a space (and some encouragement) to share something without shame or judgement. I wasn’t sure if she was masturbating while she was texting, but she respected the boundaries we had created on the fly, stuck to the fantasy, and didn’t tell me what she was doing in real time.

Admittedly, it was a VERY hot fantasy, and I was aroused. But mutual masturbation wasn’t what I was there for. I was there just to listen and to hold something that was offered to me. I was there just to bear witness.

The fantasy included a mix of things we had done together and a few things she wished we could have explored. After the fantasy climax (and perhaps her own), she thanked me for “understanding exactly what [she] needed.”

The act of “bearing witness” can be deep and intimate in so many ways.

I am reminded of the relationship I had with my second partner, with whom I’ve recently reconnected. We had been together for nine years, but for complex reasons that involved a lack of transparency with her nesting partner, we drifted apart about three years ago. Even though our comet relationship was neither kinky nor sexual, I felt her absence deeply. We fell in love because we were able to spend time in each other’s presence with a level of honesty and authenticity that wasn’t like anything else we had in any other aspect of our lives. That’s not to minimize or say that our primary relationships with our spouses/partners was lacking, but poly folx out there will know what I’m talking about. With her, as in so many poly relationships, it was just different than it was with anyone else. And the fact that we weren’t involved sexually heightened our emotional bond.

The bond we shared centered around how we were able to hold the “big things” for each other. When we did get time together, it usually consisted of us finding a quiet place for the day or a few hours, cuddling up, and smoking cigarettes over a bottle of Tanqueray for me and a bottle of Jack Daniels for her. We liked to call it “hitting pause” on our lives as they were and slipping into a space just for us.

She grew up in a very conservative, religious home. She still held onto her religion (but little else of their conservatism), and for a while during our time apart she was skewing on social media toward some very icky territory. But in the past few months she had righted herself and found her way again.

We were always, by definition, comet partners. At our height, we saw each other a few times a year; dwindling down to maybe once a year after her first child was born. The frequency of our texts to each other ebbed and flowed like tides. Once in a while we’d call. But we had fallen into a rhythm and an energy where each of us knew exactly when to text the other. We stopped calling it “uncanny” early on, because it just happened so often. I’d just sense when she needed a text or a call, and she did the same. Our instincts were always on-point. To some, it might have looked like we were just “close friends,” but if there’s one thing polyamory can teach us, its that we have a capacity to embrace love in all of its forms, and that there’s always potential for expansion of that definition.

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I was a little nervous about telling her about my move, because she had always felt some sense of security and closeness knowing that we were at least in the same state, even if we only saw each other sporadically. But when I told her I was moving, her response reminded me of why we had fallen in love as we did. There was no judgement, no questioning, not even a “why Massachusetts?” Before I had a chance to explain, she exclaimed:

“THAT’S INCREDIBLE! I am SO GLAD you are doing what you need to do. It’s going to BE BEAUTIFUL!”

And then she said that it made perfect sense that I’d be pulled there, because, as she said “it was always effort for you to feel at home in Colorado,” even over a decade ago when we first met. She saw my discomfort years before I was willing to accept it myself.

I hadn’t mentioned any pull or calling. I hadn’t revealed what led me to my choice. She already knew. I didn’t have to explain.

She said it would be a little hard knowing I’d be that far away, but acknowledged that her children were now at an age where leaving them with their grandparents or other family for a few days wasn’t really easy. She joked “When [youngest child] turns 18, I’m kicking them both out of the house and then you and I are going to have a party!” She then filled me in on what was going on in her life, her career shifts, the house she was living in, her husband’s recent promotions. When the subject of our three-year semi-estrangement came up, she dismissed it and said “I am always here, just like I knew you were always there. We just had to get our shit together. Well, mostly me.”

And just like that, it was like we hadn’t missed a beat. We talked some more and she said, “I love you so much. I am so proud of you.”

My relationship with my comet partner and my relationship with my former play partner are about as different as you can get in terms of boundaries, physicality, intensity, etc. But in each of these moments, they shared one thing, albeit on different levels: radical acceptance.

It’s a question of being seen unfiltered and without judgement; to be able to share the deep or intense sides of ourselves without fear of causing any kind of damage or causing an emotional spiral. It’s that state of knowing that the way that we’re playing and/or loving is valid and valued.

It makes me realize how deeply rooted kink and polyamory is in the need for people to be seen as they are and for what they are. For kinksters, our scenes are about being authentic to our desires in those moments and living out our fantasies unfiltered. In polyamory, we’re simply LOVING in an unfiltered way that is unique to the people involved, respecting and validating that love without perpetually having to ask how or why it works.

Of course, this doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility for being ethical, but I do think that the best and deepest of our poly relationships and our kinky play makes us ponder the deeper questions that exist at our boundaries. What is too much to ask? Too much to hold? Am I bringing my best self to the table?

But I think we can more clearly approach those questions when we have a handle on what we’ve already got.

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It lay buried here, it lay deep inside me
It’s so deep I don’t think that I can speak about it
It could take me all of my life
But it would only take a moment to
Tell you what I’m feeling
But I don’t know if I’m ready yet
- Kate Bush, “Love and Anger”

So a lot has happened. And all of it has been around relocation, recentering, and aligning with a Higher calling.

I have relocated to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It was a momentous, but ultimately not a difficult, decision. Life in a small mountain town in Colorado became incredibly heavy and depressing, despite the beauty, solitude, and it having felt so supportive and healing in the years before. But my mood was becoming increasingly dark, and it felt like I was looking through a film that muted the color and sharpness of everything.

The more effort I put into things that had meaning for me – whether it was creative projects, work, or my relationships – the more they seemed to be breaking down. I had never as deeply understood unsustainability the way that I did in those last few months in Colorado. It wasn’t just entropy, it was the kind of thing where any effort put toward something actually seemed to actively speed its decay.

This is nothing against Colorado, the town in which I lived, or the people to whom I had grown close or grown to love. For 21 years it had been home. And it had healed some deep wounds. This was a bigger feeling than just outgrowing a space; it felt as if that space seemed to be actively pushing me out. And that made me really sad. My spouse (who had been feeling increasingly unsafe there as a woman of color) put it perfectly when she said, during an especially difficult evening, “We live in a place that is a paradise for so many people, but this isn’t our paradise.”

Soon after that, in a dream, my grandmother came to me, wearing the nurse’s uniform I remember her wearing when I was a child (back before nurses & doctors wore scrubs). She said “Sometimes the hospital wants to keep you there to keep you safe; but if you stay too long, it will just make you sick again.”

I felt that in my bones.

The last time I visited Cape Cod, I had an experience that definitively brought everything home in a deeply spiritual way. I was visiting my parents and took some time to drive out to Gray’s beach in Yarmouth. Driving down the street toward the beach, I felt chills and then the pull in the center of my chest when I’m getting a download. I become overwhelmed with emotion. I had to pull over to regain my composure. Voices were coming through. So many of them. It was overwhelming. By the time I got to the boardwalk that spanned the marshes and overlooked the water, the voices started to sync up into a singular sentence:

“There are things you need to do here.”

I thought about a conversation I had with my therapist about surrendering to something higher. He was in a long-term, M/s relationship as a slave. He often talked about his own surrender to his Master, and how it was inspired and sustained by witnessing his Master’s surrender to His own higher calling. My therapist often brought me back around to what my higher calling was. I thought I knew what he was talking about, and often named things like “teaching” and basic things like that. I never understood why it just kept coming up in our sessions. I thought that I had been following one. But I was wrong. I was naming outcomes and results. At that moment, however, it all made sense.

There are things you need to do here.

Standing at the edge of that boardwalk, I took a deep breath, and surrendered to what was calling me forward. It wasn’t a specific thing, it was the act of surrendering to that pull that was the key. I didn’t need to be able to see the exact things I needed to do or their outcomes. I just had to surrender to the journey itself, and place my complete trust in the process itself. The emotional release was deep and almost primal. I hadn’t cried like that in a while. But suddenly a weight had been lifted. It felt like the first full breath of air I had taken in months. And then, I felt … right.

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It took me a while to process all of it. But soon after, various things started popping up that pointed to a move (rather than just more visits and/or something that was specific to that particular trip). I thought that a relocation was possible but that it would be perhaps 5-7 years down the road. I thought I had all the time in the world. But then as more things started to happen, and life in CO seemed to get more bleak, 5-7 years became 2-3, and then, In December, a series of logistical and financial things aligned in a way that pointed to a move in 2026. The circumstances and coincidences were uncanny and undeniable. Even though it was excruciating at times, I leaned into it.

I’m thinking about what Raven Kaldera has said in his Sacred Power, Holy Surrender: Living a Spiritual Power Dynamic:

“When you have a genuine calling, anything that distracts you from that calling tends to fall away no matter how painful it is for everyone involved. As a person goes deeper into their spiritual path, ambivalent situations tend to reach a crisis point, because the person needs to get through their baggage in order to go further” (16).

That’s something my therapist had been conveying to me as well. I had been weighed down by a lot of personal, internal baggage. It had caused me to become blind to some obvious issues.

I am a Taurus … a fixed earth sign. I nest. I do not like change. I do not like upheaval. I am the poster-child for being THAT person who will mistake familiarity for comfort. Yet, each step forward I made seemed to accelerate the next one, over and over again.

My move date in Colorado kept moving forward. A move-out window of the end of May suddenly shifted to the end of April. In our town, it usually took around 100 days to receive an offer when selling a home. Ours took 45. When we arrived in MA, we immediately started looking for houses. Three weeks to the day that we arrived, after we had looked at 25 houses and were considering an offer on one that would have needed some work, a house came onto the market that was turn-key. We put an offer in. Four weeks to the day we arrived, after some negotiation, offer was accepted.

Everything kept aligning. And they continue to do so.

In that last year and final months in Colorado, all of the efforts that I put toward making life work there never seemed to take root. Consequently, I was stumbling in ways that were causing damage and pain.

All of this made me think deeply of alignments and what happens when we’re misaligned, and how existentially that can affect us. This past Spring at South Plains Leatherfest, I had the pleasure of speaking to some trusted leather elders about alignment, and much of what they said hit so close to home. I had been carrying a lot going in, but I felt deeply validated when they shared similar experiences and mistakes they had made when things were misaligned in their own lives.

Much of what they said mirrored my own experiences. When we’re out of alignment, the things that matter to us are no longer fulfilled, and not for lack of trying. It’s almost as if when we state our intentions, share our feelings, or ask for what we need from a situation, interaction, or relationship, we’re speaking another language. Our words just never land the way they should … as if the words themselves mean different things than what we thought they did or how we feel; like a kind of emotional aphasia.

They helped me see how timeframes can misalign. What seems like progress happening swiftly for one person is happening glacially for another; and it becomes harder to sync. Motivation dwindles. Apathy takes hold. Emotional work becomes theatre at best, codependency at worst. Service in either direction becomes conditional. We surrender not to a higher purpose or even to a relationship or situation itself, but to the conditions of its limits. Most tragically, there is effort, but there is no efficacy.

However, when things are in alignment, there is ease. While it is far from effortless and it is work, the efforts — no matter how small — still bring tangible results. One action leads to the next and we are pulled forward, as Robert Frost says about poetry, “like a piece of ice on a hot stove … must ride on its own melting,” but without ever dwindling.

When things are aligned, achieving the impossible becomes commonplace, and the synchronicities gather in a line that is straight only when we look at it in reverse. The past remains squarely in the past, while the future remains as constant as the horizon. We lean forward into the unknown with curiosity and surrender to it, with joy if it is ours and with compersion if it is someone else’s.

This was by no means a smooth journey. We can be pulled along with currents when we surrender, but we can cause damage if we’re not careful. There have been times in the process when I was not careful, and caused damage along the way. I know others have experienced the same thing.

In the end, however, and one last thing I felt and that my mentors echoed: beneath the sadness, the mourning, or even the anger that is often uncovered in the process, there is a deep sense of relief, and of knowing that we’re finally aligned the way we’re supposed to be.

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When Mercy and I first started Please Kink Responsibly, we envisioned it as a hub for education, combining our own training in our respective fields with our experiences in our own journey of authority exchange.

Unfortunately, that journey has come to an end.

Mercy and I ended our M/s relationship in January. There are many reasons, most of which were precipitated by my own hubris, mistakes, and lapses in judgement.

There were places where I fell short, particularly in regard to creating a more formal contract that articulated all the things that a contract should. We were “evolving” and “working organically,” even though Mercy had asked for something more formal. I failed to fulfill that request. Consequently, I failed to include a formal plan for de-escalation, which caused additional harm when our relationship ended.

I also failed to take into consideration the couples’ privilege that my spouse and I had developed in 30+ years of our partnership together. While my spouse and I made some very big changes in the way that we handled communication in our polyamory when Mercy entered my life (going from years of don’t ask/don’t tell to something more transparent), I mistook changes in communication for progress in dismantling our couple’s privilege, which I thought was happening. Mercy and I did not live together, so she understandably wanted time to serve me in my own home, and not in spaces outside of it. Sadly, I was unable to provide that, and failed to recognize the ongoing impact of the couples privilege in my polyamory.

It was that couple’s privilege that became glaringly obvious when the possibility of a move across country became a reality. My spouse and I had lived in Colorado for 21 years, and when we left academia a few years ago, the primary reason why we moved there was gone. It became increasingly difficult for us to remain in our small town in Colorado for a lot of very deep, sometimes painful reasons, not the least of which was a lack of diversity which made my spouse (who is a woman of color) feel unsafe in the current political climate. Mercy was aware of my dissatisfaction and the reasons for it, but any plans to move somewhere back east were distant and amorphous, until mid-December, when a number of factors came up very suddenly that shifted a potential move that was maybe 3-5 years away to a move that would be happening this year.

The choice of Massachusetts was precipitated on a deep spiritual and energetic calling that I had experienced during a visit there – one which Mercy knew I needed to follow. However, the accelerated timeline was based on financial factors which could not be ignored. But that was no excuse for not including Mercy in decisions as they were happening. I mistakenly assumed that I could ease the transition for Mercy by knowing all the facts ahead of time (including calling a realtor to get more information) before I discussed things with her. It did not. It was disrespectful to Mercy, the love we shared, and to the relationship we had built; and it only highlighted the couples privilege and hierarchy that was present in my polyamory, and assumptions I had made around it.

In January, my hubris, miscommunication, financial stresses, and poor decisions all culminated in a text exchange between Mercy and I where she stated that she wanted and needed to be released. Some of the things said during that conversation triggered me deeply, and in a moment of frustration and misunderstanding, instead of pausing the conversation, taking some time, and asking to meet in person, I released Mercy … via text, even though we live a few blocks away from each other. It was, by far, the most disrespectful and foolish thing I’ve done in any relationship I’ve had. Looking back, I know why and how I got to that point, but that doesn’t make it better or excuse my behavior. It was completely disrespectful of the 4.5 years of love and trust we had, and shattered Mercy … and everything I thought I stood for.

There were warning signs with us as we grew increasingly misaligned in our authority exchange, expectations, and polyamory; but I didn’t heed them, nor did we set up the proper guardrails to avoid what happened. Again, in retrospect, the missteps are now glaringly obvious. Yes, there were several things happening that were causing distance between us in the months prior to the decision to move, and ultimately, as Mercy’s Master, I didn’t step up in the ways that I needed to, and failed us in big ways.

The mistakes I made have required a lot of time for me to process, work through, and hopefully make amends for, but pale in comparison to the pain I’ve caused Mercy. Given that, I’ve stepped away from teaching classes in the community until I figure out where I am in relation to my M/s, my D/s, and my polyamory. I have not, and will not, be engaging in any committed authority exchange relationships indefinitely, as I take a very deep look at how I went wrong in my polyamory, what I truly need, and whether or not a deeply committed authority exchange is compatible within the structure of my current relationship.

I will continue to write, however, and this substack will shift from “Please Kink Responsibly” to “Conceptual Kink.” Perhaps, in the future, I will return to teaching. But for now, this account will look at kink from a more conceptual, philosophical angle, and may even touch on some more energetic/spiritual themes as well. And I’ll still be writing “Thought for the Day” posts on Fetlife. The name of that account has changed to reflect the change here.

All of this being said, I stand by our classes and all that has been written here. I apologize to our readers for ultimately not “walking the walk,” and basically stumbling over polyamory and M/s 101. But I hope that the material we’ve produced has been helpful for you. Given the circumstances, however, I completely understand if you wish to unsubscribe/unfollow. I thank you for the time we had.

Most of all, I stand by the 4.5 years I had with Mercy. She opened me up to dimensions of myself that I didn’t know I had. She taught me levels of emotional intelligence that I never would have found without her. She gave me experiences that I didn’t think were possible. She gave me the gift of her surrender and I’m deeply sorry that I disrespected and squandered that gift as I did. Of course, I never intended to hurt or cause harm, but the impact is clear. All I ever wanted was to see Mercy shine, but my actions dimmed that light.

Mercy’s magic is real and powerful; and her connections to her ancestors and other energies is deep. Mercy is going to be spectacular in whatever she does in the future, and I can’t wait to see what that will be.

You can find Mercy’s new space, The Switches Den here on Substack and also on Fetlife.

For those who wish to remain with me as I let go of PKR and transition into “Conceptual Kink,” I have a follow-up entry discussing my energetic/spiritual calling to Massachusetts which you can find here. It will hopefully give everyone a taste as to what this space will become.

Thank you, all, for the support you’ve given us these past few years.

Quill

**Slight trigger warning for brief mention of suicide.**

During the holidays, “tradition” looms over us all. Some embrace it; others subvert it; still others try to run as far as they can from any of it. But that’s really hard to do this time of year. In fact, back in my professorial days teaching philosophy and gender, I used to use the pervasiveness of the holiday season as an (albeit imperfect) analog for compulsory heterosexuality. It proved useful for the cis/straight students that weren’t quite understanding how insidiously oppressive “tradition” and cultural norms can be.

For those who love the holidays, it can be hard to see how absolutely pervasive the season is, and even harder to imagine how someone who isn’t a fan might feel, let alone someone whose trauma might be based in Christmas itself. And while this time of year may be traumatic for cis/het and queer folx alike, the latter will find themselves enmeshed in yet another “traditional” narrative on top of the constant tinnitus of heteronormativity. Add racial, economic, political, and various other cultural pressures, and it becomes a very sticky marshmallow world of ick.

Kinky and polyamorous folx who are already dealing with the above often find that the very power dynamics and relationship diversity upon which they rely as a haven can be tested in unforeseen and unexpected ways. For this reason, there’s really no magic wand to wave to somehow ease us through the season. But I do think that all of us may have the ability to at least reframe the holidays; and perhaps even create some new spaces for ourselves.

Personally, I’m a fan of the holidays, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are easy every year. And it does take a little effort to not fall into habits or routines that can potentially become oppressive. My polyamory and my kink are at least compatible with the holidays, but I do have to make sure to create special moments and spaces with the people I love.

I tend to see holiday traditions like the repurposed cardboard boxes in which I keep most of our Christmas decorations. Some boxes I’ve kept so long that they’ve become delicate to the touch — and I just keep taping them together year after year to the point that some of them have become more tape than cardboard. And if I try and pack MORE decorations than the box can hold, it will crumble. I could purge the decorations I never put up, but I’ve found that some Christmases, I’m reaching for things I haven’t displayed in years. So it’s really not about being committed to or limited by the decorations, as much as it is the boxes that contain them.

The constraints around the holidays always bring me around to thoughts of my father. He “loves” the holidays (I used italics for emphasis there, but quotes to qualify his passion for all things Christmas). Christmas isn’t so much about tradition for him as it routine. He has a VERY specific, regimented way that he “celebrates.” To each his own, right? Yes, but in his case, it was very much a “one true way” of how Christmas should be done, and everyone else in the house was pretty much expected to toe that line.

First and foremost, there was the Christmas music. It wasn’t just what could be played, it’s when it could be played. In our Italian, Roman Catholic family, he adhered to Advent (the four weeks prior to Christmas) pretty strictly as a timeline. For him (and by de facto, for us) there could be NO Christmas music or decorations displayed until Advent was officially underway, and he had different music for each week leading up to Christmas. This had no basis in any religious doctrine or belief, it was just the perfect pre-existing structure in which his own OCD could thrive. His taste in Christmas music was eclectic and actually quite pleasant, but God forbid the Johnny Mathis Merry Christmas album be played prior to mid-December. Decorations were also strictly timed, and while most decorations went up the first weekend of December, the tree didn’t go up until the second. He set up the nativity scene and moved the three wise men closer and closer to the baby Jesus only to arrive on the feast of the Epiphany (aka three kings day) on January 6th. And after that, everything came down. The rules were iron clad; any deviation was met with huffing and puffing and a general meanness that cast a cloud over the whole house.

One year when I was about 12, after going to a friends house where they put Christmas decorations up … GASP! the day after Thanksgiving .. I rebelled. I bought my own Christmas decorations with my own money and decorated my room; complete with a tiny tree, and Christmas lights. I also played Christmas music on my stereo. My father was appalled. He would mutter under his breath every time he passed my room (which was often, because you had to pass my bedroom door to get to the only bathroom in the apartment).

But in doing that, not only had I staked out my own space for my own celebrations, I had also started my own tradition. I made a space for something special — where I could celebrate and feel festive. I could enjoy the season the way I wanted to enjoy it, concurrently with my parents’ father’s celebration. I carved out my own space. And it was special to me. Just as my spouse and I did a couple of years into our marriage when we decided that we would always spend Christmas by ourselves, rather than attending family events. We’d pull out the sofa-bed in the living room of our apartment, put something in the crock pot, and drink, snack, and nap all day while we watched Christmas movies. Again, we created a space for ourselves.

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Traditions, even holiday traditions, can be spaces in which we can create a little magic for ourselves. But if they become constraining, compulsory, or oppressive — if they limit us somehow — then we need to rethink them or let them go completely if we can. I mean, any of us who have gone to our parents’ houses for the holidays knows how it feels when they see us only as the four-year-olds we were, and keep trying to push us into that box. Even though it may not be purposeful, it feels as if they refuse to see us as the people we have worked really hard to become. On the flip-side, we sometimes can only see our parents/elders as the people they were, and have trouble making space to see them any differently than we did. But that’s something each of us has to come to terms with.

The nature of the holidays bring with it layers of conflicting experiences and memories. For me, Christmases have been filled with both the most exciting and joyous times of my life: when I was in 5th grade, my parents completely surprised me with a cat — a pet that I wanted for years. Other Christmases have been downright traumatic and difficult: One Christmas a few years ago, I was in a very bad relationship with a troubled submissive. She threatened suicide if I did not cancel all of my Christmas plans to spend the day with her to “prove that I loved her”. Thankfully, she did not harm herself, but it did end our relationship.

Those memories share the same space. And I can be nostalgic and sad at the same time. This Christmas I will be holding space for all of the conflicting emotions that are specific to this season: enjoying the time with my spouse, but also missing my slave; enjoying the undeniable beauty of a most-likely snowy day in a sleepy mountain town; but also working through the complex emotions of feeling that I’ve outgrown these mountains and am no longer feeling at home in them. That doesn’t make them less beautiful or less magical. It simply means that the wounds that brought me here twenty years ago have healed, and that another chapter needs to be written.

I think the best we can do around the holidays is just make them our own in whatever way we can. Perhaps it’s your slave’s fantasy to have the Dickens silently fucked out of them in their childhood bedroom twin bed while bound by ribbons and Christmas lights (while not waking up the rest of the family).

Or perhaps there’s critical mass among partners and metamours for a pot-luck anti-Christmas dinner. Or maybe this is the year that your holiday-loving partner(s) spends time with their family while you give a little extra attention to that partner who needs some support through their own trauma. Or perhaps, this is the year that you finally spend Christmas alone … gloriously doing completely your own thing and loving every second of it — even though you still miss your partner(s).

The most important thing, however, is to leave room for the complexity. Leave room for feeling different — and often conflicting and/or shifting — emotions at once. Don’t judge yourself for changing your mind about certain holiday traditions. Maybe this is the year that you forgo watching It’s a Wonderful Life; or you let go of the gift giving and instead volunteer somewhere. Perhaps this is the year that you finally admit that you DO like Love Actually and that the scene where Billy Mack tells his manager that he loves him punches you right in the heart.

Or maybe this is the year that you just don’t put up any decorations at all and let yourself feel all the grief.

In the end, traditions, like the routines that shape them, can demarcate spaces of creation. What memories are we creating? How — and what — are we celebrating with those we love and care about? How are we reclaiming time that may have been taken or or withheld? What boxes are held together by nothing more than trauma and desperation, and need to be retired? Which are the ones that continue to serve, support, and protect?

Whatever fills our cups in this moment, especially given today’s political climate, is what we should be building around. If it becomes a tradition, so be it. And if there isn’t room in the box, get a bigger one.

May we all find something, someone, or some way to celebrate. Be safe, everyone.

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This entry was inspired by several conversations I had with fellow Masters/Mistresses & D-types at the High Elevation Colorado Kink Conference a few weeks ago in Colorado Springs. Thanks to all of the people I interacted with. This community continues to inspire and support me in profound ways.

I appreciate the absolute diversity with which we engage in our different authority exchange relationships. Not all of this may resonate with my readers’ own relationship structures, but I hope there are some useful takeaways for everyone nonetheless.

Once in a while I find myself in that existential space, asking myself, so what does being a Master to my slave mean to me?

There are as many answers to that question as there are MMDs out there (MMD = Masters, Mistresses, & Dominants)1. All reflect the specific dynamics that people have built for themselves. But once in a while, something comes up in our dynamics that can bring that question to the forefront, in that existential way. These are often the moments when we have to reach deep and plumb our intuition to discern what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

What happens when something external to your dynamic – some outside circumstance or event – suddenly arises and throws every plan and protocol out the window? Of course, that can depend on the provisions you’ve built into your dynamic for such things; but even with the most careful risk-management planning in place, things can pop up which short-circuit every contingency. For the most part, most of the MMDs I know (myself included), will instinctively want to drop everything to make sure that their slaves and s-types are alright. We will do anything and everything to “protect the property” and help our partners.

In those moments, however, we can also find our own insecurities as MMDs popping up. We often want to take away the pain that our s-types are feeling: after all, we’re the ones who are supposed to be giving them pain … (but the difference is, that’s consensual). But when the shit really comes down, it can be overwhelming for our s-types and us. My kink-knowledgeable (and practicing) therapist tells me to “hold space” for my slave when she’s going through these kinds of difficult things. But being raised in the patriarchy, the idea of “holding space” – while beautiful by emotional intelligence and psychology standards – is a often a challenge. I instinctively want to do the things that solve the problem, or take away the pain.

When our s-type is falling apart at the seams, we try to do everything we can to be there for them. When protocols can’t feasibly be maintained, we are mature enough not to take that personally. If we’re in a polyamorous relationship, we coordinate with our s-type’s partner(s), and our own, to make sure that they are getting the care that they need. If things stopped there, it would very much be about the ways in which we “hold space” and how we slowly help our s-types to face what’s coming at them. We would take the time to allow our s-types to work through things and reestablish and rebuild protocols and the usual routines gradually.

But things never stop. Responsibilities arise, both shared and individual; and if we’re in polyamorous relationships, the responsibilities and expectations grow exponentially. But as someone’s MMD, we are in the unique position to make decisions either for – or on behalf of – our s-types. The collar on our slave’s neck means that we are bound to their care, and that we will take action to ensure our s-type’s health and wellbeing, as well as our own and that of our dynamics. It’s the last part that can be truly challenging.

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There’s a kind of ugliness to the banal decisions we have to make so that we keep our jobs, our commitments, and maintain the logistical things that keep life going. All of which – on the surface – seem to fly in the face of the “protect the property” mantra. For some, taking off from work for an extended period will put their jobs in jeopardy, which, ultimately, will be against everyone’s better interests (especially if MMDs are supporting their s-types financially). Or we have certain commitments that can’t be dropped without doing long-term damage to personal and professional relationships. Life, as it is, keeps life-ing.

But the worst thing about those decisions – what truly makes them feel ugly – is the fact that we know that our s-types, especially in the moment (but perhaps for the long-term) will not understand, and/or will actually be hurt by the impact of those choices. It’s the moment when we have to ask a metamour to step in and be present because we can’t be; or the moment when we have to leave our s-type to take care of the dozen things we dropped a week ago and are now on the verge of becoming a tire-fire. It’s making the decision that we know will disappoint and perhaps even hurt the person we vowed to protect. It’s also admitting that we are NOT superhuman and can’t necessarily solve — or handle — all the things.

These are the kinds of decisions we have to make that we know, intuitively, in our gut, are the right decisions, but don’t necessarily feel good. It’s the “bigger picture” decision that we committed to the moment we took on the responsibilities of being someone’s “Master” or “Mistress” or “Owner” or whatever other D-type term we’ve adopted. Regardless of what we call it, if we’re in a relationship that has some aspect of authority exchange, we’ve committed to not just “protecting the property,” but also seeing that bigger picture. And that means making the hard decisions. This is an aspect of authority exchange – especially in a Master/slave dynamic – that we can know in theory but be blindsided by in practice when it arises.

S-types have chosen to be obedient to us, the flavor and degree of that obedience is, of course, dependent on the dynamic to which everyone has mutually consented. We hear it all the time in leather and M/s classes and literature: as MMDs, our s-types are obedient to us, but we are obedient to our own higher purpose and/or the higher purpose of the relationship itself. And in any relationship, we often have to do hard things in order to keep it healthy. In M/s or any kind of authority exchange, the added trust of the obedience of our s-types means that our decisions as MMDs can have a bit more weight and consequence than in vanilla relationships. Sometimes following that higher self or calling means doing things that emotionally feel really shitty, but ring painfully true intuitively.

This is something I’ve had to learn the hard way – and have continued to have to lean into on a regular basis. Intuition is the aspect of myself that tells me what needs to be done, despite how utterly crappy it may feel emotionally, how difficult it seems psychologically, or even how dumb we think it is logically. Some might call this the “gut” or the “heartmind”; those partial to psychoanalytic theory might call it the superego; those on the more spiritual side may call it the soul; still others the “higher self.” Regardless of what we call it, I know that it is a part of me that is more than the sum of my constituent parts.

I’ve learned that being a Master to my slave is not simply a commitment to “protecting the property,” and receiving all that my slave has to offer me, it is also about being committed to a higher purpose. This means making the hard decisions, not just the ones that are obviously in mine or my slave’s best interest in any given moment.

Yes, we can make sure our s-types hydrate, get enough rest, practice self-care rather than just self-indulgence. We instill, support, and cultivate self-confidence in them so that they may shine. We can amplify their voices, their efficacy, and their authenticity. And yes, sometimes we have to save them from themselves, not (just) because it is satisfying, but because they have consented to giving us that responsibility, just as they have consented to caring for us in the best way they can.

We may say “I’m doing this for your own good,” when it comes to enforcing something unpalatable or mildly uncomfortable for our s-types, but so many times that still falls within the boundaries and expectations we’ve consensually co-created with them. They won’t enjoy hydrating or eating right or taking care of themselves, but they can see the sense of it. Other times, however, we have to make the choices that our s-types may not fully understand, and we have to lean on the fact that they trust us with their lives (sometimes literally, depending on the type of play in which we’re engaged), and their commitment that they will follow us even if they don’t understand exactly why we need to do the things we need to do. Even if it hurts in the not-fun way. That’s the hardest part for many of us.

Sometimes we have to do the thing we know will hurt, for reasons we may never be able to fully explain. I know that this may alienate some MMDs and the dynamics they have with their s-types – where being expected to explain their decisions would be an affront to the very dynamic itself. But for those whose dynamics are more pragmatic, multilateral, and co-creative, not being able to fully explain why we’re asking for a certain level of obedience is particularly difficult.

This is one of the places where the proverbial rubber meets the road, and where the trust our slaves and s-types invest in us transcends the trust they put in us when we’re engaging in high-risk kink practices. In many ways, those hard choice we make are a kind of high-risk emotional practice. And those can be fatal to trust if not engaged with carefully.

Ultimately, it’s that trust that sustains us. If our s-types are trusting us with their physical and emotional lives, then we need to be able to trust ourselves to make the right decisions, and also to accept the consequences of the impact our decisions have made, and take ownership of those consequences. Our s-types entrusted us with making the hard choices and doing the hard things; we owe them the honor of living up to that commitment.

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I had the pleasure of scening with them a few times prior to the event, and had spent some quality time with them outside of kink spaces, really getting to know what made them tick. I enjoy topping couples because their pre-existing dynamic establishes a basis of trust that can compound the power exchange, and deepen both subspace and Domspace. The time I spent with them and the trust we established allowed me to facilitate scenes that brought them closer together, and I considered it an honor to be a part of that energy. It was a joy.

Thus it was a no-brainer for all of us to scene at this event. I was ready. I knew their energies. I knew their boundaries, and I took the time to talk to them a few days before just to run though everything and make sure I knew what they wanted, and that we were all on the same page.

But something happened between those discussions and the weekend of the event. When we all met in the dungeon space, there was a palpable chill between the both of them. I inquired repeatedly if everything was alright, and they both assured me that all as well: they said each of them had come off of a really difficult week of both family and work drama. I offered to postpone the scene to another night during the event or call it off altogether, but they were adamant that we go ahead with the scene, because they "desperately needed it."

The scene involved bondage and impact play, with both positioned in such a way that they were touching – which was a favorite way for them to sync into their submissive energies. As I started the scene, and placed my hands on them, I could feel that their energies were poles apart. The harmony that I physically felt when we last played had given way to what I could only describe as "hot and cold" energy. One of them was hot to the touch, nearly vibrating with nervous, prickly energy; but not necessarily prickly in a positive way. The other was literally cold to the touch. Yes, it was a cold dungeon, but it was a deeper kind of cold. It felt detached.

It was more work this time around to get them into a position that energetically connected them. I remember checking in with both of them and asking, repeatedly, if they were alright for the scene. Despite the energy, their consent was clear and emphatic. I told myself that the odd energy I was feeling was nothing more than the difficulty of their week. I trusted that and went ahead with the scene.

Things proceeded somewhat stiffly at first, but started to even out a bit. I checked in repeatedly and they gave me "greens” each time, and as the scene went on, they each sank into their own separate flows. I got them into their respective subspaces, but it was work. Instead of their energies working together, I found myself basically working with two bodies that were resonating at completely different frequencies. Personally, it was one of the most energetically exhausting scenes in which I’ve ever participated. When all was said and done, both had climaxed hard, and sank into their subspaces, but they had done so separately, and almost at odds with each other. I would go as far as to say, in spite of each other.

Anyone watching would have said that the scene was "hot" and “intense,” and that based on their responses alone, that it had been successful. Indeed, in our immediate aftercare they each said that it was “exactly what they needed,” and they both seemed satisfied. There was nothing out of the ordinary during their aftercare.

But I walked away from it feeling off, and, with an unease that was something different than the usual Dom insecurity that I’d sometimes experience after a scene. While they seemed satisfied, I felt a certain ickiness that I’d never felt before, and I couldn’t shake it. I checked in with them the next day, and shared the fact that I was just feeling off after the whole thing. Together, they said they were doing just fine. But then a little later one of them found me in a hallway at the event and said that they had been having some ongoing relationship issues and had been “out of sync” with each other for a while. They apologized for keeping that from me. It was clear then that they thought a scene would help “bring them back together.”1

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Had they told me what was happening, I would definitely have either completely scrapped the scene or I would have built something something VERY different with them. But I need to be very emphatic here: while they may have had a responsibility to tell me what was happening, I HAD A RESPONSIBILITY to follow MY instincts and intuition, and either enquire more deeply about what was going on, or I should have just called the scene when I felt the energy wasn't right.

I had fallen victim to my ego. I had two gorgeous people in a scene in a public dungeon space. I thought somehow that with my skills I could “fix” the weirdness I was feeling. I had enthusiastic and ongoing consent. But – again, in hindsight – none of those were reasons to go forward with something that I wasn’t comfortable with. I knew the energy was off and I proceeded anyway. That was squarely on me.

The ego can get in the way of our judgement in insidious ways.

Hindsight is always 20/20 when it comes to mistakes we make in kink. After the fact, it's so EASY for us to look at a scene that didn’t go well and think, well OF COURSE I should/shouldn't have done x, y, or z. But when we're in the moment, it can become difficult to make that call. The question is, how do we hold ourselves accountable? How do we learn from those mistakes? Most importantly, if anyone was harmed in the process, how do we repair and rebuild if the other parties are willing?

When I think back over my last 25+ years in kink, I’ve — thankfully — had relatively few “bad” scenes. But of those, the scenes that left me with an icky feeling and/or even a bit of regret were always the ones where I led with my ego and not as my best self, or with a higher sense of purpose. Sometimes it involved scening with someone who was incredibly attractive and highly sought-after, but with whom I had no energetic connection; or with someone who had been stroking my vanity but with whom I only had a superficial connection.

That’s not to say that we have to have a deep, profound connection with all of our play partners. I’ve had amazing casual, spur-of-the-moment pick-up play with people, but it’s only been amazing and rewarding when I didn’t do it for my ego.

Thankfully, I’ve learned from those mistakes. All of the scenes I've had with play partners in the past few years (and most prior to that) have been great because I've stayed true to my highest self, and set my ego aside. I’ve gone in with the right frame of mind. Of course, that hasn’t stopped scenes from going sideways; we can go in with a healthy frame of mind and for all the right reasons and things still can — and do — go wrong; whether it’s a missed cue from a partner, or an errant strike, or even just the vibe being off.

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When we lead with the ego, we run the risk of betraying ourselves and/or our judgement, regardless of what side of the slash we’re on. We don’t want to disappoint; or we don’t want to appear weak or unable to deliver as a D-type or s-type. We can be “encouraged” (read: manipulated) to move beyond our boundaries or limits because our egos don’t want to suffer the indignity of not fulfilling what our partners want, or appearing that we’re not up to the “challenge.” Bottoms can ask that we hit them harder than we’re comfortable with hitting them; tops can ask us to be a “good girl/boy/sub/slave” and do something we’re not comfortable doing. Not only can our egos get in the way of our judgement, they can lead to consent violations.

But we learn by experience … and failure. We can watch scenes in dungeons all we want, and attend all the classes on all the things, but the painful irony to all of this is that it takes those fuck-ups, both minor and major, for us to really understand exactly what it is that we need and want from our kink, and where are egos end and our higher selves begin.

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Yes, you read that right. Unlike so many who suffer from some form seasonal affective disorder in the winter when days are shorter, mine starts to kick up when the days get longer and warmer. I tend to settle out in June, although I’m generally lower energy all Summer and begin to perk up again in late August and early September. September through December are really my best months mood-wise, but I generally do fine in the dead of Winter when most are going stir-crazy. Come mid-March, however, it just really gets difficult for me.

I wish I could explain how the Spring feels for me, my mood, and my body. But I think this GIF covers it:

My partners know this about me, and continue to be actively and beautifully supportive and patient with me through days that feel oppressive and unbearable. For that I am so fortunate and grateful. I really don’t know how I’d get through it without them.

I wrote about this once on another blog, and someone who deals with similar seasonal issues said that she tends to get anxious in the spring because she senses a kind of “underlying tension” connected to things that are about to start growing up through the ground. The inevitability of the upcoming growth felt “stressful” to her. There’s definitely something to that.

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For me, it’s a deep discomfort that is both physical and emotional. My body feels heavy, like I’m always carrying a weight and/or walking through molasses, but underneath that there is an acute feeling of hypersensitivity, tension, and on some days just searing rage. That’s why I love that GIF above: it encapsulates the sensation of feeling all of those conflicting things at once. There’s an internal violence to it.

I think that autumn, particularly harvest season, gets a bad reputation as being somehow “violent” because things are pulled from the earth; but I see it differently. In the autumn, things are returning to the earth. What’s being harvested would die anyway if it wasn’t reaped. Things settle. In the spring, things are breaking through the earth — as if pulled upward by the sun. The process of new things emerging is a struggle: bugs breaking to the surface, birds breaking through eggs, sprouts breaking through seeds. Birth is generally violent and painful. But the results, for the most part, make us forget. The joy of new life rightfully eclipses the violence it took to be born. Beauty is born from pain.

Even the spring-related resurrection myths are deeply violent: whether it’s Jesus or Osiris or Dionysius (or any of the myriad other deities who died and came back to life): all came to very violent ends in order to have triumphant rebirths and resurrections.

God I really sound like one of those moody continental existentialist philosophers right now.

If today were a better day, I could probably weave all of this into a post on power dynamics and masochism and alchemizing pain into beauty and pleasure. But I know there are several masochists and switches out there who can do that MUCH better than I ever could.

So I’ll just leave this here, with the reassurance that Sir Quill is doing just fine. Seriously. There are some really exciting and beautiful things happening in my life right now that — like spring — will soon eclipse the struggles it took to get here. I have a great therapist; I have a wonderful support system; and I’m going to be doing some traveling in the coming weeks that will feed my soul in different ways.

That being said, I’m not going to hold myself to regular posts while I’m on the road. If something comes to me, I’ll post. Otherwise, Please Kink Responsibly will return in about 3 weeks.

See you then!

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Regardless of the structure of our polyamory, I think that if there is any universal with polyamorous relationships, it’s their complexity: the complexity of the relationship structures themselves, the emotions, and the dynamics within. Let’s remember, also, that “complexity” isn’t a bad thing. In fact, there can be deep, intense beauty and joy in complexity.

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There are great books1 out there on polyamory that can really help us gain perspectives; but often the most personal and memorable lessons come uninvited and with deep and widespread inconvenience to everyone involved. I am not at all going to try to espouse right and wrong paths here, aside from the fact that clear communication should really be one of the hallmarks of ethical polyamorous relationships

As my own polyamory journey continues, there are always more lessons to be learned — often the hard way when I manage to fuck up. But in that journey, personally, there have been ongoing themes and lessons that still resonate; and observations I’ve made that may resonate with others. BY NO MEANS are these meant to be a “one true way” or model for anyone else. These are simply my observations. They are in no particular order, and will be up for constant revisions … think of these as notes to myself that I’m sharing.

Observation 1: There can be compersion and jealousy at the same time.
Yes, I know this may rub some people the wrong way, because oftentimes compersion is defined as the opposite of jealousy. If compersion is the joy we feel when our partners are happy with — and having their needs fulfilled by — other partners, how can jealousy be concurrent, or even co-present with compersion?

I can have deep, deep compersion for the joy my partners get in their relationships with others; because feeling their satisfaction, joy, and happiness, literally warms my heart and creates an expansive feeling that I just cannot fully describe. When I see someone bringing out the best of my partners, it just feels GOOD and makes my heart really big. It always has. Because I want to see my partners shine.

But that does not negate the fact that I may be jealous of the time that they have with other people, especially when our calendars just won’t sync up but theirs’ seem to sync up easily. I can also love when a partner is going to a beautiful place with one of their partners, but I can also feel a little sad that I’m not in that place with them. Others may disagree, but personally I don’t think that negates my compersion.

Observation 2: Polysaturation ≠ happiness
You can absolutely be polysaturated and still be unhappy. You can still have room for more lovers but also be completely satisfied. My "magic number" of partners for the longest time was three. It's when I felt the most stable and when I considered myself polysaturated. But right now I have two partners and I am utterly satisfied in my romantic life. I am not looking for another romantic partner. I do not need to be “at capacity” to be fully satisfied. Collecting partners will not bring you happiness, and oftentimes, people who do seem to be collecting partners are red flags, for sure.

We all know that relationships are work, and that there's effort of varying degrees at various times in maintaining our relationships. The input of effort is usually uneven, because partners require different amounts of energy at any given time.

Polysaturation does not bring joy, happiness, or security in and of itself. Conversely, just because a person has one partner (or no partners) doesn’t mean they’re not polyamorous. I hope we can get on board with this the same we we’ve (hopefully) gotten on board with how bisexual people are still bi if they happen to be in a “straight-passing” relationship. A polyamorous person who has settled into a nesting relationship with a single partner for x amount of years is no more or less polyamorous than the person living in relationship anarchy with a battalion of partners.

Also, and addendum to this in regard to polysaturation: becoming involved with another partner will not solve someone’s relationship woes with their current partner(s); nor will it resolve their unresolved psychological or emotional issues. Like having a kid to save a marriage, this will just bring heartbreak to everyone involved. And when we’re in a polyamorous situation, it can cause heartbreak throughout the polycule (or even the V). This leads me to my next point:

Observation 3: Regardless of the relationship structure, singular issues can and will affect the whole.
A major issue happening in one relationship or with one metamour can affect the entire web of polyamory in which we’re in. For example, if my slave or my spouse is going through something really, really big, it will mean that much of my time and attention will rightfully go there; and/or it may knock me off my own rhythm, which in turn, can knock another partner out of their rhythm., etc. etc. Even when everyone isn’t sharing a bed, emotional blows in one area can have unpredictable effects in other areas and relationships. It’s like an emotional Newton’s Cradle.

Observation 4: Needing alone time does not mean you’re bad at polyamory.
This is something that I had to come to terms with during one particular span when both of my partners were traveling to different places. If I remember correctly, my spouse and my slave were 1,000 and 2,000 miles away from me, respectively, and I was in the middle, rattling around in an empty house. While I missed both of them immensely, I had to admit that having that time just to myself was a beautiful feeling. I felt some guilt about that at the time, but I have since come to understand how important it is for me to have time to myself to recharge and recalibrate my energy. The idea the idea that polyamorous folks are some kind of radical extroverts who always need to be surrounded by people is just plain wrong. Yes, there are some polyamorous people like that; but for me, I actually require some alone time to be able to “people” correctly.

Observation 5: Embrace what others (partners, friends, etc.) can bring out of your partners.
I judge a potential metamour on the energy they bring out of my partner. So, when your partner is coming back from a date — or even a conversation — with this person, are they drained, complaining, or otherwise scattered? Or are they content, inspired, or just plain happy? This is where compersion really is important. For me, if another person can make my partner shine, then that person is a beautiful addition to the mix. Because I am not the arbiter or keeper of my partners’ joy. There will always be ways that another partner can make them happy that I simply cannot or do not have the capacity for.

I feel that this is a fact of healthy polyamory. These differences in how we love do not reflect deficiency, but DO reflect diversity: diversity of love, love languages, and all the accents and dialects therein. This diversity is a defining ethic of my polyamory, and what — to me — makes compersion possible.

Observation 6: Time may be limited, but love is not a zero-sum game.
There are only 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, etc., and we can’t be in two places at once. There will always be sensitivities around holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries and we do what we can to honor all the right days in all the right ways. But the love we give and receive does not come from a finite source. PKR readers know that my go-to film on polyamory has always been Spike Jonze’s Her (I know I’ve quoted it before), but Samantha’s declaration that “the heart is not like a box that gets filled up. It expands in size the more you love” is the best summary for polyamory. Granted, Samantha can be in many places at once (and is in love with 641 other people), but the sentiment still holds (PS, I will never not post this clip).

Yes, we can and do hit emotional walls when we’ve been under a great deal of stress or something big in our lives is taking a lot of spoons. Our energy can be depleted, but I don’t believe our love can be. I love my partners in diverse in amazing ways, but my love for one never comes at the expense of another. I don’t think it ever could or should.

In conclusion:

My polyamory is an ongoing journey and I will always, always be learning more about myself in the process: about what I need, what I have spoons for, and what I value. These things are always evolving, and as long as I can keep an open mind to that evolution, there will be space to grow.

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The other day I was contemplating my own feelings of depletion, and gave myself some space to think about all the places that my energy was going. I thought about jobs, relationships (and the polyamorous dynamics therein), the state of the world, professional commitments, entries I wanted to write, classes we’re proposing to teach, etc., etc. I was envisioning my own energy as a flow that was getting pulled outward in various directions at various times, and, I’m ashamed to say, sometimes resenting the places it was ending up.

This was all brewing in the background for several days until, during one morning meditation, I had an epiphany:

Nothing was “pulling” my energy from me; I was choosing to put my energy in those situations. Where I decided to put my time and my effort was, essentially, my choice.

This is something that I always knew, on that theoretical level. I mean, I have had plenty of deep conversations with friends, partners, and clients about where their energy is going … but, well, the “physician” needed to heal himself, I suppose. I had been ignoring my own advice. But yes, I had to sit in the very real discomfort and embarrassment of realizing that this philosopher was asking the wrong question all along. I had been asking “Where is my energy going?” as if it’s somehow being passively sapped or pulled away.

I should have been asking: “To what am I choosing to give my energy?”

I like phrasing it this way because it takes into account the possibility that there are situations where we are compelled to invest our energy into specific things: A pipe bursts in our home; we or a loved one are hit with a sudden, serious illness. There are clearly things that require us to invest our time and energy or limit the choices we can make. Also, the current political climate, for those in LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities poses an existential threat which tragically requires constant hypervigilance. Those members of our birth and chosen families are perpetually dogged by situations that require deep and painful choices. This can wear people down in insidious and soul-crushing ways.

Each of us, depending on our particular circumstances, privilege, intersectionality, and/or positionality, have choices to make and varying degrees of space in and through which to make them. Even when it feels like we don’t have a choice, we are still choosing to act in a particular way.

But in the less urgent interpersonal or logistical situations, like when we’re getting a migraine looking at the intricate interplay of jealousy and compersion in our polycule, or wondering why our authority exchange seems to be taking all our spoons instead of replenishing them, we can take a moment to mindfully ask what am I giving my energy to? This is the first step to regaining a little agency.1

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In most situations when we feel like our energy is being drained, if we’re brutally honest with ourselves, and don’t mind sitting in a little discomfort, we can see that the energy we think is being pulled or drained from us is actually being given away.

If you’re dubious, that’s understandable. I know I was. But let’s think of this positively. In a D/s or M/s relationship, for example, regardless of where we may be on the power spectrum, we are freely — and often enthusiastically — giving our energy (some would say “power,” but that’s slightly different) to the dynamic itself and/or the other person(s). In those moments, it’s more like an investment, because we know that our energy is doing something good, and that it’s mutually beneficial. And lest we think of it as transactional, remember the feeling of joy that happens when we give of ourselves simply out of compassion or love. Much like compersion in polyamory, we can find joy in the joy of others. We get a higher satisfaction.

In my own authority-based relationship, my slave and I give our energy to the dynamic as a means to mutually lift the relationship and ourselves. We want each other to shine, to excel, and to walk authentically in our own power.

I know many D-types who feel a sense of deep fulfilment when their s-types are thriving and taken care of; or when they are reaching their potential. Concurrently, s-types often feel a sense of deep joy and fulfilment when they know that they are serving their purpose by meaningfully serving (or worshiping, or caring for) their D-types. There is a specific kind of mutual elevation, transformation, or transcendance that occurs.

But if our energy is going toward constantly trying to put out a tire-fire that our partner(s) have themselves started (and onto which they are perpetually pouring gasoline), it can and will feel draining. If the majority of a person’s effort is going toward making sure that a partner isn’t doing something to hurt themselves, or is just hell-bent on self-destruction, then things can get really difficult, really fast, regardless of what side of the slash we’re on. If we’re constantly having to solve a partner’s problems, or process their emotions for them, we can find ourselves nonconsensually sliding toward codependency.

And it’s so hard to see while it’s happening. But we can feel it.

Of course, one person’s tire fire is another person’s authority exchange. One person’s pygmalion complex is another person’s DD/lg dynamic. But we have a better shot at trying to protect, grow, and cultivate our energy, power exchange, relationships, and/or kink dynamics when we take responsibility for our energy, asking ourselves, honestly, and without judgement, “what (or who) am I giving my energy to?”

Let’s take a less intense, but strangely more disturbing example to help bring this home: think about doomscrolling. The algorithm is designed to pull our attention (it actually really is, social media algorithms are actually based on the same algorithms that govern slot-machine technology). They are designed to be addictive. However, sometimes we can flip the script by looking at our phones or streams and asking ourselves “what am I giving my energy — my precious executive functioning — to?” That IS NOT the cure for an actual addiction, but it can be the question that leads us toward seeking help.

Just a word of warning: being brutally honest and courageously asking that question of ourselves can be a gut-punch, and it can cause all kinds of guilt, regret, and self-flagellation (and not the fun kind), but — and I want everyone to read this very carefully … The important part is that we woke up in the first place.

Because if we do have the wherewithal to ask what we’re giving our energy to, we’ve chosen to do a very, very brave thing.

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Regarding the bad haircut, I can’t really fault him. He’s a good stylist. But today he broke the news that he was leaving town, and that I needed to find someone else. Apparently, to soften the blow, he decided to give me the haircut he's been dying to give me for the past three visits; a “last hurrah,” if you will. Bless him for thinking that I could pull off a cut and style of a 25-year-old. Beyond this short-term issue, I am now faced with the possibility of having to find stylists in the neighboring ski-town where men’s haircuts are called “experiences” and cost well over $100. I cannot spend $100 every six weeks.

But all this is beside the point. Anyway …

I was sitting in my stylist’s chair watching my hair clippings fall to the floor. There was so much more gray falling with the usual brown. As he continued to create an alarming swoop to my hair which I could only partially see because I didn’t have my glasses on, I started thinking about aging. I’ll be 53 in less than a month; on May 4th, to be exact (if you you want to make a joke about me being born on “Star Wars Day,” please remember that I am older than Star Wars and saw the original in a theater when I was 5).

As I watched the grays falling, I can’t say that I felt old, per se. I mean, I don’t consider myself old at all. But once in a while, the little reminders of aging do come up. I realized, however, that of all of the things aging-related that have given me the biggest existential panic, there is one that, so far, remains the worst.

• No, it wasn’t the time I sneezed on a walk when I was 30 and popped a hernia.

• No, It wasn't the time I had Cool Whip (for the last time) and my stomach decided to stage a coup to install itself as the dominant political power of my body. My stomach’s regime rules to this day.

• No, It wasn't the day even the day I had to schedule my first colonoscopy.

It was the day in my early 30s that I looked down and saw my first gray pubic hair.

I'm sure some of my readers have experienced this, and for many who have, it was probably the exact same day you decided that shaving your pubic hair really was more aesthetically pleasing.

There was something keenly jarring about seeing that first gray pube, even though I had already sprouted a couple of random gray hairs on my head (which always for some reason grew in a different direction than the rest of my hair). I remember getting a little dizzy and having to steady myself against the sink.

I walked out of the bathroom in a haze, probably a little pale. I sat down at the table in our then-apartment and held my head in my hands, much to the dismay of my wife. She was genuinely concerned. I could only muster 2 words:

“Gray pube.”

She leaned back in her chair, folded her arms, and nodded in her cold, Capricorn way.

“Oh. Yeah. I found my first one a few months ago. I plucked it out.”

I puckered, and did that thing where your head kind of does a double-take because you're trying to process several ridiculous pieces of information at the same time. All I could muster was "didn't that hurt?"

"Immensely. But I wanted to scare the others that were thinking of popping out."

"Good thinking."

I, on the other hand, just kind of slumped in my chair and did what early-thirties me did to deal with trauma: I poured myself a "reverse Tanq and tonic," which consisted of a glass full of Tanqueray with a shot of tonic.

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We were in our early 30s and were still poor grad students, making ends meet by piecing together adjuncting and part-time jobs. No children. We kept late hours. We worked really hard but partied harder. We would still get carded when we bought alcohol, for fucks' sake. We generally were so worried about making it through the present that the future was just something we didn’t have the luxury of thinking about.

But that grey pube – for me – was an undeniable, almost unbearable, fact of aging.

I have to say, after that, all the rest of the age-related things before and after never really compared to the feeling of seeing that sole gray hair. I know full well that there are PLENTY of other, very serious medical and emotional events, traumas, and tragedies that can throw us into a deeply difficult place in regard to aging and mortality. But if we’re lucky enough not to experience those big events, it’s often the mundane and (looking back) silly things that can throw us into an existential spiral.

When I was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma a few years later (something that killed my grandmother a couple of years before), I most certainly did have to reckon with my mortality. But dealing with your mortality is different than dealing with the facts of aging.

I wish I could bring this back around to something kinky and profound. I mean, I look to the community and I am so often bolstered by the fact that aging has not stopped so many of us from playing in dungeon spaces and being proud of our bodies. I aged out of TNG-nights1 at dungeons LONG ago. I am happier in my 50s than I’ve been at any other stage in my life, and that’s truly a gift.

But if I must make a lesson out of this, all I will say is that when I do get a little down because of gray hairs (in all the places now), age-inappropriate haircuts, or the way my 30-something slave will tease me about my slow texting and instagram habits, I remind myself that aging is actually a privilege; especially when I think of absent friends who were taken from this world way too young. Those annoying aging milestones are ones that some of our loved ones never got to experience themselves.

So there … there's some existential perspective for everyone.

But lest I leave us on a down-note, I'll say that your first grey pube, or your first hernia, or your first time NOT being carded, all of them are rites of passage, and they are all testaments to our own unique blends of resilience, good choices, luck, and privilege.

So, for those who have not yet hit this particular milestone, when that first gray pube does show itself:

• Yes, re-evaluate your life.

• Yes, Invest in good trimmers that won't nick your scrotum, labia, or other sensitive bits.

• Yes, have some Cool Whip if you can still eat it.

But remember, plucking that fucker out (or having your personal sadist pluck it for you), will not scare the others from coming.

You made it this far. Age majestically.

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At SPLF, however, I felt the absence of friends and acquaintances I know from the scene. Some didn’t attend due to the rising expense of travel (VERY understandable!). But several didn’t come because they didn’t necessarily feel safe travelling.

That sentiment was echoed by some trans folks who did attend SPLF. I heard many heartbreaking stories about passport applications and renewals being rejected, and just the general awfulness of the political situation in general. The ongoing, chronic stress and fear is taking its toll. It’s hard to see, but it MUST be witnessed — and not just on Trans Day of Visibility.

I attended an “opening summit” called “Community in Turbulent Times,” which discussed the ::: gestures generally ::: current state of affairs and its effects on the kink community (particularly on trans, queer, and bipoc folks and all the intersections therein). The speakers and facilitators were excellent, but I was disappointed by a few of my fellow cis and/or het and/or white attendees who — albeit non-maliciously, but ignorantly — centered the conversation around themselves and their experiences, and/or offered the exact “solutions” that panelists had repeatedly said were not solutions …

Just an aside to my cis/het/white compatriots: saying the same thing using different words doesn’t make your “solution” any different or more effective. Also, just saying words is not a solution, even though our privilege may make us think so.

But I digress …

I went into this con (and the month of March in general), in a thoughtful headspace, probably because I’ve been accepting new clients into my practice and my brain is moving in more philosophical, existential spaces. And of course, at SPLF, I was thinking a lot about the questions of efficacy and belonging. Leather conferences — particularly ones where the entire hotel is booked for attendees only — can cultivate and sustain deep and profound feelings of belonging , validation, and empowerment … if we go in with the right attitude, and are fortunate enough to have good experiences.

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I watched a lot of people at the con looking for that empowerment in different ways; ranging from simply dressing the part, all the way to trying to validate their sexuality by having as many scenes/encounters as possible. Obviously, some methods of self-validation and empowerment are better than others, and a leather or kink conference cannot and will not “fix” you (which is a class that Mercy and I will be creating soon!).

As good as I felt in my leather, nothing compared to being showered with kisses by someone in my extended leather family who was just thrilled to see me, or being asked by a leather elder to sit by their side and occasionally hold their hand for emotional support when they recorded an interview with the Carter Johnson Library. These were transcendent moments.

For Mercy and I, this was very much a conference for reconnecting with our community, and rekindling that sense of belonging that tends to ebb a bit when circumstances keep us isolated from the kink and leather scenes. The experience reinforced what we already knew: just as a conference will not fix you, a label will not create the structure you need to give you a sense of belonging. We can call ourselves “leather,” or “kinky” or a “Master” or a “slave,” etc., but those labels alone will not magically grant us an identity and/or make us comfortable in our skins, nor will it authentically empower us.

I think in this age of social media, we’ve forgotten just how to know ourselves. In my philosophical counseling practice, I have clients who are engaging in the deepest acts of self-reflection they’ve ever done, and doing so in a safe environment. Unlike therapy, we don’t dive headlong into trauma or psychopathologies. For some, I like to think of it as a form of “aftercare” following a client's time in therapy, career counseling, and/or life coaching. I help with those deeper, more existential issues of self (who am I? How do I give MY life meaning? What does a “good life” mean for me?, etc.). It’s an itch that sometimes can’t be scratched by the aforementioned (and quite useful and effective) services.

I believe that culturally, we’ve forgotten how to engage in the deeper questions because we’ve sacrificed the deeper thought that often comes from silence (and even boredom) to never-ending scrolls and streams of news, memes, and a constant barrage of narcissistic endorphin shots.

More accurately, it’s easy to lose sight of the importance of trying to understand ourselves before we look to others to define us. I don’t think this comes from fear or a lack of desire, I think it’s because many just don’t know how. We don’t want to sit with the discomfort of truly understanding ourselves. We’d rather have the answers given to us. And if we can’t understand ourselves, how are we supposed to understand others?

It takes courage to know ourselves. It requires a kind of mindful acceptance of ourselves. Some may be tempted to say “radical acceptance.” Now, what I’m about to say may be an unpopular opinion, but I think the term “radical acceptance” is misleading and potentially dangerous when referring to the self. I don’t think radical acceptance of ourselves is appropriate when we are trying to change behaviors that may be harmful to ourselves or others. Mindful awarenss on the other hand, shifts things more to a recognition of our faults (perhaps an acceptance that we have them), and a desire to change. So perhaps via mindful awareness, we can move from “radical acceptance” to “radical self-examination.”

To radically examine ourselves is to be prepared to look at seemingly integral or essential parts of our identity and shift, change, or reject that which no longer serves us. Meeting that challenge is empowering.

This is why I left academia. These are things that require one-on-one attention, guidance, and care. This can’t be found in a classroom.

I see both kinky and vanilla folks in my practice, and I’ve found that clients from the kink community tend to be much more self-aware, and much more willing to get their hands dirty when it comes to self-work. This does not lessen the existential depth that vanilla folks face, but kinky folks most often have already had to face deeper issues of meaning, identity, and self-advocacy simply through living the lifestyle (whether they’re successfully navigating those spaces or not is something they often come to me to help figure out).

The risks we face as kinksters for the lifestyles we choose, and/or the very lived experiences of queer folks, bring existential issues to the forefront. A gay leatherman of a certain age has most likely wrestled with the arbitrary nature of life and death via survivor’s guilt after friends, lovers, and/or chosen family members succumbed to HIV-related complications during the AIDS crisis. A polyamorous person who lives honestly and transparently has faced ethical questions regarding love and compassion that few others have had to engage.

Again, this does not discount the experiences of vanilla folks at all. But I believe that practicing kinksters (whether queer or not) are more likely to have encountered deeper issues of meaning in the choices that they’ve made to engage in their desires.

But just because we’ve encountered those issues, doesn’t mean that we have the tools to face them, or the help we may need to engage with them.

I’m making the case here for “knowing ourselves,”not in a pretentious way, but a practical one. We need to know ourselves so that we can be better people. That’s really the core of it. To be a better person will always be relative to the contexts of our experiences. Empowerment is contextual.

Just some observations here from your friendly neighborhood, kink-aware philosophical counselor (if you’re interested in what I’m doing and want more info, please drop an email to pleasekinkresponsibly@substack.com)

Thanks to everyone who spent time with us at SPLF, and a special thank you to the organizers, staff, and volunteers who made it possible.

And deep and sincere gratitude to our readers for their patience as we attended to the demands of our personal and professional lives.

Onward and upward.

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Much has been happening professionally for both Mercy and I. I’ve recently launched a new business as a philosophical counselor, and Mercy’s job has been keeping her extremely busy. Things have been exciting and rewarding all around, and these are important steps to maintain each of our livelihoods out in the real (read: “vanilla”) world.

We are still working on kink education, however, and will be attending conferences in the coming months (and presenting for at least one of them). We’re really excited and grateful for all of the opportunities that have been coming our way.

That being said, I am looking at a March filled with travel commitments and the demands of launching my practice; and Mercy will continue to be busy with work. Consequently, we need to take a brief hiatus from Please Kink Responsibly so that we can settle into our respective rhythms and work/life balance. This will also ensure that our entries are up to the standards you’ve come to expect.

So, Please Kink Responsibly will be on hiatus through the month of March. During that time, all paid subscriptions will be paused (in other words, paid subscribers will receive a free month). Regular posts will resume in April, although there may be an update here and there in March if we have the opportunity.

We appreciate your ongoing support, patience, and understanding.

See you in April!

Sir Quill & Mercy

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And I just wrote. It felt physically awful. My chest started to tighten. My head started to pound. I felt like I was coming down with the flu or COVID. But I had the wherewithal (again, thanks to my slave’s guidance) to know what was happening. I was processing the emotions that went with things. I leaned in and kept going.

Why, [Quill], are you thinking that you’re somehow going to fuck this weekend up? Why are you immediately assuming that you’re going to do do something wrong, or disappoint, or somehow step in it? Why are you setting yourself up for failure? Why are you assuming inadequacy? Why are you being so fucking hard on yourself?

After the initial waves of ick subsided, I found myself writing with a kind of frenzied ease, and a sense of relief. It was all coming out, and I wasn’t holding myself back.

As I wrote, I was able to recount the pain and guilt and shame I was holding onto, and how it had caused me to create certain narratives that were dictating my behaviors. My writing started to circle around my tendency to not want to appear helpless or weak … and how disappointingly predictable that felt. I used to each upper division feminist philosophy, for fucks’ sake. Yet here I was living every script served up by systemic sexism and inequality. The tropes of fragile and toxic masculinity swirled around my brain.

How many times had I inadvertently undercut my slave or even my spouse when they tried to help me with something? This kind of thinking is particularly damaging when it comes to authority exchange relationships, and any of my readers who are involved in an M/s or D/s dynamic may be familiar with some of these patterns, especially when it comes to denying a submissive or slave the opportunity (and joy) of serving us because we think we should be doing it ourselves, and we don’t want to come across as “needy.”1

I had always prided myself on my independence and self-sufficiency. So, this was one of my steepest early learning curves in my evolution as a Dominant (and later as a Master to my slave). At the beginning of our relationship, there were few tasks I would “let” my slave do because I could do them myself. I had simply assumed, because I was so wrapped up in my own ego, that it would be more satisfying for my slave to do the tasks I couldn’t do, rather than actually listening to her and letting her do the things she craved to do for me.

I’m sure that several s-types are reading this right now and shaking their heads (either in total disbelief or because they’ve been on the receiving end of this). I mean, imagine the utter nerve of denying someone the opportunity to serve because a D-type didn’t want to appear needy?

As I continued to journal through all of this, I recounted a stumble I had a few months prior on one of our weekends. We were walking down a somewhat busy sidewalk. The lace on one of my Doc Martens came undone. My slave stopped me and said “Master, your shoe. May I?” In that moment things kind of went into Matrix-like bullet time. For some reason I was feeling “old” that day, and there were a lot of people passing by, and I went into this mini ego-spiral and was suddenly concerned about “how it might look” to vanilla people walking around to have someone tying my shoelace for me. I wasn’t thinking from my “best” or “higher” self. I was thinking from insecurity and vanity. My ego was screaming in my head: YOU CAN TIE YOUR OWN DAMN SHOE, YOU OLD, HELPLESS FUCK.

But the words that tumbled haplessly out of my mouth at that moment were far more damaging to my slave:

“Not in public.”

It still stings when I think about it. But not as much as it stung her in that moment.

That voice that berated me for being helpless was not the voice of my authentic self. It was the voice of doubt and shame. And it caused harm.

I don’t think we hear about the vulnerability of Dominance or Mastery enough in kink education. In order for D-types to do what we do, we are tapping into spaces that require us to engage deeply in both the things we need as well as the best ways to allow our s-types to serve us. That is to say, if we’re giving our s-types tasks that have no meaning for us (or our s-types) then we are rendering their service (and our Dominance) performative. Our s-types long to serve us in ways that are deep and meaningful.

I want us all — especially those of us involved in an authority-based relationships — to stop for a moment and think about how proud we are when we see our partners shine (no matter where they, or we, are on the power spectrum). Think about when their true voice and true self shines through. And for those in authority exchange relationships, think of how good it feels as a Master or D-type when you can amplify your s-type’s voice, or help them to shine their brightest? Think about, as an s-type, seeing your D-type shining as their best self, and knowing that you had a part of that via your service; and that you are literally (if it’s part of your dynamic) worshiping at the feet of someone who walks proudly in their truth.

This is where the real joy comes in, and it’s a joy that takes on a special — and for me, spiritual — depth when in an M/s context.

To be our authentic selves is to make spaces for joy (for ourselves and others). It’s a way that we can hold and see those who serve us and whom we serve. Authenticity isn’t so much an achievement as it is a state of mind. That state of mind can only come about when we see ourselves not as the narratives that have been looping in our heads, but when we see ourselves as the people that our s-types and D-types see.

One final example to bring this home. My slave has been taking pictures of me for my professional website. It’s been a running joke in my family and even with my spouse that I take awful pictures (think Chandler Bing from Friends, if you’re so inclined). To me, it seems as if my neck disappears, and my mouth curls into some awkward, mutant, bastard-stepchild of a smile. I literally hate myself in pictures, mostly because I become so self-conscious as they’re being taken that I become the victim of my own self-fulfilling prophecy.

Can you see where I am going with this? When we think that we take bad pictures, it’s usually because a parent or sibling or friend made fun of us at some point. We then manage to repeat that same look in every picture we take. When my slave took my photos, I just decided to let go and trust her. I just smiled into the camera as I would smile with her. She showed me the results. And, just momentarily at first, I saw myself as she saw me. It was eye-opening.

Sometimes our most authentic selves materialize when we see ourselves as those we love see us. Our most authentic selves are reflected in the eyes of those we love the most dearly, of those we trust the most deeply. They see us for who we truly are.

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In some circles (and as my slave loves to tell me), this is “shadow work.” I know, many may cringe at this deeply-woo term. Regardless of how we feel about it, the mechanisms of these processes are a variation on the same theme: look at the aspects of yourself around which shame, pain, and or self-loathing orbit … but don’t just look at them, engage with them. Be curious about them. Feel them. This is how we work through them.

This was something my slave has been encouraging me to do throughout our, relationship, and it was something that I was subconsciously (and sometimes very consciously) resisting. At first I thought was doing shadow work, because I thought that simply acknowledging something was processing it: Oh yes, I am ashamed of those things I did. Oh yes, those things make me feel like shit. Right, yes, I self sabotage because of these deep childhood traumas, yadda yadda yadda.

I’d look at all of those things and wonder why I wasn’t feeling any better. I had acknowledged them after all. Bless my slave for her patience.

For my purposes, that wasn’t enough. I had to be curious about them. I had to see how (and why) they worked. I needed to understand the mechanisms of them. Thankfully I found a kink-forward therapist who continues to help me to do just this, and Mercy has never faltered in her support as I worked through things. In fact, her support has been a major part of the process. Why? Because her loving encouragement and reassurances that she would be there no matter what made it “safe” for me to tread into those very vulnerable waters.

One particular day, I was stressing about an upcoming weekend with my slave. Mercy and I don’t live together; we each live with our respective nesting partners. This can create specific challenges with our M/s, particularly when it comes to having time alone with each other. So our weekends away are very important ways for us to reconnect and fully engage our dynamic in person and in real time. So, for me, trips together can carry a lot of significance.

I was falling into a spiral that I know many other Doms and Masters have felt in one form or another: putting pressure on myself to make it the GREATEST WEEKEND EVER and that we would do ALL THE KINKY THINGS and be fully “in” our dynamic as much as possible; I would be sure to give my slave the most cathartic floggings, the biggest and greatest orgasms, in the most Domly and Masterly way possible, etc., etc.

But just as soon as I was pumping up my expectations for the weekend, I found myself starting to sink into a quicksand self-doubt: How are you going to fuck it up this time, ‘Sir Quill’?

Thankfully, I was able to have a mindful moment and just sit with that doubt for a moment. And in that silence, another question arose. It wasn’t judgemental, accusatory, or hostile. It was calm, lighthearted, and quizzical:

Why do you do this?

Perhaps it was my year and a half of therapy; perhaps all the books I’d read about shadow work had finally fermented into something that my thick head could process, but this time, when the question arose, I didn’t push it away. I committed to engaging with it, and answering it — not rhetorically or figuratively, but literally.

I answered it in writing, first starting in longhand. As the ideas started coming through and I was facing it in real time, the thoughts came through even faster. I switched to typing so I could keep up.

And I just wrote. It felt physically awful. My chest started to tighten. My head started to pound. I felt like I was coming down with the flu or COVID. But I had the wherewithal (again, thanks to my slave’s guidance) to know what was happening. I was processing the emotions that went with things. I leaned in and kept going.

Why, [Quill], are you thinking that you’re somehow going to fuck this weekend up? Why are you immediately assuming that you’re going to do do something wrong, or disappoint, or somehow step in it? Why are you setting yourself up for failure? Why are you assuming inadequacy? Why are you being so fucking hard on yourself?

After the initial waves of ick subsided, I found myself writing with a kind of frenzied ease, and a sense of relief. It was all coming out, and I wasn’t holding myself back.

More next week in part 2!

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This one feels more personal than most of my posts. But sometimes you just have to work out your thoughts out loud. Thanks for indulging me. — Sir Quill.

For those of us who play “publicly” in BDSM and leather clubs, or in the playspaces at various kink, leather, and BDSM cons, we’re used to being around the “noise” of those space: the sounds of floggers and single tails snapping in the air and against skin; of people shouting, crying, or laughing in pain; of people in the throes of orgasms or being held mercilessly at the edges of them. We can hear the sounds of chains and metal and the buzzing and humming of violet wands. We can hear the thumping music of a good playlist being piped in (and hopefully not just “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails). In fact, that ambient noise of playspaces can help us get into flow.

Other times, however, the noise around us can be distracting. Busy dungeon nights can mean people having conversations too close to our scenes; or we hear someone arguing with a DM regarding the load-bearing capacity of whatever is being used for the suspension scene that they are literally trying to get off the ground. Or there’s that one person whose kink is being the loudest person at the club. If we’re experienced players, we know that when we’re in the right mood, we’ll be able to navigate it all. We also know when we don’t have the capacity to handle all that noise, and we opt to stay home or to play with our partners in private, where we may not have the hardpoints, or the St Andrew’s Crosses, or the cages, but we have what we need.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately as I try to navigate social media and doomscrolling post-election. The queer and BIPOC folks I love and anyone and everyone who considers themselves an ally, accomplice, or co-conspirator have been exposed to a ton of noise filled with doom and horror. It’s distracting and at times downright terrifying.

I recognize so much of this noise as the cruel theater it is: executive orders attempting to curtail the basic human rights of my Queer and BIPOC partners and friends in the community (and so many others across the nation). Logically, I know that these were enacted to shock, dishearten, scare, and paralyze in order to destroy hope, undermine joy, and to distract from the even bigger grift happening behind the scenes. Logically, I know that the legality of a good portion of these orders will be challenged and stalled. But emotionally, I know how damaging they are simply by looking into the eyes of my partners. And I know that in many cases these orders will cost lives.

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As an ally, accomplice, and co-conspirator I find myself adjacent to so many communities in varying degrees. But with my partners I feel the backlash of all of this acutely, and I find myself in that liminal state of “holding space,” where I’ve learned not to assume, and not to offer solutions that are only possible from the point of view of my own privilege – a privilege I constantly examine and work through to make sure I’m tempering it or using it to undermine the oppressive systemic forces in play.

But the noise still rages on.

I try to avoid the doomscroll of news and socials. Am I looking to these feeds for hope? Am I looking to them to validate my fear? Am I looking for stories of bad things happening to bad people to experience the schadenfreude that is so sweet at first but then leaves the most bitter aftertaste? I “like” and reshare the memes that I agree with and hope that the little heart becomes a means of support and amplification …

… But an amplification of what exactly? Am I just shouting into the cacophonous void? Is my voice just another yelp in the dungeon or crack of the whip among so many others?

I maneuver to abandon social media and am scolded by activists who say that it’s the only place where vulnerable people can get information and feel a sense of support. I jump back on again and get scolded by other activists pointing out the damage I’m doing by supporting a given platform, or who direct me to the next platform which seems okay now, but like all the others, will probably succumb to the hyper-enshittification that is so characteristic of this late-stage, palliative capitalism. Enshittification, like gravity, seems to always win.

When I turn back to the real world, I think about how – as long as I can remember – I’ve always been more comfortable in “othered” spaces. I think about how much comfort I take in my home club’s dungeon space and at leather cons. I think about that chosen family and how welcoming it has been. On the vanilla side of things, I think about how when I’m with my spouse’s family, often the only white guy in the room, I feel nothing but acceptance and joy. In both instances, I know that my sense of joy is predicated on deep trust.

On days when the horror comes through – either via the latest news story or via some asshole at the store who said the bigoted/racist/homophobic thing out loud – temporarily rattling my partner(s), I “hold space” by holding onto hope and/or joy for them: and holding that hope and joy doesn’t mean throwing it back at them when they’re down. I like to see it as “keeping it safe” for them when they are not in a space to hold it themselves.

But the way I see it, I don’t just hold spaces, I navigate them. I move through them. I read the room. I position myself contextually. Some days I stand back and stand aside so as not to get in the way, other days I stand with and next to them, showing support and care, advancing toward some goal or into some fight. And yes, some days I do need to get in front, to take the metaphorical (and perhaps someday, the literal) bullet. There have been days when I’ve had to get in a bigot’s or homophobe’s face because they were just too used to getting away with it.

But allyship in all its degrees is as tricky a thing to talk about is it is to do, because I’m constantly sensitive to my position and my adjacency to the people I’m allied with. I am perpetually aware of my whiteness, my straightness, and my maleness. I do the work, but it still doesn’t ameliorate the flashes of awkwardness that adjacency sometimes brings; the constant questioning; the nagging feeling of never being able to do enough.

The noise, like the horror, still persists.

But so do I.

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First of all, thanks for your ongoing patience. I know we said we’d be back mid-January. That was the plan. But a few professional things have come up for both of us that have delayed the next post. While Mercy and I are kink educators, Mercy still has a regular job, and I am in the midst of launching a business (more on that soon!). In the past couple of weeks, we’ve each had to tend to those professional commitments.

That being said, regular posts will be returning (hopefully) by this time next week.

And we have A LOT to write about.

So to all of our subscribers, thanks, again, for your patience and understanding as we get settled into our schedules and take care of the things we need to take care of. Being undistracted will help us bring you the best content possible.

We need good kink and sexuality education now more than ever, and we’re doing what we need to do to keep it going.

In the meantime, please head over to Race Bannon’s fantastic Love at the Edges, for his usual fantastic content.

And please, everyone, take care of yourselves. Remember that self-care and rest are the best forms of resistance (I highly recommend Tricia Hersey’s Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto, and Myisha Cherry’s The Case For Rage) if you’re struggling with how to literally EXIST right now.

We’ll be back soon. Good stuff is coming!

And always, remember to please kink responsibly.

Sir Quill.

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This time of year also presents the opportunity to go inward, reflect, and take stock of the things that this year held. Even though most of us likely experienced both breathtaking and heartbreaking moments, it's important to intentionally reflect and express gratitude for what we enjoyed, what we gained, what we were challenged by, and what we hope for in our futures.

What are the moments that made you proud this year? What scary thing did you do this year that you never would have imagined yourself doing? For that matter, what scary thing did you do that seems easy for everyone else but not necessarily for you? What friends did you make? What relationships did you let go of? What truth(s) about yourself did you finally embrace that makes you walk just a little more authentically?

All of our experiences are worth celebrating, and their importance in our journeys deserves recognition. They are worthy of gratitude and joy; and that joy needs to be held gently and with the knowledge that it is precious, no matter what its source may be. The people we love also need to be held gently as they celebrate their own victories and mourn their own losses. It could behoove us all to remember that to feel the feelings and work through them is to live. Our humanity is only as strong as our capacity to make life livable for the most vulnerable among us. But we know that kinky and queer folks have a relationship to vulnerability that makes us more sensitive – and more resilient – than most. That, too, deserves to be celebrated.

So as we head into the new year, we can take some time to think about the aspects of ourselves that we wish to develop, to strengthen, to challenge, and to master. No matter how small or how big, the process begins with a single step, and we don’t have to wait until the calendar reads January 1st. It can happen right now. Text that text. Make that call. Take the first steps towards that thing you really want. Take that deep breath and do the thing that your intuition has been nudging you to do.

Know that you are seen. You are loved. You are celebrated.

I look back on the things we’ve written for Please Kink Responsibly, the classes we’ve taught, and the events we’ve attended, and I’m proud of how far we’ve come. I am excited for the year ahead. I’m also proud of the work that Mercy and I have done on ourselves this year. We weathered some things, but always managed to come back stronger and wiser. We’ll be back with new entries for PKR in mid-January after we rest, recharge, and replenish ourselves.

Thank you all for your support, and we’re looking forward to bringing you new content in 2025!

Happy holidays, you kinky fuckers.

Sir Quill and His Mercy

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