Here Be Dragons

Remember the old patina-ridden maps of the world from the Age of Exploration where the outer-limits of the seas had sailor-eating dragons?  As a boy I was fascinated with their ferociousness and perplexed by their purpose.  What did those evil serpents really look like if they devoured all hands on deck?  Where are the few survivors?  I demand to interview them if they haven’t already gone mad in some insane asylum!  Imagine the fear they must have endured.  My imagination forced me to squeeze my thighs together so I wouldn’t piss my pants picturing their last minutes of life!  What unbelievable courage those explorers must have had…or stupidity.

First Crosstaff

Many decades later, journeys accumulated, and through my graduated intelligence I deduced that those poor victims of dragon-breath were now simply bones and dust – or fossilized dragon feces.  A couple of light-bulbs above the head and years later, those maps gained new meaning.

I have traveled to and experienced many cultures on four different continents.  I have been to places where the meaning of life resembles nothing like what surrounded me growing up.  The many nuances of their daily lives are as familiar to me today as they were then and I thank the gods of seafaring and wing-tips I am alive and changed.  But I have missed something.  Something was not on the map.

I am a detailer.  No not an auto-detailer and no, I have no homicidal tendencies toward tailors.  I have been a detailing observer and explorer, and I have always been a cerebral observer and explorer; sometimes anal about the details.  Get your mind out of the gutter for a moment; that is another blog for another time.  Or better yet, go rent yourself a porn video if you can’t keep-up with me here.  Refocus!

I think the title I am searching for is neo-cartographer.  I have explored many places on this planet.  My Captain’s Log would record not only the longitude latitude bearings, but also something significant to read about the people and their magnificent homes.  Still…something was missing.  I am a stickler for detail.  Were my maps incomplete?  Were they out dated?  What?

I get a hint.

It was right under my nose.  No, that is completely wrong!  A great cartographer would slap me across my short-sighted face for saying that!  Remarkably, my incomplete map with unimaginable treasures and deadly creatures had never really been so unreachable.  Mad at myself I asked, How could you be so blind?

A New Crosstaff

My beautifully created maps were missing dragons.  Everywhere I had gone and everywhere I had detailed were missing the man-eating dragons!  It seemed the further I would travel, fewer dragons existed.  But I have yet to reach three more continents.  What if I went to the continent of Asia?  Would I find the dragons there?  Yes, but I’ve been told they are woven into their fine silk.  What if I went to Australia?  Would I find them there?  As it turns out, I’ve been told they have kangaroos and koala bears.  Antarctica?  Nope: penguins.

This enlightenment begs the question:  Where are the homicide-crazed dragons?

Ah hah!  Another hint.

I have a distinct class of maps stored in a cabinet labeled “Domestic”.  Excited I rummage through these stacks of maps; between 50 and 60 small, two large, and two of them as big as a 12-place dinner table.  On these maps are the faces and memories of all the women I have intimately shared myself and loved.  I rediscover some most profound joy and passion, and some hurt and disappointment.

The small maps dominate the shelves.  No matter how well I tried to rig the outgoing vessel, no “crew” or co-captain would sign on.  The maps are black and white, and very much incomplete.  The two large maps have more detail, more emotions, and an array of colors, both with two distinct gold-bands tossed overboard in stormy seas.  One map has a newborn boy I thought to become my first-mate, but as the tale goes he belonged to another fleet of sorts.  The other vivid map has even more detail, more colors, deeper emotions, and more stormy seas.  Yet this particular map, unlike the previous, has more navigational points necessary to make future explorations less hazardous.  Mmm, frame this one.  My two beautiful children are on it.

But as I examined the two massive maps, I realized I was not going to find any flesh-eating dragons I had been so anxiously seeking.  I am hunting in the wrong place.  I rolled the maps back up.  My search for the beasts was over.  Gone were my adolescent fears.  Peacefully and with gratitude I returned every single map into my Domestic armoire.  Close doors, leave key, do not lock.

A Newer Crosstaff with Dragon-illuminator

I have charted many rough, calm, beautiful, gloomy seas, and met a wide scope of explorers and settlers.  Since 1989 I have been in the alternative lifestyles and with them come all types of explorers from all walks of life and orientations.  Before ‘89, I was ten years in the vanilla or monogamous lifestyle with a later short, disastrous 4-year return to vanilla-monogamy in marriage then divorce with kids.  I was raised and taught my first 26 years under the venerable roof of monogamy by my biological parents.  Dignity, honor, and loyalty were three mainstays in my home.  However, for the last 13 years I have not lived an ordinary life; everything but.  Why?

One perspective from only the shore

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions.  All life is an experiment.  The more experiments you make the better.”  Emerson and I would have been shipmates.  Emerson had no fear of dragons because they exist in only one place:  in our minds.  They are creatures who feast on human will-power.  They survive and flourish only when we accept their flames of “It cannot be done…it is not so.”

This is never more present than in our intimate romantic relationships.  Fear of self-examination and fear of discovering our flaws, as well as our brilliance, disempower our ability to love more, love deeper, and more importantly to love several soul mates throughout life.  Those disempowering dragons exist there, not on maps or out in the world.

When there is no proactive communication between lovers, here be the dragons.  When there is attraction to another outside the union or relationship and there are no attempts to understand why, here be the dragons.  When there is disproportionate extrospection to introspection, here be the dragons.  When there is no articulation as to why monogamy may or may not work in a relationship, here be the dragons.  When there is no desire to understand something unconventional, here be the dragons.  When there is no patient, forgiving, and non-judgmental discussion about “uncharted seas” and embracing human imperfection as well as brilliance, here be the dragons!

The irony of my personal tale is this:  in my quest to discover all things living around me and beyond, feeding my near insatiable curiosity, once on-guard to those damn elusive dragons…I have produced a worldly Captain, a rather large cartographical library, and an exceptionally fine-tuned HDD – Human Dragon-Detector – that can wale the warning…

“Here Be the Dragons!”

There have been two or three horrific dragons that I have fought in my lifetime.  Some of them I created, others sent to me.  The most painful dragon was also the one that had an evil twin with my name on it.  For whatever reason the dragon-of-infidelity menaced me for twenty-two exhausting years, begun by my father’s suicide; another “map” I will share in a later post.

Is there anyone out there, male or female, that knows of what dragons I speak?  How far have you traveled inward as well as outward?  Where did you find the dragons?  Are they vanquished?

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This work by Professor Taboo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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The Road Less Traveled

It has been a long while since I blogged about the Night Life and Entertainment scene.  Like many, I prefer variety.  I don’t typically fall into a routine or predictable nocturnal destination.  Correction:  there is one thing I certainly do with regularity:  dancing.  Dancing is part of my DNA.  I come from a very long line — on my father’s side — of a ballroom, Texas two-stepping, waltzing family.  Those childhood and teenage evenings among family and dancing cousins are some of my fondest memories; I cherish them.  However, because of my Marco Polo personality, not even the 2^nd largest state in the Union was going to keep me from a kaleidoscope world.

But before I share this night-life experience, allow me to first set the stage.

Are you familiar with the great poet Robert Frost?  There is a poem he wrote that suites my personality very well.  It describes a particular night in San Francisco, CA.  The poem is called The Road Not Taken.  The fourth and final stanza reads:

“I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

When I was twenty-four my girlfriend introduced me to a fetish which surprisingly came second nature, yet I was unaware the pleasure had been seeded in the fifth grade only to arise later.  But that is a story for another time.  My reborn fetish she wanted to explore was bondage; bondage on her.  Fortunately for our relationship, neither of us was shy.  We would try anything once, twice or more if we liked it.  Enter the world of BDSM firmly into my life.  Almost 23 years later, it has as Frost put it “made all the difference” in reaching unimaginable heights and depths of erotica in my relationships.  How?  The answer is quite simple.

Example of the post

The human brain is by far the biggest and best sexual organ in the body.

Medical science has said for decades that certain bodily functions use particular regions of our brain.  If we do not use areas, then the neurology and organ can become dormant; i.e. alive but not growing.  Makes perfect sense; athletes must train hard to be their best.  Well, for me I want to grow and grow in new ways.  Sometimes that also means getting out of my comfort zone, pushing the envelope, getting out of my tidy little box!

The Power Exchange in San Francisco is an 18-and-up adult alternative lifestyle/pansexual night club.  It is probably considered one of the premier AAL/PS night clubs in America.  One of their best policies is an alcohol-free drug-free club that is strictly enforced.  This policy and many others are primarily for newcomers, or the “vanilla world” curious about (or afraid of) the lifestyles.  But for most of us BDSM’rs the rules of engagement are familiar and practiced.  For a comprehensive explanation of the club’s rules and regulations, visit their Rules page.  Another great aspect of the club is that its weekend hours are ci-dessus magnifique from 9pm to 5am, well beyond the witching hour!

It is to be expected that these types of clubs come under heavy criticism, but they can only exist and have existed for over ten years because they are perfectly legal, consensual, and safe.  The San Francisco Chronicle writes this about the club:

“The club features a wide variety of play areas, dungeons and fantasy rooms [including rooms with glass walls or windows for inward viewing].  Whether you are looking for your first public sex adventure or looking to expand your horizons [of your unknown] in sexuality, Power Exchange is the best place for you!

The Power Exchange club is open to heterosexuals, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered.  No discrimination of any kind is tolerated!”

The particular evening that I had gone, with my girlfriend at the time, I saw one of the steamiest scenes between a Top and his bottom/sub.  The room – that any passerby could look into – was made into an 18^th century Baron’s dungeon with a large padded sawhorse to the left, a Saint Andrew’s cross on the back wall, and a wooden pole in the center with a cast-iron ring bolted to the top about 7-feet up.  The Top was dressed as a pirate captain; his bottom/sub apparently had been dressed as a captured maiden.  She was blindfolded, wrists bound above her head to the ring atop the pole, and clothes ripped-off completely with the exception of a few thin strips from her skirt.  Nothing else remained but on the floor.  This Top (I should call him an artist) not only made her squirm and moan, but often made her crave more and scream for mercy indistinguishably.  This scene alone made the price of admission well worth it!

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It is a gift – at least to the viewers – to be allowed to share (as a spectator in this case) the “flight” and chemistry between two people engrossed with each other and in the moment.  The Top obviously knew his bottom/sub very well because further into the scene the inside of her thighs glistened.  Catching those two was pure luck and joy.  It isn’t too often that you watch a Master at work…and I can say that about both of them.  She held nothing back.  Perhaps she knew she couldn’t, if he were patient enough and bold enough.

If you are ever in the downtown San Francisco area, and you and your spouse, partner, or date are up for an evening out of the box, I recommend The Power Exchange.  Undoubtedly, you will both learn something new about yourself and each other.  You will certainly have something to talk about.  That alone is good.

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This work by Professor Taboo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://professortaboo.wordpress.com.