2007-06-22
Where does the sub sleep?
There are a great many images in literature of where the sub / slave sleeps. We can ignore the dungeon or stable, chained in the corner, in a wire cage in the middle of the living room; not my style. Kneeling naked in a wall niche, ready at hand, or on a pile of furs at the foot of the Master's or Mistress's bed - those have a sensuality of them that I can fantasize about, even get an erection from - but I wouldn't want to live them, on either side of the power equation.
Mrs. Thorney has been my wife and toy and sex object for many years, and I want her in bed, next to me, naked and available. We regret any circumstance when we have to give up any of those things - naked, available, and touching or in easy reach. Stuck in a twin-bedded room when traveling, we'll sleep together in one bed rather than give up the closeness.
But when she was mugged and seriously injured June 3, that was no longer a possibility. When I moved her from the hospital bed to a hotel bed June 7, she was still sore all over,heavily bandaged, right arm strapped to her body, a needle ("port") in her left arm for intravenous. On June 22nd, she still has the arm strapped to her body, plenty of bruises and tender spots, and hugging or cuddling or even random touching is still out of the question.
As I've said before, the main places I can touch are her feet and her legs below the knees. She is not sleeping well, and I can expect to be awakened at any time, literally "24/7", to talk, to fetch her a drink, find her a book to read, help her in the bathroom, or rub her feet. If she decides that she does want to go back to sleep, kissing and cuddling her feet, rubbing them, gentle stroking of her calves, is one of the best ways to soothe her, make her feel loved, and let her go back to sleep.
So if I'm going to be doing my job - whether you call me a companion, a lover, a submissive - I have to be in easy call, in easy reach, and even in easy reach of her feet. And, as it happens, sleeping beside her in our usual way is -not- a feasible solution.
First, sleeping beside her, I may unconsciously reach out to touch her. And I mustn't. Being able to get in and out of bed means she has to be on her back or left side, with the edge of the bed at her left. That puts her badly injured right side near me or on top, the area of her that will be do-not-touch for some time to come.
Second, her right side is so tender that even disturbing or pulling on the sheet or blanket over her can be painful for her. So I can't share a sheet or blanket.
We asked an orthopedic surgeon about sleeping arrangements. He said he didn't think she could use a bed at all: she should be propped up in a reclining chair, with pillows. She will nap that way during the day, but wouldn't give up closeness to me at night. What could be done to increase the sense of normalcy, increase the sense of closeness, and, perhaps most importantly, increase my availability to do what she wants when she wants it?
We took a pile of pillows. We built a sort of nest for her in the bed. It is just a double bed (what would we want a larger one for, normally?) so there wasn't much room for me. But what room there was was much wider at the foot of the bed than at the head. The solution: make the bed, or nest, for her, and then put a pillow for me at the foot, give me a separate sheet, and have me lie parallel to her but with my head at her feet. My face is near her feet, ready to kiss or lick. If my arms reach out, I touch her legs - the part that I can touch. I can hug, kiss, cuddle, rub her legs and kiss and caress her feet whenever she wants, and as long as she wants.
It isn't the conventional sleeping arrangement for the submissive. I've never seen it in the "literature". But it works for us.
--
Is there any other couple here that has a sleeping arrangement of possible interest to the group? Does anyone in real life do any of the things that appear in the porn stories?
--
This is the end of the sequence of reports that I'd roughed out before the relatives arrived. So it may possibly be the last for awhile. I'll report back again when there is more to report and time to do so. Comments and discussion are invited.
And any notes that I can pass on to Mrs. Thorney, telling her how wonderful or helpful or ingenious she is or has been (or our postings have been) now or in the past, things she can read while convalescing, would be especially welcome. (She is now able to edit pictures using the mouse, but trying to type isn't working yet.)
--
Thorney
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
2007-06-22
The practical foot fetishist
I've never had a foot fetish. But I do read a lot, and over the years I've found an acquaintance with odd practices useful at times. I mentioned in this group perhaps five years ago that "sadistic nurse" fantasies and forced enema practices had never seemed the slightest bit erotic to me. But then I got to an age and family history situation where I needed periodic colonoscopies to check for colon cancer. The first one was long enough ago that the preparation involved three consecutive enemas, and the procedure (performed while conscious) requires running a rather large and frightening tube unreasonably far up through the victim's (er, patient's) anus. I've read appropriate pornography each time as part of my pre-op preparations, and it has helped. At least once the attending nurse noticed my rather large and inappropriately timed erection, but said nothing, and the sexual excitement does make the procedure much more bearable. (Mrs. Thorney hates it when she has the procedure, and thinks my solution is thoroughly nuts.)
When Mrs. Thorney was mugged June 3, she was rather extensively injured and lost a lot of blood, internally. Over the next four days she turned black and blue essentially everywhere but the legs below the knees. And there were aches and pains almost everywhere, to the point that very few spots on her could be touched. The mouth injuries meant no kisses for about 10 days, and even now (June 22) only very gentle ones. The badly broken shoulder means no hugs at all for six weeks or more, no serious ones for months. In fact. about the only part of her that -could- be touched in the first week or two was her lower legs and feet. And if that was the place where affection could be physically expressed, well, that's the part I was going to learn to love and be turned on by.
I was, as I've explained in earlier posts, at her feet pretty constantly. It started with adjusting socks, shoes, wheelchair footrests, as well as kneeling at her feet to get her panties on and off and wipe her bottom at the toilet. But I needed to kiss, she needed to receive kisses, and her feet were the surface that was available. They've gotten a lot of kisses in the last two weeks or so, and perhaps when one concentrates so much on kissing a particular spot, when it is the main place one can kiss, it is not unreasonable to fixate on it. I've come to adore her feet, to love kissing her feet, to feel privileged to be able to touch and play with them.
She has wanted her feet rubbed frequently, her lower legs rubbed often. I caress her, kiss her, love her, kneeling or lying naked at her feet, curled around her feet, adoring her. I curl up at her feet in bed.
As she improved she wanted her feet washed, she wanted her toenails filed. I've done some toenail work for her in the past, but it was much briefer and an entirely different game (when she has clothes on, it is a chance for me to look up her skirt.) this was different, as she was micro-managing to an extent I'd never have tolerated before. Which toenail, what angle to hold the file, how long a stroke and at what speed. I was naked at her feet, submissive, loving being micromanaged, reveling in the occasional pat of approval on my head.
And with the feet clean and toenails under control, the feet were even more tempting. I've learned to lick her feet, get my tongue between her toes, and been allowed to suck her toes. Her nipples are unavailable, blocked by the shoulder immobilizing harness. Even now that the soreness in her hip is low enough that spreading her legs might be possible, she doesn't want her clit played with - she tends to thrash around when excited, and that would hurt other places and/or endanger the shoulder. The tenderness in her shoulder makes getting to an earlobe tricky. So her toes are what I have to suck on, and I've learned to do it. I can not only get an erection very quickly by sucking her toes, I'm learning to get an erection just be thinking about being naked at her feet, sucking her toes. (Which I can't do just now, darn it, a granddaughter is here talking with her.) And she is reveling in being so loved, so sexually desirable even in her present condition.
I have masturbated to climax once by rubbing on her lower leg, puppy-dog fashion. But that didn't work that well for me, and was an inconvenient position for her. So she suggested I try using her feet. I smeared KY jelly on my cock and balls and we've experimented with my rubbing my cock all over her feet, squeezing it between her feet (using my hands to press them together), her playing with my balls with her toes. It is more incredibly exciting than I'd imagined possible.
I'm hooked, thoroughly. I doubt I'll give up loving her feet even when she has fully recovered. And she's enjoying one more way of being irresistible to me.
(At least one more report to come, but writing may be delayed with the kids around.)
The practical foot fetishist
I've never had a foot fetish. But I do read a lot, and over the years I've found an acquaintance with odd practices useful at times. I mentioned in this group perhaps five years ago that "sadistic nurse" fantasies and forced enema practices had never seemed the slightest bit erotic to me. But then I got to an age and family history situation where I needed periodic colonoscopies to check for colon cancer. The first one was long enough ago that the preparation involved three consecutive enemas, and the procedure (performed while conscious) requires running a rather large and frightening tube unreasonably far up through the victim's (er, patient's) anus. I've read appropriate pornography each time as part of my pre-op preparations, and it has helped. At least once the attending nurse noticed my rather large and inappropriately timed erection, but said nothing, and the sexual excitement does make the procedure much more bearable. (Mrs. Thorney hates it when she has the procedure, and thinks my solution is thoroughly nuts.)
When Mrs. Thorney was mugged June 3, she was rather extensively injured and lost a lot of blood, internally. Over the next four days she turned black and blue essentially everywhere but the legs below the knees. And there were aches and pains almost everywhere, to the point that very few spots on her could be touched. The mouth injuries meant no kisses for about 10 days, and even now (June 22) only very gentle ones. The badly broken shoulder means no hugs at all for six weeks or more, no serious ones for months. In fact. about the only part of her that -could- be touched in the first week or two was her lower legs and feet. And if that was the place where affection could be physically expressed, well, that's the part I was going to learn to love and be turned on by.
I was, as I've explained in earlier posts, at her feet pretty constantly. It started with adjusting socks, shoes, wheelchair footrests, as well as kneeling at her feet to get her panties on and off and wipe her bottom at the toilet. But I needed to kiss, she needed to receive kisses, and her feet were the surface that was available. They've gotten a lot of kisses in the last two weeks or so, and perhaps when one concentrates so much on kissing a particular spot, when it is the main place one can kiss, it is not unreasonable to fixate on it. I've come to adore her feet, to love kissing her feet, to feel privileged to be able to touch and play with them.
She has wanted her feet rubbed frequently, her lower legs rubbed often. I caress her, kiss her, love her, kneeling or lying naked at her feet, curled around her feet, adoring her. I curl up at her feet in bed.
As she improved she wanted her feet washed, she wanted her toenails filed. I've done some toenail work for her in the past, but it was much briefer and an entirely different game (when she has clothes on, it is a chance for me to look up her skirt.) this was different, as she was micro-managing to an extent I'd never have tolerated before. Which toenail, what angle to hold the file, how long a stroke and at what speed. I was naked at her feet, submissive, loving being micromanaged, reveling in the occasional pat of approval on my head.
And with the feet clean and toenails under control, the feet were even more tempting. I've learned to lick her feet, get my tongue between her toes, and been allowed to suck her toes. Her nipples are unavailable, blocked by the shoulder immobilizing harness. Even now that the soreness in her hip is low enough that spreading her legs might be possible, she doesn't want her clit played with - she tends to thrash around when excited, and that would hurt other places and/or endanger the shoulder. The tenderness in her shoulder makes getting to an earlobe tricky. So her toes are what I have to suck on, and I've learned to do it. I can not only get an erection very quickly by sucking her toes, I'm learning to get an erection just be thinking about being naked at her feet, sucking her toes. (Which I can't do just now, darn it, a granddaughter is here talking with her.) And she is reveling in being so loved, so sexually desirable even in her present condition.
I have masturbated to climax once by rubbing on her lower leg, puppy-dog fashion. But that didn't work that well for me, and was an inconvenient position for her. So she suggested I try using her feet. I smeared KY jelly on my cock and balls and we've experimented with my rubbing my cock all over her feet, squeezing it between her feet (using my hands to press them together), her playing with my balls with her toes. It is more incredibly exciting than I'd imagined possible.
I'm hooked, thoroughly. I doubt I'll give up loving her feet even when she has fully recovered. And she's enjoying one more way of being irresistible to me.
(At least one more report to come, but writing may be delayed with the kids around.)
--
Thorney
Thorney
2007-06-21
(Un)dressing the male submissive
Continuing the story of how we dealt with the mugging of Mrs. Thorney.
On June 3 Mrs. Thorney was mugged. The shoulder surgery was June 5. And June 7 I spirited her out of the hospital, to a hotel across the street.
I don't know if it was just being practical, or careless, or actually planned. It was what I wanted, but I'd never have raised the issue at that point. I was too busy and too tired to tell. The first time I got her from the hospital room into the hotel room, I was hot and sweaty. She had a mild fever (up maybe half a degree Celsius, one degree Fahrenheit.) She was cold and shivery, I was too hot. I stripped my clothes off as I piled blankets on her. It seemed comfortable that way, so that's the way it was, when we were in the hotel room, the next few days.
And I realized that it turned me on to be naked while waiting on her. She really didn't notice at first, but once she became aware that I was deliberately being either naked or wearing just primary-color cotton bikini underpants,we talked about it. She said it didn't make a difference to her - she really didn't get anything from looking at me naked, for her it is about affection and attention and touch, not visual - but if that was how I wanted to dress, OK. I said it turned me on, but I hadn't yet (then) figured out why that was the case.
And once she realized I was turned on by it, she got into the game nicely. Once her left hand was functional (swelling and bruising from having had needles in it for four days or so went down) she could easily pat my bottom, pat or squeeze my cock, roll my balls around between her fingers. I loved and love the order, "get your pants down", when she doesn't want the cotton in the way.
We got back home to Memphis June 17. The next morning she was sitting at the dining room table, and looked out into the garden.
Mrs: "The garden needs weeding, and we need to move some flowers
where I can see them from here."
Mr: I said, "OK, shall I do that after breakfast?"
Mrs: "No, do it now."
Mr: "Wait, I'll go get some pants."
Mrs: "What do you need pants for? No one is likely to see in unless
the meter reader comes, and he could see you even where you are
right now."
It worked. I recall a lot of images from porn of slave girls being required to work in the garden naked, bottoms raised for the owner's enjoyment, perhaps prodded on by an occasional pat with the cane or whip. No cane or whip here, but I've been spending an hour or so on my hands and knees in the garden each morning, practically naked. June 19 and 20 (today) she felt well enough to cautiously walk out and supervise.
I've always hated gardening with her in the past, since she has a strong tendency to micromanage. (We usually end up dividing labors so as to not be working in the garden at the same time.) She now has her chance to micromanage. "Pull that weed. Now that one. The one two inches to the left. Move that plant about three inches forward from where you are planting it...." I'm adoring being micromanaged, and thriving on it. And she rewards me by coming up from behind and squeezing or rubbing my balls just often enough to keep it very sexy and very loving. When the grandchildren start to arrive to visit, I'm really going to miss this part - but I guess I can do it in a bathing suit, and Mrs. Thorney and I will know what we are both thinking about.
Sleeping is still irregular. (More on that in a later post). She gets uncomfortable after two hours or so, and gets us up for an hour or three. And we've done a lot of sitting and talking, in the wee hours, trying to understand what is going on between us (and celebrating it!). We've been having the best discussion of my urges and responses and fantasies that we have ever had.
So she has asked: why do I want, while serving her, to be naked, (or, for practicality, wearing just primary-color bikini underpants)? I think I have an idea.
I love seeing her running around in practically nothing. I love the view, I love to be able to touch, I love the fact that she is doing it to please me. It feeds my dom urge, by expressing her submission, it gives me a sense of ownership (the fact that she doesn't admit to feeling any sense of submission when has done this for me in the past is irrelevant. She says she does it because it makes me happy, attentive, gets her attention.)
But it will be many weeks, or months, until I can have her running around the house naked. Maybe six months until she can crawl to kiss my feet. But I do need to keep up, even more than usual, my interest in her, my attentiveness, my responsiveness. And if I'm essentially undressed, I am constantly aware of it. I notice the breeze when I move, the sensation when I sit down. I need to be aware of where I am and where a robe is in case the doorbell rings.
(Hmm - when she is undressed and I'm dressed, she can get out of sight while I answer the bell. But right now she can't get to the door in time, usually. And if I'm the sub, it is my job to answer it anyway.)
Being aware of my state of undress constantly reminds me to think of her, her needs, her desires. It reminds me of the sexuality of our relationship. I can understand that it doesn't say "sex" to her - but she understands that it does say that, to me.
And another thing. I want her. I want her body. I want her desperately. And I want her to want me as badly as I want her. I want to feel wanted. I want to feel she wants my body the same way I want hers. Now, rationally, I know full well that men and women react differently - that a lot of it is visual for me, a lot of it is genital-oriented. For her, I know, it is about attention, affection, cuddling. She does love lovemaking, sex, climax, but those aren't in her thoughts as constantly as they are in mine.
She isn't turned on by my taking my clothes off, the way I am when she is undressed. But, at some subconscious level, I want her to be. I want to be as sexy for her as she is for me. So I want her to want my clothes off. By letting me serve her with my clothes off, she is respecting and responding to my desire to be wanted in that way.
She may not enjoy my exhibitionism the way I wish she did, but she allows it, understands it, respects it, honors it. And she does so very explicitly, by frequently during the day giving my cock a squeeze, patting my balls, rolling my balls around between her fingers.
It's a modest sexual reward, compared to what we had in better times, but -- wow! wow! wow! I'm loved! I'm wanted! She wants my body! I am put into heaven (and sometimes a massive erection) by a simple touch. As a submissive, I'm loved and wanted and appreciated and, right now, I'm in heaven.
(Un)dressing the male submissive
Continuing the story of how we dealt with the mugging of Mrs. Thorney.
On June 3 Mrs. Thorney was mugged. The shoulder surgery was June 5. And June 7 I spirited her out of the hospital, to a hotel across the street.
I don't know if it was just being practical, or careless, or actually planned. It was what I wanted, but I'd never have raised the issue at that point. I was too busy and too tired to tell. The first time I got her from the hospital room into the hotel room, I was hot and sweaty. She had a mild fever (up maybe half a degree Celsius, one degree Fahrenheit.) She was cold and shivery, I was too hot. I stripped my clothes off as I piled blankets on her. It seemed comfortable that way, so that's the way it was, when we were in the hotel room, the next few days.
And I realized that it turned me on to be naked while waiting on her. She really didn't notice at first, but once she became aware that I was deliberately being either naked or wearing just primary-color cotton bikini underpants,we talked about it. She said it didn't make a difference to her - she really didn't get anything from looking at me naked, for her it is about affection and attention and touch, not visual - but if that was how I wanted to dress, OK. I said it turned me on, but I hadn't yet (then) figured out why that was the case.
And once she realized I was turned on by it, she got into the game nicely. Once her left hand was functional (swelling and bruising from having had needles in it for four days or so went down) she could easily pat my bottom, pat or squeeze my cock, roll my balls around between her fingers. I loved and love the order, "get your pants down", when she doesn't want the cotton in the way.
We got back home to Memphis June 17. The next morning she was sitting at the dining room table, and looked out into the garden.
Mrs: "The garden needs weeding, and we need to move some flowers
where I can see them from here."
Mr: I said, "OK, shall I do that after breakfast?"
Mrs: "No, do it now."
Mr: "Wait, I'll go get some pants."
Mrs: "What do you need pants for? No one is likely to see in unless
the meter reader comes, and he could see you even where you are
right now."
It worked. I recall a lot of images from porn of slave girls being required to work in the garden naked, bottoms raised for the owner's enjoyment, perhaps prodded on by an occasional pat with the cane or whip. No cane or whip here, but I've been spending an hour or so on my hands and knees in the garden each morning, practically naked. June 19 and 20 (today) she felt well enough to cautiously walk out and supervise.
I've always hated gardening with her in the past, since she has a strong tendency to micromanage. (We usually end up dividing labors so as to not be working in the garden at the same time.) She now has her chance to micromanage. "Pull that weed. Now that one. The one two inches to the left. Move that plant about three inches forward from where you are planting it...." I'm adoring being micromanaged, and thriving on it. And she rewards me by coming up from behind and squeezing or rubbing my balls just often enough to keep it very sexy and very loving. When the grandchildren start to arrive to visit, I'm really going to miss this part - but I guess I can do it in a bathing suit, and Mrs. Thorney and I will know what we are both thinking about.
Sleeping is still irregular. (More on that in a later post). She gets uncomfortable after two hours or so, and gets us up for an hour or three. And we've done a lot of sitting and talking, in the wee hours, trying to understand what is going on between us (and celebrating it!). We've been having the best discussion of my urges and responses and fantasies that we have ever had.
So she has asked: why do I want, while serving her, to be naked, (or, for practicality, wearing just primary-color bikini underpants)? I think I have an idea.
I love seeing her running around in practically nothing. I love the view, I love to be able to touch, I love the fact that she is doing it to please me. It feeds my dom urge, by expressing her submission, it gives me a sense of ownership (the fact that she doesn't admit to feeling any sense of submission when has done this for me in the past is irrelevant. She says she does it because it makes me happy, attentive, gets her attention.)
But it will be many weeks, or months, until I can have her running around the house naked. Maybe six months until she can crawl to kiss my feet. But I do need to keep up, even more than usual, my interest in her, my attentiveness, my responsiveness. And if I'm essentially undressed, I am constantly aware of it. I notice the breeze when I move, the sensation when I sit down. I need to be aware of where I am and where a robe is in case the doorbell rings.
(Hmm - when she is undressed and I'm dressed, she can get out of sight while I answer the bell. But right now she can't get to the door in time, usually. And if I'm the sub, it is my job to answer it anyway.)
Being aware of my state of undress constantly reminds me to think of her, her needs, her desires. It reminds me of the sexuality of our relationship. I can understand that it doesn't say "sex" to her - but she understands that it does say that, to me.
And another thing. I want her. I want her body. I want her desperately. And I want her to want me as badly as I want her. I want to feel wanted. I want to feel she wants my body the same way I want hers. Now, rationally, I know full well that men and women react differently - that a lot of it is visual for me, a lot of it is genital-oriented. For her, I know, it is about attention, affection, cuddling. She does love lovemaking, sex, climax, but those aren't in her thoughts as constantly as they are in mine.
She isn't turned on by my taking my clothes off, the way I am when she is undressed. But, at some subconscious level, I want her to be. I want to be as sexy for her as she is for me. So I want her to want my clothes off. By letting me serve her with my clothes off, she is respecting and responding to my desire to be wanted in that way.
She may not enjoy my exhibitionism the way I wish she did, but she allows it, understands it, respects it, honors it. And she does so very explicitly, by frequently during the day giving my cock a squeeze, patting my balls, rolling my balls around between her fingers.
It's a modest sexual reward, compared to what we had in better times, but -- wow! wow! wow! I'm loved! I'm wanted! She wants my body! I am put into heaven (and sometimes a massive erection) by a simple touch. As a submissive, I'm loved and wanted and appreciated and, right now, I'm in heaven.
--
Thorney
Thorney
Monday, July 30, 2007
2007-07-21
The Practical Submissive
Thorney as submissive (domestic and personal service)
OK. My adored wife and sex toy of nearly 24 years, age 83, was badly injured (mugged) on June 3. It was pretty obvious that she was going to need to be waited on, quite literally, hand and foot, for at least two to six weeks. And it may be months before she can kneel to kiss my feet and call me "Master".
But we are a flexible couple, and it was clearly time to pull out all my male-sub fantasies and what I've read on the subject. How do I make her feel not only cared for, but loved, wanted, desirable and sexy? She loves attention and affection, and the former is easy enough - but I couldn't even kiss her badly bruised mouth, and she was pretty much bruises all over except the lower legs. (Yes, there will be an essay on foot fetishism in a later post).
And if I was going to keep me as attentive as I really do want to be, it would help to have rewards for me in it, too.
I'm extremely grateful for the essays I've read here and elsewhere on service subs, sex subs, toilet subs, foot subs, almost every variation that has gone by - as well as the scenes I remember from both good and bad porn, from the rough treatment of subs in Ann Rice's Beauty series to the gentler and more practical considerations in the wonderful guides to slave training in the "Miss Abernathy" books. I've drawn on a remarkable number of them to motivate myself and to find ways to entertain her, and me, and keep us close, loving, exploring new things. We've spent a lot of time talking about what we've done, what we might do, and even about my motivations, which I think I understand a lot better now. (More on that in a later post).
From the outset I was at her feet a lot - quite literally. She couldn't even wipe her own bottom, and much preferred having me do it in the hospital to having the nurses do it. The nurses were happy to save the labor, and the other women in the ward were obviously impressed with how attentive I was.
They watched me kneel to adjust her shoes and socks, fix the footrests on wheelchairs, and so on. - they commented to her on how much in love I
obviously was, and she bragged about her skill in having caught me. I've learned many other times I can make an excuse to be on my knees at her feet - rubbing her feet, adjusting a sock, but even things like cutting her meat (since she still isn't up to knife-and-fork) in a restaurant. I don't know how the public would react to a young healthy couple doing what we do, but she is a white-haired grandmother, obviously disabled, and I'm a bald white-bearded grandfather. People are tolerant of us and the usual reaction is "Isn't that sweet!" "Isn't that loving!", "Isn't he attentive!"
She gets to brag about how wonderfully helpful I am to her, how supportive, how much in love we are - and I feel as proud of being on my knees as the mythical Gorean slave girl whose Master is showing off her obedience and/or sexual tricks to a perfect stranger in a bar.
What are some guidelines I try to follow? I recall someone in this
newsgroup who explained how she, B, related to her dom, A.
(1) A does whatever A wants.
(2) Whenever A wants her to, B does whatever A wants.
(3) Otherwise, B does what B wants.
(3) hasn't been much of an option in the last 17 days. She needs a drink, needs help in the bathroom, needs a cushion moved, needs her chair adjusted, needs a Velcro binding adjusted so it doesn't chafe, wants skin cream on her legs or neck. There have been four trips to doctors' offices in the last 4 days, and papers to be gathered to bring to the doctors. Sleeping has been irregular most of the time - an hour or two at a time, and as likely to happen at 1 PM as at 1 AM. I'm on call whenever she wants, which is always and all hours. If I'm not in the room with her, she has an electric pushbutton for a bell - and she can use that even if there is company in the house. I run to the grocery in the half hour after she falls asleep, to be back before she wakes.
But even if I could do something during one of her naps (I mainly write these essays while she is on the phone or at her computer, a few feet away, and she can and does interrupt freely and/or ask me to read a passage), that isn't the goal. To paraphrase another member of this newsgroup: "The object isn't for her to have to give orders. If she is cold, she should turn around and find me holding her sweater. If she has to tell me to go get it, I've failed." Or to paraphrase from memory from one of the "Miss Abernathy" guides to slave training, "Wouldn't it be nice to have, not a slave who is an effort to order around, but one whose job is to study your needs and take care of them. Milk and eggs should simply appear in the refrigerator, you shouldn't have to think about making a list or about when the shopping gets done." I treasure the orders, the being wanted, my service being wanted, but I'm trying hard to develop that sort of mindfulness, that sort of knowing in advance what she wants - and when I succeed and she realizes I have succeeded, I find the feeling extremely satisfying and even erotic.
I'm feeling as valuable and as treasured and as appreciated as any slave boy or slave girl I've ever read about in books or stories or posts. I love having her brag about me to friends, even if the language has to be disguised. She says "we never believed in a fifty-fifty relationship. I give him one hundred percent of what he wants, he gives me one hundred percent of what I want." Her friends are envious, our children and grandchildren are a bit bewildered (but do agree that I'm wonderful), and I'm proud as punch.
And Mrs. Thorney is achy and uncomfortable too much of the time, but she feels loved, cared for, wanted, desired, even sexually desirable and desired - which isn't very easy to manage, when you are as banged up and hard to touch as she is.
(More to come)
The Practical Submissive
Thorney as submissive (domestic and personal service)
OK. My adored wife and sex toy of nearly 24 years, age 83, was badly injured (mugged) on June 3. It was pretty obvious that she was going to need to be waited on, quite literally, hand and foot, for at least two to six weeks. And it may be months before she can kneel to kiss my feet and call me "Master".
But we are a flexible couple, and it was clearly time to pull out all my male-sub fantasies and what I've read on the subject. How do I make her feel not only cared for, but loved, wanted, desirable and sexy? She loves attention and affection, and the former is easy enough - but I couldn't even kiss her badly bruised mouth, and she was pretty much bruises all over except the lower legs. (Yes, there will be an essay on foot fetishism in a later post).
And if I was going to keep me as attentive as I really do want to be, it would help to have rewards for me in it, too.
I'm extremely grateful for the essays I've read here and elsewhere on service subs, sex subs, toilet subs, foot subs, almost every variation that has gone by - as well as the scenes I remember from both good and bad porn, from the rough treatment of subs in Ann Rice's Beauty series to the gentler and more practical considerations in the wonderful guides to slave training in the "Miss Abernathy" books. I've drawn on a remarkable number of them to motivate myself and to find ways to entertain her, and me, and keep us close, loving, exploring new things. We've spent a lot of time talking about what we've done, what we might do, and even about my motivations, which I think I understand a lot better now. (More on that in a later post).
From the outset I was at her feet a lot - quite literally. She couldn't even wipe her own bottom, and much preferred having me do it in the hospital to having the nurses do it. The nurses were happy to save the labor, and the other women in the ward were obviously impressed with how attentive I was.
They watched me kneel to adjust her shoes and socks, fix the footrests on wheelchairs, and so on. - they commented to her on how much in love I
obviously was, and she bragged about her skill in having caught me. I've learned many other times I can make an excuse to be on my knees at her feet - rubbing her feet, adjusting a sock, but even things like cutting her meat (since she still isn't up to knife-and-fork) in a restaurant. I don't know how the public would react to a young healthy couple doing what we do, but she is a white-haired grandmother, obviously disabled, and I'm a bald white-bearded grandfather. People are tolerant of us and the usual reaction is "Isn't that sweet!" "Isn't that loving!", "Isn't he attentive!"
She gets to brag about how wonderfully helpful I am to her, how supportive, how much in love we are - and I feel as proud of being on my knees as the mythical Gorean slave girl whose Master is showing off her obedience and/or sexual tricks to a perfect stranger in a bar.
What are some guidelines I try to follow? I recall someone in this
newsgroup who explained how she, B, related to her dom, A.
(1) A does whatever A wants.
(2) Whenever A wants her to, B does whatever A wants.
(3) Otherwise, B does what B wants.
(3) hasn't been much of an option in the last 17 days. She needs a drink, needs help in the bathroom, needs a cushion moved, needs her chair adjusted, needs a Velcro binding adjusted so it doesn't chafe, wants skin cream on her legs or neck. There have been four trips to doctors' offices in the last 4 days, and papers to be gathered to bring to the doctors. Sleeping has been irregular most of the time - an hour or two at a time, and as likely to happen at 1 PM as at 1 AM. I'm on call whenever she wants, which is always and all hours. If I'm not in the room with her, she has an electric pushbutton for a bell - and she can use that even if there is company in the house. I run to the grocery in the half hour after she falls asleep, to be back before she wakes.
But even if I could do something during one of her naps (I mainly write these essays while she is on the phone or at her computer, a few feet away, and she can and does interrupt freely and/or ask me to read a passage), that isn't the goal. To paraphrase another member of this newsgroup: "The object isn't for her to have to give orders. If she is cold, she should turn around and find me holding her sweater. If she has to tell me to go get it, I've failed." Or to paraphrase from memory from one of the "Miss Abernathy" guides to slave training, "Wouldn't it be nice to have, not a slave who is an effort to order around, but one whose job is to study your needs and take care of them. Milk and eggs should simply appear in the refrigerator, you shouldn't have to think about making a list or about when the shopping gets done." I treasure the orders, the being wanted, my service being wanted, but I'm trying hard to develop that sort of mindfulness, that sort of knowing in advance what she wants - and when I succeed and she realizes I have succeeded, I find the feeling extremely satisfying and even erotic.
I'm feeling as valuable and as treasured and as appreciated as any slave boy or slave girl I've ever read about in books or stories or posts. I love having her brag about me to friends, even if the language has to be disguised. She says "we never believed in a fifty-fifty relationship. I give him one hundred percent of what he wants, he gives me one hundred percent of what I want." Her friends are envious, our children and grandchildren are a bit bewildered (but do agree that I'm wonderful), and I'm proud as punch.
And Mrs. Thorney is achy and uncomfortable too much of the time, but she feels loved, cared for, wanted, desired, even sexually desirable and desired - which isn't very easy to manage, when you are as banged up and hard to touch as she is.
(More to come)
--
Thorney
Thorney
2007-06-20
The mugging, and medical stuff
This is about the attack and the medical stuff. It includes discussion of bruising, shit, medical immobilization, etc., so some in the group might consider it on-topic. I don't, since I come here to talk about sex and D/S, rather than S/M. But this is essential background for the forthcoming definitely on-topic posts about sex, D/s, relationship, etc.
About 9 pm on June 3 we were walking, with a friend, back to our hotel in East Jerusalem. If you like reading maps, go to http://www.holylandhotel.com/
and click on Facts and Maps, then enlarge the map. We were walking south on Harun Ar Rashid street (hmm, are there other fans of Iznogood comics in this group?), about at the "R" in the street name on the map. A man walked up behind as if to pass us. At the last moment he grabbed Mrs. Thorney's handbag from behind her (strap over her right shoulder,) and pushed her forward very hard with his other hand. He got the bag (trivial) and ran back up the hill and turned right into the dark park.
She fell forward hard on her face and shoulder, downhill onto rough paving stones. Facial bruises and cuts, chipped teeth, cuts inside mouth, extensive bruises on the upper body. Eyeglasses badly scratched but, thank goodness, didn't break so eyes undamaged. She lost consciousness, regained it, rolled over on her back, lost consciousness again with her eyes open and defecated (very scary as I watched.) She regained consciousness, wiggled fingers and toes, moved hands and feet, asked what had happened.
We moved her into the hotel (it was a dark and now rather scary street). The police came and asked if she wanted to go to hospital, She said no. There was a language barrier. I cleaned her up. She was not forming short term memories. (She asked six or eight times in succession what happened, and did he get her handbag?)
The nurse (male) traveling with our tour group arrived and asked if she could move her arms and legs. Her right upper arm didn't respond when she tried to move it. We called an ambulance, it got there quickly, we went to Hadassah Hospital at Ein Kerem (the big world-class hospital in the western suburbs of Jerusalem, where the ambulance people said there were more specialties than at the Mt. Scopus branch of the hospital.)
By an hour after the attack she was forming memories again. The neurology people cleared her (after an MRI etc.) The orthopedic people said the right shoulder was badly broken, with two pieces broken off the humerus (long upper arm bone) at the top end where essential muscles attach. One piece moved a few inches from where it belonged, tearing blood vessels but luckily not nerves (her arm swelled up to at least twice normal diameter).
Doctor's discussion: she's an old lady, we could do minor repairs and she'd have limited use of the arm. Luckily I had pictures of her on a mountain top, and explained that she was 83 going on 30, climbs mountains and rows between islands in the Atlantic. How would they treat a 30-year old?
A neurology resident pulled me aside in the corridor, off the record. "American Jews aren't aggressive enough, they get taken advantage of. Israeli Jews are much better at insisting. Insist on getting what you want. Demand that she be treated by the head Professor of Orthopedics at the Hebrew University Medical School." I followed his instructions.
In the first 24 hours she got about 5 liters of saline dripped into her, plus antibiotics etc. Extensive black-and-blue appeared almost everywhere on her except her knees and lower legs, and her left forearm (it got back-and-blue independently, from all the needles (ports) placed in it to put in fluids.) I can't imagine where the blood came from internally that got into her bottom, but even that turned black and blue. She was carted from department to department for tests, examinations, etc. (e.g. checking for broken teeth, treating cuts in the mouth.)
The second 24 hours was pre-op preparation (chest x ray, blood tests, etc.) The surgery was done about 9:30 PM June 5. They made numerous small incisions in various places in her right upper arm and ran rods into her at various angles, then under fluoroscope (continuous x-ray) they pushed the pieces of bone back to where they belong. They put in long pins (4 inches long?) that hold the bone fragments in the right place and extend to just under the skin; they will be removed in a second surgery after six weeks, once the bones have set. Six of the incisions were large enough to need one stitch each to close, and there are numerous small cuts on the arm that may also have been rod insertion
points.
For the next six weeks, the arm is strapped firmly to her body so that it can't move. The appliance to do this is called a "universal shoulder
immobilizer" and is similar to the picture at
http://www.healthdesign.net/products/ipages/shoulder/422-0075.html
There is a very wide cylinder (size of an elastic tube top) around her chest (very uncomfortable on her breasts) with Velcro closure. a Velcro cuff about her upper arm that is fastened to the large cylinder to keep her upper arm vertical, another Velcro cuff about her wrist to keep the forearm in a fixed horizontal position.
This looks like an interesting bondage device, but I suspect after six weeks in it she will -not- want to ever try it on again. After two weeks, she is already regarding it as quite undesirably sadistic.
She had low and unstable blood pressure etc. for a day or two after surgery. By the evening of the 7th, however, she was wanting lots of things (a very good sign). She was sick and tired of the hospital food and the noise and crowding in the ward (five people in a room that would have been very crowded with four - one a screamer, one who shouted constantly into her cell phone.)
I found a wheelchair in the hall, put her in, rolled her out of the hospital and across the street to a hotel. We got her into bed and I phoned the nurses station to say she was safe and that I'd bring her back for doctors' rounds in the morning.
Next evening (the 8th) the doctors agreed she could sleep in the hotel if I brought her back in the wheelchair whenever they needed to see her. She continued weak - occasional diarrhea and projectile vomiting, probably reactions to food and/or antibiotics, so I had my hands full, but the nurses back at the nursing station provided advice and other things I needed.
On June 13 the doctor said she was well enough to travel once her stomach settled, provided that she went by wheelchair, first class or business class air, one leg a day with hotel rest intervening. We flew Tel Aviv to Vienna on the 15th (Vienna has an airport hotel and is geared to move people from the airplane straight to bed in the hotel by wheelchair). Vienna to Washington DC on the 16th (by now she was able to use a motel shuttle bus, with care, and eat dinner out with friends), and DC to Memphis on the 17th.
On June 18th we saw an internist in the morning and a dentist in the afternoon (he'll patch the chipped teeth next Monday, and we saw an orthopedic surgeon the 19th. New X-rays show that the pins and bone
fragments stayed where they were supposed to during the trip, and they took out the stitches and reduced the volume of bandages. Many of the bruises are starting to pass - face looks OK, bruises are reduced in area on the arms and legs, still there on the top of her rump. I don't know about on the chest and back, those are still too wrapped up to see.
She remains as cheerful, enthusiastic, and loving as ever, and has started editing pictures of our trip (using a left-handed mouse) and even writing a few notes (I juggled furniture to put a keyboard where her right fingers are, since she can't move that hand much but the fingers work.) Moving about and sleeping are still uncomfortable, due to the odd system of pins and rods inside her right arm.
We will cancel most travel plans for the summer (we will go to a
granddaughter's wedding in August) until we see how physical therapy is
progressing.)
Next posting: Wiitwd ("What it is that we do": Sex, love, D/s, and things like that.)
Thorney
The mugging, and medical stuff
This is about the attack and the medical stuff. It includes discussion of bruising, shit, medical immobilization, etc., so some in the group might consider it on-topic. I don't, since I come here to talk about sex and D/S, rather than S/M. But this is essential background for the forthcoming definitely on-topic posts about sex, D/s, relationship, etc.
About 9 pm on June 3 we were walking, with a friend, back to our hotel in East Jerusalem. If you like reading maps, go to http://www.holylandhotel.com/
and click on Facts and Maps, then enlarge the map. We were walking south on Harun Ar Rashid street (hmm, are there other fans of Iznogood comics in this group?), about at the "R" in the street name on the map. A man walked up behind as if to pass us. At the last moment he grabbed Mrs. Thorney's handbag from behind her (strap over her right shoulder,) and pushed her forward very hard with his other hand. He got the bag (trivial) and ran back up the hill and turned right into the dark park.
She fell forward hard on her face and shoulder, downhill onto rough paving stones. Facial bruises and cuts, chipped teeth, cuts inside mouth, extensive bruises on the upper body. Eyeglasses badly scratched but, thank goodness, didn't break so eyes undamaged. She lost consciousness, regained it, rolled over on her back, lost consciousness again with her eyes open and defecated (very scary as I watched.) She regained consciousness, wiggled fingers and toes, moved hands and feet, asked what had happened.
We moved her into the hotel (it was a dark and now rather scary street). The police came and asked if she wanted to go to hospital, She said no. There was a language barrier. I cleaned her up. She was not forming short term memories. (She asked six or eight times in succession what happened, and did he get her handbag?)
The nurse (male) traveling with our tour group arrived and asked if she could move her arms and legs. Her right upper arm didn't respond when she tried to move it. We called an ambulance, it got there quickly, we went to Hadassah Hospital at Ein Kerem (the big world-class hospital in the western suburbs of Jerusalem, where the ambulance people said there were more specialties than at the Mt. Scopus branch of the hospital.)
By an hour after the attack she was forming memories again. The neurology people cleared her (after an MRI etc.) The orthopedic people said the right shoulder was badly broken, with two pieces broken off the humerus (long upper arm bone) at the top end where essential muscles attach. One piece moved a few inches from where it belonged, tearing blood vessels but luckily not nerves (her arm swelled up to at least twice normal diameter).
Doctor's discussion: she's an old lady, we could do minor repairs and she'd have limited use of the arm. Luckily I had pictures of her on a mountain top, and explained that she was 83 going on 30, climbs mountains and rows between islands in the Atlantic. How would they treat a 30-year old?
A neurology resident pulled me aside in the corridor, off the record. "American Jews aren't aggressive enough, they get taken advantage of. Israeli Jews are much better at insisting. Insist on getting what you want. Demand that she be treated by the head Professor of Orthopedics at the Hebrew University Medical School." I followed his instructions.
In the first 24 hours she got about 5 liters of saline dripped into her, plus antibiotics etc. Extensive black-and-blue appeared almost everywhere on her except her knees and lower legs, and her left forearm (it got back-and-blue independently, from all the needles (ports) placed in it to put in fluids.) I can't imagine where the blood came from internally that got into her bottom, but even that turned black and blue. She was carted from department to department for tests, examinations, etc. (e.g. checking for broken teeth, treating cuts in the mouth.)
The second 24 hours was pre-op preparation (chest x ray, blood tests, etc.) The surgery was done about 9:30 PM June 5. They made numerous small incisions in various places in her right upper arm and ran rods into her at various angles, then under fluoroscope (continuous x-ray) they pushed the pieces of bone back to where they belong. They put in long pins (4 inches long?) that hold the bone fragments in the right place and extend to just under the skin; they will be removed in a second surgery after six weeks, once the bones have set. Six of the incisions were large enough to need one stitch each to close, and there are numerous small cuts on the arm that may also have been rod insertion
points.
For the next six weeks, the arm is strapped firmly to her body so that it can't move. The appliance to do this is called a "universal shoulder
immobilizer" and is similar to the picture at
http://www.healthdesign.net/products/ipages/shoulder/422-0075.html
There is a very wide cylinder (size of an elastic tube top) around her chest (very uncomfortable on her breasts) with Velcro closure. a Velcro cuff about her upper arm that is fastened to the large cylinder to keep her upper arm vertical, another Velcro cuff about her wrist to keep the forearm in a fixed horizontal position.
This looks like an interesting bondage device, but I suspect after six weeks in it she will -not- want to ever try it on again. After two weeks, she is already regarding it as quite undesirably sadistic.
She had low and unstable blood pressure etc. for a day or two after surgery. By the evening of the 7th, however, she was wanting lots of things (a very good sign). She was sick and tired of the hospital food and the noise and crowding in the ward (five people in a room that would have been very crowded with four - one a screamer, one who shouted constantly into her cell phone.)
I found a wheelchair in the hall, put her in, rolled her out of the hospital and across the street to a hotel. We got her into bed and I phoned the nurses station to say she was safe and that I'd bring her back for doctors' rounds in the morning.
Next evening (the 8th) the doctors agreed she could sleep in the hotel if I brought her back in the wheelchair whenever they needed to see her. She continued weak - occasional diarrhea and projectile vomiting, probably reactions to food and/or antibiotics, so I had my hands full, but the nurses back at the nursing station provided advice and other things I needed.
On June 13 the doctor said she was well enough to travel once her stomach settled, provided that she went by wheelchair, first class or business class air, one leg a day with hotel rest intervening. We flew Tel Aviv to Vienna on the 15th (Vienna has an airport hotel and is geared to move people from the airplane straight to bed in the hotel by wheelchair). Vienna to Washington DC on the 16th (by now she was able to use a motel shuttle bus, with care, and eat dinner out with friends), and DC to Memphis on the 17th.
On June 18th we saw an internist in the morning and a dentist in the afternoon (he'll patch the chipped teeth next Monday, and we saw an orthopedic surgeon the 19th. New X-rays show that the pins and bone
fragments stayed where they were supposed to during the trip, and they took out the stitches and reduced the volume of bandages. Many of the bruises are starting to pass - face looks OK, bruises are reduced in area on the arms and legs, still there on the top of her rump. I don't know about on the chest and back, those are still too wrapped up to see.
She remains as cheerful, enthusiastic, and loving as ever, and has started editing pictures of our trip (using a left-handed mouse) and even writing a few notes (I juggled furniture to put a keyboard where her right fingers are, since she can't move that hand much but the fingers work.) Moving about and sleeping are still uncomfortable, due to the odd system of pins and rods inside her right arm.
We will cancel most travel plans for the summer (we will go to a
granddaughter's wedding in August) until we see how physical therapy is
progressing.)
Next posting: Wiitwd ("What it is that we do": Sex, love, D/s, and things like that.)
Thorney
2007-06-19 The Trip
( A depressing post, with nothing relevant to this newsgroup. I need to ventilate, you don't need to read it.)
The trip, May 28-June 3.
The web site of the sponsoring organization is
http://www.interfaithpeacebuilders.org/
and the "official" diaries of the trip appear starting at
http://www.interfaithpeacebuilders.org/del22/default.html
I haven't read those, having been too busy with other things. But it saves me writing as much about the trip here as I might. I suspect that on the whole I'm more understanding of the Israeli government's position than many other members of the group we traveled with. But that doesn't mean I'm in agreement with the actions the Israeli government and military have taken.
We walked through a Palestinian refugee camp, near Bethlehem. We visited the hotly contested neighborhoods of Hebron. We followed the "security wall" through Jerusalem suburbs and Palestinian villages, talked to families divided by the wall. We visited with people who had lost family members (on both sides, families of suicide bomber victims as well as families who had lost a member to soldier's bullets.) We prayed at the Wailing Wall, at a synagogue in Jerusalem, at the old Quaker meeting house in downtown Ramallah (on the way we visited Yasser Arafat's tomb and the Palestinian Parliament building.) Several places we visited experienced violence (shooting and battles) within a few days before and a week or two after our visits.
We visited and talked with demonstrators and officers of various organizations. We visited residents of a slum in Tel Aviv and an expensive suburb in Herzliyah, and "settlements", Israeli communities built within "Judea and Samaria", the "occupied territories", "The West Bank", or "Israeli East Jerusalem", depending on the political point involved. We visited Yad VaShem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum - I was startled at the fact that some of the Americans in our group knew so little about the ghetto experiences of the European Jews leading up to and during World War II.
We had an Israeli doctor in obvious distress say, "Of course I want to be able to treat Palestinians in this hospital. But after an ambulance arrives and is full of explosives, do we dare let in the next ambulance?" We had a Palestinian doctor in an Israeli hospital (we spent a lot of time in the hospital, not part of the original plan!) express worry about his son who has said he wants to be a suicide bomber so he can go straight to heaven - those of you who have trouble with your teenage kids, think about that one a bit...!
The preparation for the trip was depressing: it didn't show much hope for progress toward peace. The trip itself was depressing: peace is not likely to break out in Israel / Palestine anytime soon. We did see "points of light", schools for children with post-traumatic stress syndrome (US foreign aid to them was cut off, of course, when it was discovered that some of the kids had lost parents to Israeli bullets. US government money must not be used to help family members of terrorists, even 4-year-old kids.) Church-sponsored secondary schools (no US aid, for the same reason.) School teachers still working, although not paid since the US government disliked the results of the first real democratic election Palestine had ever had. There are groups teaching nonviolent techniques, and groups of volunteers who try to interpose themselves between Palestinians and hostile Jewish settlers. But these are bandaids on broken arms, they don't get to the real problem.
Too many people on both sides are trying to figure out when and where and how to retaliate next, too few are seeking ways to break the cycle of violence. And the press publicizes and emphasizes the worst on both sides, making matters worse.
Is Jimmy Carter's word "apartheid" too strong? Well, it is certainly the wrong word. I had enough South African relatives during my formative years to know quite a bit about apartheid. Apartheid, in my view, is much too weak a word for what is happening in Israel / Palestine. Israel is confining the Palestinians into ever-shrinking ghettos. Jews ought to know better than that, and it is not an approach that will bring peace.
I really don't want to get into a political discussion in this newsgroup. But, given the events since June 3, I needed to ventilate. Thanks.
Next post: the mugging.
The trip, May 28-June 3.
The web site of the sponsoring organization is
http://www.interfaithpeacebuilders.org/
and the "official" diaries of the trip appear starting at
http://www.interfaithpeacebuilders.org/del22/default.html
I haven't read those, having been too busy with other things. But it saves me writing as much about the trip here as I might. I suspect that on the whole I'm more understanding of the Israeli government's position than many other members of the group we traveled with. But that doesn't mean I'm in agreement with the actions the Israeli government and military have taken.
We walked through a Palestinian refugee camp, near Bethlehem. We visited the hotly contested neighborhoods of Hebron. We followed the "security wall" through Jerusalem suburbs and Palestinian villages, talked to families divided by the wall. We visited with people who had lost family members (on both sides, families of suicide bomber victims as well as families who had lost a member to soldier's bullets.) We prayed at the Wailing Wall, at a synagogue in Jerusalem, at the old Quaker meeting house in downtown Ramallah (on the way we visited Yasser Arafat's tomb and the Palestinian Parliament building.) Several places we visited experienced violence (shooting and battles) within a few days before and a week or two after our visits.
We visited and talked with demonstrators and officers of various organizations. We visited residents of a slum in Tel Aviv and an expensive suburb in Herzliyah, and "settlements", Israeli communities built within "Judea and Samaria", the "occupied territories", "The West Bank", or "Israeli East Jerusalem", depending on the political point involved. We visited Yad VaShem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum - I was startled at the fact that some of the Americans in our group knew so little about the ghetto experiences of the European Jews leading up to and during World War II.
We had an Israeli doctor in obvious distress say, "Of course I want to be able to treat Palestinians in this hospital. But after an ambulance arrives and is full of explosives, do we dare let in the next ambulance?" We had a Palestinian doctor in an Israeli hospital (we spent a lot of time in the hospital, not part of the original plan!) express worry about his son who has said he wants to be a suicide bomber so he can go straight to heaven - those of you who have trouble with your teenage kids, think about that one a bit...!
The preparation for the trip was depressing: it didn't show much hope for progress toward peace. The trip itself was depressing: peace is not likely to break out in Israel / Palestine anytime soon. We did see "points of light", schools for children with post-traumatic stress syndrome (US foreign aid to them was cut off, of course, when it was discovered that some of the kids had lost parents to Israeli bullets. US government money must not be used to help family members of terrorists, even 4-year-old kids.) Church-sponsored secondary schools (no US aid, for the same reason.) School teachers still working, although not paid since the US government disliked the results of the first real democratic election Palestine had ever had. There are groups teaching nonviolent techniques, and groups of volunteers who try to interpose themselves between Palestinians and hostile Jewish settlers. But these are bandaids on broken arms, they don't get to the real problem.
Too many people on both sides are trying to figure out when and where and how to retaliate next, too few are seeking ways to break the cycle of violence. And the press publicizes and emphasizes the worst on both sides, making matters worse.
Is Jimmy Carter's word "apartheid" too strong? Well, it is certainly the wrong word. I had enough South African relatives during my formative years to know quite a bit about apartheid. Apartheid, in my view, is much too weak a word for what is happening in Israel / Palestine. Israel is confining the Palestinians into ever-shrinking ghettos. Jews ought to know better than that, and it is not an approach that will bring peace.
I really don't want to get into a political discussion in this newsgroup. But, given the events since June 3, I needed to ventilate. Thanks.
Next post: the mugging.
--
Thorney
Thorney
2007-06-19
The Trip.
The Context of the trip.
(Trying to explain why we were there. A form of core dump as I work my way back to wiitwd. But no wiitwd in this post.)
For many years Mrs. Thorney and I have attended synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday. (Mrs. Thorney is liberal Protestant, although she might be an Arian if that was possible in this century). I'm Jewish, traditional in belief and Orthodox when we met, but we attend a Reform Jewish Temple as she isn't much into Hebrew. Our kids were by earlier marriages so religion of kids wasn't a problem. )
I call myself a Zionist - I want a place for the Jews, where they can live in peace and safety and "where they can go, when they have to go someplace". I think Israel is the place where the world might let us do do that. That doesn't mean I have to agree with policies of the Israeli government any more that the fact that I'm a patriotic American means I have to agree with policies of the US government.
We've been distressed for some time with the alliance (as we see it) between Osama bin Laden and George Bush, promoting wars between Islam and the West. And we were upset at what we saw as a Jewish overreaction to Carter's recent book on Palestine. As comparative religion fanatics, we've found Islamic ideas helpful sometimes in our thinking. And we don't feel that the US can afford to treat out resident Muslims - most of whom are as inoffensive as our local Methodists - as some kind of exotic or hostile strangers. So a few months ago we started attending our neighborhood mosque on Fridays in addition to our synagogue and church, getting active in their social events, inviting people from one house of worship to visit another with us (yes, a few Muslims -have- come to synagogue with us.) And we've run parties where friends from one of these places can meet our friends from another.
And then Mrs. Thorney discovered that the American Friends Service Committee - a Quaker-founded group we have long been friends of - was acting jointly with a group called "Interfaith Peace Builders" (an offshoot of the pacifist group, the Fellowship of Reconciliation) to sponsor a group to visit pro-peace groups, mainly in Palestine (West Bank) but also in Israel, to explore chances for peace in the area. And Mrs. Thorney, commenting that at the age of 83, one can afford to take some risks, suggested we go. I agreed.
We traveled with the group May 25 - June 3. I'll tell a bit about that in another post later. On June 3 she was viciously mugged, not in the obviously dangerous areas we had been deliberately traveling in, but a few yards from our hotel in Jerusalem. That will be another post. And then comes the treatment and recovery, which is giving us opportunities to find new ways to relate to each other, and new ways to express our closeness in the absence of the most usual sexual outlets. And it is giving me, shall we say, great opportunities to try out a wide variety of submissive roles and fantasies, see how I like them, and to think about my own fantasies and motivations. So I do intend, within a few days and subject to the constraints of the children and grandchildren who will be coming to visit, to get back to interesting thoughts about wiitwd.
The Trip.
The Context of the trip.
(Trying to explain why we were there. A form of core dump as I work my way back to wiitwd. But no wiitwd in this post.)
For many years Mrs. Thorney and I have attended synagogue on Saturday and church on Sunday. (Mrs. Thorney is liberal Protestant, although she might be an Arian if that was possible in this century). I'm Jewish, traditional in belief and Orthodox when we met, but we attend a Reform Jewish Temple as she isn't much into Hebrew. Our kids were by earlier marriages so religion of kids wasn't a problem. )
I call myself a Zionist - I want a place for the Jews, where they can live in peace and safety and "where they can go, when they have to go someplace". I think Israel is the place where the world might let us do do that. That doesn't mean I have to agree with policies of the Israeli government any more that the fact that I'm a patriotic American means I have to agree with policies of the US government.
We've been distressed for some time with the alliance (as we see it) between Osama bin Laden and George Bush, promoting wars between Islam and the West. And we were upset at what we saw as a Jewish overreaction to Carter's recent book on Palestine. As comparative religion fanatics, we've found Islamic ideas helpful sometimes in our thinking. And we don't feel that the US can afford to treat out resident Muslims - most of whom are as inoffensive as our local Methodists - as some kind of exotic or hostile strangers. So a few months ago we started attending our neighborhood mosque on Fridays in addition to our synagogue and church, getting active in their social events, inviting people from one house of worship to visit another with us (yes, a few Muslims -have- come to synagogue with us.) And we've run parties where friends from one of these places can meet our friends from another.
And then Mrs. Thorney discovered that the American Friends Service Committee - a Quaker-founded group we have long been friends of - was acting jointly with a group called "Interfaith Peace Builders" (an offshoot of the pacifist group, the Fellowship of Reconciliation) to sponsor a group to visit pro-peace groups, mainly in Palestine (West Bank) but also in Israel, to explore chances for peace in the area. And Mrs. Thorney, commenting that at the age of 83, one can afford to take some risks, suggested we go. I agreed.
We traveled with the group May 25 - June 3. I'll tell a bit about that in another post later. On June 3 she was viciously mugged, not in the obviously dangerous areas we had been deliberately traveling in, but a few yards from our hotel in Jerusalem. That will be another post. And then comes the treatment and recovery, which is giving us opportunities to find new ways to relate to each other, and new ways to express our closeness in the absence of the most usual sexual outlets. And it is giving me, shall we say, great opportunities to try out a wide variety of submissive roles and fantasies, see how I like them, and to think about my own fantasies and motivations. So I do intend, within a few days and subject to the constraints of the children and grandchildren who will be coming to visit, to get back to interesting thoughts about wiitwd.
--
Thorney
Thorney
2007-07-30
Starting again
OK, I've been posting for years in newsgroups and sometimes in web forums. A few series of posts need to be archived, so I'm reviving this blog.
The first set is going to be some newsgroup posts stemming from a trip to Israel / Palestine. Mrs. Thorney was mugged and badly injured, and I needed to do some writing about how we kept up spirits - and our sex life.
Starting again
OK, I've been posting for years in newsgroups and sometimes in web forums. A few series of posts need to be archived, so I'm reviving this blog.
The first set is going to be some newsgroup posts stemming from a trip to Israel / Palestine. Mrs. Thorney was mugged and badly injured, and I needed to do some writing about how we kept up spirits - and our sex life.
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