Dream.

I had class this morning at the M/S conference. 9:00 AM is a cruel injustice if you expect  night owls to be coherent. Night owls on Pacific Time are even more tortured. But I made it through. People shared some very painful stories, and asked some very wonderful questions, and it was well worth the agony of early morning consciousness.

 

I had time to walk around a bit, talk to some folks. I had an interesting revelatory moment when I ran into someone with whom I’d had an oddly, obliquely cool relationship, and their continued coolness was obvious to me now, and I thought to myself “That wasn’t your imagination! They don’t like you much.” And this is something I’d have found devastating in the past. now? I just thought “Well, it makes some things make more sense. And it is their loss. I’m awesome.”  And I rolled on. Took a walk through the vendor area before I realized I was in serious need of more sleep.

 

Then after another EPIC 20 minute adventure getting upstairs (only ONE elevator working now) I crawled back into bed and had one of the most vivid dreams I have had in years.

 

I woke up from a very strange dream during my nap. I was with The Dominant Guy, and I was in service, following him around on various errands, etc. And I felt wonderful, as I do. Until I realized I was crawling around behind him rather than walking. OK, no problem. I can roll like that. I kept nudging up against him, butting my head on his leg, rubbing my face on his thigh when he stopped. I then felt abruptly self-conscious as this seems a wee bit inappropriate. Not very proper for the service girl to be fawning on the dominant’s leg, you know? I couldn’t stop though, it felt like something I had to do, and it was just fine. But also fucking weird, you know?

 

This went on for a while, me crawling around with him, comfortably in my place behind him and to the right… but I became more unnerved when I realized my knees weren’t aching, like they would if I spent any amount of time on them. In fact, my locomotive process was all off. I was moving far too quickly and easily to be crawling around. This was unsettling and I spoke up  up to get his atention, but couldn’t  form words. Only oddly modulated yipping barky noises…I freaked out and tried to stop him by grabbing his belt but couldn’t do that either and only then did I realize I couldn’t grab him because I didn’t have opposable thumbs anymore. Just big dirty…paws.

 

Total panic set in, yeah? And he stopped, and turned around and I put my paws on his chest and tried to speak but couldn’t. But he smiled, and rubbed my head, scritching  behind my ears, which were now really big and quite sensitive, I gathered, because I was able to hear him even though he was whispering in my head. And he spoke to me, and said …well. He said comforting and very moving things.  And I felt better then.  And we walked on, me trotting behind him.

 

When I woke up, rather shockily, I realized that, though I will dream about and speak to Bubbles, my demon, I’ve never been her.   And then the entire dream reminded me of  something.  After lying in a half-awake daze it came to me. “Oh yeah, I know what that reminded me of…

 

 

Pieter Hugo’s work is kinda amazing. The phtographer who took this photo and others of the Nigerian hyena men says this about the relationship:

 

 I look back at the notebooks I had kept while with them. The words ‘dominance’, ‘codependence’ and ‘submission’ kept appearing. These pictures depict much more than an exotic group of travelling performers in West Africa. The motifs that linger are the fraught relationships we have with ourselves, with animals and with nature.

 

 

 I realised that what I found fascinating was the hybridisation of the urban and the wild, and the paradoxical relationship that the handlers have with their animals – sometimes doting and affectionate, sometimes brutal and cruel.

 

D/S indeed.

 

I have several theories about dreams. And those theories vary depending on the intensity and the depth of the experience I have. This one goes to 11.