My Two Cents on a Serious Subject

I don't often (or at all) post things that could be considered controversial, mostly because I don't like getting into arguments with people and, sadly, most people I meet are incapable of having a discussion rather than an argument.  I was raised in a household where someone always took the other side of an issue; we had domestic debates on a regular basis.   Imagine my surprise when I got out into the big, wide world and people thought I was trying to tell them they were wrong about their opinions just because I was trying to discuss the other point of view!  I found it disheartening and annoying and started keeping my opinions to myself.

However...

Earlier tonight I was strolling through Fetlife and I stumbled across a discussion that really inspired me to want to Say Something!  I am writing about it here because my opinion is likely to be too lengthy to be a comment on that post, (which if you are a member of Fetlife you can read here.)  The discussion in question is entitled "Reality check? Entitlement, disclosure, & the 'trans' hypno-fetishist" and covers whether or not a person who is trans-gender should be required to inform their potential hypno play-partner of their trans-gender state.  A recent book on erotic hypnosis, Mind Play, states that yes, they should, and there are reasons abounding both for and against this opinion playing out in the comments.  (Extremely well-written comments presented by people having a discussion and not necessarily an argument!)  I won't go into those opinions, I will merely present my own.

Yes.  They should.    But they shouldn't have to.  It's a slap in the face to have to say "I identify as a woman but I have (or once had) the physical attributes of a man" to someone, it's a step backward in someone's personal journey of gender identity to have to fight to be accepted for what they know they are, because it is fact, rather than opinion that leads them to identify as female.

But it is also fact, not opinion, that many people just don't get it.  They think that one day Sally woke up and thought to herself, "You know, being a woman really sucks.  I think I'll try being a man now."  They think that when Sally gets tired of being Steve she can just change her mind and go back to being Sally again.  Which means that when they find out that the person with whom they have forged a highly personal and intimate connection with through hypnosis is trans-gender they feel betrayed because they think the other person lied to them about what gender they are.  They think that they've been made the butt of a joke.  They think that the trans-gender person has been pretending to be something they are not, rather than someone whose anatomy has a truly terrible sense of humor.

I believe that it is foolish for someone who is trans-gender not to disclose this fact to their prospective playmate, because if they do make a meaningful and intimate connection with the other person then they had better be damn sure that their new friend isn't creeped out or wouldn't feel lied to about it.  And with the level of ignorance that exists at this time it would be nearly impossible to have that discussion without bringing their own gender identity into it.  Also, should a public relationship form, it's just irresponsible to put the non trans person potentially in the position of having to defend them in public without knowing what they are talking about.

Historically, the burden of societal change has fallen on the oppressed.  So, yes, it absolutely sucks that, due to the rampant ignorance and fear of the general public, a trans person should have to out themselves to prospective play partners, but until such time as we are all educated and informed about what it is to be trans-gendered it is necessary.  It's hard to be the pioneer.  It's a terrible burden to have to be the one educating the ignorant.  But it has to be done.  Because most people can't accept something new without it becoming familiar, and the only way for that to happen is for the unfamiliar to expose itself to public scrutiny.

The Experience of Feeling Normal (aka Friday night at WEEHU)

I am, in the words of every person, every where, who has ever started a blog, then ignored it in favor of other life events, really REALLY sorry that I disappeared for (gulp) 7 months.  +/- 10 days.  Or so.  I have a list of excuses that work well for me, I'm happy with them and will continue to use them in the future, the chief of which being that I had a lot of changes in my everyday life happen all at once and I don't handle change that well, so it took me quite awhile to get my feet back under me.

Or possibly it just took something really special to motivate me.

So (please refer to earlier blogs and reacquaint yourself with my tendency to over-use the word "so") this weekend was "WEEHU" the WEstern Erotic Hypnosis Unconference.  And it was AMAZING.  Who knew that all it would take to feel "normal" would be to spend a weekend surrounded by people often categorized by society in general as "abnormal"?  I have come to the conclusion that any time you get a community of people together that collectively is more creative and intelligent than average it will be inevitable that all the dimmer lights surrounding them will be blinded.  Or something like that.  I am also REALLY tired! So much of this non-pre-thought-out rambling will be neither original nor linear, but I can live with that.

Here is the anatomy of my weekend.  After working many, many days in a row in order to justify taking a lot of time off in a small period of time, I met up with my trusted traveling companions (thanks to Skyla and Naj for not, as my brother put it, reenacting the Saw movies with me) to drive to San Francisco.  Thankfully we were starting off in Portland, so it was a very manageable drive.  We had dinner, then got on the road and drove all night (Halloween night,) and got to our breakfast meet up by 9-ish.  Skyla and Naj went along without me to pick people up at the airport, and I had the pleasure of enjoying a wonderful sunshiny afternoon outside by myself, which frankly I really needed after all that working!  Then I got to commute the rest of the way with the wonderful Felix Krull, who MAY have tranced me a little bit on the way, something I have been looking forward to for weeks.  This weekend was actually the first time that I've ever had the opportunity to experience any hypnosis with a living, breathing human that I could reach out and touch, so I had a little impromptu list in my head of all the things I wanted to experience. Traveling-trance:  check!

That evening was the meet and greet and open halloween play party at The Citadel.  Is there a better place to have a costume party than a Dungeon?  I don't think so!  With that said, there weren't as many people in costume as I had hoped.  I am by nature not a 'mixer' (or a blender or a food processor) and spent most of the time sticking by the people I knew and letting them introduce me to the people they knew.  I lasted about 3 hours before being tired enough that I felt like I might pass out, and left to get some actual sleep.  Anyone I met Friday night, when I was covered in crystals and hopefully not looking as lost and out-of-place as I felt, but never said anything to again, it's most likely because I didn't remember meeting you!

I may <ahem> have gotten to have a wonderful experience outside of the play party that night which ultimately led to me getting a wonderful night of sleep.  Slept straight through 'til morning, which, as readers of this blog will know, is HIGHLY unusual, so pretty much the best first night of my first live get-together weekend EVER!

NOTE:  I started this Monday night, and it is now Tuesday afternoon and I find I'm having trouble writing it because it has sparked so many different ideas for other posts!  So hooray for that!  I will work on the rest of the specific WEEHU post offline and then post when it is more coherent.  For now, a million thanks to everyone who organized WEEHU and made it possible for me to attend.  The experience of feeling like a normal human, accepted and welcomed by the people around me, is one of the most priceless memories that I will ever have and I cannot really express how much it means to me.

Hypnosis And Cats

For those of you who read the last post and are concerned that I seem depressed, morose, and generally a big giant downer who needs to cheer up and play in the sunshine you are a) correct but b) over-reacting a tiny bit.  When I get down, I write about it, and that makes me feel better.  It's a system that works pretty well for me, so it will keep happening, because I do tend to have little crises of melancholy in the middle of the night when no one is around to talk to.

That said, I have been spending a lot of time in a chat room lately, learning how to be more social and generally being friendly with people.  Several of the people with whom I've chatted have kitty cat personas, which is interesting, since I'm not built that way, and it's ridiculously entertaining for me to watch.  (Actually, there's a ton of mutual entertainment happening between all the kitty cats, and that's what is really fun to see.)  So, I'm not a kitty myself, but I do have a kitty story...

I did get to do a little trancing the other night, which was wonderful, but had a pretty abrupt ending.

I'm sitting there, all relaxed and comfy, (and approaching hot and bothered), and vaguely aware that the cat is being pretty vocal in the background...but it really just didn't matter at the time.  So I have a little mantra I'm chanting (or trying to chant, talking wasn't my strong point at that moment) and the cat is adding a nice descant in the background (which I am hearing less and less) when...

CRASH!!!!!!!!

I'm pretty certain that what I said at that point was something reminiscent of a certain christian deity, got pulled utterly and completely out of trance, turned around and...

...well the cat was under the bed, and a lamp that shouldn't live on the floor was reclining quite comfortably there, and most of the small make-up items from my make-up table were strewn on the floor around it...but other than the yowling (which was apparently getting louder in real life while it was getting quieter for me) and the crashing, my hypnotist couldn't tell what happened, so I will have to use my imagination and extrapolate from the available evidence.

1- There are raccoons in my neighborhood this time of year.

2- My cat feels honor-bound to protect all living things from the horrors that are raccoons.

3- The raccoons like to tease my cat by perching outside the bedroom window and peeking in at her.

4.  The window sill on that particular window is about 2 inches wide

The cat's vantage point to see out of that particular window is on top of the cabinet/small fridge/toaster oven tower that I keep next to my desk.  She climbs up (floor to desk to printer to fridge to toaster oven) and can stare out the window.  When the raccoons are out, she stands on her hind legs on top of the toaster over and paws at the window glass in an effort to get to the evil vermin outside.

I think the raccoons were out there, and she, pushed to her breaking point, tried to get up on the 2 inch wide window sill and attack the furry fuckers.  And fell off, bouncing off the toaster oven and into the lamp, and across the make-up table and to the floor, at which point she decided she was under attack and ran and hid under the bed.  I think.

All I know is that the age-old question of "will Noelle stay entranced if something loud and unexpected happens in the background" has now been answered!

(And the cat is just fine.  I lured her out from under the bed with her favorite dead-fish tasting treat and that was enough to make her feel safe, and she has no broken bones or pulled muscles that I can tell, and is currently doing what she always does this time of day, namely sleeping.)

There may be more on what that session was actually meant to accomplish later...         

Meandering

I was really, properly grateful at work today for the time that I have spent learning about/experiencing hypnosis.  Right around two thirds of the way through the day I hit the wall big time and just wanted to keel over and nap.  On top of that, my neck and shoulders have been super tight and tense for about a month and a half now, mostly from stress, and I was sitting there between shifts feeling my muscles get tighter and tighter and really wishing that I had access to anyone at all who could put me under and help me relax.

It took me longer than it should have to realize that I could do it for myself.  (I get slightly stupid when I'm tired.  And hungry, for that matter, but that's another story.)  So, roughly 30 minutes later, crisis averted, and onward with my evening.  But I wish it hadn't come to that.

The fact of the matter is that I really miss the kind of trance-life that I used to have.  And even though I've learned valuable lessons and grown as a person because of my experiences and all those other pithy and pathetic cliches that one can use I really fucking detest the fact that I am now in a place where I have trouble trusting people and second-guessing almost everyone.  I am incredibly tempted to just throw myself to the sharks and see what happens; I'm too smart for that, really, but god the temptation!

And for anyone who might be curious, yes, the insomnia is back.  Too many thoughts in my head, too many fears in my mind, too much pain in my heart; it all goes around and around and around.  I think that maybe someday I will get control over it; I'm hopeful anyway.

So.  I've had a song stuck in my head for about a week now:  "I'm not missing you at all, since you've been gone away.  And there's a heart that's breaking, down this long-distance line tonight.  I'm not missing you at all."  Etc, Etc, Etc.  It's a great song (the original version, the Brooks and Dunn cover...not so much...)  And it applies to an awful lot of things and people in my life that I have had to walk away from or let go of or bury.  And I know that everyone's life consists of chains of events and people and things that will be left behind as we meander through our individual journeys.  Sometimes we get lucky and our wanderings cross the path of someone else and we can meander together for a small while.

And sometimes when we are truly blessed beyond belief we can meander with some of those people forever.  Our family, our friends, our loves, the people that make the journey worthwhile and the destination worth striving for.

I would like to be that lucky.

Working On Easter (A Departure)

This post departs completely from my usual areas of interest; rather, I'm going to write about my real life a little bit, because something that happened at work yesterday really bothered me (and continues to do so) and writing about it will help.  An awful lot of it is written in a very sarcastic tone, because that is how I deal with being upset about things. (Well, that and cussing, but I'm trying to tone the cussing down.)

But first, here's something that relates (a little bit) to my experience yesterday--

An amazing woman, Yvonne Brill, who was a pioneering rocket scientist before anyone knew how cool it was to be a rocket scientist, passed away recently, aged 88.  The New York Times published a long and glowing obituary for her, as one might expect.  And in the original piece, made sure to point out (right at the beginning, so that we would all understand how very much more important it was than the, you know, ground-breaking scientific achievements) how great her cooking was.  Yup, Yvonne apparently made a killer beef stroganoff.  Also, she somehow managed this feat, as well as the, you know, science, while being a super supportive wife and mother.

For some reason, woman all over the globe were a tad bit offended by the New York Times' intrepid obit writer choosing to commemorate Yvonne Brill's accomplishments in this manner.  It's like all the women suddenly were over-taken by a need to be defined by their actions and not by their gender.  Or their husband.  Or their children.  Can you imagine a world wherein a person can be called a "scientist" instead of a "lady scientist"?  Apparently, that's just crazy talk.

Here is the Ottowa Citizen's obituary of Yvonne Brill.  Good job, Ottowa Citizen!  And here you can find an article about the New York Times piece that contains the texts of both the original version as well as the version that went up once the shitteth had truly hitteth the fanneth. 

So, you may now be asking, how does the obituary of Yvonne Brill relate to my experience at work yesterday?  (Actually, by now, if you're anything like me, you've already forgotten what you read at the beginning of this blog, right?)

Yesterday, (aka Easter Sunday, aka a former pagan holiday that celebrated fertility), I drove a coworker to quitting his job.  Inadvertently.  And I want it clear from the start, I don't like the guy.  Haven't liked him from the moment he started.  I found him patronizing, rude, a dash incompetent (and nothing irritates me quite as much as having to work with people who are bad at their jobs but make no effort to improve), and quite lazy.  Now in real life, the life where I actually earn money to pay my bills and hypnosis is something I talk about in the context of therapy and not crazy fun erotic hijinks, I wait tables.  Already a situation fraught with the potential to be disrespected by the clientele, people to whom I am paid to suck up in the hopes that they will reward me with a fraction of their hard-earned cash.  I expect my coworkers to treat me with respect.  After all, we're all in this together, yes?

So this coworker who quit yesterday, let's call him "Joe" (no, that's not his real name) likes to call me "girl" rather than by my name.  Since he started, I don't recall him ever actually using my name, or any form of it.  It's not like he doesn't know what it is, it's written on my shirt after all.  And it's not a complicated, hard to remember name by any means.  But to him, I am "girl".  Yesterday, I had to work in a section with him, and run a large party of happy easter guests with him, a task that required us to communicate pleasantly with each other.  I asked him before we started to please use my name, rather than calling me "girl" all day.  He said something along the lines of "sure" or "okay"--and then proceeded to spend the next 3 hours calling me "girl", while I got more and more irritated.  (And yes, part of the irritation was at having to do a lot of the thinking for our large party, having to explain to him that he actually had to physically go back to the table and ask people if they needed anything for example.)  I finally asked him again to not call me "girl", and his response was spectacularly not cool.

     "You need to relax." Quoth Joe.  "You really need to relax.  I don't know what kind of bad things are happening to you in your personal life, but you need to leave that stuff at home when you come to work.  You are so negative.  You just need to relax.  That's all I have to say on the subject."

     Um.  What?  I would have been perfectly willing to accept something along the lines of "It's a habit, I'm sorry I offended you, I'll try harder."  Or even "It's a habit, I don't even realize I'm doing it, I'm sorry."  Note the key element of apology in my dream scenario.

Next thing I know, he's in the office complaining to our Culinary Manager about how negative I am.  Next thing he knows, I'm in the office repeating to our General Manager the conversation that Joe and I have just had.  The GM basically told him to can it, to use people's names, and if he heard another complaint about it then Joe would get a written warning to go along with the verbal warning he was already receiving.  (The GM was kind enough to fill me on this conversation later.)  Joe told the GM that it was just a habit, that it didn't mean anything, to which the GM replied "And I'm telling you it's not a habit anymore."

You see, I saw Joe stalk out of the restaurant and thought he had been sent home.  Joe's wife is pregnant, he needs the work, I felt bad, because honestly all I wanted was the apology.  So into the office I go again, and hear about Joe's conversation with the GM.  Turns out Joe up and quit on the spot.  Walked out on Easter Sunday because it was so unfair that he should be expected to respect his female coworkers enough to use their names.  I actually felt a little bad about him quitting...until I heard this:

     "And I'm telling you it's not a habit anymore.  You won't be doing it." My GM said to Joe.

     "Well what's her name even?" Joe responded.  "Am I supposed to call her 'Noelle', or 'Elle', or 'Ellie'?"

     "Those are all variations of her name that people use, any of them would be fine." The GM patiently explained.

     "Well I can't do that.  I quit." Joe said goodbye to no one as he stalked back out to the parking lot on his last day of work.

WHAT.  THE.  HELL.  

Now folks, I worked in the South of this fair country for just over 4 months some years back, and all the gents there (the ones who stereotypically would or should have been calling me "girl") managed to use my name.  I have worked as a waitress for the restaurant that I am with for 13 years and have always managed to be called by my name.  I call other people by their names, and defend people (like my friend who really does kind of look like Harry Potter) when people push too far with calling them things like..."Harry Potter".  When I am asked to do something or change a behavior because it is offending someone I try my best to do it, and when I have hurt someone's feeling I apologize for doing so, even when I don't understand why their feelings were hurt.  I own my actions.  

What I want to know, Joe, is why (WHY?) in this day and age do you not realize that it is inappropriate to define people by their gender?  Or their religion?  Or their sexual orientation?  Or their skin color?  Or their weight?  Or their ethnicity?  Or their taste in clothes?  People should be defined by their actions.  If that  means you have to get to know them before you can come up with a working definition of the kind of person they are, then good.  Get out of the cave, or the box, or the crevice within which you have been living and learn.

Also, kudos to writer Brian Bendis of Marvel Comics for pointing out in the latest issue of All-New X-Men that "Lady Mastermind" was always a dumb name.  After all, they didn't call her father "Dude Mastermind".

Tickling

I have finally been inspired to write something erotic again.  Hope you enjoy!
(The following contains sexual situations that may not be suitable for minors.)

Retracing My Steps

One of the side effects of my February hypnotist disaster has been the tainting of my hypnosis fetish.  I had only been exploring hypnosis for a little under 3 months when I started working with him, and a ton of what I learned that I liked and what worked well for me I learned with him.  Not everything, thanks goodness, but enough that for the last month it has been really hard to be in trance without his specter sort of lurking in the back of my mind.  Mind you, this is after the other person with whom I work helped root all the left-over suggestions etc that had been left behind out of my head.  I decided that I needed to re-write the program, as it were, so that is my new adventure.  Same as the old adventure, just from a different direction and, unfortunately, without as much trust in myself or for new people as I had.  I miss the kind of innocent enjoyment I was able to bring to things before, and I may never forgive him for the loss of that, but I know that I will be better off this way.

So, I went back to the beginning.  Which for me, was YouTube (you can all stop cringing, there are worthwhile videos to be found there.)  I'm re-learning how to go into trance trusting myself, and I am trying to do the same with my other friend/hypnotist, who has stuck by me through all of this and has been a rock and a pillow all at the same time.

The hardest part has been having the sheer joy I found in the erotic aspects of hypnosis be diminished.  When I lost my trust in people that was the first thing that was affected, and has proven to be extremely difficult to work through.  I was never interested in being the person who tranced alone from a file to get my rocks off, I relished the human connection that I had found and even more the friend that I thought I had found through it, and losing that broke my heart.  It also slammed home just how lonely I had been before I started my hypnosis adventure, and made me enormously grateful for the friends I have made who didn't disappear on me, even though I have been weepy and whiny, selfish and scared, and more than a little bit over-sensitive.  (Or, as one person put it, complicated.)  I am a very, very complicated person.  Yes.

The other major thing that has been bothering me is that (because I am insecure) in my imagination my ex-hypnotist tells other people to stay away from me, that I am bad news, that I am crazy, that I am the kind of person you don't want to get mixed up with (which is how he made me feel about myself when he left.)  There are a couple of people who, before I met him, I had been interested in getting to know, in being friends with, and because I know he is friends with them/associates with them I feel like I can never pursue that avenue.  I feel like I have my own version of the scarlet letter floating ahead of me everywhere I go, and that this herald of my presence will color every interaction I try to have in the future.

But I do understand that I feel this way because I lack self-confidence.  I do understand that I am insecure and that most of the time no one will care what has happened to me in the past or about with whom it happened.  It's the one person who will care that I think about.

My friend last night told me something amazingly and agonizingly important:  feeling this way, feeling in general, IS COMPLETELY NORMAL AND ACCEPTABLE.  (I had to capitalize that for myself, to help it sink in a little more.)  Feeling how I have felt over the last month, and the way I felt through the 5 weeks before that--all completely normal and acceptable.  And it's not my fault if other people can't deal with it.  The only things within my control are how I feel and how I choose to react to those feelings, and I have handled that in the most honest and ethical way that I know.

And for now, that is enough.