This book is not comforting; it does not reassure. It does not teach anything a decent person needs to know. It is a book about BDSM, but it will teach you nothing about tying knots, swinging floggers or spanking. It does not comfort, it does not attempt to reach the vanilla public.
This book addresses control, it addresses change. The recreational uses of humiliation, conditioning, psychological torture, hypnotism and interrogation techniques are explored and laid bare, broken into usable steps and understandable, applicable concepts. It is a workshop of ruin, the tools necessary to cement lasting alteration and unforgettable experiences for those few who truly crave them.
“This is not a 101 or “BDSM for everyone”. Actually, this is not really for anyone.
Most of the things that are in this book I cannot sanction anyone doing to anyone else. Except, of course, that we do, and we will, and we want to. So here are tools to do them well, to do them ethically, and to enact your own, terrible sacraments. We seek to ascend, so we descend.
I called this book a mixed message, a perverse architecture, and so it is. The keystone of this edifice is inscribed with the heart of all these chapters, these words cut at cross-purpose:
“Here is something you should never do to anyone.
And here is exactly how to do it to someone you care about.”
– From The Forked Tongue, A handbook for treating people badly

I’ve been mucking about in a depression for almost a month now, and it was coming to a critical point this morning. Just… woke up black, and it was not getting any better. In the mail came the news I was expecting, what I was dreading. The Property has a buyer. I knew it was coming- my twin watched her dream get sold away, so I knew it was not going to be long. That’s the way these things work. It’s a long, terrible umbilical.

The hammer fell, and nailed me down but good. Straw- camel’s back. Critical mass.  I was having trouble remembering why you have to try in the first place; just lost in my own head. I wanted to give up. I had enough objectivity to know I was stuck, that I had to do something to get out of the tar pit. The idea of going to see The Village and dinner came up, and I clutched it like a life preserver. My animal was trying to pry what was wrong out of me- but what was there to say? To speak it out loud would just have been diminishing- and I had already dwindled as far as I could bear. Get out. Look for signs. Find my center. That’s what I had to do, or I’d just sit at home and drink Drano.  

So- out. The movie was pretty good, it was distracting- and it reminded me of a few important things. I was pondering them as we
found Her.

I’ve never seen Her for sale. And there were so many. She was in five or six places in the window, topped by a great brass version- head and bowl, sword and tusk, skirt of hands, necklace of skulls, foot on her consort, fangs and tounge.

She’s 1800$. I can do that, eventually. I bought one of the smaller ones for $20

More than that, she was there when I needed her to tell me a few things:

“My children live. With gratitude for every sunrise I let them see, they live. They weep. They bleed. They rage. They burn. They die. They dance. they fuck. They roar. Before me, they crawl.

But they do not snivel. So shut the fuck up.”

She has given me more than I have ever deserved. She has given me more than many people will ever see. I have wasted many more chances than most people will have ever had. I have been blessed. I even have someone to bleed with.  I had forgotten all her gifts.

Everybody pays.

It’s just my turn.

And- until I am before Her, I will not crawl. So fuck this. And fuck anyone in my way. I have a long way to go before I get Home, and I am not troubled by the idea of stepping over as many bodies as I have to.

“Farewell happy fields
Where joy ever dwells, hail horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new Posessor.”

Milton- Paradise Lost

” This house became the embodiment of every childhood dream I had of stability and security. It contained all of my little secret dreams and fantasies about things that I don’t tell anyone for fear of being ridiculed. All of those wishes were finally going to come true in *this* house. I was going to build the world I wanted inside these walls and fences. This is where I found home, where I belonged.”

That’s not fair. That’s not fair to anybody. I’d call my Mother, but she’d just laugh. Hell, that’s what she’s doing now.

“‘Cause when love is gone, there’s always justice.
And when justive is gone, there’s always force.
And when force is gone, there’s always Mom.

Hi Mom!

So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms…”

–Laurie Anderson – O Superman

We stepped off the subway and my animal got one good look at it sprawled out in front of us in all it’s gaudy spread, like a faded movie star, whoring on a backalley matress.

No more than a heartbeat passed as we took it all in, blinking in the sun. We heard the rushing and screaming of the coaster, and the barker calling rubes to see the freakshow. We saw a hundred cheap and tawdry ways to trade our money for bad food, cheap trinkets or nothing at all. Then she said:

“This is so you –  decayed granduer.”

We went to Coney Island on my birthday. This, for me, is a pilgramage I do not make near often enough. In true New Yorker fashion, I never think of going there- it was my animal who suggested it, and the idea came as a shock. I think about going to India all the time- but I never get off my ass to take the Long Ride down into Coney Island.

The impact on me is enormous. Really all out of proportion to the actual place; especially considering what the place is now.
I was absorbing that – looking at the video arcades, overpriced hot-dog stands, rigged games, cheap prizes, pastebord and blinking lights- and part of my mind going:

 “There’s nothing here.”

And another, more certain voice saying:

 “That’s the point.”

And it was the point. It is the point.

I am not moved by grandeur. I am not moved by greatness… I am moved by ruin. I’m not really sure what it’s about, why it calls to me like nothing else- but I suspect it’s about duality yet again. Greatness that still stands barely touches me; squalor that was always squalor is the same. Calcutta was a city of artists, poets, sculptors and angels without equal- and it is now a foul cesspool of poverty and human misery. It is my Mother’s city. I must see it, and pay my respects. But until I can reach Kalikut, city of my Mother…
I have Coney.

And it is Mother’s touch that I see in Coney. Once upon a time, Coney was the center of the world. It was the spectacle which nothing in man’s creation could touch. The birthplace of the electric city, the incubator, the New World of science and wonder, the prodigy child of Edison, Tesla and Barnum.

And now… now all that is gone, and the echoes are so faint that you have to know what you are listening for to hear the faintest whispers. It is Paradise Lost, it is Eden after the fall.

I don’t think I would have cared much for Eden before the fall. Beauty fades. But loss? Ruin?

Ruin is forever.

Amen.

I was chasing someone. My shirt flapped loose below my ribcage, black and hollow. I could feel the wind blow through the inside of me, where I used to be. I was cold, and angry. I ground my teeth like I was trying to light a fire with the sparks.

“theif, thief, thief, thief, thief…”

I never saw him. I did not know him. He was always just ahead in a city that looked green and familiar, but was not my own. The streets were slick with a rain which had passed I stepped in a puddle as I ran, and it soaked through my boots. I was cold inside. Part of me had been taken by a stranger, and I meant to have it back.

“Thief, thief, thief, thief, thief…”

Down some stairs and to a door- either pistachio or pine or some other unpleasant shade of green. There was a number I could not read. He was on the other side of the door. I couldn’t touch it. I could not knock, I could not smash it down. I could only stand there and shake, and hiss through my teeth…

“Thief, thief, thief, thief, thief…”

Uncle Flagg’s Deep Dish Despair

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature.
• 2 cups all purpose squalor
• 8 gallons denial
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 cups slander
• 1 cup deluded hypocrisy
• As much crazy as you can carry, if necessary, call a friend with a truck… you just can’t have enough crazy for this one.
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon extract of self righteous
• 1 pound shattered hopes, thawed and drained of all future
• confectioners sugar for dusting; or just use real filth.

 Steps…

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter a 5” deep pie tin, line bottom with filth, debris and anything you find on the street and can drag home. Butter wax paper, set aside, and forget immediately what you have done with it. In a medium bowl, whisk together denial, baking powder and slander; attempt to keep in ignorance.
2. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and hypocrisy until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each, then beat in self-righteous indignation.  With mixer on low speed, add denial mixture (have someone else find it.) mix until just combined. If you have difficulty, listen to no one who tries to help you, react violently to criticism. Batter should be as thick as cookie dough. Remember- nothing is your fault.
3. Pour batter into dish, scatter shattered hopes over the top. Bake until your friends can tolerate you no longer. Pour all 8+ gallons of crazy onto steaming mixture… don’t worry if it overflows, nobody can get enough of your insanity. Talk nonstop at oven, and anything else which wanders close enough. If anyone suggests that you might be accountable for your own problems, scream at them or simply argue some other, unrelated point.
4. Serve on bed of squalor. Don’t worry if you did it wrong… someone else will clean up your mess and you can take the credit for it.

After nine months of acting like an entitled infant, you expect… what?

You have proven time and time again that you have no understanding of adult communications, and have thrown any gestures of civility and maturity back in our faces. 

Please. Spare me yet more victimized dramatics.

Civility is wasted on you.

So – there are a lot of folks who wanted to know how this all went; so here goes:

Tuesday was election day- I met my animal nearby, and we had a little dinner before the festivities. The Operations people did a laudable job with crowd management in the new space. Good turnout, we made quorum easily. Our Secretary got the ball rolling, and the ticket was nine people for five BoD seats, one running for Arbiter (unopposed)  and two bylaws proposals – one regarding the abolition of the Parlimentarian position, one regarding membership. I have had strong interest in running for Parlimentarian – I’d be damn good at it – but I supposted the bylaw, and it would seem odd to try to do both.

Ken “The Living Weapon” Soulhuntre and Kimiko were present to vote, and he was keeping me laughing the whole time- he’s a truly funny bastard.

The bylaw failed, so there was an open Parlimentarian post, and I had taken a BoD seat, along with Catelynn, Bo, Mike S, and Sharon. Good company- but I regretted having beat out my friend Mosquito Pete. As it turned out, I need not have worried about it. Tower was elected Arbiter- but when there was a vacancy for Parlimentarian, he ran for that position. If I had not made the Board, I’d have done the same- a late night recount showed that we (Pete and I) had actually tied. I got the news when I got home, and my first instinct was to default the position to Pete. Considering the backbreaking labor he’s put in for TES, it struck me as wrong for him not to get the position. I talked with my animal, who had a brilliant idea, slept on it and called Mark back in the AM with an idea. He proposed it to Tower and The Big Mosquito, and we all reached an equitable agreement; we just had to bring it before the BoD, and see if they accepted it. It seemed the best conclusion to the whole muddled mess, as it put two candidates to the posts they had been initially elected to, and the third, who had tied for an officer position, in a Board officer seat- albeit non-voting.

So- I withdrew from the BoD race, so that the BoD seat would go to Mosquito Pete. No matter what happened, the BoD would have the right man for that job.

Wednesday was spent with my animal at the Bronx Zoo. A truly fine day. We then toddled off to Court, where we paid only what we tried to pay five fucking months ago, before that nonsense started- all we owed, and all they had any right to see.

Which made our day that much better.

Thursday was the first meeting of the newly elected BoD, a grace period where the old Board and the new Board sat at the same table and tries to make a smooth transition. The first order of business was to decide what to do about the tied election and the complications it brought about. Two hours of exploration later, the Board unanimously accepted tower as Arbiter, Mosquito Pete in the voting Board seat, and myself seated as Parlimentarian- which is what I really wanted in the first place.

It was interesting to watch some of the denial issues at work. Of the three candidates who did not win, only one camp (A camp of two)been screaming “Foul” because somehow he lost- so, of course, something must be wrong with the process. Apparently, election pixies were supposed to come and make everything all right, their tiny wings a’strainin’ with the weight of dozens of unmailed ballots and dragging recalcitrant voters by their naughty, naughty ears.The meeting had a side dish of note passing and nonsense. A special note of thanks to Starts1, who hashed issues and doubts out with me like a gentleman, and really is an unpright man. (By the way- some of the above histrionics have taken place on his weblog, and is well worth seeing.) In the end, I was placed as Palimentarian unanimously, and will serve on the BoD until the elections next September.

It was recently said that “Being polite might buy you a cup of coffee, but it won’t fix the barn.” Well, I have no idea what the hell that’s supposed to mean, but I do know this: Sometimes, all you need to fix the barn is a majority vote.

So, it’s been a long few months.

I have not updated Innuendo in some time- mostly because the gibbering monkey that was stealing my change was checking it for things to trot to his lawyer. It’s not really a shock, as he was showing up with him everywhere he knew we’d be in the same place, often carrying a camera. Seanbaby, font of wisdom and spirit guide, pretty much covered their antics, seek his wisdom.

A final note, before I move on:

I made a promise a few posts back. I keep my promises.

Here comes trouble…
Open wide.

But before I roll on to other topics, (My animal, the upcoming visit of my twin, and the TES Elections) I have some thank you’s.

Thank you to The Big Mosquito, for being Da Man. “If you want to be da man, you gotta beat da Man…”  and that I could not do- and I’m glad of it. More on that during The Election Follies, coming soon.

My appreciation to J.K, my number one fan. Hungry for what table scraps I throw her, and sends me delightful tribute. Maybe one day I’ll spit on her.

Finally, thank you to Soulhuntre for going above and beyond, helping me take care of me and mine, keeping an eye on my animal and always making me laugh. A far better man than the Ms. Boards will ever appreciate. (But then, they are not terribly big on men over there. Apparently, we’re bad.)

Finally: This is so funny I can hardly breathe.

Oh, There’s a monkey in my pocket
and he’s stealing all my change,
his stare is so blank and glassy,
I suspect that he’s deranged…