Shadow Lane, here we come!

Tomorrow morning, that is. Today, there is still much to do. In the middle of doing laundry, getting my hair cut in an hour. Picking up the rental car this afternoon. And packing. So much packing.

Always a challenge for these events. You’d think I was going away for three weeks instead of three days. But you know, outfits are important. Not to mention panties. Lots and lots and lots of panties.

I have many. This is one drawer of two, and it’s missing several pairs that in the wash right now. Sometimes, I think I should just dump the drawers into my suitcase and be done with it.

But that would be silly. Right? Of course… (sigh)

So I will pick and choose. And of course, then there are the remaining lingerie items, the dresses, the skirts, the shorts, the tops, the PJs, the shoes, the makeup, the hair products, the… oh, hell. The women know what I’m talking about. The men are rolling their eyes.

I never quite relax until we arrive at the Suncoast. The ride to Vegas has much potential for disaster, since the I-15 route going there is rated one of the top 10 most dangerous highways in the U.S. You can imagine how comforted I was when I saw that on TV last week! But so far, we’ve made it every time. That little voice that keeps saying “Maybe this will be the time that we won’t” seriously needs to #$%& off.

I had mentioned this on FetLife a week or so ago — while I always look forward to the play, I find that this time, I’m looking forward far more to simply seeing all our friends, to the hugs, to the laughs, to the closeness and camaraderie. Loners don’t get much of that. Can’t wait to see all the dear familiar faces, plus will be meeting a bunch of new ones too. I do hope people will forgive me if I’m frazzled. I’ll settle down after a day or so; I just get so overwhelmed with all there is to do in so little time.

Plus, I have reasons to be extra excited this time. I didn’t mention this until now, because I was so afraid I’d jinx it somehow. But I am doing not one, but two shoots during this party weekend.

The first one will be a fun quickie clip with BratKaye of Amateur Spankings. We met her at the “50 Freaks” party last February and she is an absolute hoot, and she asked if we could shoot a little something together. The spanker will be the gentleman who runs the site (don’t know if I can use his name, so I won’t). We’ll do this on Saturday late morning, before lunch.

The second one — are you ready? Drum roll, please. On Sunday afternoon, John and I will be heading to the home of the one and only Dana Kane, where I’ll be shooting a scene with her partner, the handsome gentleman formerly known as the Court Disciplinarian for Spanking Court. To my knowledge, this is the first time Dana has shot any M/F content for her site, so I am truly honored. Plus I am sooo jazzed to see them both again — it’s been nearly two years, and now that SC has gone dark, there’s no chance of any reunions in that venue. Oh, and I finally get to meet all her kitties! Dana has a wickedly good idea for a scenario and I think this will be lots of fun. 

But of course, more for Erica to stress about! “Ack! I need to get plenty of sleep so I won’t have raccoon eyes on camera!” “Ugh! What if I get marked before the shoots?” “Eeek! What if I’m too sore?” Oh, shut up.

I will simply have to pace myself, and tell people I’m not down for my heaviest play (until Sunday night, when all bets are off). And make sure I get my Zzzzz’s.

It’s been a crazy, crazy time with John the past few weeks. He bought a second property (a condo) and it’s been an insane time of mortgage arrangements, loan approvals, property inspections, dickering with the seller for repairs, shopping for furniture, endless emails and calls with his broker, etc. The heart issue has been put on hold because he has to resolve all his dental issues before any of that can take place. Yesterday, the poor dear had a tooth pulled. I was freaked out, worried that it would make his weekend miserable, but he got two opinions and both said that he’d be OK. It was a particularly bad tooth, which had been crowned and then had a root canal, so there were no nerves left and there wasn’t much tooth left either. So fingers crossed that he won’t be feeling any discomfort this weekend. He called me last night and said he felt fine. All the papers are signed and all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed, so we are free and clear to head out of town. (whew)

All right then. I won’t be blogging during the party, but I will check in with email and comments and what-have-you often with my phone. I promise I will have the usual report(s) when I come back! Have a happy, safe and fun holiday weekend, y’all.

Indispensable

I wasn’t sure how Steve was going to feel about last night’s post, but when he arrived today, he told me he liked it. I asked him if he wanted me to remove it, and he said not at all. However, there was one part he didn’t like — hated, really. The part where I said I was dispensable.

We talked for a long time. But then talking time was over.

“Are you ready for me to spank complete awareness and understanding into you that you are not dispensable?” he asked. I shuddered, but said yes.

“I need you to know this. I need to show you.”

And he did. Most emphatically. 

After it was over, he held me until the trembling and the tears subsided. I didn’t think I’d ever stop crying.

But you know what? I think I’ve shed my last tear for a while. 🙂

Indispensable. I am, dammit. He is, too.

We are.

And that’s all she wrote. Here’s what he wrote:

Guess I had my pre-Shadow Lane warm-up, huh?

Funny side note: Two weeks ago when Steve came over after his vacation, he walked in and then said, “Oh, damn. I brought you a box of these awesome cookies from Hawaii, but I forgot to bring them.” No problem, I said; just bring them next time.

He didn’t make it last week, and when he came in today, he sheepishly handed me a small Baggie and said, “I finally remembered to bring you those great cookies from Hawaii… but I ended up eating most of them.”

LOL! Look at this — he left me a whopping four cookies!!

Aren’t they cute; they’re shaped like little pineapples!

Oh well, it’s the thought that counts.

♥ you, my top.

An open letter to those who find me threatening

OK, kids. You know the story. You’ve heard me lament about it a bazillion times over the years — losing my beloved tops/spanking partners when they become involved with women who do not accept my existence. It didn’t just happen with ST last year; overall, it’s happened about half a dozen times. I’ve always had things I wished I could say to these women, the ones who find me oh-so threatening, but I never had the chance. Now, you may recall I have yet another who wishes I could be banished from my top’s life. Or from the planet, for good measure. (read here)

Granted, it seems that Steve isn’t going to roll over and allow another to dictate with whom he can or cannot play. However, this is getting tiresome nonetheless. So I thought perhaps it was time to craft a form letter, so every time this happens, I could simply whip it out, change the name and have my say. Here goes my rough draft.

“Dear [insert name here],

I don’t need to introduce myself; you already know who I am. [Insert name] and I have been spanking partners for [insert amount of time] now, and he and I share a special friendship and bond. However, I really can’t understand why you find my presence in his life to be such a threat. I am not his girlfriend, I am not his lover. I have my own boyfriend of many years whom I love very much. Your resentment of me is quite baseless, for many reasons:

1. I am possibly the least threatening female you will ever meet. I have no desire to take what doesn’t belong to me, or to ruin anyone’s relationship. I only wish to keep what I have — my spanking friend and trusted confidante.

2. The odds are that I’m older than you. And, since we’ve been chosen by the same man (for different reasons), chances are my looks/figure/intelligence/what-have-you are on a par with yours. In other words, I am not some femme fatale out to steal your man.

3. There are females out there who dislike other women and have no regard for their feelings. I am hardly one of those. I love my girlfriends and am very loyal to them, and I have never endeavored to be the type of woman whom other women hate. If you would be friendly with me instead of adversarial, I would be very solicitous of your concerns.

And now, [insert name], here’s the part where I’m going to get just a wee bit bitchy, mmmkay? Ready?

You get to see him nearly any day you wish. You are interwoven with his life; you will meet his friends, his family, his kids if he has any. You can go anywhere with him in public, and if you are kinked as well, you can attend scene events with him, as well as all the everyday vanilla events too. You can spend entire weekends with him, go away with him. And last, but certainly not least, you get to have sex with him.

Me? I get to see him for a couple of hours, one day a week. Sometimes not even that often; many things can interfere with our session time, including work, family issues, holidays, illness, etc. He spanks me, soothes me, and then he leaves until the next time. Not much to ask for, really. And yet, you would begrudge me even this, because you can’t stand to have him give anything to anyone else but you.

Shame on you. And how sad. Beneath my hurt and bewilderment, I can almost feel sorry for you. Because living with that degree of insecurity has to be pretty damned unpleasant.

But take heart, dear. Not all of the time, mind you, but much of the time, of the two of us, I am the most dispensable. So I offer you this bit of advice; be as charming and pleasant as you can be. Save your true colors for later; don’t go all jealous psycho-bitch on him until after I’ve been dispatched and am out of the picture. That way, he’ll probably figure he might as well stick around, since his options have been eliminated. Oh, and make damn sure that your sexual skills are superlative. You’re gonna need them. 🙂

Sincerely yours,
Erica Scott”

What do y’all think? Chances are, I’ll end up deleting this. But it sure felt damn good to write it. 😀

OT: Revisiting an old friend

Who remembers the cartoon character “Ziggy”? The short, bald, pants-less, lovable loser with mournful yet humorous outlooks on life?

Ziggy was around for about 40 years, so he had a lot of mileage in the comic world. Reading him in my most depressed years, I related to him often. Of the hundreds of panels I read, one stands out in my memory. I tried to find it online but could not, so I’ll describe it. It was very simple, one of his “observation” cartoons where he’s just standing there and talking to the reader. In this one, he was saying:

“Maybe people who need people really aren’t the luckiest people in the world.”

(For those too young to know the reference, it’s a play on an old Barbra Streisand song, with the lyric “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.”)

Today, I am revisiting that sentiment. 

I like to think of myself as a fairly strong person, self-sufficient, independent. I love many, and some love me. Love is a good thing. In my darkest days, I used to believe that I’d be safest if I kept myself reserved and apart from others, because to love was to be wounded. The lyric from Simon & Garfunkel’s “I Am A Rock” spoke to me: “If I never loved, I never would have cried.”

I accept love in my life now. But what I still can’t stand is my neediness.

I don’t like needing others. Loving and enjoying people is one thing; life is rather colorless without that, and it feeds my soul in ways I never dreamed imaginable. But as soon as I start to need, then I am in trouble. Then I lay myself bare for hurt, for pain, for insecurity, for loss.

Neediness strips away my armor, my layers of protection, and leaves me tender and vulnerable. Neediness reduces me from a strong woman to a gullible little kid, desperate and hungry and willing to believe anything I hear. I become ridiculously hypersensitive and weepy, craving attention like a spoiled child.

If I need someone, they can let me down and hurt me. If I rely on someone else other than myself, they will let me down. Not because they are bad people, but it’s simply human nature. No matter what the songs, the poems and the romance novels say, no human being can always be there for another. Even those who love us most will hurt us sometime. And the haters will smell vulnerability and weakness and swoop in like vultures.

When I get into a needy place, then I’m focused outward. This is lethal for a depressive like me. Because then I am giving others power over my serenity, my happiness and peace of mind. When I’m feeling needy, rather than look to someone else to fill up that gaping hole, I must fill it for myself, from within, from my own strength. As long as I am outwardly focused, I will render myself powerless and vulnerable to disappointment and hurt, which then starts the downward spiral into depression for me. Not good.

Powerless over people, places and things. The only thing I can change is myself, and the way I deal with things. 

For today, I am going to remove the outward focus and the neediness, and bolster myself from within. Today, I will nurture my inner Ziggy and be kind to me. No, I’m not a loser like he was. But there will always be a part of me who relates to that little guy.

New video, and the age-old question

The last of the four clips I shot with Lily Starr and Robert Wolf is out! It’s called “The Secret Life of the Kinky Wife”; Robert and I play husband and wife, married for just under a year, and I have kept my spanking fetish a secret from him. One night, he catches me in a lie — instead of being on a Girls’ Night Out, I’m actually meeting with my play partner of 10 years. Robert discovers my stash of spanking toys and magazines, and the videos and photos on my computer, and confronts me when I get home.

I am really proud of this film. Aside from the general plot plus a couple of key lines, Robert and I completely winged it, playing off each other and our combined knowledge of the scene, instinctively covering many of the points that would arise in a situation like this. He is understandably hurt and upset with me, and I’m desperately trying to explain to him that it’s not what he thinks, that this is a part of myself that I kept hidden because I was afraid he’d judge and reject me.

And of course, there’s plenty of hot spanking too, since he decides to give me a lot more of what I’ve already gotten that night from my playmate.

There is plenty of discussion throughout, covering salient points such as technique, warm-up and aftercare, and not spanking in anger. As the scene progresses, Robert slowly comes around to understanding, and I realize I’ve done him an injustice and apologize sincerely.

It’s a nice length too — 20 minutes. To read more, go here.

And so, the question persists: Just what does one do in this type of situation, where one half of a partnership is kinked and the other is not? How do you tell your mate? Do you tell your mate? Granted, our little scenario had a good outcome, but reality isn’t always that tidy.

I’m not going to ask the question, “Can you convert a vanilla partner?” I already know my opinion about that, and my answer is no, not really. I believe an open-minded partner can learn to please the kinked one, or at least accept what they do and let them fulfill it elsewhere. But unless someone has the kink themselves, has that wiring, knows that urge and need, I don’t believe they’ll ever fully understand. They get kudos for trying, for going through the motions, but it won’t be the same as playing with another fully wired kinko. Just my opinion; yours may vary.

My question is: Do you know of others who have been in this situation? Have you yourself? What did you choose to do about it? And did it work for you, or the people you know? Everyone has a different story to tell.

Thoughts, please.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, no Steve this week. His son is visiting and he’s extremely busy with work and with home issues.

You know, I am very happy my top has a full life. I love that he’s a caring father, a responsible worker, etc. — all things I admire in a man. So is it terrible of me to say that sometimes I wish he had just a teeny bit less of a life? (sigh) I feel so disconnected when I don’t get to see him. When we spoke on Friday, he said, “Thank you for being so understanding.” Really, what else would I do? Pitch a fit? Demand his time? That would make me a pretty damn sucky play partner, more stress than fun, and I don’t want that. So I deal. But I’m still sad. Can’t help it.

One day at a time. He’ll be back.

Stupid @#$%ing Google/Gmail/YouTube

You know, kids, things really shouldn’t have to be so damned complicated.

As y’all know, in the ongoing effort to post videos on here, I signed for a YouTube channel. Because I was trying to keep it as private as possible, I wanted to choose a user name other than Erica Scott, and I certainly didn’t want to use my real name. So just for the hell of it, I chose a hybrid of my first and middle name, and called myself Elouise Scott on YouTube.

Guess what. Turns out that YouTube, Google and gmail are all interlinked. So now, my Google profile and my gmail name suddenly became Elouise as well. I didn’t even realize it had happened, until a friend emailed me and said, “Who’s Elouise?”

I went back and forth, back and forth, between YouTube and Google, trying to figure this mess out and how to change my username. Well, it turns out that I can’t. As far as I could figure out after an hour, all I could do was create another gmail address, and relink my blog to that, which I did. Then I tried to figure out how to transfer everything from the old gmail address to the new one, and delete the original. Turns out I can’t do that either; it’s my primary email address and I’m stuck with it. All I can do is reroute everyone to the new one.

Like I said, it shouldn’t be so damned complicated. So, folks, make a note: the email associated with this blog is now ericascottlls@gmail.com. Your comments will automatically be sent there, but if you want to email me directly with anything blog-related, you can use this new address. A lot of you still have my old AOL address, and that’s still valid as well. Just forget about erica.scott.blog@gmail.com. It still exists, but I’m trying to phase it out.

And while I’m in a whingy sort of a mood, and speaking of comments… Where the hell is everyone?? I know you’re out there. I see my stats. But barely anyone is stopping by to say hello or drop a comment anymore.

I know it’s summertime; I know people are busy with stuff and life goes on. But still… I posted a video on FetLife on Tuesday, and so far it’s gotten 27 comments and 104 Loves. Posted one here — barely a whimper. What gives, guys? I miss you.

You’re going to have me thinking you don’t love me anymore. 😦

Meh. I need Shadow Lane. Big time.