Rest In Peace, Claudia.
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Posted:Feb 23, 2009 11:37 pm
Last Updated:Mar 1, 2009 7:07 pm 52798 Views
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I found out tonight a friend is dead.
She was only about 6 or 7 years older than I am.
I met her when she started dating a dear friend of mine.
The relationship was turbulent at times.
Towards the end, it became abusive because she was a drunk, and a mean one at that.
But she and I have a lot in common, since we both used alcohol to manage our emotional states.
She'd been in and out of rehab over a dozen times.
But it never stuck.
She had Hepatitis C, so her liver was already compromised.
But to be in your 40s and dead from drinking....when I found out, it almost pulled the skin off of my body to hear it.
But then, I wasn't surprised.
Since I knew what that road looked like, the path she chose, I saw her walking it.
I can recall the precise moment I decided to turn towards the light and away from the dark.
She left everyone behind, despite all of the hands reached out towards her to help, she slipped away.
She had a VERY supportive employer. She had a lover who wanted her well. Friends, family, people who cared. But she didn't have her own back.
And, because of that, none of that saved her. She didn't take those hands.
One of the last conversations we had, she marveled at my sobriety.
She wanted to know how I managed to not drink when there were "ads everywhere...booze everywhere...all of the time..."
I didn't have a fancy answer.
"I just don't wanna die. I know that if I start to drink again, I am an excellent candidate for premature death."
When I was doing my "90-in-90" I'd invite her with me to meetings. I asked for her help in supporting me as I took my first steps into sobriety. She never made it.
It is my hope that her passing was peaceful. But we can't know, as she discharged herself from the hospital to go home, alone. And die alone.
This was her final choice.
I make a choice, every day, to live.
And I know a great many of you make that same choice.
And I know some of you make that choice in the shadow of your own addictions.
Being alive, being sober, being grateful, being in thsi moment is all that I can do.
I have a home, I have amazing friends. I have a job. I have my cats, I have my capacity for love and for compassion and I have this crazy compulsion to Tell People Things. And I have a relationship with God I wouldn't trade foe anything on this or any other world.
And I have people to listen.
Thank you for reading.
If you know someone in recovery, congratulate them. If you know someone struggling, pray for them. Please.
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Not watching the academy awards....
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Posted:Feb 22, 2009 6:26 pm
Last Updated:Feb 23, 2009 2:06 pm 49533 Views
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....because I've seen so few of the movies nominated and, frankly, because I'm not nominated 
It is a chilly, rainy night here in San Francisco.
Puttering around and trying to get some writing done...
I was in Washington DC over VD weekend. The Dark Odyssey event was most amazing. I had the honor of teaching 2 classes there, and meeting a great many on-line buddies who became real-time friends. It was stellar.
This Friday night was very challenging for me, in that I was teaching a class on Race Play for the local Women's BDSM organization, the Exiles. It is the class that makes me the most edgy, and not just for the obvious reasons. It is tough enough to present at ALL for kinksters. But I knew that there would be some people there for whom this was a very difficult topic. I also knew that I was a little anxious about doing a demo. It is a tough line to walk between doing something meaningful and doing something over the top.
Then as I was getting settled in, I learned that someone had written an e-mail message in protest of the class and sent it to the Women's Building, a community center and the location of my class.
Great.
Although I must say....if I have to be anywhere where there is a possible threat of Shit Going Down, a room full of righteous babes, furious femmes, bad-ass butches and Riot Grrls isn't a bad locale from which to defend oneself.
Now, I gotta toot my horn here for a second.
I am not great at taking credit where I've dona a good job. I am often pretty crap about even feeling good when other people tell me I've done well.
But it is quite rare to receive a standing ovation from a great many of the people in the room when you wrap up a class. It is also insanely crazy to have people who are my mentors in the Leather Community, women who have paved the road on which I now walk come up to me and say things that blow my mind. It was so fucking powerful I still don't know how to talk about it.
I feel honored. I feel as though the difficulty I have had around issues of race and play, all the people who talked huge amounts of shit, all of the tears I shed feeling like yes, there must be something terribly wrong with me to have these desires....that all of that was completely worth it when person after person came up to me and thanked me and told me that they thought what I was doing was important, that they really heard and were pleased to listen...
Shit! I mean, to have so many people give so much love what overwhelming.
I felt very honored, very special, very humbled, very proud.
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Some cool ALT changes...
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Posted:Feb 8, 2009 7:50 pm
Last Updated:Feb 22, 2009 6:27 pm 51914 Views
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Well, slowly (really. Slowly.) but surely some cool stuff is happening. Some of it is gonna take a long time, and some of the things that our group wants to do is tough to wriggle through. But we have some continued shifts to the Advice Lines, etc, that are based on some great feedback from a great many people, and i think will go a long way towards removing some tools of fuckery.
Namely, voting.
Fingers crossed, voting on AL questions and responses will be something that the person posting the question can decide to add or not, as they see fit. We'll see if that gets pushed through 
There are lots of questions about moderation and about the means of approving posts sitewide that are out of our hands in Editorial, but we;re making a case for those issues.
I have a few things in mind for the Magazine and for other ways to cross-pollinate ALT with the outside world. Hopefully, those will take root in the next few months.
We shall see
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Please don’t hurt the…masochist???
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Posted:Feb 8, 2009 7:44 pm
Last Updated:May 24, 2024 6:51 am 49922 Views
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I value the relationships I have formed within the BDSM community. It is not only that we have the commonality of kink, it is that being a pervert means that you smite the artifice of sexual Gerrymandering.
I am living a charmed life in some ways. My lifestyle as an “Out Kinky Pervert” actually was pivotal in landing me my current job. I am out to everyone who knows me, and I am pleased about that. I have done a lifestyle mash-up with kink and theater, kink and employment, kink and my social life. This makes for awesome stories. And a pretty groovy life. Most importantly, I have made friends who, outside of BDSM, it is highly unlikely I’d ever have known.
Two friends of mine fall into this category. Lady Thendara and her husband, Mustang, are the kind of loving and happy couple you’d see at dinner, going to a movie, shopping, whatever and have no idea that, when they “got hitched”, he was actually in full pony gear, and proudly pulled his bride in a pony cart.
Well, that was the ceremony for “kink family” at least.
We should all have the freedom to play our heart's desire.
I was the caterer for that phenomenal soirée, and it was pretty awesome to be a part of such a singular event. There is nothing that makes me smile quite like the memory of drawing up a menu that included appetizers, a carving station, beverages and…pony-treats. Think quartered apples, (but NO green ones!) and whole carrot sticks alongside people-sized crudité .
I feel so blessed to have folks in my life who are an example of a couple who have found kinky compatibility and share their joy with others. I am happy in their company whether playing Scrabble, enjoying play-time in a Dungeon, gossiping over dinner or wriggling in bondage.
I’ve played with the both of them before. Mustang is a switchy player both in and out of his Pony Headspace. And Lady Thendara has enough experience on both sides of the crop to be a double threat. Female Switches, y’all!! Much like the Wu-Tang clan, they ain’t nothing to fuck with.
I was a bit apprehensive when Thendara invited me to visit with them for the weekend, despite the fact I really wanted to. Of late I have been having some pretty radical internal conflicts about my role in BDSM. Partially this is the same shit I grind myself through whenever I’m single for a while. But playing with a couple, for me, has its own wistfulness. It can underscore my being single…here I am, alone, and there they are, all happy and blah blah blah… but mostly it was my fear of not being “enough.”
As a masochist, I can play very heavily. The operative word in that sentence being the modifier. I can, but that does not mean I will. And it doesn’t always mean I want to. Being a submissive or a slave sometimes means subsuming your will, and then you better be down to take one for the sake of your service-oriented ass.
Many people see that highly-charged over-the-top play-style and assume that is the way that I play all of the time. But it isn’t. It is just what people remember and talk about at the next Munch. My “heavy bottoming” has terms, conditions, infrastructure, caverns caves sinkholes and fucking punji-pits within. And you can’t see that. All you see is me being thrown to the ground and shocked with collars, poked with a few dozen needles, brutally anally assaulted, OR groveling and licking the boots of a man I’d just met.
But these are the exception, rather than the rule, and I am ill-suited, right now, for heavy play. Because I have no one to whom I can turn for the unpredictable repair process I need to “come back” from that edge. And for me to want to take that pain, I realize I need that emotional connection.
I’m not a clinical masochist…just a twisted slavish masochistic sex-pervert.
Yet I live in apprehension of the thought of disappointing my friends.
So, I scurry around the edges and hope that my Dom Charming will soon ride in in his gleaming creaking leathers and sweep me off of my quivering feet.
But I couldn’t resist the sunny warmth of my friend’s offer to play, and the instantaneous relaxing of the bands of anxiety circling my heart when I blurted out that I really can’t do any heavy play and Thendara laughed.
“We’re service tops, sweetie! It’s all good!”
Oh. Right. You WANT me to enjoy myself.
Fuck yeah.
So, right now, I have something better than obsessing and moping, and that is letting myself enjoy the company of friends, knowing that they are looking forward to seeing me, and that it is OK to say “Be gentle, care for me, and hold me after.” and they will do that, with love and affection.
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Performance. Anxiety.
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Posted:Jan 28, 2009 8:49 pm
Last Updated:Jan 29, 2009 10:30 am 51072 Views
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“How can I compete with a class where someone gets a fucking BLOWJOB from a PORNSTAR?!?!”
This is my agony today. Lame? Maybe. Weird? Certainly. Self-precipitated? Definitely. But nonetheless.
See, as a kink educator, I have the unique opportunity to share my experience with other perverts. I think that is a singular honor, one I don’t take lightly, and one I am always amazed is extended to me.
But, like anything else, it has its pitfalls. No matter how many times I may think “This isn’t a competition, I’m there because I have something positive to share, and I’ll do my best and it will be great!” I can’t avoid that second-guessing voice that nags away. “Oh hey, you’re just standing around…talking. Huh. That’s…nice. But see, THAT class has naked girls being beaten…THAT one has 62 people simultaneously having Tantric orgasms….THAT one has loud and sexy whip cracking…”
If you have ever been to a kink event, you know what a sensory overload it can be. No matter your experience level, it is a great deal to take in. If you HAVEN’T been to a leather event, imagine a Trade Show / Street Fair / Lecture Series / Circus …with Leather and Sex and Fuck and Perversion dripping oozing cavorting burning and screaming all around you for. Three. Days. Straight.
Don’t get me wrong. Please. This is NOT A BAD THING. It is indeed an excellent thing.
I’ll be fine. These are my tribe, after all. I agonized for a long time before I decided to cross into real-time with BDSM. I agonized again when i decided to go totally public as someone involved in the Leather community. o this day,I struggle with being a woman, submissive, and Black. The shit ain’t easy. But if I don’t find a switchback strength in it, I’d leave hold of the path and settle into familiar tracks.
The risk, the strangeness, the thrill and yes, the discomfort and uncertainty, all of those things make it worth it.
Even if, sometimes, you get drowned out by a vigorous fist-fucking in the next room.
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Sorting through ALT's cauldron of issues.... :-)
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Posted:Jan 23, 2009 11:20 am
Last Updated:Feb 8, 2009 9:30 pm 51437 Views
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Howdy...
SO as it turns out the ALT world did not explode while I was in NY and DC for the Inauguration. I did keep an eye on things, since I log in anyway, and it seems that we may be on a better track for making some adjustments here and there.
The interesting thing I am learning is that there is no coherent structure for troubleshooting, and there are half a dozen different groups that need to be "in" on any given change on the site. And the most impactful issue is one I can't even really address and I am not delighted about that. And that is the issue of customer service in general. But it is tough to address this issue when these ostensible "co-workers" of mine aren't even in this country.
I'm pulling together a meeting to strategize a plan of action, and how we can prioritise these really pressing issues, and what to do about the ones for which we feel we don't have solid footing.
Small steps...small steps....thanks all who have been so supportive, and constructively sharing. On a professional level, it is stellar to see that there are so many thoughtful people on the site and willing to share their experience and suggestions!
On a personal level, it feels great to have so many people who bring so much positive energy. It is easy to second-guess people's motives and make assumptions. I've worked hard to remove myself from personal involvement and levying my personal opinion, even erring on the side of caution when it comes to addressing all issues and or complaints. Sometimes I just want to scream, throw my hands in the air and ditching the whole ball of wax in despair.
It is easy to get sucked into cynicism and negativity. But that is against my religion  so I resist!
Peace
~Mollena
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Barack and Michele Obama: even better in person.
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Posted:Jan 22, 2009 2:45 pm
Last Updated:Jan 26, 2009 3:50 pm 50681 Views
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I have discovered that sleep deprivation actually DOES impair brain function. Who knew?
I'm back from a week-long trip to NY and DC. I was one of the 2,000,000+ people who braved the BALLS ASS FUCKING COLD to be able to say "I was there."
I had a sub-optimal experience initially, details of which can be traced through my Twitter feed of that historic day. I confess a shitload of the posts were along the lines of "kill me now" but after 9 hours standing in the cold and 5 hours standing in the heat of the Western Ball, I saw the First Couple dance.
I got to be withing yards of him speaking, smiling, his energy seemingly unflagging. And Michelle, resplendent and simply glowing, and the both of them REAL PEOPLE. I've not spent a great deal of time in the presence of legendary figures. But I am sensitive to the vagaries of "performance" and how it feels to watch a show being put on for me.
My own opinions and issues aside, let me say that these are people who are alive, present, aware of their place in fucking HISTORY and yet gracefully human.
No, I didn't cry. I was too dehydrated. But when Michelle pulled her dress from under her husband's foot and they both chuckled, I was deeply joyful and delighted....I thought that was about the most gorgeous thing that the Obamas will and can do for us in their historic place.
Be human.
If you wish to see my own video of their appearance at the Western Ball, it is on my other blog. mollena is the name
mollena (d0t you-know-what) (slash) the-western-ball
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