For some reason whenever I end up going to St. Louis to visit the chosen family, things turn weird. Or maybe unusual. Interesting? Something.
In the middle of the week last week, I got the brilliant idea that it would be a good idea for me to get some pictures taken of me when I got dressed up for the Halloween party being held by the kink group I'm a member of. The first surprise of the week...I got back into a corset that I've not fit into for a year or two. On my own, with no help. Hrm. Maybe having a near nervous breakdown and moving for a week straight is a good diet strategy.
Then again...maybe not.
After making arrangements for a friend to bring his digital camera with him to where I'm staying, I suddenly come to the realization that I have no makeup to pull this off *AND* I need to have something done to my hair because it's been way too long since the last trim. Right. So, off to the salon we go to get 8 inches cut off of it...and relayered which took off another couple inches. (*EEEK*) Fortunately, it's still pretty long.
BUT, now I have two toned hair. (*sigh*) These plans are getting more complex all the time. Right. Off to buy hair color to get it back to one shade. Did anyone else know that "Hibiscus" is a code word for "red so dark it's purple"? Fortunately, most of it washed out by Saturday afternoon and I was left with mostly an extremely dark red with sort of a purplish undertone. Not bad for a Halloween party. Somewhat more disturbing for work, but by today it's lost almost all the purple undertone. Yay for me.
Now, normally for a vampire outfit, I'd do the white pancake makeup and the whole extremely dead look. However, I was hoping to get some pictures that really do look like me. So, off to the store again, this time to buy appropriate makeup that will make me look dead, but classy. Did you know it's damn hard to buy gothish looking colors at a regular store? Somehow I managed to find the colors I needed, but I think I need to find a better source for them if I do this again. Friday rolls around and into the car goes half of my apartment, including the dog, and we trundle off across the state to have some fun.
Saturday was a day I was looking forward to and dreading all at the same time. Ultra and Bear had been planning to take me in to the person that does all of their piercings to get the family piercing done on me. There's a lot of things that motivated it, but they felt the need to make certain that I didn't feel adrift and all alone after parting ways with Tiger. I've been sort of "extended family" for quite a while...sort of half in and half out the family.
I will admit to occasionally feeling at a loss since Tiger moved when it comes to feeling like I belong anywhere. That's not to say that I don't have friends and family that care about me. Quite to the contrary, I have quite a few. But that sense of belonging, of being where you're supposed to be with the person or people you're supposed to be with has been missing. I had connections to two families and didn't quite fit into either of them fully anymore. It's hard to belong somewhere when there's 1200+ miles between you and your family and when there are drastic (in appearance from a distance) changes taking place. It's hard to belong when there is only sporadic, rushed communication that generally only flowed in one direction and when there wasn't really time to share what was going on.
And I will admit that I didn't quite feel like I completely belonged in Ultra and Bear's family during that time, as well. Not because we weren't close, and not because of anything that anyone did. It was just a factor of having ties elsewhere that didn't mesh well with the family itself. Tiger's family was kind of like a neighboring state, if you will, and I was one of the citizens of that state. You don't get the full benefits of any other state until you become a citizen. Perfectly normal.
But also somewhat isolating.
I know I've mentioned it before, but I'm needle phobic. Somehow I can trick myself when getting ink done that it's not REALLY needles doing the inking. Maybe it's the gun itself that lets me do that. But with piercing, it's pretty obvious that they're going to shove a needle, and a fairly large one at that, through a part of your body that normally isn't intended to have holes poked in it. In my case, it was the tragus of the right ear. (For those not familiar, it's the little cartilage bump on the "front" of the ear.)
I was pretty ok with it right up through picking out the stone that would be the captive bead on it. Everyone has a small snowflake obsidian bead on a titanium ring. So. Up comes the piercer and off we go to the room. Whoopee. (Or should that be EEEK!?)
He sits me down and explains how to take care of it and then gets everything set up while chatting with Ultra, Bear, and kyl. Me, I'm not quite white knuckling the chair arms, but I'm also not exactly completely relaxed. I'd heard a couple of different versions of what getting this particular piercing is like. One was that it didn't hurt but there's a loud popping noise that bothers some people. Another was that there wasn't a loud popping noise but that it's somewhat painful.
I figured I'd get very painful AND the loud noise, just because I'm me.
One thing that had puzzled me up until now is why they tell you to breathe in and then out and pierce while breathing out. MY theory is that they want to hear you hiss like you've sprung a leak. There wasn't a popping sound, for me. Either that or my hearing's worse in that ear than I thought. There was, however, a lot of pain.
I know...what did I expect when someone tries to shove what feels like a pole through my ear? Actually, the pain from that went away for a bit. Down to a dull ache until they pushed the ring back through. THAT smarted. Finally the endorphins hit and I just zoned out. I know the piercer asked me a couple times how I was doing while he finished cleaning it up and putting the bead on. I vaguely remember it. Really. Sort of.
The temperature was MUCH warmer than when we went into the room, but I managed not to fall over getting out of the chair. It's been a very long time since I've been on an endorphin rush like that. I asked kyl for a drink of his soda. I got the cap off of it just fine, but after about a dozen tries and several minutes of attempting to get the cap back ON, he took it away from me with a giggle.
After browsing around the store for a while, we stopped at a nearby diner for food. I stared at the menu for a while, then asked what I wanted to eat. I think I got one of those looks from everyone at the table that says "you're stoned...give up" though Ultra did tell me I wanted a hamburger. Which I ordered and enjoyed...I think, anyway.
One of the interesting things I've noticed over the last several days...the endorphins aren't entirely gone like after a hard scene. Those gradually go away, for me, over the next day. But up until this morning (that's Tuesday, by the way), I was still vaguely fuzzy and not feeling quite like myself. I tried to write up my weekend several times since Sunday, but ended up sitting and staring at the screen with nothing coming out.
The other interesting thing that I've noticed is that it's also somewhat changed my attitude. That's taking some more adjusting than the actual ring in the ear. It's not any big secret that I am MUCH more shy out in the great big world at large. I'm fairly quiet until I get to know folks. But, changes, they are a coming. While I was zoned out in the chair, I had several...well...not quite visions...but pictures of me in the past and present.
(Wooo! My first drug induced hallucinations...I wonder if I'll get flashbacks...)
Mostly they were a jumble that I'm still working on getting more details on, but one or two were very clear. There was a picture of me getting my first tat at a critical changing point in my life and then the burn of the piercing fused over top of that making me hyper-aware of my ear, but with the pain kind of at arms length. Apparently I must modify my body when I come to turning points. Ok. Interesting factoid to know.
After dinner, we swept back through town to go home and change for the evening Halloween party. Endorphins apparently affect your ability to do this, too. I was putting on some light foundation with a sponge (something I never use) when I decided it would be a good idea to rub it over my eye. Now, if I'd just hit the lid, everything would have been fine. But no...I had to go be a masochist and rub it over the WHOLE eye, thus painting lids, lashes and everything else with foundation that immediately got into my eye and commenced burning.
Note to self: no more makeup application after endorphins.
Eventually, I got the makeup on (and hoooooboy was that interesting) and dressed and dutifully took my pictures that I'd asked to have taken. Then we were off to the event itself where we mixed and mingled and socialized away the better part of the evening. Or something like that.
Several times during the evening, I found myself drawn to watch the scenes that were going on. One or two were fascinating...Midori had recently visited and there was a new piece of equipment designed for suspension. One trio of people spent quite a while suspending the smallest of them from it in a very intricate rope harness. Absolutely lovely. I would hazard a guess that the recipient thought so too, from the blissful expression on her face at the time.
Others left me kind of puzzled as to why they were up there and bothering. They seemed to be kind of going through the motions with very little connection to each other or what was going on. Now, they may very well have been experiencing the time of their lives...but from where I sat there wasn't.
What it helped me to realize, however, was that there needs to be more than just a visceral connection to the person I scene with. What I experience when I'm catching is an ecstatic state, a receptive state that feeds off of the energy of my partner and returns energy to him. The times I've tried to play with that flow of energy absent or restricted have been ok at best and often not successful in any sense of the word.
I also realized that there was something missing that night. I was dressed up with no one to dress up for. I know...you don't NEED to have someone to dress up for and I enjoyed it for myself, as well. It just seemed like there was a hole in the whole experience. Or, maybe the same dark shadow that I saw when getting my ear pierced (drug induced pictures, remember?) was also "there", as if he were holding a place for the person who will be there in the future.
I felt the pull, probably for the first time in my life, to actually WANT to be up there in front of everyone with someone that has that connection to me that allows energy to flow and feed off of each other. Me. The person who feels strange because she doesn't play in public. Maybe the piercing and the new start broke something loose that I've been afraid to look at before. Or maybe I'm just changing and searching out something that is missing. A particular person sprang to mind while I was examining the parts of me that felt like something was missing. The more I watched, the more I examined, the clearer the idea became that it was him that was supposed to be there.
Part of my brain wants to chalk it all up to the endorphins. However, it's a bit hard to dismiss outright for some reason. Maybe it's all because I'm slowly settling into the idea that I want to have family around me, people that I know I can count on to be there when I'm pissed off or upset or laughing hysterically at something. Someone who won't pull away from any of the faces of my emotions, the faces that I sometimes keep hidden from the world at large. Someone who wants to see those faces, too.
Once we got back home, we decided to play corset wars and see who could get laced in until the corsets closed. It was a sort lived competition, however, as Ultra's corset was probably going to cause her some pain if they tried. So, I get to have corset wars on my own.
Somehow, they managed to get mine closed completely for the very first time in my life. Both of them, actually, because after they did the first one I wanted to see if it was a fluke and I made them prove it with the other one. Of course, rather than basking in the glory of this (and trying desperately to breathe) they told me I needed to get a smaller corset.
Sadists. Every last one of them. But I have pictures as proof if I ever doubt it.
And now I have to go shopping...
