By Sensuous Sadie 
sensuoussadie@aol.com  
www.sensuoussadie.com 

This is one of several postscripts to my column series called "My Travels with Griffin ." It's the story of my relationship with Griffin , with a focus on our mutual exploration of BDSM and spirituality. You don't have to read them in order, but it might make more sense to do so. While Griffin probably does not like what I wrote, he did have the opportunity to review it and make corrections.

The truth is, I want to shoot out his kneecaps. I want to smirk at him writhing on the ground as I murmur, "Now you know how I have felt the last three months." I could do it too; turns out that I'm a good shot at a fifty-yard target, and likely a darned good one at three yards. I won't of course, because I have good impulse control, but now I understand why so many people shoot their spouses. Heartache can make you fantasize about and even do some pretty extreme things. Instead of indulging my shooting fantasy, I did a "David Letterman" and tossed his boom box out my second floor window. I grinned as it crashed in a pile of lopsided pieces. If I'd known how satisfying that would be I would have destroyed his leftover junk months ago.

"He," of course, is my former Dominant Griffin. I've written a number of columns following our yearlong love affair, but none of them tell the story of his leaving in one place, so this is where I'm going to try to do that.

Griffin and I celebrated our first anniversary at the 2003 holiday party of Rose & Thorn, the group I founded here in Vermont. A couple of months later I noticed that several areas of his life were unraveling: his career, finances, and his ability to make decisions. Soon after I received an e-mail telling me, in short, to get lost. Of course I knew these were serious challenges, but I didn't realize there was any issue with me. He refused to speak to me for nearly a month; "surgically removing me from his life," as he put it. We had promised each other a hundred times that we would always, always talk over any problem that came up so I was in a state of shock, unable to comprehend what had happened.

Griffin told me at the end of that month that it wasn't that he "couldn't" talk to me (which I could have forgiven), but rather that he chose not to, and that's what broke me. I spent two months crying myself to sleep every night and crying myself awake every morning. The level of my grief has surprised even me, but then maybe not all that surprising considering that I lost my Dominant, my lover, and my best friend, all in one fell swoop. I wish that Griffin could know how much I hurt; I imagine that if he knew, he'd at least acknowledge it which would make all the difference. Even now I have deep periods of sadness, wondering why he won't respond to my many questions. I think I would have handled it better if he'd just talked to me, but being shut out just does me in.

The Griffin I knew was a warm and loving man, nurturing and incredibly good at communication. I wonder where that man went. Is he lost in some fugue? Has he become a different person? Could it be that the wonderful year we shared was really an aberration for him, and that this cold and distant person is the real Griffin?

My friend and fellow author Justin Tanis went through an even more horrendous experience with his partner. After nearly six years, his Master cut off communication, refusing to return phone calls or make any kind of contact. Justin had a ethical issue as well because he had committed to being owned by this man, and he wasn't able to get his Master to release him. Justin takes his slavery very seriously and didn't feel he could just release himself. I found his situation similar to mine because I too had made a promise not to abandon Griffin, and it became quite the rock and the hard place because you can't really stand by someone (or be a slave to them) when they won't even speak to you. After a while you start to wonder if you're a fool, and maybe have been all along.

Justin explained that sometimes a mental illness or other situation makes a dominant unqualified to be an owner of human property; not unlike Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny. In a situation like this, contracts and commitments cannot be kept because the dominant is simply unable to fulfill his or her part of the bargain. The bottom cannot be held accountable to a contract that the Top cannot uphold.

While it is true that I gave up standing by Griffin a few weeks ago, the guilt still stands by me like a late evening shadow – long into the night. I wonder what kind of partner I am to give up on someone who is in trouble. I don't know that there are any real answers, except that I cannot help him if he won't allow me to, and that it's clear that he is not able to be a Dominant right now. Yes, Dominants too are human, all too much so sometimes.

In the absence of information, I'm working on a number of grief reduction strategies, the best of which is target shooting. This has the additional visceral satisfaction of exploding clay pigeons. I also work out, do breathing exercises, and listen to stress relaxation tapes. Relaxation notwithstanding, last week I took a hammer to the beaded collar he had made just for me. This was one of four collars Griffin gave me even though he did not want to collar me, something which hurt me deeply. That's the ultimate in ambivalence, the shifting sands that made up almost everything about him. Despite this he has always maintained that he loves me, even now. I can't help but wonder if that could be true when almost everything else I knew about him turned out to be untrue, or at least only true for the moment. Is love and rejection compatible? As much as I believed he loved me and still does, I sometimes feel like I am simply fooling myself considering how he left.

The only question left then is: What would I do differently next time? The tough part is that I thought I'd done my due diligence with Griffin; after all we waited six months before ever discussing love, commitment, or collaring. In retrospect of course, I can see my mistake. I've always felt that even if a relationship cannot be all you want it to be, you should appreciate a person for the gifts they can give you. That's the positive side of things. The other way to look at that is that I compartmentalized away the parts of Griffin that didn't work for me. I figured since he didn't live with me, it didn't matter much if his life was in chaos. Now I understand that compartmentalizing doesn't work because all parts of a person eventually come into play. While I was able to keep his problems at arm's length for that year we were together, they would eventually affect my life in the most profound of ways. I am also partially responsible because I shut my eyes to the elephant in the livingroom, a strategy which only postpones the moment of getting stomped on.

My friend Cynthia, who happens to be a mental health counselor herself, says that in psychological circles my wanting to pop Griffin in the kneecaps is considered to be a form of homicidal ideation. She adds that this may make me at-risk to harm another person and that she would assess my situation to figure out if I was actually likely to do it. I countered that this is "assault," not "homicide." After all, I don't want to kill him, just maim him a little. She's right that I'm at-risk though, not for shooting anyone, but for losing my trust in men. I'm not sure how I'll get that back. Still, as long as there's something to drop out of a second floor window, there's always hope. And it just so happens that I've got a few of Griffin's things put aside.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Thank you to Justin for sharing his very personal story, as well as helping me edit that section so it read in his voice.

Read the SCENEprofiles Interview with Justin Tanis

The Caine Mutiny is by Herman Wouk and is available on www.amazon.com 

Bullseye courtesy of www.mytargets.com/ 

Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene. Read an excerpt at http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html . She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn, Vermont's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com . Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright May, 2004 Sadie Sez Publications