#gratitudeNow: The Top Bag... for my friend Manuel

“You come home from a relaxing vacation and realize you have the wrong suitcase.”

So this morning, my friend Manuel messaged me, something he often does. Today it was with a writing challenge.

Well, this was just what I was looking for.

I’m deep, deep into working on my behavior app, WeMinder, and getting to a really tough part.

So I could use a small distraction. I’ve had sudden fiction (short-short stories, 500 words maximum) on my mind lately.

So when he messaged me about this prompt, asking for a word count, I suggested 500 and I was all-in.

Here’s what I came up with:

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The Top Bag

— by Mako Allen

The mistake had started with that last strawberry daiquiri.  The ship was forty-five minutes out of port, his bag was packed, and despite it being the last morning, the bartender manned his usual post near the breakfast buffet.

“What the hell,” he’d thought.  Then had not one, but two for breakfast.  His shoulders were a little crisp with sunburn.  As the cool drinks ran down his throat, that sharp ache receded into a dull murmur.

He’d lumbered off the ship, pulling his black, cloth, wheeled suitcase behind him.  After a short cab ride, and an uneventful flight, he’d arrived in DC, and waited blearily by the carousel along with everyone else on the flight from Miami.

Maybe it was the dehydration, the sunburn, or the nap on the plane, but Leo was definitely feeling the beginnings of a hangover.

He grimaced as a loud klaxon sounded, and a whole flood of bags tumbled onto the carousel.  Including two cases which were nearly identical, stacked one atop the other.  Of course, he thought, that pattern of scuff marks made it clear which bag was his.  So he took the top bag.

It was only after a $47 Uber ride, only after he had carefully unbuttoned and peeled off his Hawaiian shirt, that he realized he had made a mistake.

There was no luggage tag.  And the bag was locked, with a combination lock.

Well, shit.

He called the airline, after fishing in his pockets for his bag check receipt, and spoke to someone in lost-luggage.  They assured him they’d track down the case, and get back to him.

Leo sat on the bed, idly fumbling with the lock.  On a whim, he tried a few combinations.

0-0-0-0 was a bust, as was 1-2-3-4.

He snorted immaturely, and tried 0-0-6-9.  The lock popped open with an audible “click!”

Knowing he was only compounding his mistake, he unzipped the bag, and looked inside.

And gasped.

If this had been his bag, the top part would have contained his dirty t-shirts, nestled around a bottle of coconut rum.  But in this bag it held… whips.  Well, some were whips.  They had long stringy tails, and thick braided handles.  There were also paddles, and some sort of split thing that looked like a tongue.

The bottom of the case held very shiny black clothes, a corset, fishnet stockings, and impossibly long high heeled leather boots.

Deep inside one boot was tucked a pair of clearly-not-clean panties.  Leo held them to his face, sniffing in deeply, and felt himself grow painfully erect.

He fished around inside the other boot, and came up with a business card.

“Mistress Jacqueline” it said, listing a Virginia phone number.

He grabbed his cellphone.

After one ring, a woman answered.  “Hello?”

“M.. Jacqueline?” he asked.  “I think I got your bag by mistake.”

“How did you get this number?” she asked.

Oh, fuck.

#gratitudeNow: Support, I has it

I am so lucky.

I have a crew of people who have my back, in all sorts of ways.

First there’s my friend and co-worker T. who is incredibly knowledgeable and digs in to help me whenever I ask.

Then there’s my wife Missy, who is my biggest cheerleader, and who lifts me up when I’m blue. I’m in awe with how much she loves me a little bit more than the day before, and has been doing so for more than a decade.

My brother Spacey, from whom I have no secrets. We lean on each other for perspective, and help. He’s constantly there for me.

And then there are my WeMinder beta testers, who lovingly trade ideas with me, and spend time considering all sorts of possibilities.

#gratitudeNow: Enduring friendships

So the other day, I caught up with an old friend, S. I saw her posting about something near and dear to my heart (cooking with an air fryer), asking for advice and help.

I’m a big fan of those things, and do a lot of cooking with the ones we have. (Yes, plural.)

So I pinged her, and we got a video chat going.

She and I have been good, loving friends for a long, long time. She’s someone I see at events, one in particular. But we don’t live close to one another, and I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen her in person in the past five years.

But I adore her. And she adores me. So I video called, and we caught up. And it was glorious. We expressed our mutual affection and feelings of connection for one another, caught up about our lives, and doubled down on why we feel so fondly for one another.

It was good.

#gratitudeNow: Enjoying Collapses

So I’m starting a new feature on WeMinder today, that’s going to make it more friendly to a wider group of people. When I got started creating it, I made the roles of the two people in a chart the caregiver and the little. But really the application could work for all sorts of roles, as long as discipline is part of the relationship. Top, bottom, dominant, submissive, handler and pony, all sorts of roles can use this thing.

Discover & share this Fail GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

But I started with caregiver and little, because you start with what you know, right?

I’ve had it on my list to do for a while. I sat down to think on it, come up with a good user interface, and some options.

And then began really thinking about how to implement it.

Which was a bit like pulling on the loose thread of a sweater, or maybe placing that last domino.

And slipping.

What I thought would be a pretty minor thing is turning out to have all sorts of side-effects and related concerns. Which, I’ll admit, when I first looked at it, made my stomach churn a bit, and I kind of clapped my hands to my face, like this poor guy.

But then right after, I felt just the other way. This is exciting! Because once I started to realize some of the other implications to what I’m doing, it began giving me all sorts of ideas not just for how to do it, but how doing it will make the whole application even better.

I love this process. LOVE IT. I feel the same way when I write fiction, or when I cook. There’s a kind of phase-shift that my brain goes through, where a problem, assumption, omission or mistake transforms and instead becomes a data point, an asset.

As a friend of mine said to me once, long ago:

“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

#tao_of_kink: No. 1: The Beginning

Years ago, I had a profound spiritual experience at a pagan festival, which resulted in my casting aside my atheist and objectivist beliefs, and becoming more spiritual. Pagans find their own particular path. The one that called to me the loudest was Taoism.

I practice “philosophical Taoism” or Tao-chia. I find it’s like Othello – simple to learn, but a lifetime to master. Tao-chia is more spiritual philosophy than religion, and blends very well with many religions, and with kink and sexuality in general. It’s very sex-positive. If I had to sum up Taoism in one word, it’d be “Relax.”

The central work of Taoist wisdom is the Tao te Ching, the “Book of the Way and its power”, written by Lao-tzu around 600 BC. It’s a tiny book, of 81 small poems about various aspects of life. I’ve read these poems over and over, and spent years in contemplation of their meaning in my life.

We’ll explore each of them together one at a time, and see how they might apply to living a more fulfilled sexual life.

Let’s start at the beginning.

1 
The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name. 

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.

This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

Tao is Chinese for “way”. There are all sorts of tao’s. A “tao” is the way you do something, or the way that it happens. The way you pull down your submissive’s pants to spank them is a tao, as is the way their bottom gets red when you smack it.

But that’s not the tao I’m talking about. I mean the big one, the Tao. It contains all those other little tao’s. Wikipedia defines it as “the ever-lasting essential and fundamental force that runs through all matter in the Universe, living or not.”

That’s about as clear as mud soup, isn’t it? What the heck does it have to do with being kinky, or sexual? Everything, actually.

The Tao is the movement of everything. It’s the way sunrise follows sunset, and the way seasons turn. Everything that ever was, is, or will be, is the Tao, including you.

One key idea about the Tao is that it’s not good, nor bad. The Tao just is. As part of it, you can’t study it, can’t learn it, and can’t judge it. You just perceive it.

We kinky people sure do love our labels. He’s a submissive. She’s a dominant. That person is a top. This one is a bottom. The truth is though, that names, which Taoism calls “ming”, get in the way. Ming imply judgment, often a source of difficulty for kinky people.

Let’s imagine that you like to tie someone up and watch them struggle against it. What if you also have a desire to suck someone’s toes? Maybe that makes you a foot fetishist, or a bottom. Can you be a rope top and a foot fetishist at the same time?

Well, if you are those things, then clearly you can be. The Tao is known, not judged. So is kink. Go ahead and tie someone up, and then suck away to your heart’s content!

People in the scene often make value judgments about it, like “A real submissive would do (fill in the blank)” or “A top would never do that.” These are opinions, not facts. The very words we use are subject to debate.

What’s the difference between a submissive, bottom and slave? People hold up the standard of Safe, Sane, and Consensual as a holy grail for these things we do. But who’s to say what’s safe, what’s sane, and what’s consensual? Those are relative definitions at best.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t form your own opinions. You can, should, and will. It’s just human to do so.

When I first got into kink, I was convinced I was completely submissive. I’m an age player, an adult baby. I thought that was all I was, and wouldn’t or couldn’t enjoy being someone else’s top, or Daddy, or Big.

But it just wasn’t true. Over the years I’ve developed a love for caring for other age players. I love giving a good spanking, or checking someone’s diaper and cradling them in my arms. I love topping and bottoming in many other ways, too.

Lao-tzu had it right. When you stop worrying about the kind of kinky person you should be, you can fully embrace the kinky person you actually are.

Originally published by Fearless Press