Energy.

I'm in the home stretch now. Only six shifts left. I'm so glad. Getting off work at 7 AM, getting home at 9 AM, having far less than eight hours of highly fragmented sleep, and heading right back at 10 PM--it's wearing a lot off of me. (I worry that it's wearing a lot off my writing too. I still try...) I'm on three hours of sleep right now. The last post was written on zero. I haven't reread it, so I, uh, hope it's in a language used on Earth. I've made that mistake g'Pawwta wraragh.

This chronic exhaustion hasn't killed my sex drive. I still get horny, I still masturbate even when I'm half-asleep. I have less time for sex than I'd like, but when I have the time, I take it. (I might be on the bottom with a glazed look in my eyes, but I'm still enjoying myself, I swear. Besides, I do that anyway.)

What it has killed, or at least dampened horrifyingly, is my kink drive. I find that BDSM takes tremendously more energy, mental and physical, than simple sex. Taking a punch is physical work, taking pain is mental work, and taking domination is emotional work. Wonderful and rewarding work, mind you. At its best, kink makes me feel strong, loved, fulfilled, and whatever the adjective form is of "coming my brains out." But it's hard to feel strong when you aren't strong because you used all your strength wiping diarrhea off a 300-pound end-stage-dementia patient at 4 AM.

I still have fantasies. I still want to get thrown against the wall and punched and kicked like I lost a fight. I still want to get tied up and fucked like he wouldn't fuck me if I could get away. I still want to be called all those words you're not ever supposed to use on a woman and made to gratify whims from "get me a beer" to "no, on second thought, shove the bottle up your pussy." I still want to feel the fear of a knife against my skin and the horror and relief of it just barely breaking through. I still want to feel the limits of my body and mind, the things I'm capable of and the things I'll sink to.

I still want, maybe more than anything, to dabble in "defilement" and discover thereby that I cannot be defiled--that throw anything you want at me, in the morning I'm just as smart and strong and goofy as I ever was. To make over again that wonderful discovery that to be humiliated is not to be lessened, but to become ever more beautifully aware of my own inner strength.

I still want to not just throw out "oh yeah, I'm kinky" as some informed attribute of my sex-positive street cred, but to live it in the most visceral and sick and joyous ways I can.

I just need to sleep for like five weeks first.