Michelle's corner

I can see some people's point of view. Their utter bewilderment as to why someone would pay serious chunks of money and travel half way around the world, for a minute or twos ride on the highest, fastest, most awesomest roller coaster ride ... and have the shit almost literally scared out of them in the process.

It actually makes perfect sense. Our every day lives are so dull, regimented and restricted, that occasionally we need to stand on the edge of the cliff, open our arms to invite the howling wind in to our souls, and scream our frustrations to the belting rain.

Fiction does just that. A good story, well told, can take your emotions and leave you gasping for air, bouncing with energy, or crying in to several boxes of tripple-ply, man sized.

It can also do this without having you having to travel the globe. You can stay in your living room and, if your lucky, you can escape from a good book without having to do so much as brush your hair, let alone trying to explain why your lips are pinned to your ear lobes, and your eyes look like someone's just shoved two hundred and forty volts up your derry air.

But that's the problem. In order to do this, many works have to go to the extremes in order to entertain; and little niceties like, "fact," can get seriously lost in the process.

It is one reason why people get confused when a submissive person actually turns out to be intelligent, witty and could give a shop keep a belting argument if they get short changed. They then look at the person, turn to glance at the latest BDSM fiction that everyone's raving about today, and completely fail to equate the two.

You know how, in relationships, two opposites can help each other; like the ultimate saver married to the ultimate spender. The outgoing, bubbly person joined at the hip to the person that wouldn't say boo to a goose, even if it was being taken out of the oven having been roasted for Sunday lunch.

Just imagine someone flying a kite. The piece of plastic is up there, dancing free and flighty in the wind; occasionally having a string pulled by the person down below, to make it do tricks, somersaults, flips and dives in the gusting fresh air.

Well, that's how a submissive can be. Creative, out there, soaring high in the sky above all down below, looking up in awe at the dance of the free ... but if there wasn't someone on terra firma with their hands firmly on the strings, they'd be carried far away in the wind of fate, likely to get tied up in some power line somewhere, or fall out of the thermal and come to a watery grave in a forgotten village pond.

As for the dominant ... well, have you ever been on the ground, flying a kite, making it do tricks and feeling the energy of its freedom as it comes down those wires, in to your hands and feeds your soul? Wishing that you were up there, but knowing that it is only able to be as awesome as it is, because you are exactly where you are, and doing what you're doing?

As for the things like contracts and emotive terms like slave, master and mistress? They are just a little bit of the emotional roller coaster in our everyday lives which makes us smile, even if our grins don't get as far as our ear lobes; that's all ;-)