I didn't mean to alarm any of you reading this by not being online much last week. Of course, there aren't many people reading this. I didn't add a hit counter or anything, but I suspect the readership is about four.
Four people, not four years old.
Anyway. With Boy backing out last week, and another friend-who-is-sometimes-boy-and-sometimes-just-so-filled-with-angst-you-can't-stand it also deciding that he's "not in the mood" lately, there wasn't a lot of reason for me to be online. Plus, I had a lot of other things to do, and I usually keep a spare machine online on gay.com or AIM or whatever.
So, last Saturday, I shut it down. I started doing other stuff. I moved a different computer into the same place that didn't have the chat stuff set up on it, so it wasn't too easy to chat anyway.
It was kind of nice. I'm poking my head online a bit more now, but still not staying on there like before. No one seems to have noticed much, save for my best friend, but I stayed in touch with him through other means, so my absence doesn't seem to be denting the universe.
From the short chats, I think Boy thinks I'm mad at him for backing out. This is not exactly true. I'm sad and disappointed that he did, because the main reason he got through the door was that he was so sure of what he wanted. If I'd detected that kind of uncertainty in his wants, I wouldn't have invited him out here. I talk to lots of boys online who never get through the door; he would have fit in well in that group. (Most of them think they can come through anytime they want, but that's an earlier post.)
I don't feel like he used me or anything, though I did question that at first. I think anyone would. For that lovely feeling, at the same time, let's talk about another boy whom I've talked to online for about three years. When I first started taking to him, he was just a club kid, with a latent interest in leather but not at all ready for it or what it meant. Over a 3-year online friendship, he learned more and more. He asked for lots of advice, and I always tried to stop and give it. I even designed business cards for him once.
I did invite him out here on several occasions, but he didn't start getting close until last year. I stopped inviting him after offering him dinner and a movie on his birthday and getting back, in words not much different than this, "let me see if anyone better is around first."
But still we talked. He asked more about BDSM and I told him, about toys and what being a master or slave is like, and how to play safely, and whatever else crossed his mind. He always said he wasn't quite ready to try it. Then, after I didn't hear from him for a week or two, he popped up again, and said, "You know all that stuff you wanted me to try? Well, I found a guy in another city and tried it all!"
That really wasn't what I'd had in mind.
Still, I wanted to be supportive, so I talked him through problems and misconceptions. Late in the year, he realized it was finally time to get his head shaved and get collared, and I'd promised him a collar as a no-strings-attached gift more than 2 years earlier. So he came out here and took care of all that, and borrowed a few simple toys to help his new proto-master bind him, etc.
Since then, he's had difficulties a few more times, thinking that his master isn't taking his service as seriously as he is, wondering about how to get things done. One Wednesday night, he msg'd me almost in tears, not even sure if he was going to stay with his master that week because he was so disappointed. I stopped my work and sat down with that computer and talked him through it for an hour before he left, abruptly, because his master was home.
I have, in general, attempted to have the patience of Job with the boy, even once it became clear that he was not interested in me as more than mentoring and advice.
So, this month, I realized I hadn't heard from him in a while. I found him on one of the IM services and said hi, and asked how the slavery was going.
He said, in essence, that it made his new master uncomfortable for him to talk to anyone about BDSM problems, so he wasn't going to talk to me about BDSM anymore, and didn't want me to talk to him about it. He asked for my address so he could mail back the toys he borrowed, which was always the plan of last resort anyway.
After three years of schooling him on BDSM (and everything from how not to panic to how not to commit suicide with club drugs), now I'm very politely told to censor myself, and not to talk to him about the major topic of three years' worth of conversations. (He has plenty of work-related question for me, though, and seems annoyed when I don't stop my tasks to provide free work-related consultation to him.)
That, my four readers, is what being used feels like - and why I don't miss being online as much as I was. Like I said, I'm poking my head up every now and then, and checking mail (sorry about no replies, Paul), and all that. And who knows - someone else may come along, unexpectedly, like Boy did. I may write a couple of stories, or tell some more stories here. Maybe happier ones!
So drop me a line if you want to say hi, or speak up when you see me poke my head up, since I'm not staying online for long, and may not be online for several days at a time again. But I'm here. You need kryptonite to get rid of me.
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