Dark Odyssey Thoughts

Written in two segments, this is an incomplete yet fulfilling rant into what happened at camp for me this year. Add in me getting to talk with beings bigger than a breadbox instead of getting to do energetic orgasmic work, and some random foibles, and you have my camp.Camp.Dark Odyssey Summer Camp I list as being the only event internationally that I will not miss. A Kink, Swinger, Pagan crossover event in Northern Maryland, it starts on Thursday and runs til Monday (it being Sunday night now), and this year had over 300 attendees. Usually I play a lot at this event- not this year. This year has been about personal introspection and in doing so has been deeply fulfilling.I arrived Wednesday night from Oakland after having ridden in a hire car from the Hotel Monaco, being regaled with tales of where to visit if I ever visit Russia. The flights to SLC and then to BWI gave me a chance to read the bulk of “Dark Moon Rising: Pagan BDSM and the Ordeal Path”, and I finished the book while here at camp. I really did enjoy it, and even knowing a lot about this path I am on, appreciated a few new terms and approaches I had not considered before, and was pleased with the wisdom that Raven had been able to collect in the volume.When I landed at BWI I was convinced I was at the wrong airport, my phone did not work, and my ride, Colten, got lost so I sat there a while. We picked up someone else at the Train on the way back to camp, and I settled in, unpacked bags, and grabbed a few Zs.Thursday I ended up doing a private ritual for myself in which I removed of my chest and genital jewellery. Some comedy ensued involving needing help to undo one ball, but it was an amazing and deeply needed self-ritual for me that took place all around the lake and by the obstacle course. Later that day I did my first class, on Switching Strategies, that went amazingly well and is fast becoming one of my favorite classes, along with D/s Rituals… I am definitely getting more deep satisfaction out of my psychology and emotional pushing classes than my fun hands on bondage classes, though the bondage ones always make people smile.I purposefully did not make dates here. Good thing too. This was an emotional roller coaster ride here, but needed.Head/hair/cock bondage was packed and fun. Invocations and Evocations went rather differently than planned but was better for it, and helped each person more, which was what I wanted. Rituals for D/s turned out differently this time, focusing more on how to connect on a daily basis with partners and strengthening bonds, plus ideas of identity and connection to the universe at large and our ties to society at large and intentional community.I got to attend some great classes as well. Sir Bobby’s Trash Talking definitely gave me some new ideas for my “Getting to Hot- Communication, Negotiation and More”- plus makes me want to design a new one specifically about talking in play. Skian’s “beast Within” was one of the few times I have gotten to see a group of Tops talk openly about their fear of giving in to the dark desires of the soul and concerns about madness, desire, fantasy and how to feed those things without destroying ourselves, and touched me a lot. Erotic Breathwork with Barbara Carrellas should have been amazing for me, and was going to be, until certain asshole Gods got in the way. Nope, not in the mood to discuss conversations with the divine on this forum.The class that ended up effecting me the most this weekend though was Raven Kaldera’s “Astral Bodies, Astral Genders” class. Everyone was talking at the beginning of the class about “masturbation is optional” part of the class, and the small group (7? folks plus Raven and Joshua) settled into comfty spots. We went through some guided visualization work into astral gender after first doing some basic astral form work, which was good, but then we did transformation things. Taking astral gender and doing female. What does your female astral form look like. How does your skin like being touched. How are you shaped. How do you move? Now into Masculine- what do you look like, are you smooth or furry, how do you move, how do you react. Now something between- do you have balls and no cock? Breasts but no cunt? Do you have it all? How does it feel.Then we did it again, with sexuality in mind. Female- how do you want to be touched? Who by? How often? What does it feel like? Male- how do want to be touched? Why by? How often? What does it feel like? All this while we were invited to explore these sensations in the flesh as well. Then to Something between- how do you want to be touched? Why by? How often? What does it feel like.I ended up having a pretty major revelation, well, a few of them.My feminine energy has no empathy with nipple sensation, and breasts are good for grabbing and beating. My masculine energy has nipple sensations but has no breasts, and is thus thrown off by breast play that uses those words.My feminine energy is a slut, and enjoys playing with all sorts of folks I connect with, and is happy to separate romance and sex as just sensation. She is happy to play with folks of all bodies and orientations. My masculine energy however prefers only sexual touch from (preferably gay) men, gender queer individuals, or folks with a lot of strength and power that I have a personal romantic or admiration relationship with. There is no interest in random flings that involve my genitals. I would be happy to be monogamous or very limitedly sexual outside a core relationship. I am happy to Top stone or moderately stone to folks outside that category of folks, very happy if it feeds my need for psychic vampirism, but bottoming outside the folks who I would list on the sex list is not very likely.This was, well, revelatory for me. It explained a lot of my nipple/breast issues on why they sometimes work and why sometimes they don’t, or why if folks tell me my nipples work and they aren’t in the gay male energy or gender fuck category, it can mess up my head space and make me feel dirty playing with them.I also ran the Autumnal Equinox Ritual, in two parts, and it was the Psychic Enema the community needed. My own offering, a statement about preconceptions of path and a need to focus on my own perceptions above that of others in making choices, I had folded into an origami bird. Bad idea. It refused to burn. I ripped it to pieces, laughing yes, this was not a pretty thing to remove from my life so, yes, the offering shouldn’t be pretty, and it went up in smoke. Only a few people did the second round of the ritual on Sunday, but it was worth the time anyway. Friday’s ritual had Raven singing a great Mabon song, and my new Bay Area crush drummed as well.I danced in the Dark Odyssey Sex Idol Contest, and won Best Burlesque with my interpretation of “I’d Like to Com” by the Wet Spots, even with a huge stack of technical difficulties it went off great. I am a performer indeed.I got to scare swingers with clown gear.I spent a lot of time meditating and walking alone, or carrying bear pelt or cauldron.I cried.I sang.I had amazing conversations.I won a golden egg for the Transsexual Empire of Asphodel.I got to teach someone self bondage one on one that left us both laughing and most of the dungeon confused, while discussing gender politics and rescue work.I turned down a lot of dates with ease.I got ridden hard by forces bigger than bread boxes and put away crumpled.I spun fire.I also had one of the hottest bootblack scenes of my life.May I do your boots Sir?Not right now, it’s still raining.But if I do them now, I can do them again later…We waited until Saturday night, and meeting her at Sex-o-Rama, we headed off to the dungeon after grabbing her bootblack gear. She started off doing my Durangos as I sat back and enjoyed the sensation- I love an enthusiastic, passionate, and heavy pressure bootblack, slipping out of the stockings and letting my bare feet sit inside the leather as she worked. I couldn’t resist, and had to touch her while she worked with focus, even if I kept providing distraction, polish to my cunt an inviting smile as she fingered out the black between my legs. When she said she was done I asked her if she was sure, and she went back and fixed what was off, well done.She almost started to pack up when I told her to sit down, her pussy having been smacked as she licked my boots on the wood floor beneath us. She sat down on the wooden bench and I grabbed her boots which had been set to the side while she worked. Unlacing them I took the first lace and bound her wrist to wrist. Then I took the second lace and tied her to the bench, before sliding each boot onto her foot.I’ve always wanted to boot rape someone, but have never gotten to. I am a greedy pig with feet, and want to have them my way sometimes. I want to pull them up close, use them, have them, and enjoy them how I want to enjoy them, not how I am “supposed to” do it. I pulled her boot up to my chest with a hard pull and rested them in the middle of my chest as I grabbed the saddle soap and sudsed her leather up with the brush, using hard, abusive strokes that were about me, not her. I wanted these boots, wanted her, and would take them and make them beautiful, but only my way, my doing, my will. Polish across my breasts and her leather, working them in with strong hands. Trading off feet with hard movements and harsh words. Polish on my chest, on my hands, on my chin and not caring as she moaned and squirmed…Later that night the play went on, abandonment fear on the roadside blindfolded. Ripped apart by a Demon against a tree outside the dining hall. Bodies broken, used, abused, mine, and I fed…One night of play, plus a bit of fun bondage tonight. That’s all I really needed, wanted. Cigar bottoming and smoking in Sir Bobby’s Cigar Play class, my mouth an ash tray. That man amazes me and entices me, talking about hot leather men.I have stuff to take in, digest. A lot of stuff. I expected the next few months to have a lot of that, and I got it.The dance changes again. After finishing these thoughts I headed back to my cabin to pack bags and ran into the creature, the delicious individual whom I had done hands on self bondage with in the dungeon, whom I had flirted with a bit pre-camp and met in passing before. He asked if I was going down to Midnight Snack. Of course.It was hilarity on a stick- camp songs for BBJim and Levi, who became *this many* (6). There was the great cake break in, the daisy on my toe, tales of Jaws and Dunderbeck, and BBJim devoured or destroyed many Styrofoam cups in the name of magnificence. I wandered up to the fire on the hill, wandered over to the toga swinger party, got to see Margo and Elkor, talk a bit with Nina Hartley, and then saw the delicious creature again.He and I had discussed gender politics and paradigms, work and worries earlier that day, and the chat continued while Jerry regaled us with the tale of Chevy-slayer and spelunking beneath Akron, Ohio. An arm around him, it is *so* much easier for me to flirt when I think the person is distracted. I can put on the femme fatal act and woo anyone if I don’t really care, but when someone is a person I hope to have as a long term friend, ally, or lover/play partner, I sometimes am notoriously shy and obtuse. We talked for hours on the steps, he and I, and eventually he told me he wanted to kiss me. The dance changed.We each play roles in relationships, and the dance did not go as planned. He hadn’t expected to dance at all, let alone see me beneath him at any point. We had to stop, bodies grinding and moaning, and talk. We had to connect. We couldn’t do this dance as was, and I exposed my fears of loosing a new friendship with a one night stand, I’ve fucked up a few too many potential friendships by complicated the mix. He didn’t expect to Top, and certainly not with me. We stopped, connected, and finally lay next to one another in a hot circle jerk, hands on our own cocks until we screamed laying side by side, legs intertwined.Dawn.When did it become Dawn?Camp does strange things for my sense of time. Rituals and Romance, old friends and some people trying to be too close, not getting what I’m going through. Metal rings hanging from trees, screams into the woods, humans with sticks by the fireside. I sleep as Raven sings, I sing as swingers walk by, I hear the cries of fucking and fears exposed beneath open skies. I am vulnerable. I am artist. I am divine. I am loved.Kiss me goodbye, beloved Camp. I’ll see you again.