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stella41b -> RE: Looking at Everest .. and seeing its just a mountain (5/13/2008 7:01:25 PM)
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Wow. This brings back memories. E-mails, chat conversations, text messages, first across a country, then across Europe. It was a few years back. I'd come back to the UK from Warsaw, moved into a BDSM household with plans of just serving and going through the 'transition'. It didn't work out, but encouraged to keep in touch with my friends back in Poland she wrote me such a long e-mail, and we chatted. I parted amicably with the household and went back to Poland to try out a relationship with her.
There was no flight, as I had an issue about flying then, and so it was a long coach journey. I started in Dover. The Eurolines coach arrived, pulled up. I checked in, passport, documents, luggage, ticket, waited till my bags were put away, climbed aboard the coach. The door closed, the coach pulled away, moved the 500 yards or so across the ferry terminal and came to a halt, waiting for the ferry. As I'm watching the white cliffs of Dover fade towards the horizon and watching the wash churn up the English Channel behind the ferry I felt a sense of release.. the sort you feel when you're heading out on a long journey and a new chapter in life. Nothing to do but curl up in your seat with a good book and keep counting those road markers in the middle of autoroutes and autobahns across Europe.
I've always wondered who gets more nervous - the one doing the travelling or the one doing the waiting?
It's those moments of arrival.. the newness, everything is similar, but different. I was no stranger to Poland, but this was a different part of Poland, the south, different mentality, different language, even the landscape is different. More mountains. A 28 hour coach journey from Dover to Katowice.. Ridiculously small bus station, ridiculously large railway station in a ridiculously small street. No trolleys. Struggle with two bags to the currency exchange office, buy local currency, then to the ticket office. I'm heading south to Zywiec. The last town in Poland before you reach Slovakia. It's an international train to Vienna. Good. It doesn't stop in Zywiec. Oh dear. Change trains in Bielsko-Biala, the last major town.
I'm on the platform. Then it hits you. Oh my God. This is 24/7!!! No way back. Am I crazy? Yes, but like Seal wrote in his song 'But we're never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy..' But this is what life and living is all about, taking those chances which might never come twice.
Four hours later, in the fading sunshbine of the sunset over the Beskidy mountains which surround Zywiec we meet. We know each other from 'the community', but have never met, until now, and it's the start of a relationship.
That journey back to her apartment was when the reality and truth comes out. But you are tired, disorientated. You look around and all you can see are strangers, everything is new and different. You notice both pigeons and statues in the architecture. Besides, I'm out of synch, having to speak another language. Give me fifteen seconds longer to respond to what you're saying, and though I'm trying to speak the same language as you - Polish, English words will slip out.
This is where the truth really does come out. Lady B was mentored by Lady J who wanted to own me as a slave. Lady B doesn't have any experience, we tried to play but it didn't come out right. All Lady B had learned was Lady J's One True Wayisms. The relationship would have worked but for one small issue - Lady B is hetero, the masculine role in a relationship is anathaema to me. No matter how much you like someone, if it doesn't hang together in the bedroom it just doesn't hang.
But this started a very very close friendship between Domme and sub and I shared with her my theatre and knowledge of BDSM which lifted her out of depression.
The ending was difficult. It came when I came out publicly in the theatre. She was one of the six members of the theatre who walked out when I was removed with immediate effect by the authorities. She spent over a year being ostracized by the town for 'introducing perversion' to the good reputation of the town which numbers 40,000 people. As a result she is banned from all the churches in the diocese. She found solace in the silent minority who remained silent but who were supportive of me and us to the end. She maintains the hardest time was seeing me off onto that train to Oświęcim (Auschwitz) on a platform knee deep in snow never knowing if she would ever see or hear from me again.
But we have been in touch, and there is a happy ending. In the not too distant future she's coming to London for a visit.
It is a wonderful analogy softness, and I myself can vouch for Yorkshire having been brought up in Leeds and Bradford myself.
Everest is just a mountain, but it's worth remembering that it is climbed in stages, slowly, carefully, never being sure of what really lies up above, setting up camps, and taking it one step at a time. But it can always be conquered.
Or as they say in our parts 'if you're going to be hanged for a lamb, might as well steal a sheep'.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed - go for it. Wishing you all the best.
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