Day 174 - On Getting Pierced by Large Hooks Piercing Through My Chest and Bells Dangling from my Back While Dancing with Wild Naked Abandonment Around a Tribal Altar at a Leather Conference in Phoenix, and On Needing Master More than I Expected and Master Being Disappointed as a Result

YOU CAN POST COMMENTS NOW!!!

*sighs* I found out to my annoyance today that readers of my blog had to be a registered user to comment. Yeah, it’s possible that not many people really wanted to say anything, but in case you do, I’ve fixed it now so that ANYBODY can comment. I found out because Master said he had commented on my blog, but I hadn’t realized it, and I checked my settings and found out that only people with a LiveJournal ID could leave comments, and to top it off I wasn’t being notified when they did. Well, that's fixed now, like I said. FYI, after searching through things, I also found out that a very nice person (who has his own blog at www.esclaves.org) happened to post a very warm comment regarding my January 1st blog. So, for that, thanks!!! *bounces and waves in his direction*


Things are getting back to a type of normalcy since the Southwest Leather Conference last weekend.

Hoo boy. Do I have a lot to write about.

And I’ve got a few souvenirs, which include 14 scabs from where pieces of metal entered and exited my body. I’ve also got the two hooks that were sunk into my chest, four bells that were hung from my back, a rose-quartz crystal hung from the flesh directly over my heart, a very sexy (and stretchy) cigarette dress that hugs my body like nobody’s business, a nicely illustrated convention T-shirt and some wild memories. Oh, and about three extra pounds spread around my body from eating too much at too many buffets.

Talking about the convention will likely require two separate blog posts, so I’ll jump into the part I’m sure everybody’s wondering about – the Dance of Souls. You can get the basic background info here, which is pretty informative regarding its history and such.

I’ve been told that the mental, emotional and spiritual aftereffects will be hitting me repeatedly over time, possibly when I least expect it. Maybe. I’ll see, but at least I won’t be surprised if it happens.

Imagine a room half the size of a basketball court. In the center is a large wooden altar that’s made from a big square of wood made from four large poles elevated by four more large poles, with very thick hemp rope crisscrossing along the top and chains running along the top edges.

Imagine a bank of drummers pounding out a beat that’s fast and furious and shakes you to your very core.

Now imagine nearly 100 people, many of them fully naked, dancing around the altar. The bodies of all of these people have been pierced in multiple places. Almost all of them have metal bells hanging from their back or chest. Many of them are also pierced by large hooks, from which they hang from the altar’s rafters on thick cords or pull against each other using metal rings. The pressure against the hooks causes the skin underneath to be pulled out, often several inches or even more. Blood flows from many people’s wounds. A few people even allow themselves to hang completely, their entire body weight pulling down against the hooks that are attached by cords to chains above them.

I was part of all that.

Four metal bells were in my back, hanging from loops of fishing line that had been threaded through my skin. Another bell was similarly attached along with a quartz crystal and a glass pendulum to my chest as close to my heart as possible.

Along with that, thick metal hooks had been thrust completely through my skin above each breast, and were jutting out about halfway between the nipple and the bottom of my neck.

Besides the bells and hooks and crystals and rings in my earlobes, I was very happily completely naked. I didn't miss my clothes at all.

I had originally planned only to get four bells. Master had told me that hooks were advanced, and I was a beginner.

But Master wasn’t there, and when it came time for me to be pierced, I decided on impulse to take it to the next level beyond the bells. And I’m glad I did.

If Master had been there, I wouldn’t have gotten hooks most likely. But to our mutual disappointment, he wasn’t. Instead, he had to stay in the hotel room, sleeping off a bad cold.

The fact that Master wasn’t there had very important repercussions, which I’ll discuss later.

Back to the hooks. Master said they were salmon hooks with the barbs taken off. You can look them up on the Internet easily, but to give you an idea of the size, the distance between the holes left by the hooks going in and coming out of my skin is between an inch and a half and two inches.

If you saw me, you’d probably think I would have been in extreme pain as I leaned back near the last few minutes of the dance, my hooks tied to cords which I had attached to a chain above me. I looked down a couple of times and saw my skin was stretched out what seemed like at least two inches away from my chest.

Instead, there was no pain – only a feeling of pressure as my skin was contracting between the two hooks, bringing them toward each other.

My eyes were closed, and I was talking to Wolf spirit. I remember asking him what the big deal was. I remember asking him why the feeling of my skin being squeezed tightly like that was supposed to have some type of mystical effect. And I remember him saying it might not have that much of an effect for me because I’m already used to talking with him and other spirits on a casual day-to-day basis. But I got the impression that he felt it might help energize that connection, making it stronger than it’s been in awhile.

Judging from some experiences I had at the convention before the dance, it’s clear that my spiritual awareness was, indeed, already active. But judging from an experience I had two days after the dance, I can also say that my awareness may quite well have become more focused than before. More on that later.

The bells, by the way, didn’t have nearly as much as an effect on me as the hooks. At several points during the experience, I took a break from the hooks and danced furiously in place, making all of my bells ring in time with the drumming. And after awhile of that, I was starting to definitely trip out.

But it was the hooks that truly made the experience something incredible. If you had asked me ahead of time if I would have dared to do it, I would have told you “no,” but something compelled me that day to reach beyond my limits.

To do something that would make Master and me both proud of my courage.

Instead, I caused Master to be embarrassed and regretful. Not at me, he said, but at himself, for not following his own instincts – which were to not let me go at all.

Master had done the Dance of Souls before, and, with the knowledge of how powerful an experience it could be, he planned for both of us to do it together. He booked reservations long in advance, and we were both greatly looking forward to it.

Then, two nights before the dance, he came down with a cold, which became increasingly worse as the dance approached. Finally, the day of the dance, he told me he wouldn’t be able to attend, but he encouraged me to do it by myself, even though we both knew I would miss him greatly.

Master told me not to think of him, but to keep my mind and my spirit at the dance. I thought I could, and I did ... for awhile.

From the time of the piercing to the time of the final farewell, the dance ran for more than three hours. About halfway through, I saw something breathtakingly beautiful happen in the middle of the dance floor. A very powerfully dominant Master collared her slave with a gorgeous golden collar while surrounded by a group of well wishers all swaying their hands in emotional and spiritual support. After the collar was snapped into place, the Master and her slave, both bedecked with bells and hooks, danced together in incredible passion and love. When I saw that, I felt so deeply moved that I simply had to contact my own Master. I had to see him, to touch him, to feel his skin against mine, to hear his voice. And so, wrapping a blanket around my body, I went outside the dance room and used the phone to call him. Instead of the tender reception I expected, he answered gruffly, telling me he had been asleep and ordering me to get back to the dance. I hung up the phone and tried to return, but soon tears filled my eyes, and the most I could do was stand at the edge and stare at the others in the room.

Along with the dancers and the drummers, there were more than 100 other participants – witnesses. They were there to watch, to observe, to be there to validate what we as dancers experienced near them. Among the watchers were several slave friends of mine from Denver, and when they saw my distress, they came to me to help. And we talked, each of us sharing our feelings about our Masters. What they said to me is personal to them, but for me I told how heartbroken I was that my Master was up in the room, choosing to sleep rather than to come down even briefly to see me when I had let him know how much I wanted him at that moment. Yes, I knew he had an awful cold and needed the rest. But I was hurt emotionally – a lot – and the tears flowed from my eyes in response to the pain in my spirit.

Eventually I went back inside the dance room, but soon I couldn’t take it and, without telling anybody, I put my clothes back over my hooks and bells and, against the rules of the dance, went upstairs to the room. I felt I had to see Master, more than anything in the world. But when I went up there, instead of finding him reading on the couch or surfing the Web on his computer, I found the room darkened, with him asleep. I was extremely disheartened and paced back and forth, trying to decide what to do. The decision was taken out of my hands by the telephone ringing. Master jerked awake and grabbed the phone to hear somebody telling him I had run off and asking about where I was. Master told them I was there, then he hung up the phone and angrily faced me, glaring at me, and soon, instead of the tenderness I most needed at that time, I was faced with my Master furiously ordering me out of the room and demanding that I get back downstairs and don’t come back up until I was done.

Of course, I felt horrible beyond words. I returned to the dance floor and confronted the slaves who had called Master, and they told me they had been genuinely concerned by my disappearance and were mortified it got me into such serious trouble with him. My three slave friends gathered around me and expected me to help me get my piercings removed, but I told them I would fucking complete the dance if it killed me, and I marched over to the altar and attached the hook cords above my head, determined to make the most of the remaining time.

Only a quarter of an hour remained in the dance, but I have to say that those fifteen minutes were possibly the most powerful, most meaningful of the whole experience. It was then I truly went beyond myself physically. I didn’t care about limits. I just wanted release from the deep, dark feelings I was experienced, and I found that catharsis in the hooks pulling so tightly against my flesh. Getting my skin pierced seven times for the hooks and the bells hurt like crazy, but that was nothing compared to the pain I felt from feeling so isolated from Master then, and, in the end, I felt a deep sense of relief and release as I felt the cords tugging tighter and tighter, dragging my skin further and further from my muscles and bones.

Sooner than I wished the drumming changed its tempo, and the closing ritual began. It was a simple one, in that we all lowered ourselves to the ground to center our energies into the earth. I was still tense, still anxious, but I worked to let it all flow out.

At some point, I heard that Master was looking for me, that he had asked about me outside the dance room, and had left to wait for me elsewhere. I went outside the dance room and asked for him, and somebody found him and he came to me and told me to meet him in the lobby after my piercings were removed.

Slowly and carefully, my hooks and cords were safely taken off then packaged for keeping, along with my bells, the crystal and pendulum (which I consecrated in my sacred grove two days later, but I’ll talk about that in my next post). My clothes were put back on. And I knew Master awaited.

I didn’t know what to expect from Master. I was actually worried in the back of my mind that he was going to tell me that this showed I wasn’t the slave he wanted, and he was going to tell me to look elsewhere for a Master. I wondered if I could survive living on my own while working at Starbucks or somewhere. I was scared and confused. My mind wasn’t exactly working on a rational, logical level.

I found him sitting in a chair, calmly awaiting my arrival. I approached with my head down and quickly kneeled in supplication at his feet, and he gently led me back to the room. Once there, I explained what had happened, why I had done what I had done, and I begged forgiveness. To my complete surprise, he looked at me sadly and said he was the one who made the mistake. He said his instincts had told him that it was too early in our relationship for me to go to an event like that on my own, but he let me go anyway.

A year from now, he said, he expects I’ll be strong enough to do something like that without needing him with me.

I sighed and accepted his words, feeling remorse for the day’s events.

It hit me a little later what he said.

“A year from now.”

He expects that I’ll be with him for a very long time, despite what happened.

I mentioned that to him on the drive home back from the airport the next day, and he told me matter of factly, “I’m not running a training house, where I release you from your collar after awhile.”

We’re together. Possibly – I hope – for the rest of our lives.

The day we left from Phoenix, as we were packing, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to take the hooks back with me to Denver because Master and I only brought carryon luggage, and the hooks wouldn’t pass airport security screening. Fortunately, a Master-slave couple who were good friends of my Master was in the hotel lobby, and they said they’d take the hooks back to Denver for us no problem.

It turned out that this slave was the person who encountered Master when he came to the dance to look for me. She told me that Master was concerned that I would be a bit mentally loopy from walking around with all the hooks and piercings in me, and he had wanted to make sure I got back to the dance safely. The slave saw him and, as a registered witness to the dance, she went inside and found me as I was leaning back in a near trance state, the hooks pulling so very tightly against my flesh as I previously described.

“You looked so beautifully peaceful,” she told me as we stood together that next day, me holding the box with my packed hooks. “I knew that everything was fine, and I let your Master know that, which was why he knew it was safe to leave you and wait in the lobby.”

I told the slave what had happened regarding the problems with me and Master, and how horrible I felt about it, and how disappointed he was with himself. Her response was to smile, gently hold my hands and tell me not to worry.

She said that what happened between Master and me would be just a “pebble” on the road we’re going to travel together during our lives. Just a minor bump in the road, she said.

I told Master later what she said, and Master replied with a smile that “she’s a very wise woman.”

I agree with Master 100 percent. That slave's Owner is an extremely blessed man.

The dance was three days ago. As you can guess, it’s going to be a long time before I get over what happened.

I’ve got a lot more to write about regarding the conference and what happened afterward, but you’ll have to be patient and wait for my next blog posting for that, which should be in just a couple of days.

Until then, as always, with true joy in my heart ...

La kajira!!!