~Subject: until our arms ached
~Date: 12 Feb 93 21:26:17 GMT



Twenty days ago I was busy and nervous. I was studying for my
finals, and passing quickly and often from top of ecstasy to dark
nights of the soul.

I worked also in the night, and I was feeling exhausted from lack
of sleep. Our house was a terrible mess: books everywhere, together
with cassettes and videotapes in English, hills of accumulated
stuffs to clean and mend, games of our kids scattered all around.

I began to study, then I was interrupted by the phone.  I returned
to my books, until, after a few minutes: "Mamma, can you help me?"
my daughter was asking.

And my son, poor darling, in a typical preadolescent crisis, often
weeping, asking me: "Mamma!  Answer me, please!  All morning I'm
at school, then after a brief lunch I must do my homework, then I
must practise judo, and THEN on Saturday I have religion lessons,
and on Wednesday English lessons!  I never have a moment for me!
I deserve free time!  Life is awful!"

Visualize: Laylah immersed in English didactics, confronted with
such heart-rending laments... I embraced my son, trying to comfort
him: "And you, mamma? You are almost 32, and you are still studying,
and you clean the house, and go to school to teach! How can you
live in this way?"

My son started crying before I had a chance to utter a single
word... "Darling - at last I managed to say - darling, you must
see the good side of things...  I love your father so much, we have
no big problems of money, we are quite healthy, we are a happy
family!"  "I'm not happy! I want freedom!"

I almost wept myself.  "Freedom?  Lucio, you HAVE got freedom! What
do you actually want?"  "I want to read my books, and play with my
friends, and use my computer... I am stressed by all the duties I
have!  I am only ten!  I deserve to be happy!"  I almost collapsed
on my chair.  "It's adolescence coming, my son, don't worry...  I
think that..."  But Lucio interrupted me:  "And Daddy?  He works so
hard all day long, and at evening he is so tired, and it's quite
a while you don't have a... you know what!"

My heart began to beat faster.  "We don't have... WHAT?"

"Do you think I am blind?  You did something together, I don't know
what, that gave you both so much happiness, and now because of your
finals you can't any more, and you can't play with me, or speak
with me for any length of time!"  I was on some sort of edge by now.
"Lucio, I love you, but these finals are important, it's my work,
my career..."  And my son: "Are Dad and Flavia and I less important
than your job? Are we? "

And I crossed the edge.

When Alex arrived, that evening, I was different.  We ate, then,
when the kids were asleep, I ordered him:  "My slave, now I will
use you, and beat you, and burn you.  I am your Lady, and a Lady
does not need to ask forgiveness, but, this time anyway, I ask you
to forgive me..."  Alex's eyes were deep lakes of crystal.  "My
Lady, you did nothing wrong..."  I answered: "Oh, I didn't, did I?
Well, I definitely did - and I *WILL*!!!"

I took the heavy cat, not even bothering to tie him down, just
ordering him to strip and submit; he obeyed quickly.  I started
swinging it widely, striking his back, and his buttocks, and his
thighs and his flanks.  His skin gets marked rather easily, I
know, although the marks then fade rapidly; and, I know he's
robust enough, to take all that I want to give him; still, I
often times get moved by the sight of the hideous marks my whip
leaves on him, and I then soften my blows - but, NOT tonight!!!

I was ANGRY, tonight.  Not at HIM, of course: at life, at my duties,
at time fleeing away, at myself above all.  But, he IS my slave,
and if his Lady was angry, worse luck for him: on his body would
I expend my fury.  I was not beating him for his pleasure tonight,
oh no: I wanted to feel him in pain, to see him writhe, to hear
him beg for mercy - and not give him any.

And yet - throughout that whipping, with my rage lashing at him as
much as the tails of the heavy flogger - he was completely relaxed
and offered, naked and open and perfect.  Sometimes he thanked me,
softly, sometimes he was silent - then, at long last, a quiet moan
was starting to come from him, not yet a lament, but no longer a
moan of pleasure either.

I beat him until my arm ached, then stopped to rest it for a few
minutes.  He remained down, his moan slowly decreasing back to
silence, unmoving, obedient, a sacrificial offer to my anger.

But my anger was no more, all burned up, together with my strength,
in that furious rain of blows.  Through the ashes from that fire,
there shined inside me a different light now, glowing golden and
glorious like dawnbreak after a stormy night, a powerful light of
love for the wonderful man, the wonderful slave, that had so offered
himself as sacrificial lamb to the wrath of his Goddess.  I owed
him something, now: I owed him a fitting close to this scene.  I
summoned up my strength again, and wide I opened the gates of my
empathy, feeling his desires, his needs, his own love for me, his
total acceptance and submission...

And my freshly renewed and brightly burning love I expressed on
him with my whip, as I had just finished doing with my 
just-extinguished, darkly burning rage.  I knew he could tell the
difference, although he would accept the latter as wonderfully, as
completely as the former:  his lips were forming words of thanks
at me again, although there was no strength or breath left in him
to give voice to those words...

So I hit him again, and again, and again, hard, with all my strength,
with all my love, to give him pain and pleasure, together, intense,
ferocious, overwhelming, pushing myself, despite the ache and
tiredness of my arms...  I only stopped when at last I saw his tears
streaming, from his beloved eyes full of ecstasy and pain, all down
his face, and when I felt my own heart pulsing fast, frenetic,
again, and that dull, oppressing ache had left it.

I made him kiss the whip, then dropped it, exhausted, and snuggled
on the bed, close to him, wanting to hug and console him, and yet
not wanting to renew the pain on his frayed skin.  He was
abandoned, sobbing, broken - and yet still wonderful: as soon
as he got some breath back, his first words were of thanks.  I
let him kiss my hand too, and shushed him - we both needed some
rest.  We laid like that for a short while.

He recovers fast.  Soon he was looking at me, with eyes as
always full of love, and also now of an unspoken question, which
I knew how to answer.

I told him:  "Now I feel happy and purified.  And yes, you may
now speak.  More - how would you like to switch, right now...?"

"And your study?", Alex asked.  "Please, our love is more important
than anything else...", I begged him.  "No, Laylah, Enlightenment
is more important yet... but, I DO want to switch!  Undress quickly,
slave!"  He was transfigured - so fast! - into a tower of strength,
tall, domineering, commanding... I felt a lump in my throat - of
joy, of wonderment, of a slave's awe of her Master...!

I performed. I saw the man of my life, my Master and my slave,
taking out the chains and the other whips from our chest of drawers,
still moving a bit gingerly, his strong shoulders striped of red
welts, his flanks and buttocks badly bruised.  Sweet Goddess, why,
why I am so full of defects and imperfections, why am I tired and
nervous, while my Alex is always full of light?

Because I'm attached to the things of this world, because I cling
to them... I knew the road which leads to the Pure Earth: how many
times I've walked that path!  But each time I was able to live in
the perfection of heaven only for awhile, and then, each time, I
let the dark night of the soul engulf me again...  How can I help
other human beings, and animals and plants, how can I SAVE them,
if I can't even save myself? How can I write the breathtaking poems
of light and beauty, which I KNOW are inside me, if I continue to
stumble and fall...?

My Lord tied me spreadeagled on our bed, face down, and started
with the crop, medium strength, clearly with the intention to warm
me up.  Memories and hopes were crowding in my head.  I had lived days
and days of happiness so pure and stainless: am I the weakest woman
of the world, that I can't stand some months of hard work, stress
and lack of sleep?  And my inner sight returned, and I understood.
I saw as in a crystal mirror all the beauties and the miseries,
all the peaks and the abysses I have lived through, I felt deeply
how much human I was...

How frail I am, and, at the same time, how incredibly strong!  I
drank at the spring of my birth, and I drank my heritage, divine
and human, and I was ready to admit my faults and my limits: so, 
I was also ready to overcome them.

"Master, can you forgive me?  I was tense and nervous, I was bad
with you and the children, I disappointed my Goddess, I was a
disaster..."  "I forgive you, Laylah, with all my heart, if any
forgiveness be needful, and I don't concede it is.  Now I will whip
you severely, until you safeword, or until I can't move my arm
anymore.  But I want you to enjoy the beating, so I'm starting out
gradually.  Agreed, my slave?"  I kissed his crop: "Agreed, my Lord."

The blows were given with a perfect unbroken rhythm.  My Master
was warming me up in a wonderful way.  I felt the leather kissing
my flesh many times, and the pleasure I enjoyed was so great that
I cried:  "Green, green, Master!".

So he hit me stronger, as I had asked in this fashion.  I squirmed
in my bonds, my legs and arms open an vulnerable, I offered my
buttocks as far as I could so immobilized, I relaxed my shoulders,
and spontaneously, unprompted, I began to thank Alex after each
blow:  "Thank you, Master, thank you, thank you, thank you my
Lord...  my Goddess, how much pleasure I feel!  Thank you, Master,
Thank you..."

My consciousness altered, and my sight shifted.  There was a burning
sensation, not a pain, but a very intense sensation on my buttocks,
there was a liquid fire on my back:  "Green, green Master!", again
I cried.  My Lord changed toy, and this time hit me with the heavy cat.
A rain of delicious lashes fell on my back, my sex juiced, my pierced
nipple sent me waves of pleasure; again I begged: "Green, Master."
"My slave, you asked me for this many times, and now you'll have it!"

My Lord took the long twin-tailed whip which our friends Sandro
and Rita had lent us in exchange for our little red plastic one,
took a step backwards for swinging space, and with skill swung it
so it cracked on my buttocks.  This time I cried and cried, until
I realized that Alex was changing my position, and I found myself
spreadeagled again, but belly up.  He whipped my thighs, and my
breast, time and time again, until tears were streaming down my face.
"Darling, you are strong today", he said...

A terrible blow cracked on my pierced nipple, and I wept, my voice
almost broken: "Yellow, yellow, yellow..."

My Lord immediately started whipping me less severely, but still
enough to cover of angry red welts my belly, thighs, arms. Then he
put his left hand over my eyes and nose, to protect them, and lashed
my cheeks and my mouth. He kissed my tears away, sweetly, then hit
me on my right flank, on my spiral of cutting and burns.  This time,
again, I cried yellow.

And he whipped me, whipped me, whipped me.

My breast was all bruised, my sex wet, and an otherwordly sweetness
was enwrapping me.  Each new stroke was like a blessing, and my
pleasure was so great that I begged: "Green, my Lord!".  Alex lashed
me for a long time...

The pain was so good, so good and sensual and holy, all at the same
time!  The words I uttered were without sense, at the end, and when
Alex stopped whipping, saying to me:  "Laylah, my arm aches, both
my arms are aching" I knew that I was born again, I was in the
light again.  I kissed his hands, and I washed them with fresh new
tears: "My Lord, my Lord, how perfect you are!  What a lucky slave
I am!  And I was so bad, I was so terrible..."  

My Master kissed me, then: "Silly sweet wonderful Laylah, you are
human, after all... although, and indeed BECAUSE of that, you ARE
the Goddess!  All right, so you have got defects, and limits - so
what?!  I *like* to push your limits, I enjoy to see you struggling
in order to improve yourself... and you are wrong to make an idol
of me: I am human like you - no clinging, no attachment, ever!
And now, don't cling to the past, don't dream of the future, just
BE, here and now!"

Speaking, he untied me, and we made love, my bruises burning on my
just whipped flesh, as surely still did his own.

Afterwards we spoke, embracing each other sweetly.  "Darling -I
said to Alex- Lucio is in a total preadolescent crisis, and Flavia
also has her problems.  Sometimes I think I am a bad mother, and
I would like it if they could be always happy... Do you think I am
right? If my kids are unhappy, is certainly my fault!"

Alex caressed me: "Laylah, please don't be silly again...!  It is
not your fault, of course.  You should not be so nervous, this is
true, but you are a good mother, and a splendid slave, and a severe
Lady!  And the kids - their moments of happiness outnumber the dark
ones; and they love you deeply.  So stop worrying immediately, and
drink the Light inside your heart."

My Lord is so, so perfect: he is always in the Light.  I felt moved,
and tenderness fell on me, as a warm blanket.  "Master, and Cassandra?
I miss Her so much... It's so difficult to live so far... I need
Her!" "Laylah, you must be patient: you'll see your Lady in March,
you really can't ask for more."  "Yes, I can't", I answered.  And
I fell asleep, dreaming of my Lord and of my Lady.  The Goddess
has really blessed me.


Blessed be, dear friends of the net,
    Laylah
	--
    You bite my slender wrists, my frail and fiery flesh,
    You drink the cutting taste of lips and breached sunsets
 
Laylah Martelli: 
lela@am.sublink.org,lmartell@nyx.cs.du.edu,an1826@anon.penet.fi