Start in the Middle

3/4 of the way through our scene last Saturday night, Nea's hip cramped. Now, they've been having trouble with that hip for a while and I've been playing with ways to support it more when we tie but nothing is perfect or infallible and partway through our scene their hip decided it couldn't take any more. I don't know what I actually said to them but I rolled them from a torsion into an upright position and flipped the upset leg over my shoulder so I could start working on untying the waist/thigh thing I'd been using to keep that side stable. Still in the air, supported by a single thigh cuff, their calf on my shoulder, and a shitty chest harness that was requiring them to use their whole core to balance and not roll back into a torsion, I could feel their breathing steady as I released their thigh from their waist. We still weren't done with our scene.

People talk a lot about how photos only show a small part of what's going on. They go on and on about how you never know what's out of frame or what happened just before or after a photo and that's true, but it also extends so much further. Even if you know Nea and I well, I don't know if you would have caught the moment something "went wrong." I'm not even sure I'm willing to say that this was a misstep. It doesn't feel like one. It feels like a natural consequence of pushing the body. Sometimes the body pushes back and we have to accept that and find other ways to get what we want. Everything with Nea and I is like that. If you just look at my Instagram you'll likely see what appears to be a very typical small, white, afab rope bottom. You don't see all the disabilities, you don't see that we're both trans, you don't see the full picture.

Things have been taxing recently for a lot of reasons and in all that mess, I haven't been tying as much and haven't been enjoying my time in rope spaces as much. After last Saturday, I felt refreshed. I spent the whole drive home, and then hours after I got home, overflowing with ideas and thoughts and feelings. I haven't been this excited about rope in months, maybe years. This blog is a consequence of that overflow. I want to spill my brain out both for current and future reflection, and I hope that that overflow provides something for someone else too.

My dad used to say that the best way to start a story is in the middle. Pick up when a character is in flux. Well, that's where I am now, a character in flux, starting in the middle.