So several folks have asked me to post about my Shibaricon adventures and to be honest I wasn’t sure I was ready to process a particular part of it just yet.. but here goes. First a little background.
When Nelson and I parted more than 4 years ago there was a period of it that we were still in touch and working on evolving our relationship back into a friendship. It wasn’t always easy, we had a lot of history in the way and I had quite a lot of broken trust and anger about it but I never stopped loving him and part of me never accepted that we were done. Hell there is probably a part of me that still hasn’t accepted it fully.
Anyway, I had loaned him somethings like over a $1000 worth of massage DVDs & videos that he wanted to copy and said he would return. I sent him my custom made pair of 3 foot signal whips that he was going to help me break in (he was truly amazing at Florentine work). I also sent him my first batch of “real” rope that I ever bought because he had told me he wanted to borrow it to do a photo shoot. At the time that he told me that he had been out of photography for a few years and I was delighted to hear he was going back to it.. he was so talented and had such a great eye and it made me sad to think he had given it up. Well, I boxed it all up and sent it off to him and he naturally promised to return it as soon as he was through. He was always good at promising things, just not great at keeping them.
That is going to sound especially like sour grapes considering he got sick or made me aware that he was sick not too long after that. He never smoked cigarettes or did any kind of drugs in his life and he turned up with a cancerous mass in his neck. I only know bits and pieces of the story from there. Partially because he was not very forthcoming with info, (he never was any good at delivering bad news) and honestly because there was a part of me that couldn’t deal with it after losing my mom to cancer so I didn’t press for a lot of details. He decided to do an all natural healing approach. Healthy juice regimes and positive energy work and he seemed to be doing better for awhile. Then he had good weeks and bad weeks and promised several times that the “box was in the mail” but I felt really bad harassing him about my “stuff” when he had so much else going on.
But still, I missed him and wanted to see him. We planned for me to visit him in Asheville again but the plans fell through. I got the impression he really wasn’t up for the visit so I begged out and said we would wait until he was feeling better. That day never came. He passed on last summer. His most recent partner Denise was the one that wrote to let me know. We talked one night shortly after for over an hour and we laughed and cried and shared our experiences of Nelson and at some point in the conversation she promised to send me my things as well as some of his ashes. I was stunned that she would be so generous. Then life got in the way for quite awhile and we lost touch. Two other friends of mine, Honey & Stan, that I know from Shibaricon live in the same area as Denise and offered to play liaison in getting those things back to me. I was delighted to get an email from Honey saying she had the videos and my rope and the whips (which had actually not turned up when last I spoke to Denise so that was a sweet surprise).
Thursday night during the meet & greet and Shibaricon Brett and I were busily greeting a lot of my fellow rope loving friends when Honey & Stan arrived and invited us up to their room. They let me open the suitcase on the floor and it was filled with treasures! All of my natural and red colored jute from “Japan Rope” was there. That is the rope that made me truly fall in love with bondage. I love the smell and the feel and the soft sheen of it and I am so happy to have it back. 🙂 And my whips! Still as stiff as a board but I am thrilled to hold them again! There was also all of the videos I loaned to Nelson including a very expensive set of deep tissue massage DVDs as well as a huge pile of BDSM porn videos that belonged to Nelson. A Lot of heavy whipping and smoking fetish vids. I sat on the floor for what seemed like a long time, letting memories flood back as I picked up and smelled my rope, let the whips slide through my hands, poked the the case full of videos looking at all the titles. A lot of memories and associated feelings: gratitude, joy, guilt, grief, sadness, and more. I started to pull myself together so I could let them get back to enjoying their evening and they asked me to sit down for one more surprise.
Honey handed me a beautiful butterfly carved puzzle box that was wrapped in a mini karada and told me that it contained some of Nelson’s ashes. I burst into tears and hugged them both and Brett. They also gave me another beautiful box that contained the ashes of someone whose name they could not remember but that had been a very special teacher to Nelson. I completely understand this gesture because I have had people that have been as instrumental in my life as well but wish I had been more a part of his life during the time that he knew this person so that I had a better idea what his or her impact had been on him.
Anyway, I did not really feel that I was going to be able to process the feelings that having a piece of Nelson in my hands again was bringing up until after I got home from the event so I placed him in the dresser drawer and went on with the weekend. I may have thought I wasn’t allowing myself to be affected but I definitely was on some level. I realized how much I missed the level of play and connection that he and I shared and it definitely affected my attitude which led to a fight between me & Brett Friday night and then Sat I got pissy with a DM for stopping a scene I was in for simply leaning against the wall (Note to self: I have to follow the event & hotel rules whether I like them or not not matter how frigging annoying they are! Grr!)
The bottom line is, I was hurting on a core level and not expressing it properly so it was leaking out all over the place and manifesting in really unpleasant ways. Luckily I don’t think I managed to burn any bridges and I came home and gave myself a couple of days to decompress. Today, for the first time, I untied the box and opened it very carefully. I ran my fingers through his ashes and cried for awhile while sitting in the spot where he last stood in my home and said goodbye to him again. Probably not for the last time. Some people will never ever leave you completely. They are too much a part of your life to ever be forgotten. Nelson is one of those people for me and now there is a part of him sitting on my altar.
I want to express my heartfelt thanks again to Denise, Honey & Stan for that and the other gifts. To Brett for his love, patience and understanding and to Shibaricon for being a safe space & container to hold everything that came up for me last weekend. I am still trying to decide if I want to keep those ashes in the box, or release them somewhere or keep some and release the rest or what. Way too much feeling there still … time will tell and in the meantime.. I am going to go work out for a bit.
