Although he slumbers in a city far away tonight, Polymnos is in my bed with me. Although he
cannot see me, he controls me, controls my movements. Sometimes he directs them, sometimes he restricts them. Always he motivates them, inspires them. Makes me ache for release, for confinement, for his next directive, for the heat of his touch, for the utterance of his whims and instructions on how I can satisfy them.

Without meaning to be, I am alert for his voice, whether it speaks to me through his lips or from his fingertips. My giving nature yearns to be at his service and he graciously accepts, returning just enough of what I crave to keep me hungry, sometimes ravenous--but always coming back for more.

Previously repressed desires, now contained within a safe and firmly nurturing environment, begin to flower in me, growing wild and strong while tended with a steady hand that gently but inexorably guides, subtly shapes and refines. I am alabaster flesh beneath his fingers. I am gently flushed marble waiting to be polished. I am a dream being born in the mind of a watcher.

Not long ago, I attended a party. Polymnos was poised to enter my life, but had not yet done so. I was still a wanderer in search of a direction. One guest created name tags based on things she knew or suspected about our natures. The words she wrote for me read, "Everything to Excess." I had been labeled. Categorized. Tagged. Defined.

Does excess include denial--or only overt hedonism? Can denial be a form of hedonism? Is it any less orgiastic to relish astrict existence of discipline and removal from the obvious joys of life than it is to succumb to them? Is the Carmelite nun, shunning the ways of the human world and wrapped in a holy fantasy of silence, obedience and humility any less self-indulgent than the worldly slut with her painted lips, voluptuous curves and frankly languid gaze?

One needn't be a 19th century English Romantic poet or 20-something local Goth chick to know that there is deep sensual power in denial. There is luxurious poignancy in meditating upon the absent, upon the lost. What bliss for lovers to read and reread old letters, committing key phrases to memory and sobbing softly while rubbing the delicious nettles of separation into their raw emotions in anticipation of the thrill of reunion.

"No orgasms until I return," Polymnos had told me and left. As an early reward for good behavior on my part or largess on his, come the sunrise my restrictions are lifted, mere days after their enforcement. I have been my own willing jailer. Oddly, while my muscles press against my skin in urgent appeals for relief, my spirit is strangely melancholy amidst the rejoicing. Even a stranger within myself. Unsought experience has taught me well that the last moments of suffering can be the sweetest.

Although he slumbers in a city far away tonight, Polymnos is in my bed with me. He has cum in the most intimate part of my anatomy; we are fluid-bonded in the mind, having found a custom-made entrance beyond my usual barriers. He has sparked the connection between reptile and mammal and thus both my human and animal natures are in his debt at the unification.

Bitten, teased, tormented, pampered, petted, paddled--ignored or adored--tonight I bathe my spirit in a sinful decadence of denial, more lustful than any frenzied orgy of the damned could ever conceive or come close to matching for sheer self-indulgent luxury. We live in a hurried time. To truly relish the lack of something is to slow, to focus, to internalize, to experience sensation and generate thought. What a dangerous evening's activities I have engaged in, this exploration of the mind/body/spirit connection. Sleepless, creative, inspired and on the verge of freedom, how long will I willingly postpone the moment of reclamation of my natural right to self or shared pleasure? How long will I roll the bittersweet fruit of absence and delicious denial on my tongue before releasing the devils and angels straining within my skin?