"I like your collar"

We went to a party yesterday, a rather unusual event. Even more unusual, it was Mistress that declared she wanted to go, and even RSVPd and everything. My dad came and babysat, and we actually had a great night. It was a friends birthday party, and for me it had an eery feeling of deja vù - this is our old friends. The friends from ten, fifteen years ago, the once I've been afraid of losing since I got pregnant, and busy and tired and sick.

But they're still there, we still get the invites, we're still included and welcomed, and showing up made me feel both as if no time has passed since I was twenty and trying to move away from home and spending all my money on LARP-ing and commuting to my boyfriend out of town, living on oatmeal and spaghetti. And, on the other hand, my God how grown up we are now. A lot of the gang are married, mostly to each other as a matter of fact, those who wanted children are about to have their second go at it (and all the pregnant bellies makes me super-jealous) and most of them have a job instead of ever-on-going university-studies. I kind of like it.

I like the adults we've become. Myself included.

But as per usual, around ten PM I was getting drowsy and Mistress decided to herd me home. We did the good-bye rounds, and as I was hugging a guy I've barely had talked to during the night, I noticed he was eyeing what I thought was my blouse (a pretty blue silk one with a sequined hemline), then for a moment suspected was my cleavage until he said in a kind of low key voice "I like your collar." "Oh" I said, speechless for a moment, and then with a sheepish smile "yeah, I like it too".

Silence.

I had no idea how to continue that line of conversation. What do one say? Was he implying what I thought he was implying? Or was he just complimenting my jewelry? But no - complimenting jewelry you do in a crowd, when you meet, if it happens to be appropriate, you don't specifically wait for a quiet moment and point it out. Not if you don't know what it it is you're trying to say.

"Nice" he said.
"Yeah" I said.
More silence.
"Have you worn it for long?"
"About a year."
"Great!"
"Yeah, I think so too!".

By then the time for the usual quick "bye, nice to see you!"-hug had run out, the flow of people in the room was shifting, and also, I was embarrassed and blushing furiously and couldn't make coherent words anymore, so I just kind of backed off a little, and Mistress hugged her way around the good bye crowd while I was tying my shoe laces and waiting for my face to regain it's normal colour.

I was so outed, one might say. And I really really like it.

I don't want to be secretive, showing one face to the world and my friends and another to Mistress. I don't like this feeling of having a secret life, a secret agenda, being one on the outside and another on the inside.

When my kink-side started appearing I was five, fantasizing about spankings and masturbating without knowing what I was doing. But I always knew that I couldn't talk about it, that I was strange and odd and unnormal. Eventually, it grew in to sexuality, the adult, mature version, and I knew a little more, but it took about fifteen years from the first inklings until I got to see that I wasn't alone. Fifteen years of shame and confusion and knowing I was different.

Since then there's been another almost fifteen years, and I know very well by now that I'm certainly not alone. In fact, not all that few of the friends I tried to hide things from have turned up on the kinky side of the line during the years since then. I'm not ashamed, and I honestly don't think it's that much of a secret, anymore.

But it's still not talked about. It's not something that is reflected by people around me. It doesn't "exist", in the conversations, in the assumptions people make, in the mirrors that my friends eyes turn into when they look at me. 

So for my collar to be seen for what it really is, not just a pretty piece of chain around my neck but a significant symbol, as meaningful and telling about my life as my wedding ring, communicating something important about me and about my relationship to Mistress, that felt good. A little bit bewildering in the precise moment it happened, but good.

Also, now I'm deadly curious about my friend and his young wife and their story. Perhaps there's breadcrumbs laying around the 'net, now that I know what I'm looking for? *goes sniffing*