I woke from a dream in which Mina had been bound. She stood, wearing a wooden yoke that kept her hands level with her face. Her hands were red and balled into fists; the first sign of her frustration. The tears in her eyes were the second. She was trying to look down at the metal restraints that were around her thighs and hinged together, but she couldn’t see around the wood and it kept her from lowering her chin. She was naked and as I approached her, I knew that I’d done this to her; bound her this way. The rounded hinge pointed up and would rub between her legs faintly if she moved, the cold metal sending a shock that she both loved and hated and she couldn’t figure out how to make it happen more or make it stop. I woke from the dream, wanting her, but she’d already left for work and I was alone in the bed, awake after only a few hours of restless sleep.
I don’t dream often these days, but as always when I do its vividly so and they are usually somehow related to what’s going on in my life. I’d dreamt recently of a friend who lives something of a double life; I was in a grocery store in a city I’ve never been to and I mistook a fairer-haired, slightly plainer version of her for the real Charlotte, only to find out that she was a twin that I’d never been told about when the real Charlotte appeared. I don’t have dreams that entail sex very often, but complication isn’t uncommon in them. I dream often that I can fly, but sometimes only a few feet above the ground, or that someone is taking elaborate measures to overcome something in their own life. My dreams are a puzzle, a problem to be solved and they very often have a connection with what’s happening in the waking world.
Mina told me the day before that her father had asked outright what I do for a living. She’d been meaning to tell me, but for how long, she didn’t say. It hadn’t come up during our trip, so I more or less figured that it was only a matter of time. People who don’t know usually ask a lot of questions; people who have an idea usually wait for it to be brought up, until they feel that it can’t wait any longer. Once it’s on the table, the reactions vary from awe to revulsion and are often accompanied by curiosity (morbid or otherwise). I’d met Mina’s father during our trip to New York and I’d gotten his approval; we’d gotten along quite well. She’d got along quite well with my family as well when we visited them in Detroit.
She told me a few days ago that she’d told her brother and she told me yesterday that her father had finally asked. I don’t know if it changes things; Mina say’s it doesn’t. But when it does change things, it’s not always instant. The pressure of wondering when he’ll find out is gone now. Now the only thing that remains to be seen is if the approval remains or if I’ve lost it and if I have; what will it take to get it back. Mina’s father is a good man though and has the patience of a saint, which I’ve seen him exercise with the people who he cares for. He’s kind and accommodating and I think that even if this does give him pause (which I can understand why it might) it’s more important to him how I treat his daughter, that I take care of her and make her happy. I’m the first of Mina’s boyfriends to get his approval and it happened because I made an effort to meet him and when I did, he said that he could see that she and I looked at each other the same way that he looked at his own wife and it made him happy.
It might seem strange to read an adult entertainment blog where the writer worries over the opinions of others, but I do in certain circumstances. It isn’t in general; it’s very specific and it isn’t for my own sake at the moment, it’s for Mina’s. I want her to rest assured that her father is happy and is proud of her. I know how much that means to her. I also know that every time I schedule a shoot, every time I pick up my camera and point it at a pretty girl, I’m asking her for something like permission and forgiveness and it never, even for a moment, escapes me how much that might be to ask of some people and that some couldn’t (didn’t) give as much. This isn’t just a part of my distant past, it’s a part of what I do now and what I’ll be doing for the foreseeable future and that I have someone outside of it all who is alright with it impresses me constantly. It also doesn’t escape me that I’ve got an extraordinary woman or that i’m a very lucky man.
