Friday, November 9, 2012

The Public Eye vs. The Private Life

Hey Team,
So I started this post last week- just got my thoughts down on paper while they were still fresh- but hadn't had a chance or the desire to finish it until now. Thus it is rather disjointed and hard to follow, but I think I get my point across. So here it goes:

Don't really know how to start this so I suppose I will just begin. I currently am finding that I want to share less and less of my personal life here, in part because my life is so different now than what it used to be. It used to be just me and my lovers and partners and that was it. I knew no one. I had never been in a room with more than one spanko until London (two years after I started my blog), and then it was another year before my first party. Yeah my face was there, and I had plenty of online friends, but for the most part, it was pretty anonymous. Or at least I still had the feeling that it was. Perhaps not anonymous so much as isolated…

Now I am not only a model, but also, and perhaps more importantly, someone who plays in the local scene. It somehow feels OK to tell the details of my sex life and fantasies to people on the other side of the globe, or even just people in front of their computers in the house next door. But I am not inclined to do so to the guy in the corner of the local dungeon. Actually, I don't mind when strangers (even local strangers) read and then say they are fans. But it’s weird that people I know and play with or hang out with- scene friends IRL (because I have those now)- read this... sometimes feels like I can’t be fully open...

I remember having this issue when I dated that guy in London briefly (you would have to be a really dedicated fan to remember that). He had been a fan, and that was how we met. And he read the blog. So it was strange to write because I knew he would read it eventually. Edward never did, and neither did the ex. Even Paul didn't read the blog unless I asked him to…

In regards to the issue of being in the “scene,” I had a similar problem with Sarah and Paul. But that had so many different facets to it the comparison isn't entirely true. Both of them are in the public eye in a professional way, so for people to know about their lives isn't all that strange. It's a persona- it’s a role in many ways even if it is also their lives. So it feels different, both in regards to what I can say about the other people in my life, and also in regards to what I can say about myself.

Now I find myself with someone who is a pretty big deal in the local community, but not in the same sort of public way that Paul was. Daddy does have a public face to keep up- he has to be a good image for his store- but most of the part of him that is in the scene is just him, straight up. Paul’s entire life was the scene, but it was the spanking scene as a whole, not simply the local community (and Daddy’s is a community I don’t belong to or understand. Paul’s was my community too. I wasn’t a stranger there). He had been with models before, and was always someone who put himself out there and didn’t really give a shit about the backlash. Me blogging was never an issue. He understood that it came with.

Daddy… well he reads my blog now. Apparently he read it some when we weren’t together too- or at least he kept up with me. Had never heard of me before we met, and has never read the back logs, but he reads it now. He had read my last post before I told him that I had posted it…. Certainly changes how I look at talking about things…


All of this is making me think- why did I want to do this in the first place? What was it that made me think I should share my deepest desires anonymously on the internet? It’s attention and love, but a rather craven and shallow form of the two. The love of fans is never the same as true love. You are trying to prop yourself up on the love of others, but that means you fall with it as the ever mercurial nature of public attention wavers or falters…. When I came out to my brother, he said that it tends to be very insecure people who do porn- because they are searching for some sort of acceptance and love and validation that they can’t find elsewhere…. And I’m not going to lie, we all know that part of why I did this after the first month was because it made me feel beautiful for the first time…

It’s not that I don't want to share anymore. More like I wish I felt like I could share in the way I used to. I just want to get it out. Have my public diary. Anonymously… or at least with that illusion of anonymity. But now feeling anonymous would be more of a delusion than an illusion….


I recently for the first time ever defined myself as a model. Like a professional model, and not a blogger or producer or kinkster or any of those other things I have always clung to in resistance to being a "model." But the truth finally is that I am a model. I, more often than not, am relating something here that is in a way professional. But that doesn’t mean though that what I’m relating isn’t also personal, because somewhere along the way, those became one in the same.

I want to find a way back to (or forward to) a public life that makes me feel I can share my private thoughts. That I don't have to keep my private life secret and hold onto it so dearly, given that my public life is in so many ways most people’s most intimate of private lives. I am hoping that I no longer have to so fervently grasp at the privacy that withholding gives me the illusion of but never really bring me….

So I’m going to be working on that. It’s going to be an experiment. We’ll see how it goes. For now, I think I will just pretend that no one I know reads this. That all the commenters are my online friends, whom I love but will never actually meet… going to pretend that none of this has consequences.

Illusion or delusion?

Xoxo
Princess Kelley

PS. OMG I apologize for the grammatical and compositional clusterfuck that this post is. I was in a really weird headspace when I wrote the snipits the first time, and linking together random thoughts that are meant to be profound... well it's not particularly easy. And I didn't exactly succeed, but I didn't want to scrap this post either. So don't judge, lol.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Kelley,

    I don't think you need anything or anyone to make you feel beautiful. You ARE beautiful. The photos from your recent modeling shoots that you posted on FL are absolutely amazing!

    We all struggle with "the line" and where in our lives it belongs. I believe in time you will work out a reasonable compromise.

    In case you weren't aware, Friday is Love Our Lurkers Day. We'd love to have you join us.

    Hugs,
    Bonnie

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  2. Hello, Princess:

    The same thing happened with me and my blog.

    Originally, I was anonymous and could say anything I wanted. Then, I met real people in real life and had to be aware that they read my blog.

    There's a lot to be said for this: "[Y]ou’re making a classic Normal mistake: You’re giving a shit about what other people think of you. That has to stop." --Alice Laussade ( http://jerrybear.tumblr.com/post/33936952497 )

    But even though I posted that, I don't always follow it. I don't want to post something that will hurt someone's real-life feelings.

    --
    Jerry Bear

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  3. Hi there,

    I've been following your blog for a little while now, and just felt the need to comment on this post, which comes on the right day to allow me to comment and de-lurk as well!

    There is a fine line, I think when it comes to living your life in the public eye, between sharing too much, and too little. I'm recently out of a long term relationship and am finding it hard now to write on my blog. Things that felt ok to share in the past, now feel intensely private and I dont feel like I should share a lot of things.

    There are things that I've had to censor from my blog in the past due to the people they talked about suddenly needing things to be made a lot more private. I didn't have any problem with that, but it did make me think hard about where my line was.

    I don't think it's easy, and I dont think there's one answer that's right for everyone. But in time we will find our line and find a level of detail we are comfortable with sharing.

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  4. Fascinating discussion. I think part of the issue is about information asymmetry. It's uncomfortable when people you know socially know more about your secret life than you know about theirs, I'm guessing.

    Karl Friedrich Gauss

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