The Power of Silence

This page of Ser­i­jules’ Jour­nal from Tues­day, April 8th, 2003 is used with permission.

Silence is a given for me, being I am deaf.

How­ever, it’s also given me the abil­ity to learn to com­mu­ni­cate with­out need­ing words, some­thing I have had many part­ners com­pli­ment me on. Find­ing some­one that also has that skill is wondrous.

I have one per­son I play with, he canes me, and our entire scenes are usu­ally done silently…there is no need for him to speak to me or I to him, we com­mu­ni­cate amaz­ingly through small ges­tures and watch­ing each oth­ers body lan­guage even though we do not play often. He can be sit­ting across the room and I just look at him intently, with­out tak­ing my gaze away when he meets it…and he knows what I want, and the canes come out. He doesn’t need to stop and ask me how I’m doing; a hand on my back will get a small, barely notice­able nod from me, and he knows I’m all right to con­tinue. If the hand doesn’t move, I know he needs me to look at him so he can gauge where I am by my expres­sion. If it gets to be too much, he’s real­ized that the slight tense lift of my palm or the length of time that my leg lingers bent up into the air rather than remain­ing in posi­tion after a par­tic­u­larly painful stroke, means that I am near­ing my limits.

When he switches canes, he will slip the end into my palm so I know what he is doing…but if I am too far into sub­space, he can tell by how badly I’m shak­ing, and he will just slowly set­tle the cane into his tar­get and con­tinue. He will hold 3 fin­gers up in my line of sight, and I know he is telling me that there are 3 strokes left, and they will be the hard­est, but then we are done. We’ve never talked about these things, they are just there and we both under­stand them. There is no rela­tion­ship between us other than occa­sional play part­ners and friends, and it’s so sim­ple. It’s very pow­er­ful for me.

With another per­son I play with, and this per­son being some­one I am very close to and means a lot to me, I have also expe­ri­enced this level of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It was fleet­ing, unex­pected, but just as powerful…and some­thing I just know will be a part of our play again. It makes me shiver to think of it. It’s very allur­ing. Very fas­ci­nat­ing. Very erotic. As much as I loved the actions in the scene we had…it was that shar­ing of silent com­mu­ni­ca­tion that made me shiver and smile. She left an impres­sion on me with­out say­ing a word.

I look for this often in others..it tells me a lot about a per­son. I often find myself think­ing that peo­ple depend on words too much and don’t pay enough atten­tion to the silent details. The words only say so much…it is the actions that go with them that give them the mean­ing, and the abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate your wants and needs and inten­tions with­out speak­ing so much of a sin­gle word, is a sign of strength and secu­rity in the rela­tion­ship, no mat­ter what the nature of that rela­tion­ship is.

Silent com­mu­ni­ca­tion is one of the most pow­er­ful things I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. It’s actu­ally more of a rar­ity than I ever thought it would be.

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