How we met, or: Why a treehouse?

I bet you're wondering how Pablo and Mija met. I mean, otherwise, what are you doing roaming this site? Oh . . . you were lost and looking for information on building a treehouse? Well then aren't you the lucky one? You get to hear about us now for not one dollar or pound extra.

Pablo and Mija met by very lucky circumstance. This is of course how most of the very best things happen in our random universe. Basically it all happened in early 1997, on the Usenet newsgroup alt.sex.spanking, in the cyber town of ASSville. Mija was new and had just rather shyly and schoolgirlishly delurked. In her first blush of enthusiasm she misunderstood what Pablo meant by calling himself an 'English graduate student' and wrote to him to say she was studying English as well.

Pablo straightened out her misunderstanding, explaining he was a student who was English, but the two became correspondents anyway. Mija quickly developed a crush on Pablo's witty prose, falling too for the very gentle way he treated her in his letters. The two, while living many thousands of miles apart in one respect, in the other lived together. Pablo reminded Mija of that by gifting her with a story about the two of them and their fantasies, Spelling, which offered a gentle tease of her 'creative' words in her e-mails and posts.

By the time Pablo sent Mija the story Surfing, written when she was ill, to remind her not to stay on-line late at night, Mija had fallen in love with him. Now falling in love is always nice and wonderful and all that. But when you live 6000 miles from someone and they've never seen you and you're sure you look much better on the computer, it's also scary.

Anyway, the two decided they would live together in this sweet (okay, so it isn't always sweet there) cyber town and started imagining together late at night what their house would be like. They imagined some place small and snug, but with a schoolroom (of course) and window seat for Mija to read in. And a back garden with a big big tree.

One night one of them (Pablo and Mija both claim it was their own idea) suggested a treehouse for the back garden. Mija asked for a rope ladder that she could pull up after her and be all private. Pablo added a deck with a telescope. And the idea grew from there. There is something magic about a treehouse which reflects the magic of our relationship.

About Mija by Pablo

Thinking about Mija and the effect she's had on my life, it's a little like one of those cheesy film taglines: 'It's everything you dreamed of, and nothing you expect.' I've told her many times in the past that she's turned my life upside down, and that's perfectly true. When she then wonders aloud whether that's a good thing, I answer, honestly, that it was the wrong way up to begin with, so she's just set me on my feet.

It isn't a kind of indulgent sulking when I say that before Mija came around, I seriously doubted my ability to love and be loved. That didn't seem to bother me unduly, insulated as I was inside a bubble of hermetic self-obsession. It was always going to take someone both stubborn and persistent to break through, and that's exactly what she did.

Looking back, it's amazing how quickly the first e-mails we exchanged grew to epic proportions. I'm not good with people mostly, and don't have much energy for relationships - if you look up the word 'introvert' in a good dictionary, that's my picture they're using - but this was so much easier and more natural than I'd ever felt before. One day, I tagged a very simple '{I love you}' (yes, even with the curly brackets like that - it felt like a slightly tentative whisper) to the end of one of our long e-mails, and sent it off.

E-mails became on-line chat, which became long transatlantic phone calls. We wrote stories for each other (most of which you can find on this site), shared and trusted information about ourselves that no-one else on the planet knew. I've no idea what I did, but she seemed to fall in love with me, and I've no idea how she did it, but I fell in love with her. One day in 1998 I found myself flying halfway across the world to meet her, a brand-new wooden hairbrush in my bag. It was crazy, but it also just seemed to make perfect sense, and it still does.

But enough of the historical stuff. What is Mija like? Well, she's incredibly strong when she needs to be, but also strong enough to know that it's okay sometimes to be vulnerable. Often she's more wise and mature than I think I could be were I to live to 300, but also grown-up enough to know that sometimes she needs not to be quite so grown-up - which is something far too many people never come to terms with.

Perhaps especially at those times I can help keep her somewhat grounded, and create a space for her to feel safe within. I hope so. She awakens feelings of protectiveness and love in me that no-one else ever has. To be trusted so completely by another person is extremely humbling.

We both tend to be made a little uneasy by the idea of labelling our relationship as this, or that, and by the idea of labelling our positions within the relationship. I'm not even going to think about that. We're just us: two equal, different people, who love each other and meet each other's needs in all sorts of ways and at all sorts of levels. She's mine, and I'm hers.

There's a sense in which all of our writings here are revealing of who we are, so the biographical stuff doesn't end with this page. I hope you enjoy exploring our little treehouse. It's a pleasure to have you come visit.

About Pablo by Mija

Some of you know Pablo from the Usenet newsgroups alt.sex.spanking and soc.sexuality.spanking as someone polite, logical, a fine writer and generally fair and clear thinker (stubborn too if you've ever tried to argue with him). But I don't want to describe him in terms that other people know. What is he like in relation to me?

Pablo in relation to Mija walks a very delicate balance. I'm sure it's not always easy. He generally feels very protective of her, but also a lot of respect for her as his equal. For him I'm a child and adult - always different and always respected.

Pablo is the first (and only) person in my life I've ever been totally honest with. That wasn't always true. I used to shield him from the truth, lying by telling him everything was okay. This was in part because I was kidding myself, making it easier to avoid looking at problems head on. But it was also because I didn't, for a really long time, believe that what was between us wasn't just a game for him. I thought if he knew how hard dealing with me was going to be he'd give up.

Of course, lying made a difficult situation worse, made it harder and more frustrating for him to try and help me. But he never gave up, never let me push him away. 'Cause he's the most stubborn man in the world. <grin> Gradually my impulse to lie receded.

I honestly think of Pablo as my guardian, as the person who looks after me and helps me keep everything in balance. Mostly I'm a sort of weird person. I always seemed sort of old as a child, but then never really grew up as an adult. This isn't something I'm proud of (in fact, I used to think I needed to hide it because I was sure it was proof of insanity).

Reality and fantasy bleed in and out of each other for me, sometimes making it hard to see my problems for what they are. When I started letting my fantasy world out a bit, it threatened to overwhelm everything else in my life. That made me dislike and be afraid of it. Pablo helped me to see this as something good and valuable rather than as a curse. At the same time, he helps me stay focused so I'm not afraid of drifting.

<reading over what I've written>

I've made Pab sound like a rock. <giggle> And that's true in that he's very stable. But he's also very creative (as you can see from his stories). And very open - likes to explore and experiment. Each time I told him something new I wanted to explore, I was afraid this time I'd squick him, that he'd be disgusted to hear I thought about such things. Instead he's been open to exploring and allowed me to enjoy new facets of myself.

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