Yesterday I went for a hike with my BFF Angelface. Even
though he’s a lil’ bit deaf, he is still the best listener I know. In fact,
having to kind of holler my stories makes our walks/two-person support group
sessions even more cathartic. I’m amazed at how unwavering he is in his
support. It’s funny how saying my self-doubts aloud to some folks just makes me
realize how silly they are. I feel so lucky to have that kind of friendships.
It was such a beautiful day. We saw baby geese and a downy woodpecker. We
smelled all manner of flowering trees and scrolled through every nuance of our
inner lives.
And yet, even though he listened so kindly and perfectly, I
still felt ashamed for telling him all of the stuff that’s happened lately. I
got home and felt so guilty even though he’d given me absolutely no reason to.
Partly I guess I’m just ready to move on to the next
(hopefully much more awesome) set of stories, but I think it’s more than that.
Even though I’ve done every single thing to fight the Man-induced compulsion to
shut up, I still feel guilty for talking about it, even to my best friend. I
can hear those chiming admonitions about “privacy” that ran through that stupid
thread and even though we are not in touch in any way, I can still feel The Man
judging me because I didn’t “move on” as fast as he’d have liked.
And I do still feel embarrassed for how much of myself I
wasted on him, how much, okay, probably something like love I felt for somebody
to whom I essentially did not exist. I hate the way his idea of me is still in
my body and heart, to the point where I feel guilty about sharing a story with
my friend.
My BFF, my wife, and my other close friends have given me so
much care and support, and honestly I really do owe them better stories. And I
want the shame to be out of me somehow—no matter how many times they TELL me
that it wasn’t my fault, etc, I won’t be able to really move forward until I
believe it, all the way down deep. This has been my lifetime struggle, and I hope
somehow I’m getting closer.
The past couple of days have been quite happymaking. I’ve
been feeling all loving and fulfilled at work in spite of (because of?) the
immanent threat of layoffs. Last night, I spent the evening with friends
watching fantastically-soundtracked burlesque. And today, I had the bestbest
time with Sweetie—we slept in until 11, had strawberry waffles, read a stack of
magazines, and had soft, gentle sexytimes that filled my heart all up. On TOP
of all that, we went to the library and Whole Foods and then sat in the park
reading our books and eating sushi, fresh bread, and fancy chocolates. The park
was full of happy couples and birdsong and the sound of stringed instruments
was wafting over from a nearby museum. The air smelled like lilacs and sun.
But when we got home from our date, we laid down for a nice
spring snooze and for some reason, all that stuff from a few weeks ago came
back. The Man still creeps out my mind sometimes, even though I’d gladly have
the whole thing Eternal Sunshined out. The creepiness comes and it makes my
sense of well-being seem unreal. I remembered the mean, condescending,
self-capitalized things that his friends said to me, his smarmy lack of
accountability, and my worry (which Sweetie disagrees with) that I may not be
welcome in our regular dungeon anymore.
As I write this in my living room, they’re there setting up
the furniture for my favorite monthly party and I miss it so much. I miss the
feeling of waiting for someone else to get naked so that I wouldn’t be the
first one. (I’m always the first one.) I love watching the crew work together
to get the furniture up, claiming a bench, drinking wine out of a plastic cup,
lending my Hello Kitty tape to anyone who needs it. I miss the feeling of
connection to the other girls as we prepare for our respective (and collective)
adventures. I miss watching my pals have a good time while we have our own.
Yet despite all of that warm feeling, I have an apprehension
about all of it. I told Sweetie earlier today (I TRULY have to work on my
pillow talk skills) that I worry that putting myself in ANY sexy situation
might be putting myself in harm’s way, like somehow staying connected to the
kink side of myself will put me on the road to more blame, more hurt, more exploitation.
I know that that isn’t rational or true, that my sexed-up self is worthy and
good and that I didn’t deserve what happened, but it’s hard to shake the urge
to go all the way inside, to be deeply defensive, to close up rather than risk
being seen again the way that he saw me, or failed to see me.
What sticks with me most about the situation with The Man is
that to him, on some fundamental level, I wasn’t even there. One of the
defenses he gave on the online thread was that it wasn’t scene invasion because
he’d invited the other lady in. That scared me more than anything else, because
he wasn’t just discounting my limits and everything we negotiated, he wasn’t
seeing me as a factor AT ALL. When they stood around talking shit after I’d
asked him to tell her to leave, it didn’t feel like he was ignoring me, it felt
like I wasn’t a me at all.
I realize that I’ve just admitted to being haunted by an
internet discussion thread, that getting up from a lovely snooze with my wife
to write about a long-past jackass was a poor life choice, considering how
lucky and blessed I am and how much there is to look forward to.
But here’s the thing—I’m still really hurt. I’m still hurt
that he turned a nice (if ultimately mismatched) relationship into a cheap,
meaningless, ugly scene for no reason except selfish carelessness. I’m hurt
that he saw me as desperate and pathetic instead of seeing the good parts if
me, a happy, pheromone-drunk girl who had a crush. I’m hurt that the venue
owner lied to me about believing my story and that so many people were much
more concerned about Fet Life’s terms of use than my own. I’m hurt that some
random lady I never met wrote a tirade about what a whiny, spiteful baby she
thought I was being. And I’m hurt that, though many strangers posted and wrote
to lend their support and let me know I wasn’t alone, the people I’ve played
next to for more than a year, who were exactly in the position to let people
know I wasn’t some weird stereotype of a woman scorned, did not speak up. It
hurts to think that anyone would believe that a grown-ass woman with a career
and a family would put herself through all that just over a breakup. It hurts
to know how deep misogyny runs.
Most of all, it hurts that I didn’t have to go through all
that. I should have listened to my intuition. The man was fired from the zoo
for yelling at the birds, for god’s sake. He was very thorough and
out-in-the-open about ALL of the red flags, including the fact that his “Dos
and Don’t list” asked for silence from his submissive. I ignored every red flag
and every instinct I had that told me to just run.
I don’t know why I ignored everything that told me he wasn’t
safe, except that I wanted to be flexible. I wanted to be open-minded. I wanted
to show that I could compromise, and I ended up compromising everything. That’s
how I ended up being not-there.
A lot has been written about the pleasure of submission
being in the annihilation of the self, but I never want to feel that feeling of
not being there again. It’s too much like death, and I am a really, really big
fan of existing. On beautiful, perfect days like this, I still have to fight
the annihilating influence of him, the fear that he was right to see me as
nonexistent. There’s no easy way to convince myself that I’m actual, but every
step toward pleasure and joy helps.
For a little while I was worried that the post-The-Man depression was serious, but my mood has lifted quite a bit in the last few days. Even though I'm not quite ready to jump back into the dating pool just yet, I do feel enough oomph to wonder where my next flirt/kink/public nudity will come from. I thought briefly that that time of my life might be past, but, um, notsomuch.
After I blew the whistle on the Scary Party, I'm not sure if we'll be welcome at our regular dungeon--I mean, our dungeon owner is MUCH more sensible than the SP's, but I could see he might feel leery. I'm nowhere near ready to tackle that conversation, so that's out for now.
Wait, I just Googled "Beltane" and I think I figured it out. Huzzah.
I’ve been thinking a lot about those Fatal Attraction references that The Man made about me. I’ve never
seen the movie, but I think maybe I identify more with the Michael Douglas
character than with Glenn Close. I remember from somewhere (probably from an
old episode of Siskel and Ebert) that
(after focus groups demanded it) the story ends with the married couple safely
back in bed, having vanquished the hostile outside force. In other words, the
movie is an advertisement for monogamy, a cautionary tale that only nightmares
lay outside the marriage bed.
(As a side note, I think that a lot of the couple-centric
problems that outside partners run into (wall-building, rule-making, hierarchy,
and a general atmosphere of fear) stem from the fact that the bunny-boiler
trope is so pervasive that even honest attempts at non-monogamy evoke traces of
her.)
Now that The Man and the Scary Party are behind me, it’s
very tempting to wish that I could use the scariness of the experience to
fortify myself for a life of monogamy—after all, Sweetie has nearly all of the
things that I need in a partner, plus so much more: she is chivalrous, brave,
smart, deeply loving, and as the icing on the cake, fantastic with knots. For
the foreseeable future, until I learn how to actually listen to my intuition
and treat myself as somebody valuable even in the midst of man-smell, I am only with her.
And yet, every morning this week, I’ve had the same dream:
kissing a man. A real one, not the goth-boys-who-did-not-grow-up-to-be-goth-men
than I’ve been drawn to lately. He is decisive, clear, desirous, and hot. Maybe
he’s my own animus, or maybe he is real. Or both.
Likewise, when I look up porn (at least there’s not so much
anhedonia this time), it’s always of the many-men-one-woman variety. There is
the simple fact that I lovelovelove penises, even if my relationship with those
who have them tends to be fraught.
Before the now-long-past thing with Bill, I believed in
something simple. I thought I could find someone, make out, synch our
calendars, fall in love. I thought that if I was open enough, my missing person
would appear. It never occurred to me that I would be asked and tempted to give
up my autonomy, my dignity, my voice. I don’t know what to make of this year,
how much of it I’ll keep and how much I’ll shed, easy as deleting my Fet
profile.
I still don’t know if what I want (two real, deep
relationships, one with Sweetie and one with a man) is a real possibility or a
dream to be let go. My need to be loved by a man is so warped by compromise and
taboo that it seems like just a huge risk, but a life without it seems very
sad. There aren’t any answers for it now, just a quiet, simplified life and a
hope that someday soon I’ll feel well enough to socialize, that someday soon
I’ll be on solid ground.
When it became clear to me that nothing was going to change
at the Scary Party (The owners had given me lip service about improving safety
but The Man was kept as head of security) I decided to post my story on the
local public Fet forums. When followed was a terrible experience that is in
many ways more frightening than the original violation/harassment.
I don’t usually wade into internet discussions—I’ve never been
awesome at filtering out feedback, so it’s just a recipe for hurt. But I knew I
was going to feel guilty unless I did everything I could to warn people that
this might happen to them if they go.
Here’s what I learned:
1. The owner announced that he never really took my story
seriously because The Man broke up with me during the process of me reporting
it. He told them I was making up details because I was heartbroken. They
claimed to have been having an “investigation” but that really amounted to just
finding ways to dismiss the story.
2. The Man is still claiming that I “consented” mid-scene
and everyone seems to be accepting that, even though he was breaking
pre-negotiated limits and breaking the party’s own rules. The creepiest part
was when he said “She said she was enjoying it.” That doesn’t make it any more
consensual!
3. The number of doms who run that party and are willing to
attack me and try to keep me silent went up significantly. One woman yelled at
me for “muddying the investigation” by saying what happened to me--shouldn’t my
point of view have been part of the investigation in the first place?
4. More than one person read the post and decided that the
real problem was me cross-posting.
5. Lots of people who told me it was my fault because I
hadn’t called red. What is the point of negotiating if it’s okay for the dom to
do whatever he wants anyway? I said in
the post that I wished I had called red, but that I was in subspace and my
voice was (non-consensually) restricted. A few people said that he’d done wrong,
but they were far outnumbered by people who told me to quit whining, just get
used to it, it happens to everybody. It was mostly ladies yelling at me in this
way.
6. The part that made me laugh the most was when The Man
asked me what he could do to “make amends” Um, stop lying about what happened?
7. Even my “friend” who wrote to send me support made it
clear that she had no quarrel with the venue itself.
8. Sweetie wrote the most beautiful post in my defense. I
love her so much and I hope someday soon that I can be able to feel the warmth
of my own home again.
Right now, it seems as though the entire local community is
attacking me and telling me that my safety is not worth protecting. It seems
like there is not a safe place anywhere in the world. People work so hard to
protect the rights of predators, they argue so hard against anyone who tries to
change things, it’s hard to imagine things ever getting better.
I wish that I would have had the sense to break up with him
right away. I can’t explain why I didn’t, except that he seemed to understand
what he’d done wrong and I liked him a lot. I wish I had just gotten myself
home that night, reported the incident, and put myself to bed, but I didn’t. I
tried to stay close to someone who’d showed me he didn’t think I was worthy of
care. It doesn’t make me deserve what happened, but I hate that it wrecked my
credibility and made it less likely that something would be done.
The amount of crazymaking doublethink that came from The Man
and the rest of the posters makes me wonder if I’ll ever be able to participate
publicly in kink again.
I did everything I could do. I stood up to dom after dom in
those conversations. I overcame the desire to be a good girl that has kept me
silent in the past. Maybe that’s enough to break the pattern, to keep me from
putting myself in harm’s way again.
It’s a beautiful spring day. The leaves on the trees are
budding and we have the whole weekend to ourselves. I am going to try to stay
away from Fet’s black background, both literally and metaphorically. I deserved
a safe place to play, to be as happy and cared for as anyone else there. Even
if nobody else believes that, I do.
I’m feeling really sad and scared right now. I feel like
trying to change what happens at the Scary Venue has become kind of a creepy
part-time job. The owner has been very kind and deliberate, acknowledging that
his staff needs to be more respectful and that something has to be done to make
the venue safer. He let me know that he met with The Man yesterday and is
taking a few days to process before he decides what to do about him.
Imagining the conversation between them fills me with a deep
sadness and dread. I know that The Man saw me as possessive and overly nervous,
and I am afraid that he must’ve used that to somehow justify what happened. I
am so afraid that it will be dismissed as a He Said/She Said situation, when
really it’s a He Said/She Said/She Said situation where one of the Shes didn’t
ask to play with the other. (and where it’s two doms’ word against one sub’s)
Obviously I know I just never have to go back to the party,
but I just don’t know how I’ll handle it if they keep those two on their
security staff—I honestly don’t know how I could go back to ANY local party if
that happens. It all just seems like a huge power imbalance between the
in-crowd and those who are new. I can’t stand the idea that what happened to me
could be happening right next to me any time I’m playing out in the world. The
whole thing gives me deep moral misgivings not just about engaging in BDSM, but
about engaging with the world at all. How can I participate in a system that
allows such scary power imbalances? How can I ever feel safe again?
I know that removing him from the staff or barring him from
one party won’t take away the fear, hurt, and sense of loss that comes from his
boneheaded behavior that night—what happened will have always happened. I know
that only time and kindness to myself will heal what was broken.
Sweetie says I won’t have to withdraw all the way, that
there’s no reason to give up other parties. She’s probably right that when this
passes, I’ll be naked in a room full of friends soon enough, but for now, my
world is narrowed to a little tunnel of fear, wondering what lies he told about
that night, wondering if, in the end, I’ll count for anything.
