Helpless, Not the Fun Kind

I wanted a release. I wanted an escape from softness, from the mossy melancholy that still muffles my days in this heartachey in-between. Thinking back to the absolute REFRESHMENT that The Song Sender brought me last summer, I wanted this new guy to spank the softness OUT, to kindly knock me into my heart’s next phase. This new guy seemed promising, with the good banter,  probably because, like three messages in, I responded to “How was your weekend?” with “Lovely but I didn’t get spanked!” (Three sobbing emojis)

It wasn’t the best news week for this, but when is it ever? E. Jean Carroll’s courtroom journey was milder than, say, the Kavanaugh hearings, but still. In clips from that hideous CNN “town hall” thing, I’d heard the Trump crowd’s laughter at her expense, at the expense of all survivors. That crowd is why my body has trouble moving through the world, moving at all sometimes.

Sometimes on Feeld, all there is to go on is a pretty smile and a vibe—guys, for the love of heck please write bios. But I did my screening questions and:

“We’ll get along if you listen,” he’d said.

“We’ll see.” (Angel emoji) I’d replied.

He was BEAUTIFUL in the selfie he sent me, broad, dark-skinned, silly/frowny Dom expression, cute glasses.

I was EXCITED.

I put on one of my favorite red first-date dresses and headed over to my favorite restaurant, the same one where I’d met the Princely Guy. (I’ve decided to become an in-person regular there as my summer hobby, regardless of dating. BFF and I are going this Friday before we go see Fast X!)

When I saw him already at the table waiting for me, I just started to GLOW from within. He smelled so good when we hugged hello that I wanted to skip dinner and drag him right home.

The conversation tumbled into politics like falling off a cliff, though! I’d screened for politics, I always do, but I suppose that “I hate politics but I’m a registered Dem,” does sound pretty moderate in retrospect.

He really dug in and tried to convince me that there’s blame on both sides. That the hate only came when Trump arrived and said it was okay. That “we have to be nicer to Republicans if we want them on our side.”

“You sound like my mom,” is not a thing I ever want to hear myself say on a first date! Or ever! But there it was—the “very fine people on both sides” vibe even though he insisted that wasn’t what he was saying. My brain started fizzing with alarm and I couldn’t remember the phrase “false equivalency” or anything else coherent.

“Victim blaming, it’s…bad.” I said. He agreed with me there but was so determined that I should just give up. When I said I’d always fight for justice, he said “How’s that working for you? What are you going to do when Trump wins again?”

 I was already on the move. I offered to pay for dinner but Prospective Dom insisted. As the waiter very kindly packed up my samosas and rice, (I was getting rice all over the table!) my date said:

“So this means we’re not talking anymore?”

“Yes, I’m sorry, and it’s too bad because you’re SO BEAUTIFUL.”

At least it was one date in instead instead of seven, like it was with This Charming Man, that fall when Dave Chappelle was ruining everything.

Before I blocked Prospective Dom, he texted “I apologize,” and I wrote back, “It’s okay, that’s what first dates are for.”

But my brain stayed fizzing. As I drove home, I heard rustling sounds that turned out to be the takeout bag I’d left on the roof of the car—I would have to face the night samosaless. I overshared with my neighbors outside my apartment and regular-shared with closer friends over text. I called BFF while I added a few pieces to my 1000 piece puzzle of dahlias.

Sometimes, the cloud of dread seems real and insurmountable, like tyranny has already won. The “behave and maybe they’ll stop hurting you” impulse that has followed me from childhood can seem like the realest thing, can cast a shadow over everything I know and everything I am.

But. That beautiful impulse to flee. The grace with which I carried myself to safety. Knowing who it’s safe to let in, and who isn’t. It’s unreliable sometimes but precious and hard-won, I’m so, SO grateful for it.

I’m Not Angry, I’m Just Disappointed: Age, Déjà vu, and a Little Metablogging

A few weeks ago, two events conspired to make it really hard to have any faith in this process. I wrote a little bit about it here but I find myself needing to return to the topic. Part of what inspired the sadness of this post was HempRopes, the talented top who suspended me last month.

After we played together, he sent me the picture and let me know that I’d been a vey good bottom and that he’d play again any time, so I asked if we could make some plans. He responded enthusiastically, telling me it was time to meet his wife so that I could be vetted to come over and play at their house. I let him know that I was a ways away from private play but that it was a possibility for the future. The exchange was punctuated with more than a few smiley emoticons on my part.

He said that his November schedule was up in the air but that he’d let me know. I saw his RSVP on a mid-month event but hadn’t heard from him so I planned to go and play with Sweetie.

I should have had a blindfold on. We were at a very sociable venue and I was distracted from our scene. People kept coming over to say hi and for the most part I didn’t mind it until my friend Bubbly Sub came over and gave me a happy naked rope hug, glowing and bragging about how much fun she’d just had with HempRopes. She was all buzzy and glittery with happiness, and it should have just made me happy, but it didn’t. I don’t know why their having played bothered me so much, except that I couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d chosen her first because she is 24, more pliable, more agreeable than I am. There was no way I could ever get chosen if those were the desired traits.

The hurt brought me completely out of my scene with Sweetie—I was struck by the sheer empty futility of standing there naked trying to attract the attention of men, and most of the time failing, at least in the long term. I know much more happy and healthy uses for my nakedness, but in that moment of despair there were none to be had. I felt guilty for interrupting our fun, but I had to get some care and go home.

There was no offer from HempRopes to really decline, since he’d clearly forgotten that I’d asked for plans, but simply to hold myself to my decision, I sent him a note with the heading “Not Cut Out for Bunnying.” He responded that he certainly had had no intention to hurt me, but that he’d put out a call (on FL) and she’d responded. He said “I tend to get myself a queue when I put the call out, so I go in a “first come, first served” order.”

So BS was chosen not for her youth or cheer, but simply for her ability to sit on FetLife and wait for someone to offer to play. So in a way I guess it was her youth—no adult, professional woman would have time for that nonsense. She was, in the truest sense of the word, easy—a thing I will never be.

I didn’t say any of that, of course, I just sent a polite note that a queue wouldn’t feel right to me. He wished me luck and I crossed off another possibility, stunned by the callousness involved in thinking that he saw both me and BS as nothing but a take-a-number bodies waiting to entertain him.

The second blow to my sense of hope came a few days later, after I’d already posted about my general worries and emptiness. I’d had a good playnight with the Man About Town, and in my post-scene glow, I’d accidentally sent a tweet about it to him instead of Twitter. It was a silly mistake and since it had a hashtag in it, he took it as an invitation to look up this blog, even though I’d made it clear that that was considered 29^th base—I wanted us to get to know each other better before I trusted him to read it without trying to control it.

After ONE scene, either he thought we’d achieved that level of intimacy or he didn’t care.

I felt trapped. I found myself workshopping emotions I hadn’t had enough time to even think about yet, things it would seem INSANE to share with someone new, especially someone I was casually playing with. He apologized for “leaving marks that scared (Sweetie)” and it felt like this awful, creepy, invasion into my married life. I would have expressed concerns eventually, on my own terms, but having those insights taken from me felt awful.

Still, it was a mistake from a silly mistweet and the whole sex-blogger thing IS a tricky situation. If he would have apologized, I still wouldn’t have played with him again, but I wouldn’t have been quite so bitter. Instead, he was self-righteous, saying “I’m not going to apologize for reading something that is basically public property, that anyone could just stumble upon.”

Which would be a fair point if I hadn’t ASKED HIM NOT TO. I keep coming back to that:

I asked him not to and he did it anyway.

After one scene, he felt entitled to renegotiate our terms without me, to take what he thought he was entitled to, whether I agreed or not.

It is supremely disheartening, that even the most new-agey, married-to-a-high-priestess, referring-to-the-moon-as-She guy would still feel entitled to my inner life after such a tiny amount of time.

It’s enough to make me rethink my attraction to D/s situations. While I do of course physically enjoy being dominated, I think I’ve emotionally used dominance as a place-holder for things I’m not sure I can find or deserve, traits I believed in a year ago—ideals of masculinity that I see in friends and the husbands of friends but not in the men who are interested in me—courage, chivalry, integrity, emotional honesty and strength.

So far, my experience of dominant men has been one of cold cowardice—from Bill wishing simply for a chokeable fuck doll, to Fireguy thinking that my expressing a point of view about my own experience was going to wreck his entire existence, to HempRopes and his “First come, first served.” I started with a fear that that I could never be what men want, that a man could never be interested in my whole self, and I have found character after character to confirm those fears.

I worry a lot about being perceived as a man-hating harpy, and I’m sure that M.A.T. can commiserate with Fireguy to that effect, but I am really, really trying to be flexible and kind. I don’t want to have such a stunted view of men. I want to let someone real into my life; I’m just totally at a loss about how to get there.