A Fortune Cookie Slip is Really Small

Before I untangle this connection any further, I have to say, I chose this. I went all in on The Shy One because, well, I’m not sure I have other settings. But I knew he didn’t want the same kind of relationship I wanted, and I chose him anyway. Partly because love, but partly because I don’t feel worthy of what I want. It seemed easier and more fun to try to fit into his limited vision for us than to keep looking for the kitchen table or otherwise more available guy/constellation that I wanted. Sorry, me!

And while I’m fumbling through the push-pull cycle of neediness/withholding/being marooned on weeknights, it’s important to acknowledge that there was a three-day trip coming up for us, mid-February. I can’t fully explain why that wasn’t factoring into my heart’s schedule math. I really, REALLY wish I could have made it to Friday the 17^th.

Anyway, a week before the actual breakup, after I admitted that the texts were carrying too much weight because I missed him ALL the time, because I wanted more intimacy and more groundedness to our connection, he suggested daily calls. (I remember in the beginning, he was always telling me I could call whenever I wanted, but that never felt like the right thing to do for whatever reasons.)

So we picked a time that worked for both of our work days (This daytime stuff has a mistress vibe to me, but I don’t think it would’ve if our hearts were aligned.) and had nice calls for a few days. I liked having a little more of his ordinary dailiness in my ears, but I also resented the impingement on my work/art/whatever during the day.

But it was lovely, those little chances to know him a little more. Until Thursday before last. My small-talk go-to, what are you making for supper?

Thursday was Chinese food night, it turns out, so I was like, “Oh yay! Send me a fortune!”

“Nah. That’s (Younger Daughter)’s thing. I wouldn’t want to mess with that.”

She likes to smash the fortune cookies when they come, a precious tradition for sure, and one I would never have asked to be present for. But would really have liked to be present for, I guess it’s okay to admit.

A fortune cookie slip is so small. Grab it after dinner when you’re clearing the plates, snap a pic, easy-peasy!

I didn’t say that of course, I just made agreeable noises and let the subject move on to other things. Like I did after so many little rejections like that.

I couldn’t and can’t fathom how I could have “messed with” his daughter’s tradition by wanting a picture of a fortune cookie slip, but that’s how it felt to him. I guess, like the me world and the family world would have come too close, the fortune cookie slip turning into a vortex and then a black hole that would destroy both worlds somehow. He was having a protective instinct, I don’t think it was intentionally cruel or phobic, but just whoa. Not this.

Aside from the closetedness, his conservative background, and general resistance to change, I can see how being in a relationship with someone who wants more could feel claustrophobic, even threatening. I can empathize with the pressure there, I felt it too, from the other side. A mismatch feels oppressive no matter what anyone tries, that’s why there’s breakups!

But being seen as a threat to children. That’s just something you just have to live with, as a queer educator, as a queer ANYTHING. I’ve lived my whole adult life with the societal idea that I might be a “groomer”—it was there the whole time, even before the DeSantises of the world decided to make the implicit prejudice more explicit.

I know that it’s partly his own shame, his own dissatisfaction with his own poly situation that made that cookie slip vortex such a real fear. I’m just really, really sorry to have put my poor heart in the way of that shame and fear, especially since I saw it coming. So I’m writing myself a little apology.

Dear Self,

Yes, I knew better, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to what you really wanted, that I tried to make you settle for so much less.

In fairness though, we also deserved the pleasure and happiness he WAS able to give! There’s no reason to feel ashamed of all that! It was real.

Self, I’m going to try to hear you. You want someone you might see on Christmas Day, even though the 20^th was lovely. You want someone who will share his life, organically and at a pace something other than glacial. You want to take your time and date whatever number of people feels right. You want to feel like a gift, not a duty or a burden. You want to bloom and vine and grow love all over the place. You want to have bad days or panics or sad moments without feeling like an annoying todo list item.

Self, you’re a morning glory, not a bonsai, not a cactus, not a pruned miniature rose. You want to love big. You’re already doing it. Go ahead.

 

New Heart Goal

So I think I would like to learn to recognize when I have deep feelings for a guy at the time that it's happening, as opposed to fighting against it until it comes out way after the fact. That would give me a better shot at actually expressing it in a fruitful way, and also cut down on  the number of after-the-fact-letters I end up writing. Maybe.

Revisiting the Dream Guy

When I first started dating guys again last fall, I had a very clear idea of the kind of relationship I wanted. While I’m glad to be considering other kinds of connections, it’s worth remembering that this project is about learning to love myself so that I take care of myself in a real relationship with a man. If I’m honest, the dream is one guy.

In many ways, Bill and Fireguy could not have been more opposite, but they had this in common: they were emotionally unavailable and I knew that. I am horrified at how much I deluded myself into thinking that if I just said exactly the right thing and did exactly what they wanted me to do, I could matter to them, they would love me and keep me safe. They both wanted me for primarily physical reasons and they both rejected me as soon as I had any negative feedback at all.

Attaching myself to guys who are not in a position to get attached to me is a way of telling myself that I don’t deserve the attachment, that I don’t deserve a real relationship with a guy. With anybody, really.

As a way to refocus myself on what I really want and take stock of what I’ve learned so far, here’s my new list of what I’m looking for in a guy. Some of these qualities are not things that I myself possess, but that I aspire to.

My Dream Guy:

1. Has an innate sense of empathy, social and environmental justice, and respect for the human body.  He may not always know what to do about those things, but he feels them. This seems like a lot to ask for.  We’re living in harsh and callous times—even the Mayor of Kittentown has been known to tweet a rape joke! (I know. I’m trying to figure it out about him, too.)
2. Is an amazing kisser. Before I kiss someone, I should feel like these is at least some potential of a romantic relationship—I’m going to do my best to be honest with myself about this.
3. Has great taste in music. I’d given up on this one after things with Bill (still the best song sender) got so hurty, but it really is an important part of attraction for me.
4. Is a top who likes rough sex, but in an affectionate, affirming, and humanized way. He should be open and willing to discuss the emotions that go along with sex, even if it’s sometimes awkward and not-hot.
5. Is patient, kind, and emotionally available. When I’m around him, I should feel safe, happy, and free, fully able to be myself and get to know him. He is happy to let me run and play—he always trusts me to return.
6. Is willing and able to share himself, to let me into his everyday life. If he’s in a relationship, there should be room for me to negotiate and ask for what I need.
7. Is not in a couple with a lot of set-in-stone rules. That doesn’t give a secondary any room to help create the culture of the constellation—it makes it inherently unequal. To paraphrase Cunning Minx: “You got all those rules? You don’t get this.”
8. Is interested in me (and I’m interested in him) for lots of different reasons, not just kink or my hot boobs. We should be able to be whole people together.
9. He is big, strong, and tall, loving and affectionate but also capable of throwing me around like a little fucking ragdoll.
10. Lets me love him as ridiculously much as I want to. Lets me cry if I’m sad. Gets excited with me.

I already found all of these things in Sweetie, so they must be possible in a guy too. I’ll keep my eye out for him.

Letter to The Song Sender

Last week, I thought about going back and talking to The Song Sender about what happened between us. I was/am feeling stuck and I thought maybe his point of view would jostle something loose. This morning, my stuckness/curiosity got the best of me and I emailed him my number. As soon as I did that, all the bad feelings came rushing back, I remembered what it really felt like to be with him. So I reblocked everything and sent him this letter:

"But sending you my phone number made me remember how it really felt back then. It brought back all of the fear and anxiety and worry and desperation and shame. Being with you opened up such a chasm of greif, not all of it from you, but still.

Whether you literally wanted me to be a doll or not, wanting to do all that big meaningful stuff (it was big and meaningful to me) without any pesky emotions was treating me like an object. I deserved better. I gave you so much trust, all those first times, all that love.

 

I wanted to know if you did it on purpose or maybe it was just a bad match, but it doesn't matter. I wanted to know why you didn't want to go out in the world with me, but the fact is, you didn't. I wanted to know why you didn't treat me like a friend, but it doesn't matter now, it just sucked, it was a horrible way to treat somebody.

 

I'm pissed off at the damage you did. I'm doing my best to repair it.

 

Forward is a good way to go."

I'm giving myself a gold star for finally talking back to him, even though it was so long after the fact. I hope it makes a difference. Hope it makes me feel free again sometime soon.

What I'm looking for seems really, really far away, but I do know that backwards isn't the direction it's in.

Triggers and My Voice: The Story of a Hard Limit

Note: If you’re someone who gets triggered by mentions of non-consensual sexual violence, you’ll want to skip this one.

Last week I talked a lot about being protective of my voice and being subject to panics. I’m unsure if these facts about myself disqualify me from experiencing BDSM in the ways I want to. I guess I thought there would be failsafes or at least compassion in case someone’s triggered, but that doesn’t seem to be the case so far. I’m trying to not judge the whole “lifestyle” based on one group of people.

A lot of things contributed to me being an anxious girl with shaky self-worth. I had both a happy childhood and a terribly abusive one. Both my mother and father were physically and verbally abusive to myself, my siblings, and each other. They often fought loudly about sex. One night, I’m pretty sure I heard my dad rape my mom. I got it to stop, in fact, by crying loudly. “Now you made (me) cry.” she said as the action simmered down in there.

But the biggest factor in me being protective of my voice was something that happened when I was seventeen. I’ve been telling the story in the same stupid way for twenty years: I was promiscuous in high school and it lead to an inevitable conclusion of rape and assault. That is a bullshit way to tell the story—it’s sad that I only realized recently that there was no cause-effect relationship. It was a terrible, evil crime, not a path I put myself on.

What happened was, my friend Sheri and I lied and said we were going to each others’ houses so that we could hang out with her boyfriend and his friend and get laid. That didn’t take very long, so after the guys were done with us, they dropped us off in the park three doors down from my house. We were considering sleeping in the park when a pickup truck full of hooting and hollering people we vaguely knew pulled up and asked if we wanted to go to a party and we said sure—I thought of how mortified my mom would be if she knew I was riding in the back of a pickup truck.

They either put something in my drink or I drank way too fast. I don’t remember drinking very much at all, but we were playing Quarters around the time that the guys started asking, “So which one of us are you gonna fuck?” I was woozy and tired and I didn’t want to fuck anyone, no matter how known for it I was. But I knew I didn’t really have a choice—I wasn’t in any condition to stop anybody, and this was kind of who I was now. So I chose Willie, the cutest guy at the party. He was a tall, skinny African American guy, cute but with kind of a dismissive face. I chose him partly because he was there with his girlfriend, I think her name was Lisa, a blond in acid-washed jeans. I thought he couldn’t do anything with her there, but he sent her home.

Willie took me to the party host’s bedroom and told me to get undressed. “All the way,” he said, and I did. He got on top of me and put it in, humped quickly and mechanically. I opened my mouth to cry out, not for help, but to moan so I’d be doing a good job. He put his hand over my mouth and I shut up. When he was done, he left the door open so that the whole party could see me scrambling around for my shirt.  

That’s when I started to get sick, just throwing up copious amounts everywhere, so, so much. I must have passed out then and when I came to, I couldn’t see, and they were hitting me with something hard. (I found out later it was tennis rackets) and yelling at me for throwing up. They were screaming all kinds of names at me, but I just remember them saying I was bad. I’m not sure how many people were doing the hitting, but Willie and Lisa were two of them.

I screamed and screamed and screamed and some angel neighbor called the cops. When they got there, Lisa or some other blond girl took me into the bathroom to try and clean up the blood that had spattered all down my shirt. I remember she was talking to me so sweetly.

So far we have three reasons why my voice (which includes these paragraphs) feels like a lifeline that could get taken away: “saving” my mom by crying, Willie’s hand over my mouth, and the screams that maybe actually did save my life. But the fourth reason is much guiltier: I didn’t tell the police the sex part of the crime. They couldn’t get it out of me. Everyone knew, but I refused to say it on the deposition. I’d been drinking, I was a slut, I didn’t know how to prove I didn’t deserve what happened.

I didn’t know how to prove I didn’t deserve what happened. I’ve told this story so many times, but never understood it quite that way.

I felt like I couldn’t really say it was rape because I’d chosen him, I didn’t try to stop him. The Accused had somehow become embedded in my consciousness, having the opposite (?) of its intended effect. I knew the danger of being “put on trial” for it and I wanted no part of that. So I lied my face off and told the police the assault story without the first part. A few of them, including Willie, did some jail time for the assault, but the fact that I didn’t tell the truth about the rest of the crime makes me feel like a co-conspirator, like I didn’t do enough to protect myself or my fellow women.

The crying, the hand over my mouth, the screams that saved my life, the guilt over not telling, they’ll always be in my body. Sometimes they make me very hard to be close to, but they also make me brave, protective, and they make me try to be transparent.

I guess what I want people to get out of this is that you never know what stories can be inside someone’s body. Every single person you touch, even in the most casual way, sitting next to her on the bus, tying him up at a play party, or hugging them on a first date, has a body full of stories. Give up the idea that enough negotiation can make those complications got away. The stories inside us, even the screams, are beautiful and deserve to be treated with care.

Advice, Please: Care Beyond Aftercare?

As a new sub, I can't always predict what my reaction to new experiences will be. Sometimes they are "Yay!" but other times they are more intense and complex.

These reactions might occur well outside the scene; after the adrenaline wears off, the reality of what happened may sink in.

In a friendship or dating situation with a dom, I feel like I should be able to approach him with these reactions or concerns, but a few times I've tried it and been met with annoyance.

In a vanilla situation, I'd expect the guy to be able to talk about what we experienced together. Is it different for BDSM? Is this something I need to negotiate for explicitly?