Roadblock #1: Mom Was a Harpy, Dad Was Kind of a Rapist

Now that I’ve ended up crying on three separate second dates, I think it’s time to look more in depth at the things that keep me from feeling the base-level confidence that other women carry into their sex lives with men. I want to excavate and exorcize the ideas and images that sometimes hold me back from wholeheartedly and trustingly enjoying men in general and PIV sex in particular. I feel a little apologetic about this line of thought since I’d rather just be writing hotness, but hopefully self-examination will lead to more hotness.

My parents fought loudly and constantly on every topic. One night on a long car ride home, I woke to hear them having a way-too-intense discussion on the subject of the Designated Hitter Rule. They fought every year on the day we went to get the Christmas tree. They fought when my friends were sleeping over. But on no subject were they as loud, articulate and traumatic than as they were on the topic of sex.

Before I even really knew what sex WAS, I knew what it sounded like to be a woman who was deeply and bitterly frustrated by her sex life. I believe that my mom had the same hotpants tendencies that I have, but she hated that desire and never found a way to enjoy it or take ownership of it. In recent ill-fated discussions of my sex life, she’s suggested that I just ignore and wait out my attraction to men, with the bone-chilling advice that once I reach menopause, I just won’t care anymore. This does not make me feel less urgent.

As a kid, I was awoken many nights by her screaming indignantly about his inability to get her off. That this was my introduction to the concept of the orgasm makes it seem miraculous that I ever would’ve gotten so good at them. From the fights it seemed like his desire was lower than hers, too—some of the fights started by her trying to initiate something (“I got ready” she’d say, meaning she’d put in her diaphragm, which usually resided on the side of the family bathtub, a monument to her complete lack of boundaries.) only to be rejected. And then they fought, about how ineffectual he was, about how he didn’t love or want her. Because the fights often turned violent, I developed a hypervigilance and protectiveness toward her, even though she ran me down as constantly as she picked at him. (And, in fairness, he treated me with the same emotional distance and rejection as he did her.)

I was probably ten when I was being forced to have this over-awareness of their sex-life, and one night in particular stands out. I’ve talked about it a little here before but I think I need to go into it a little more deeply.

I awoke to hear them having sex. I guess she pulled away midsex because she said, in the most contemptuous voice possible “See? This is what it feels like when someone stops before you’re finished.” Her voice sounded so deeply spiteful and ugly, but in no way did it excuse what happened next.

There were sounds of struggle and she said “NO! NO! Stop! (his name)!”

I knew something really bad was happening and so I started to cry as loudly as I could. The struggling sounds stopped and she said “See, now you’ve made (my name) cry.”

The fight boiled down but the damage was done and I was somehow creepily part of it.

I asked her about this incident during their divorce proceedings a few years later and she says he never raped her. Given my own complicated relationship with sex and struggle I could see how she might see that as true, but I know that after that night, part of me gave up on the world. It seemed too dark and hopeless, and there seemed to be too much threat and danger, especially in male-female partnerships.

Part of me has trouble not identifying with my mother, with the anger and ugliness of her unmet desires, or rather the ugliness of how she blamed everyone for them including me. It’s hard not to feel guilty for loving my dad, given his general abusiveness and the callous brutishness and selfishness of his response to her bad games. It’s been such a long struggle to mentally separate my own sex experiences from those of my parents. It’s hard to see my own urgency as normal and natural, to see men as the sensitive caring humans they most assuredly are, to see PIV sex as something that isn’t inherently humiliation. Even after all these years and all these adventures, I still have to learn that I am not bad for wanting it.

I am so ashamed of that night, for being part of it, part of them. I’m ashamed for the times I’ve been like her and treated partners in less-than-humane ways, for being like him and acting selfish and callow sometimes.

But it’s way past time to realize that I’m not them. Like her, I was born more desirous and aggressive than a woman is expected to be, but I’ve tried to make myself responsible for my own satisfaction. It’s not really me who feels guilty for wanting to climb all over men, it’s my mother, and I am not my mother. I have the advantage of having been born in a more liberated era, and while I am proud of trying to make the most of the tools and advantages I have, I feel compassion for her sex drive being thwarted and unloved for a great deal of her adult life. It doubles my commitment to loving it in myself.

I’m not sure how I’ve lived all these years with a rapist for a dad, how I’ve spent all these years loving him. In that one moment of desperation, hate, and anger he squashed a beautiful part of me that has been so, so hard to get back—the belief that sex with a man can be loving, or fun, or empowering or even (gasp!) all of the above. It’s hard to trust that if I say what I need, I won’t be punished for it.  It’s hard to believe that I am not as dark and broken and unlovable as that memory. That’s what I’m working on here, and I’m so grateful to have the chance.

Things Go Haywire But Still a Good Scene, Part Three

As I sit down to write this, I’m in a state of worry—will I ever know how to see a relationship with a man through any lens other than abandonment? Why does my brain equate “I like him.” with “He is going to go away and never come back.” and also “I am not good enough.” Mister Hazel Eyes might have been a doofus on our date, but that doesn’t change the fears that I have to learn my way out of. Are my abandonment issues and distrust things I can overcome, or will they keep me from ever realizing a true and lasting connection with a man? I guess all I can do to find out is go forward.

After rope class, we sat off to the side on the padded benches where people usually congregate and talk. Sweetie spanked me in the same place just a few months ago, in our first public scene. There were a few couples over there, but MHE and I were in our own little bubble of conversation. He felt so good there next to me but I still felt uneasy. I told him I was having trouble believing that he didn’t actually belong to someone else. I know that sounds weird coming from someone who is married and dating, but I just kept suspecting that he was being unscrupulous, especially after he said not to leave bite marks—he said he was worried his mom might see them, he said. I said that sounded like bullshit, and he pointed to Nice Girl as well—“Well she should know about me because I AM A PERSON.” I said and he said he’d told her about me. I didn’t believe that either. “You seem really…married. Are you worried that Betty Draper will see?”

We wrestled away the tension of it—I pushed and pulled against his arms, and he said “You can start trying any time.” He was delightfully strong. I shoved him against the wall and kissed him and he held me and I struggled—perfect. We got up to look at some of the other scenes going on—some neat suspension work—and he took that opportunity to wrestle me up against the bar and bite my ass. There’s a glee that comes up in me when a guy’s trying to hold me down, a thrill of recognition, a fruition. In those moments, I am so excited and grateful to be alive.

Then it was—hooray!—time to go over his knee. This was what I’d been waiting for, there’s nothing so comforting as being sprawled across his lap, elbows on the bench, cute shoes in the air like a pinup. His hands wove into my hair and pulled—that’s where the real magic started. He pulled up my pajama bottoms so that my butt cheeks were exposed. I was conscious of the couples nearby, and I liked knowing they could see my ass, see me being so vulnerable to him.

“You’re such a fucking good girl, do you know that? I fucking adore you.”

After a few more spankings and affirmations of my adorableness, he pulled me up to his face and kissed me. I asked if he wanted to take my top off and held up my arms. After he pulled my shirt off sweetly, I leaned back so that he could take a look at me, Hello Kitty nipple tape and all. He looked happy. He buried his head in my chest and I held him there, right where I’d been wanting him.

We took a break to go get drinks, and he went a little bit back to douchetown—he told me red wine’s for pussies, even said it in a lispy voice, which I promptly called out as homophobic, with a “HMPH! Straight guys, I swear.”

“Okay,” he said, “Okay.” Kinda like he was choking back an argument.

I liked the feeling of walking to the bar near-naked with him—I felt like a whore to him, like something he’d just purchased. It was a dark, sad feeling, connecting me to all of the ways that women have been owned in both good and terrible ways. I felt empowered, anonymous, and chosen. It was a strange kinship with the ladies of the world, a darkly feminine moment, and I feel a little ashamed of it.

Next: Tied to a kneeler with very helpful ropes.

Things Go Haywire But Still a Good Scene, Part Two

I really want to skip this section and get right to the hotness, but it refuses not to be written. Sigh.

So I really didn’t know where this date was going, but just in case, I’d told Sweetie I didn’t want to be home until morning, and she was all settled in about it. I wasn’t having a good feeling about my chances, though. Whether that was a self-fulfilling prophecy or not, on the way to get dinner he told me it couldn’t be a late night because he had to help his mom with some stuff at 11 am the next day. When I type that sentence, it really doesn’t make sense at all.

I was not-getting-the-hint girl, and I said, “That’s still plenty of time to take me home in the morning.”

He got quiet for a few blocks and then he started to talk about how embarrassed he was about his apartment being a mess.

Okay, tell me if I was being paranoid. Have I just watched too many episodes of Mad Men or what? I just got a really bad feeling there was a lady at home who didn’t know about me, and I couldn’t stop myself from asking. He insisted that his apartment was really a mess, but it just didn’t ring true. Granted, he could be just going at a different pace than I was and didn’t expect to bring me home yet, but I really don’t buy it.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t want to be there with me, and I couldn’t stop myself from probably ensuring he’d want to be with me even less. I felt like a mean teacher trying to show someone how to be on a date. When he texted and checked his phone all through dinner, I actually told him to put it away, and the emotion I felt was exactly like a bad day in the classroom, but without the reassuring knowledge that I could re-assess and try again tomorrow.

We did get our scene negotiating done though. I really like (and will probably miss) our safeword: albatross. I love it for the Monty Python of it all, and for the fact that it’s the thing that keeps the boat afloat, isn’t it? But also a haunting burden. (I just spent a few minutes studying the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” but it was inconclusive.)

When we got to the party though, more texting. Even after I’d lent him a collar to put on me and we had a nice moment about that. He explained “I’m texting (Nice Girl) to tell her I’ll be unavailable for a while.”

This was exactly what I had been missing from him—those little transitional texts that only take a second or two but make me feel oriented and cared for. I would very much like to say that I took a deep sensible breath and calmly talked about how that is something that would be helpful for me as well.

Instead: “You never do that for me. You just disappear in the middle of the conversation, forget to answer questions, I have to ask you two or three times where and when to meet you. What is it about her that gets her treated like a girlfriend? Maybe I should ask her. Maybe she should teach me.”

I had my own conclusions as to what the difference was—the fact that I’m not single. I was not being treated with as much respect as she was because it’s hard for single guys to see poly women as girlfriendy characters.

I explained a bit more about poly, about how I was looking for a real relationship and could belong to more than one person at once. He said that he hadn’t really understood that, and agreed that I didn’t deserve to be discounted that way. He said he was really going to try to be a better communicator, and we headed upstairs to rope class.

Even after all of the trouble and fuss, I was still really excited to be there with him. I changed into my outfit for the evening: short, soft, adorable light green pajamas with little flowers all over them, Hello Kitty nipple tape, lucky underwear and purple wedge heels. I had some hope in presenting myself to him that way, but I think he was distracted by the self-consciousness of rope class.

Sweetie says she really feels for him during this part—she says rope class can be a lot of pressure, getting the knots right and keeping your date happy is a lot to think about at once. It really makes me think about how much work I am to be with. I have a lot to offer, but still.

Unlike Sweetie, who is comfortable with the fumbling aspect of learning new rope stuff (“Practice makes pervert,” the class leader is fond of saying.) Mister Hazel Eyes clearly felt frustrated and embarrassed when it took him a few times to get a knot or when the ropes clung to a bit of velcro on his shorts. The lady who was acting as demo bunny came over to help, and I liked the times when they were both working on me.

He had to do some of the knots so many times that some of them started to become clear in my head and I started to learn them. Look! I made my own cat’s paw! I get a badge or something. He was having a really hard time and unfortunately this meant he kept apologizing for being “retarded.” I know! Am I a bad person for messing around with somebody who uses that word that way? A bad teacher? I sure didn’t have any desire to correct another thing, so I ignored it. But he said it a LOT. Ugh. As I write this, I’m feeling a little less like a harpy and a little more like it’s just a bad match.

Next: Somehow a bad match becomes a beautiful scene.