OMG First Horror Movie Date, Part Two

It wasn’t a long time of Messenger-ing about movies and catching up on everyday stuff before The Coach started calling me “sweetheart” and telling me he’d thought about me. (Some people, and I’m probably one of them, mean something real specific and sticky when they say they’ve thought about you! I don’t dislike it!) Around the time I was seeing the opportunity and thinking he and I should hang out sometime, he asked if I wanted to hang out sometime.

I told him I’d been dying to see Candyman and hadn’t wanted to go by myself. (BFF will tolerate a horror movie, but she isn’t a fan.) He’d already seen it but didn’t mind going again. He found the showtime. He got the tickets. He picked the seats. Is that all it takes for me to feel cared-for, looked after?

There was some talk about movie makeouts, but the morning of our date I remembered to ask that one annoying life-or-death question and no, he wasn’t fully vaccinated. (I am, but I’m not trying to get the Delta!) Only halfway there. So I told him there couldn’t be any snuggles until after his second shot. I think I knew, in my heart of hearts, someone who’s right for me would have been vaccinated by the end of May. I think you’ve gotta be at least that much of a team player. Still, I know we’re all coming at medical stuff from different angles, and I REALLY wanted a movie date, so I didn’t make it a dealbreaker.

(Before I asked about vax status, I’d fully decided I would take him home after the movie if I got the chance. I was/am horny, nothing wrong with that!)

(Honestly I half-expected him to back out when I told him there wouldn’t be snuggles for a while.)

I got READY for this 5$ Movie Night date. I took everything off my todo list that day (not much was on there since I was on staycation) except manicure and pedicure. I bought a pretty new dress (light blue and fairy-ish with a little gold glitter) and a tiny butterfly necklace for transformation. Possibly this is a story about having a crush on THE MOVIES themselves, or on totally femme-ing it up, but The Coach brought it all together so nicely.

I liked how decisive and swaggery he was, carrying the snacks for us and leading us to our back row seat. I liked how he knew the movie was directed by Nia DaCosta, not Jordan Peele.

I moved the soda from the armrest cupholder so our elbows could touch. I got chilly and he lent me his jacket. I hid behind said cozy hoodie during the grisliest scenes and made him tell me when it was safe to look. It seems like this particular gender-sparkle should have happened to me long ago, but somehow, I’d missed it.

It was just the best time. The crowd was talkative in just the way I prefer, just the way I’d missed for all the quar-months. This really is a little bit a love story about the movies.

Even though (Or because?) there was a makeout embargo, The Coach gave me such an unexpected new kind of joy. There’s only two or three more more installments left of his story, but long live femme-ing it up at Candyman—one of my favorite adventures yet.

Perfectly 1993 Guy, Part Eight

 

 

Okay I’m writing three different stories at once right now but that’s gonna have to be okay. I think this story might shine some light on the like story I’m currently living about The Drummer.

 

So Perfectly 1993 Guy had started college and I had gone home to live with my dad. We were a six-hour Greyhound trip apart. In those days, well before I could capably drive and when EVER owning a car seemed like a crazy dream, the Greyhound was the route to all things meaningful. Standing at the bus station that Friday night/Saturday early morning waiting for him would’ve felt like I was cracked open and shining love everywhere. That’s a big feeling given that, in this case, my dad must’ve driven me there to pick up my long-distance love, possibly in the middle of the night. It seems to my memory that most Greyhound things in Small Hometown City happened at about 3 AM.

 

Whatever the hour, my blank canvas of a bedroom felt golden with Perfectly 1993 Guy in it. In my arms, kissing and cuddling, he felt so warm but also so evanescent. I’ve never been more aware in my life of how many hours were left until Sunday at 1 PM, when I’d have to say goodbye again.

 

That Saturday night, the midnight between our two birthdays, felt incredibly momentous, sacred, solemn. He had told me a few weeks before that, aside from a just-the-tip occasion with his previous (regular  normal fancy rich person) girlfriend, Perfectly 1993 Guy considered himself a virgin. His first time felt like such a huge deal to him, and I was honored and daunted to be chosen. I felt a little unworthy, given how experimental, reckless, and haphazard I’d been just a few years before. Before my heart pendulum had swung wildly back to the chastity of the Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow.

 

Before that, though, all afternoon on his birthday, we walked and walked all around Small Hometown City. I showed him a couple of the coffeeshops that I had become completely obsessed with, and which would become my home-away-from-home in years to come. I ordered jasmine tea, which tastes not-great but feels very fancy.

 

We walked and walked and walked. Somewhere in all that love-and-anticipating-goodbyes glow and idle chitchat, I (accidentally?) said “This just feels so temporary.” I don’t think I’d ever seen a man so affected by my careless words, and I maybe haven’t since. He slipped into a silent funk, closing his shoulders off and walking a few feet ahead of me. I remember him (in those dreamy green Docs) climbing up onto the not-very-high ledge of the art museum’s planters, now walking ahead AND above me. He was hurting and escaping, and I didn’t know how to get him back. And we had so, SO little time.

The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, Part Four

That teenage summer, there were just a few moments between us that genuinely felt connected to sex, at least as I understood it then. I remember being on top of him, both of us thoroughly clothed, on the floor of Favorite Aunt’s sewing room, while a family party went on below. It’s hard not to imagine myself with the intent an evil scientist, trying to pin down a beautiful and helpless butterfly. I’m not sure if he remembers it that way, if he remembers it at all. Present-day signs point to no on the helpless-butterfly-pinning. (At least not in a bad way. But I can only speculate.)

I had sworn off sex as a respite after the Big Trauma. (He told me a few weeks ago, while having coffee outside a museum on a perfect sunny-chilly spring day, that I had referred to myself as a “born-again virgin.” A LOT. That quote both breaks my heart and makes me laugh—of course that person would become a pansexual sex blogger! I feel really awesome at life right at this moment!) Anyway, I was doing the reasonable-seeming-at-the-time thing of blaming my sluttiness, my adventurousness, for the fact that I had been drugged, raped, and assaulted at a party right before that summer.

I told the Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow that we would wait until we were old enough to get married (by which I meant, like, when I was 20 and he was eighteen) and THEN have sex. Silly as it is, that strikes me as a pretty badass thing to say to somebody, especially someone you’ve only known a few weeks. Imagine saying that to a 2019 guy! Back then, the idea felt romantic and like a relief from all of the impersonal sex my body and soul had been though the previous school year. (Sex which, LET ME MAKE IT CLEAR, I chose a lot of and some of which I really enjoyed. I wonder if I can write about it in detail sometime?)

When I found out, years later, that the Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow (By then technically the Man Who Sewed Me a Pillow) ended up with a guy, I imagined he had been relieved by our lack of sex, maybe for the chance to rest in the performance of heterosexuality before embarking on the road out of the closet. So many oversimplified assumptions in one sentence! I told myself this story for DECADES, and maybe it is true, but I’m pretty appalled at my binary thinking, the ability to write off my own experience as well as the entire spectrum of sexuality and desire, even in the face of so much experience and SO, SO many paragraphs.

This seems like a good place to stop and let it all sink in over the long weekend. Kondo-ing my feelings takes a lot, and right now is that part where all the emotions are in piles all over the place and I need to slow down, touch each one, and see what sparks joy. Maybe next week I’ll finish the story and then everything will be treasured and have a place.

Dear people who are kind enough to read this, enjoy your Easter or Passover or Cherry Blossom Festival. Eat chocolate and look at flowers, I love you.

The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, Part Three

After I said goodbye-for-now to the cute boy and went home from the respite of Favorite Aunt’s, that summer is a fog of dissociated memories, but I remember this:

My mom wanted me to get out of the house into the sunshine, but I was afraid. She wanted me to walk a few miles down the rural stretch of road that our suburban street turned into, to pick some daylilies, sweet peas and black-eyed susans. (The only way I’m sure of the timeline of this memory is the kind of flowers she wanted me to go visit. The clock of the year has always been a loyal friend.) In fairness, flower-picking had been my m.o. since I was very little, on any given stretch of road. But just then, I felt frozen and afraid, in need of the deepest kind of privacy.

Mom said “Do it while you can, before you’re married and trapped and you can’t do anything.”

(I have to wonder what horrible-but-sort-of-true advice I’ve given my nieces and nephews and students over the years, what they’ll be typing into their blogs and/or quoting to their therapists…)

I couldn’t argue with her (for once) and I didn’t have a better idea of what to do with my afternoon. While I was recovering (or not) from the Big Trauma, my mom was concealer-ing her own bruises (I never covered mine, I felt like people should know. I still do, obvs.) and navigating her stay in a violent, contemptuous marriage, a lifetime of hurt, of controlling and being controlled. So I went and picked the the flowers. I felt empty and not-there, a summer afternoon in quotation marks, but I remember the colors. Maybe she was right, maybe the flowers did save me. (And also right that marriage feels like a trap, although in my case definitely a trap of my own making.)

In addition to flowers, better than flowers, even, that summer there was MAIL. The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow sent letters, and I wrote back on dolphin-themed stationary. (Why dolphins? I actually have no idea. I don’t think we saw dolphins at the beach or anything. Anyway, dolphins it was.)

(I wish Marie Kondo had a term for the opposite of sparking joy—the pang you feel when you realize you gave away something precious you probably should have hung onto. In my early twenties, I did my first performance art piece: I built a small pyramid of shiny pink boxes, suitcases, and other shiny pink things, all filled with memories and other things I (thought) I wanted to give away. I liked knowing that a stranger was taking home a collaged shoebox full of all my love letters, three loves to that date and so, so much treasure. The idea made me feel more connected to the world at large, but the practice left me with loss and emptiness. I’m glad there are blogs now so I can give away all my love stories to strangers and still keep them safe with me. And letters stay with me forever now, Marie or no Marie.)

(Another thing about Tidying Up: In addition to the excitement of having neat closets and always knowing where my headphones are, I like the way that Kon Mari has helped me to unstick myself from the present. “Live in the moment” seems like excellent advice for an Insight-Timer-addicted chakra enthusiast like me, but in practice, living in all of my timelines is better. It’s less lonely with all my past selves, past loves, past friends, past cities closer at hand and closer at heart, integrated with today—that’s kind of what this story is about.)

As you know by his name, he sewed me a pillow. I think he gave it to me on a visit, I remember hugging it on a Greyhound bus. (It’s also possible that he mailed it to me but I brought it on a Greyhound bus to hug. Totally something I would have done.) Favorite Aunt must have helped him make it. It was light purple satin, with a darker purple lace around the edges. There was a purple applique of a dolphin in the middle. It is the most perfect object I have ever owned, and I have no idea what happened to it. It might have been a casualty of cat pee in my first apartment, or perished in a housefire in my skater flophouse fourth-fifth-or-sixth apartment. I wish I had taken better care of everything ever. I’m amazed that I have anything left.

There were a few more days with The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow that summer. I think there were some cancelled plans, too—I remember being sad in a mine where you could look for phosphorescent rocks. When we were together, we got in our own little world (well, our own little world that almost always included Favorite Aunt) of giggles and inside jokes.

Also, we went to church together, holding hands sweetly in the front pew. I felt fresh and new there, cleansed, like I was doing something right for the first time in my entire life. It makes me really, really sad to think of that feeling, the idea that he, in addition to being an actual person I thoroughly adored, could feel like a source of legitimacy and redemption to a young woman who would maybe never know she needed neither. I want to rescue us both from that aspect of things, swoop in like Carol Danvers and sweep us both to a field somewhere, tell us both that we’re perfect and lovely and queer and have everything to offer, that the Catholic Church could just fuck right off.

Maybe he never would have needed that rescue, maybe he always knew his whole worth, maybe coming out was a breeze or a nonissue, who knows? We’re getting a little into not-really-my business territory, I haven’t asked him the million questions I have yet.

For a long time, I didn’t acknowledge the real connection between us because all of the Catholicism and trauma and patriarchy involved convinced me I must’ve been just a burden to him. For a long time the whole thing just seemed orchestrated, like a performance of normalcy that was probably less than convincing, a feint at something like virtue.

But then, weekend before last, my body was near him for like two seconds before I realized that that interpretation of things was nonsense, just as dumb and reductive and confining as religion itself. My body knew what my mind had written off, had stored love in my muscles and bones and veins for thirty years and gave it back to me like a gift, like a miracle.

Between us, this is still a very chaste kind of story. Within me, it is decidedly not.

The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow, Part One

For this one, we’re going all the way back to the early Nineties, to the summer after the Big Trauma happened https://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2012/04/triggers-and-my-voice-story-of-hard.html?zx=e0bd5bdf8967148e. He was fourteen and I was sixteen.

Unable to stop taking their unease with the Big Trauma out on me and on each other, my parents, near divorce and overflowing with violence, sent me to stay with my Favorite Aunt at her beautiful Colonial-era home, about six hours away from my immediate family’s cramped and feral suburban home. Favorite Aunt had always been the person who most vocally liked me when my parents, clearly and emphatically, did not. She was an oasis of hugs, praise, and affection, in a childhood full of coldness, contempt, and turning to teachers as my only daily source of grownup approval.

She was also, though, Catholic. That part of the story makes it hard to not become incoherent with rage. Favorite Aunt’s spirtuality felt like a bright white escape hatch, a way to clean and simplify myself of such a dirty and complicated life, a way to escape the pain, trauma, abandonment and fear of the previous months. Of course now I understand that in being pulled (temporarily, I’m relieved to say) back into the religion of my upbringing I was both victim of and complicit in a more effective and insidious factory of rape than any teen party, no matter how out of control, could ever be.

At the time though, it seemed that the best way to regain control after a brutal rape and subsequent assault by my dad (https://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2018/10/metoo-letter-dear-dad-stfu-about.html) was to blame myself, my sluttiness, my sense of adventure. That seems heartbreaking now, but at the time it felt self-explanatory. Such is the power of an adult willing to dole out affection. I don’t think my Favorite Aunt was rape-culture-gaslighting me on purpose, because at the time, blaming myself seemed as natural and as life-giving as air.

Favorite Aunt’s charisma and generosity of affection means she often has children as friends. (I share this quality, for which I am very grateful.) She thought one of these friends, the artsy, quiet son of one of her church families, would be a perfect match for me, and he was. (All these years later, she still ships us, in spite of a lifetime mostly apart and a mountain of evidence. This doesn’t bother me as much as maybe it should.)

I don’t remember how he and I got together, whether we were pushed or drawn, probably both. I can’t clearly remember my first kiss with The Boy Who Sewed Me a Pillow (also, the first truly kind or loving kiss I’d known) but I know it was postcard perfect. Favorite Aunt and I went to visit him and his family where they were camping for a week, on a vacation island not too far ways from Favorite Aunt’s home. We walked (maybe I was holding his hand, seems like something I would do…) down the beach a little ways away from the families. We stood beside the water, the tall waves making for the closest approximation of privacy we were likely to get.

I remember the sea as rough but kind that day, the dizzy feeling in my throat, the sense of finality, of accomplishment. Having a sexy feeling that was also loving, with anyone besides myself, was a new and blissful sensation, as big and reliable and all-encompassing as the ocean itself.

The day went by fast. Favorite Aunt and I had made homemade poptarts for him and his family (how Emily Gilmore of us!) and we gave the container to him out the car window as Favorite Aunt prepared to drive us away. He kissed me on the forehead and said, not unkindly, “You have really big dandruff.”

All of the beach days and other excursions with Favorite Aunt meant that my scalp was sunburned and peeling. I was only a little bit embarrassed. I was a jumble of salt and skin and hot-pink feeling, riding away from the beach and towards a sunset as pink as my cheeks.

Gilmore Guy Part Three: Please, Please, Please

Though Gilmore Guy lives on a busy block and it was Friday night, I did show up wearing pajamas. I wore my favorite old soft pair, the ones I usually wear after the beach when I want to feel femme-y and relaxed and posh—black with purple, line-drawn lilies, stretchy but with pretty, sheer trim. Underneath, I had on a regular good black bra and one of my few pairs of undies that doesn’t go all the way up. (Confession: Though it’s hard to imagine anybody reaching around inside them, I really like wearing briefs. I wish they weren’t so stigmatized! Darn you, Bridget Jones! Although come to think of it, they really didn’t hold Bridget back, did they?)

I didn’t know which bell to ring, so I texted and he came down. I’d broken a sandal-strap on the way from the car, so I had to awkward my way up the steps. His (their) apartment was impeccably clean, with a feeling of the midcentury about it, like Mrs. Maisel’s apartment but not so fancy. The walls were painted a warm, vivid orange, which should have been hideous but was not.

Though we’d talked all about sex already, including the awkward testing talk, there was a lovely tentativeness between us—it’s nice that no matter how worldly anyone gets, the time before a first kiss is so often fizz and jangle, innocent and silly and new. It’s a wonderful, excruciating feeling, and I wonder when it will happen again.

His alcohol selection rivals my pen collection (and my Instagram feed) in terms of pure (artistic, one hopes) obsession. I handed him the mint from my garden, which I had forgotten to wash. His mojito-ing process was LONG, and he got sidetracked a few times having me taste fancy things I hadn’t had before. I noticed the sprig of pink silk-flower butterflies in a vase on the table, the same dollar store ones I use in my street art. I took it as a good sign.

His living room was warm and full of pillows, festive with street noise from the bar downstairs. The room very clearly belonged to Gilmore Lady, but could have equally housed Max Medina. I scanned the bookshelves (mostly philosophy) wondering if their book collection was merged—I mean, of course it was, right? His DJ equipment was in there too, though he said he hadn’t used it in quite a while.

We watched the Demi September 21 videos (Seriously, google it, “electrolemon September”) and then settled in for the Gilmore Girls.

“Stars Hollow looks so different,” he said, and filled me in on facts I’d forgotten about how things changed after the pilot. I was soooo happy to be starting my yearly rewatch, next to this gorgeous man, with a bespoke mojito in my hand, proud of my mint and swoony with good luck.

            Unsurprisingly for two switches, it took a little effort to figure out who would put their arms around whom. I wanted to wrap him up, take him, cocoon him protectively, but he did that for me instead.

            Probably about ten minutes into the Stars-Hollow-is-so-different pilot, I looked up into his face and it was easy. It felt natural and right, as if we had been kissing for our entire lives. His mouth was soft, yielding but also insistent. Our faces, our mouths, we fit together and the night clicked into place. Our fate, at least for the next few hours, was sealed.

A Whole Bunch of First Times Part One: Flogging

Just when I was getting to the point where I thought I’d have no more paragraphs, a whole bunch of stuff happened all at once.

I went to our usual dungeon last night, and it was the first time I went by myself. It felt strange—there’s a whole new level of slutty to standing around in shorty pajamas, no bra, and heels when nobody in particular is looking after you. I was a little worried that I was humiliating myself, but I knew I’d just have to stand there and talk to people if I was ever going to have hope of finding guys to play with.

I sort of had somebody in mind. He was the first guy to spank me in front of Sweetie—his ceramic-star cane is now my nemesis—and also part of the couple who helped Sweetie rescue me when I fainted the time before last. They are both a little younger than me and vaguely steampunk—I’ll call them Punk Rock Girl and Old-Timey Guy. I knew ITG was enough of an expert to make my first flogging experience meaningful—and it was!

I think I may have been a little overeager last night—next time, I think I’ll let people settle in a little more before I ask them to do stuff to me. Old-Timey Guy made fun of me for being impatient (okay, so I may have jumped up and down a little) but agreed, making it clear that it was a strictly demo situation. He gave me the nickname he likes to give subs—“Little One”—which in my case is adorable/hilarious because I am a big giant Amazon.

He started hooking up carabiners to the St. Andrew’s cross. There was already a couple playing on the other side of the cross, an adorable switchy couple I’m quite used to playing next to. (It made for some cute “I know how you feel” moments while chained face-to-face to the girl) Old-Timey Guy instructed Punk Rock Girl to put shackles on my ankles and wrists and get me attached to the cross.  She took a lot of care to make sure that my wrists were comfortable—“I can fix them now, but once he starts, it’s too late.” She got me all snug and settled in and then moved away so that OTG could take over.

He leaned against me and asked “Do you think I’m a bad man?”

I laughed but nodded empathically. The truth is, his face is fundamentally good natured—all beardy and trustworthy. He makes me feel all silly and innocent, plus he is often wearing a hat with a feather in it, but I was overjoyed to play along:

“Oh yes, very bad man.”

“Do you want me to do bad things to you?” More smiling and supercheery nodding.

The first implement he brought out was a pretty silver filigreed thing, shaped like a little tiny garden rake, but dainty and fancy. He said, “Now I’m just gonna warm you up.” He raked the little filigree thing over my back, my shoulders, my neck, my hair, the backs of my knees. It felt firm sometimes and tickly other times. He tickled me with his fingers, too. I never thought that I would like that, but I did. I loved all of the squealing and wiggling. The dungeon owner says ticklers are the hardest on his furniture, and I can see why. Very squirmy!

All the while, PRG was watching and assisting. She was the one who took my glasses off when I needed her to, and the one who told me to keep my head forward so that it’d be a little more safe.

OTG started flogging my back—he’d asked if I liked thing more thud-y or sting-y and this was as thud-y as I had requested. I relaxed against the cross in a semi-subby state until the thuds got a little harder and I had to brace against the pain a little. I gritted my teeth and balled up my fists, but I didn’t cry out or make the stop signal.

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No, but you could go a little, um, lower,” I said, wiggling my ass in his general direction.

“This looks like it can take some pain,” he said, and got started, first with the flogger, then with a strap thing that I really, really, REALLY loved. Rhythmically, one cheek, the other, I never wanted it to ever stop. But too soon, he leaned into me and said “My dear, you have now been flogged. Did you like it?”

“Ohmygoodnessyes.”

As a finale, he pulled down my undies and left a heart shaped marked on one side and a star-shaped mark on the other. It hurt like a sonofabitch.

I was sad that it was over, that there wasn’t an aftercare factor, but I hugged and thanked him and helped get PRG into her shackles for their real play. (Really, she helped me help her into her shackles.) It was melancholy feeling, but centered and very warm about the back and ass.

Next: Hello, suspension!