Oh, Mr. Breakfast!

 I liked him on Facebook Dating, but I heard from him in my DMs. He said he'd accidentally swiped left when he scrolled through my music selections, so he sought me out through one of our two mutual friends! Effort! I thought that was so sweet.

His answers to my screening questions made me feel like I was in good hands. I liked his job and his face. We made a date for the best diner in his neighborhood. He took two busses to get there, despite the fact that it was blustery and like ten degrees. Honestly I should get some kind of reward for doing anything at all when its this aggressively February out!

He charmed me right away with his love of breakfast. It's one of those old fashioned diners that has a million things on the menu, but we bonded over our love of breakfast, and we ordered enough to have dinner and take some home for the next day. A man I can eat in front of! I felt so free and happy and full of French toast and bacon and damn fine diner coffee.

And the conversation was the perfect combination of overshare-y and polite. We both talked about our therapists--how hot is it to be on a date with a guy who's in therapy?! He was fragile, though, apologetic. "You're allowed to exist, " I said at one point. I was being either very Ma'am or very codependent. Por que no los dos?

His face was sweet and soft, mostly made out of smile. He's a little taller than me, soft in places but strong. Dark-skinned with charmingly scraggly locs. Extremely my type, of course he was.

After diner, it was decided that I should come over and meet his dog. Once we got in the car, I realized I'd left my hat inside, and he faced the weather to go get it for me--gallant. Effortful. Kind. So promising!

 He apologized in advance for the parking situation--his neighb is one where I've had can't-find-a-parking-space panic attacks before, and our city is filled with glaciers and mounds of hard, frozen grey snow. We agreed that if a spot couldn't be found, it meant we would take it slow and try another day.

Driving around looking for a spot with him was so much fun! Even though he, a non-driver, had driving advice aplenty! At least he could laugh at himself being a side seat driver. And he joined in my little stim songs like an absolute champ. I felt far from panic! This guy made me feel so strong and grounded, or maybe it was just me making myself feel that way.

Anyway, I parallel parked on a part-glacier, on a narrow street, with a car waiting impatiently behind us! It was beautiful, how neatly I parked. Honestly the biggest rush of the night.

When we got to his place, we kissed, and I asked to be under a thousand blankets please. Two very fluffy ones were enough, and the very good dog joined us for a snuggle. The perfect place to be on a freezing cold night, but he wanted the basketball game on TV. I asked if we could put on something nice instead, and he had to go find batteries for the remote so he could put on Steven Universe for me. Having the TV off was not an option, and eventually, the game would have to come back on.

The non-negotiable sports TV might have been the dealbreaker, if not for this:

We were talking about fetishes we had and he said

that he likes to initiate sex

while his partner is asleep!

I called him out for how not-consensual that was, and he admitted that he felt bad about it, and obviously he wouldn't do it if I'm not "into that."

I was tempted to name him "Sleep Rape Guy" but thought it would be too triggering right up top. The thing is, I went home feeling like it was a good date with a few red flags. It didn't sink in how scared I was until the next morning, when I texted and told him WAY TOO FUCKING GENTLY that we weren't a good match. Because of the SLEEP RAPE FETISH.

Dating is so hard and scary and de-humanizing sometimes. There's an OCD thought that's trying to be loud right now, telling me I'm only good for taking advantage of, for raping or using up in other ways, while other women have value and deserve to be treated with kindness. I don't know if other women are having such an easy time either though.

It's been a triggersome, hurty couple days since. I'm proud of (belatedly) saying no to Mr. Breakfast and of caring for myself as best I can. My next date is Wednesday, and I think it will probably be a lot gentler on my poor heart. Here's (Somehow! Still!) hoping. 

I Did Not Expect to Feel This Way When a Creepy Guy Invaded the Zoom!

 

These days, what even IS a body adventure? I know I should be working on my No-Contact High Fidelity proj and learning the knots on Thursdays, but the sense of hopelessness that’s pervaded my snuggle-outlook since Quarantine Crush is hard to shake. I think a lot about what quarantine-long lack of touch (Aside from some very special occasion exceptions (Like, say, friends are alive after being boxed in during a police-incited riot…) Sweetie and the cats are the only people I can hug or high-five. And the cats are TERRIBLE at high-fiving!) is doing to my brain and body. I’m not really sure what my psyche is up to, but I think it’s time to figure it out.

 

Yesterday, I was “at” my favorite Zoom book talk, sponsored by our local bookstore/coffeeshop. I like to go and mostly mute myself, hear what some local strangers are reading, occasionally unmuting to chime in about a book or invite everyone to a march. This week though: WHOA!

 

We were listening to a lady talk about the cool workbook that comes with Life Before Slavery when, OHNO! I looked up from my doodling to see: A naked, face-hidden white guy playing with his erect penis!

 

“It’s so small!” Exclaimed the lady who was trying to talk about her book. Though I’m resolutely against size-shaming, I so much admired her bravado and he definitely deserved worse! It was just kind of normal-sized, lovely even though it belonged to an invasive, rapey creep. They muted his video feed and we aimed to get back to books.

 

I felt awful for the moderator and for the rest of the group. After a little nervous laughter and dismay, we went back to our talk. I was a little more chatty than usual and was happy to make some new friends for the first time in a while and add some more books to my TBR.

 

What that guy did to our Zoom was evil, violent, hateful and invasive. I can’t believe anyone could be that callous, selfish and cruel to anyone, let alone a neighborhood bookstore!

 

Stepping back and looking at my own physical and emotional reaction, though, I am shocked, SHOCKED and a little alarmed. Though I guess a delayed reaction may come later, I felt no fear, no triggers, no jangled sense of helplessness. What my body felt about being subjected to this nonconsensual cam guy was:

 

…Yay?

 

It could be an adrenaline thing or a self-protective bravado, but I think my reaction is more base, if I can use that word in a non-judgmental way. What stayed in my body for the rest of the evening and a little bit still today was/is a clear, quiet physical happiness. It almost feels like…health.

 

Against all ethics and reason, I felt a sense of possibility and joy. Later, after the talk was done and I finished the dishes and played my phone games and caught up on the news, I had some very nice personal time, with a further-reaching, more hopeful imagination than I’d had in a long time.

 

There were some more sense-making things contributing to that healthy feeling, to be sure. An old friendship dragged itself up yesterday from the Bernie scrap-heap (Hi Pagan Boy! Welcome back if you’re reading!) and I spent a few hours at my own (not the same one) bookstore job for the first time since March. It was a generally good and progress-y day.

 

But. this invasive, creepy moment was the most personal sexual encounter I’d had since those nights taking Quarantine Crush’s songs the wrong way. It was the nearest I’d gotten to getting friendly with a penis since… when was Comedy Guy? Like a year ago at least! In spite of myself, something was fulfilled in me, a glowing little (yet regular-sized) puzzle piece of joy fitting neatly into my Sacral chakra. I have no excuse.

 

I think the take-away here is this: It’s time to stop neglecting my sex drive and my kink. As creative as I’ve gotten with working and socializing remotely, I think there’s a lot of room for improvement in my virtual sex life, which doesn’t currently exist beyond swiping through Bumble and Hinge. I want whatever I find to be consensual, private, and personal of course, but just as surprising and stimulating. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Snuggles in the Time of Kavanaugh, Part Four

            Part of the reason the Kavanaugh hearings were so painful and traumatizing was that Dr. Ford’s testimony recalled my own teenage rape so clearly. I felt protective of Gilmore Guy as he helped me navigate those feelings, mostly by being wonderful and adorable and nice-smelling and superhot.

            But when, after several increasingly tense attempts at PIV sex, it started to slide into place, I could feel his focus on his penis’s performance. His determination and fixation made me feel like I wasn’t there, like he wasn’t there either. I slipped back from this safe, celebratory moment to that decades-ago drugged, mouth-covered, trapped, lost teenage feeling. I lost the battle against panic and told him so. He stopped, of course, looked scared and concerned. I felt all of my OWN pressure to get back to cheerful so we could fuck, my own increasingly futile determination to not be so scary with all of my feelings.

            “What do you need?” He asked again and again, in a voice that was at once scared, caring, and businesslike. I apologized for panicking and he said something understanding about “emotional labor” which struck me as a sad phrase to have to use on a second-or-third date. Nonetheless, he cared for me and treated me kindly, to the point where I wanted to return the good-listener favor. I asked him what was on his mind and he said:

“I miss (Gilmore Lady).” I just couldn’t help it, I started to cry. It wasn’t cute crying by any stretch—lonely, hurt, sad tears, empty and heartbreaking. It was a moment of inescapable honesty and I lost all attempts at being I-love-sharing-modern-open-relationships lady.

I cried and cried and confessed and confessed. I told him how much I want to be someone’s sun and moon and stars (“Not YOURS. Not on the second date. I’m not CRAZY.”) how what I really wanted was romance, how I’d already told him in the woods that I’m not a secondary.

“Do you want me to go?” He asked delicately.

“No. You can think I’m crazy tomorrow. Just… don’t go.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he said forcefully, climbing back into bed and wrapping me up in his arms. As kind as he was, and even as he didn’t mind me playing a guided meditation to try and get to sleep, I couldn’t settle in next to him. I went downstairs to the couch and almost immediately, exhausted and scared (not of him) I fell asleep in my own personal space.

When I woke up in the morning and, after my morning writing, meditation, and Spanish practice, went upstairs to him, I saw all over again what a gift he was. He was just lying there on his belly checking his phone, locks in a grey bandanna and fanned out over his naked back and shoulders, looking like a perfect treasure of a man, and I told him so. I really didn’t want to let him go, and we made the VERY most of the morning until it was time for me to get ready for work.

We made plans for the weekend. We texted and texted and texted. I sent him long, fretful, feminist paragraphs and he sent kind and thoughtful responses back. I could send him fraught texts in the middle of the night without scaring him away, that does not go unappreciated. He was a champion. He really tried, and so did I.

When it came time for our third-or-fourth date, a NO rose up in me so strong and goddessy that it felt like it was coming from the center of the earth. I said rather more than I meant to about unicorn hunters and the treatment of secondary partners how I might LOOK less-than, but wasn’t.

He looked regretful and sad as he left, and I was sad too. But more than sad, I was SURE. I was brave. I could see and admit what I wanted, even though poly norms and society in general would tell me to expect and accept less. I was embarrassed that I’d said so much, but mostly I just felt proud.

A week or so after that, Gilmore Guy and I exchanged kind goodbye/thank you texts, and I’m glad. I couldn’t be more grateful for his visit to my life, and I’m glad I got to tell him so directly instead of just hoping that he reads this.

I feel like I am a new and different person in a post-Dr.-Ford world. Her bravery is a new resource that empowers me to stand up for myself in the screaming-at-the-Supreme-Court way but also in the smaller, more daily, even in the more snuggly ways. I can’t say enough about my gratitude for Dr. Ford and for all of the women who came before her and with her. My childhood self had Anita Hill, my present day self has Christine Blasey Ford, and we both have Murphy Brown, so I think everything might be okay.

            After I said goodbye to Gilmore Guy, I changed my “Relationship Type” in OK Cupid to monogamous. I’m not sure that’s exactly right either, but there’s no “sun and moon and stars” option. So far, it has the same trials and indignities as it did before, but also the same hope. Steven and Gilmore Guy kindled a good flame in me, and I’m going to take care of it.

Snuggles in the Time of Kavanaugh* Part One

*Gabriel Garcia Marquez was also a rapey garbage person.

Before I write elsewhere about my adventures at the Supreme Court protests last Saturday, (Short recap: Screamed at a couple of Trump supporters, got in a cop’s face when he wouldn’t let me take my sign up the steps, screamed at a Franken apologist, helped take the steps of the Capitol, didn’t get arrested, went to the botanical garden) I want to keep honoring my time with Gilmore Guy, which is both related to and so sooooooooothing about the national misogynist mess.

After our wonderful time on the twenty-first night of September, Gilmore Guy and I set our next date for the following Monday. I was sooooo excited for the date that I even went shopping for cute new PJs, a lacy new bra, and underpants that were decidedly NOT the Bridget Jones kind. It felt wonderful to think about lace and ribbon and general girly adventurousness—I hadn’t felt that way in a long time!

Unfortunately and fortunately, that Monday was also the day of the National Walkout to Support Dr. Blasey Ford. It felt tricky to hold both that massively important moment and the wonder of this gorgeous, cuddly new man in my life at the same time.

I did NOT like wearing black. I would do anything for survivors, but in the future, I may not do that. Without my jewel tones and happy, sparkly jewelry, I felt armorless, marked as a victim for all to see.

I stopped at the library to pick up my holds, and the librarian complimented my NARAL pin that says “feminist” in six languages. She then felt moved to tell me that her brother had been molested by a man in the Sixties while hitchhiking. I felt equal parts sympathetic and annoyed, equal parts solidarity and irked by himpathy.

I text voters as often as I can to support the #bluewave, but I maybe should have skipped it on that day. Or maybe I’m glad I didn’t. Every time (okay it was only two times) somebody told me how undignified the Democrats were being at the Kavanaugh hearings, I came out as a rape survivor and told them why their support was important to me. It was good work, but also so discouraging and WILDLY triggering.

So after that, I was jangled. I was scared both physically and about the election. I also sometimes get a feeling from guys that once you’ve had sex with them once, it’s assumed for the rest of time. That’s maybe unfair, but it’s where I was at. I texted Gilmore Guy all this, and he understood, but wasn’t very wordy about it—taciturn. I felt like I had done something wrong, but I might have felt that no matter what.

Still, I liked the idea of just cuddles and episodes, and he even agreed to bring some Prosecco, my hero. (him AND the Prosecco) The idea of bubbly wine and introducing this cutie pie to Steven Universe got me back to myself and on with my day.

After work, even more of the fear and strain fell away. My job is very restorative these days, thank goodness.

So I got home, lit candles, got happily into my pretty new undies, awake and full of anticipation.  He was a few minutes late but when he got there and popped the cork, it felt like the moment was charmed. Plus, I got to use the fancy champagne flutes that Sweetie and I got at our wedding way back when. I gave him the pink glass and took the green, thinking (BUT DEFINITELY NOT SAYING) oh, heart chakra colors!

It’s a good thing Steven Universe episodes are only like fifteen minutes long, because Gilmore Guy’s arms were so warm around me, and this apartment sure as HECK has an available bed.

Oops, I Accidentally Got a Crush on a Men’s Rights Activist, Part Two

This story is sad, but it’s hopeful too. I like the way that I was able to love this person, this man so disjointedly separate from me, so deeply. It gives me faith in my heart, even if my taste in humans is once again not the best.

Conversation came back again to the “morbidly obese” who were, Cute Pansexual Assistant Manager kept saying, a problem. “For them,” (us, I meant) “MAYBE, but it’s not fair when society tells people what our bodies should look like. It makes me want to punch society in the face.”

WHY was I IN a conversation about his, about ANY of this, at work? With the Assistant Manager and the Store Manager? The Store Manager cosigned my feminism out of empathy for his teen daughter, which was comforting, but it hurt to have to defend my body weight in the middle of my stupid day job.

Even when I told Cute Pansexual Assistant Manager directly that he was hurting my feelings, he maintained that it was “just a difference of opinion.” He had thoughts on the matter if I was interested. NO, REALLY, SUPERVISOR AT WORK, tell me more about how the size of my ass is burdening you.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about a comp class I was in fifteen years ago at Syracuse. The professor had ostensibly chosen food politics as the semester’s theme, but in retrospect I can see she was doing body terrorism before I knew there was such a term. As we watched Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me show shot after shot of headless, poorly dressed fat people, revealing the filmmaker’s contempt for both the fat and the poor, I sat in my slightly two small classroom desk feeling scrutinized. The fat at my middle felt naked, my boobs too big. I felt exposed in a way that reminded me of my long-ago rape.

In 2018, I would have been OUTRAGED, would have called every campus official, but instead I wrote about objectification in my class papers, got an A and moved on. Now, whenever I see Morgan Spurlock’s book, or any other piece of body-shaming trash, in the Little Free Libraries around town, I put them in the recycling where they belong.

Anyway, back to the bookstore, fat-shaming comments weren’t the only ones to come out of CPAM’s mouth—he seemed determined to dismiss any existence of sexism or racism ANYWHERE. “It’s 2018,” he said, “It sucks for everyone.” He brushed off feminism as man-hating, ignored my complaints about his frequent casual racism, and seemed personally injured by any kind of justice talk. I was only DOING any justice talk because his gentle but constant stream of prejudice kept nagging my conscience to say something.

 “Stop trying to school me,” he eventually said, the third time I tried to calmly explain that fat people aren’t less-than, that we haven’t necessarily “let ourselves go,” that we haven’t somehow placed a burden on him or on other straight-sized people just by existing.

I can see how the “schooling” was annoying to him and how it DEFINTELY wasn’t my job. I gave him way too much leeway because I needed a friend, because I wanted a new bookstore home. I should have reported him to the Store Manager, but he had a ways to go, too—I’d had to also gently call HIM out when he referred to an old Cosby joke that was only sort of about rape. (At least SM was receptive to pushback and didn’t make me explain myself, but the reference hadn’t exactly inclined me toward trust. )

Partly, I was doing a bad white person thing: I didn’t want to give up comfort to do what was right. I wanted a break from being like this. I wanted to be a part of things without being an SJW for like FIVE SECONDS but I think what I’m learning is that those days are behind me. Good.

I’m not sure why I tried so hard to belong there, when there’s so much belonging available all around me—there’s marches, there’s canvassing, there’s yoga and massage and occasionally stopping into (super liberal Unitarian) church. There are my feminist-bookstore-owning neighbors who still have their Hillary sign (from primaries!) up. I have a home in the world no matter what. I’m not sure how or why that bookstore got so important to me.

Because of that needless struggle to belong, or because of my poor handling of it, (and, to a greater degree, because America puts children in cages now) the first half of this summer was about battling depression, about really struggling for hope. I want sometimes to go back to my life before activism, before Nazis came back to the streets, before Heather Heyer got murdered, but this is where we are now, and there’s no way out but through.

At the bookstore, that would mean a few more snits and a lot more HR.

Next Time: Does he know what he’s saying?

Open Letter to LGBT Community Center Hosting The Scary Party

3/21/2018

Dear (Executive Director),

I have shared a deep concern with the (LGBT Community Center Hosting The Scary Party) staff via email a couple of times and my complaint has been ignored. Just a heads-up that what you are about to read may be triggering, and for that, I’m sorry.

I am writing to you under my blog name to minimize outing other partners I’ve written about on my blog.

Since finding out that (LGBT Community Center) is now hosting (The Scary Party's) monthly parties, I have been suffering flashbacks to traumatic events that happened to me at the hands of their leadership, as well as feeling that I no longer have safe access to (LGBT Community Center) for counselling and other events.

At an (Scary Party) event in 2013, I experienced numerous consent violations from the head of security at the time and his friend, who was also on the security staff. In response to my report, the dungeon's leadership gaslighted me, blamed me for what happened, and the entire (Scary Party) community gang-trolled me on FetLife. 

I have considered (LGBT Community Center) to be a wonderful resource in the past, but until this situation is corrected, I will no longer feel safe using your services, and I don't think any woman/femme/submissive should.

Here are detailed blog posts on both the original incident and the FetLife nightmare. In the future, I hope you will consider safety and consent in your booking decisions.

http://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2013/03/scene-failure-and-scary-party-part-one.html

http://kittencalendar.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-horror-my-adventure-in-fetlife-rape.html?zx=97b3fce42ee5dcf8

Best,

"Pretty Ribbons"

Big Therapy Project, Week Three: Four Very Creepy Words

Even though I’m walking around most days feeling like I have a low-grade emotional flu, it dawns on me sometimes that I’m doing something I’ve wished I could do for two decades—change my relationship to The Bad Thing, get it out of my body, move myself toward a life where I’m not hard, harsh and on the defensive quite so often. I love the idea that that one night when I was sixteen will stop leading me back to itself and crushing me in new and ever more creative ways. It feels like this is the ultimate body adventure and a big part of the point of this story.

Confronting the Bad Thing is a surprisingly physical experience and it’s hard to predict whether I feel warm and open or anxious and coiled up from day to day. It’s hard to imagine whether I might ever be a sex blogger again. For the past few weeks, my sex drive has been superwonky. I still have personal time, of course, but sometimes I’m rattled and upset afterwards, or just restless and vigilant. A couple of times I’ve gotten hives on my thighs or gotten strong urges to find a way to numb myself, especially after anything penetrating.

It seems like as good a time as any to admit that, with some exceptions, penis in vagina sex has been at least a little bit triggering each time I’ve had it in the past few years. As much as I enjoy it, it stirs up a deep anxiety that either leads to too-quick love and clinging or to fleeing, sometimes both at once. It’s sad that something I crave so much could have so much pain attached, and that’s something I hope to at least partly heal. For love and sex not to live so closely with paralyzing fear anymore, that seems like a worthy goal.

This appointment, she had me close my eyes (scary) and go through the story again. I sank further into the story this time, let myself feel where it lives in my body. I realized how much of that night was about not being able to move, that trapped and nauseous feeling. I came close to feeling the sickening humiliation of there being a penis inside me that I didn’t want there, a man on top of me that I was forced to choose. I can no longer pretend that I had any say there, that the sex part was anything like my fault. Even if I had not been drugged, I don’t feel in those moments any sense of agency, any power to consent. I was forced to have sex with him for the twisted amusement of the party, and nobody seems to have even had any fun.

After I told the story and was relieved to have my eyes open again, the therapist gave me the list of words and told me to work through them in whatever way I could. After she left, having high-fived me for our accomplishments, immobilized is exactly what I felt. I got into bed and didn’t/couldn’t get up for at least three or four hours. I hadn’t been to the grocery store yet and I came really close to asking Sweetie to go to the store for me. But I eventually got up and got there.

So immobilized is the one I started with and I immediately recognized its stultifying, sabotaging influence in my life. Even what drove me crazy about Sweetie is what I often described as her “inertia” but oh, how immovable I am on the inside. Part of me, since that long-ago night, has been sitting against the wall on that party’s kitchen floor, unable to get up and get myself away someplace safe. The more I acknowledge its influence, the stronger it feels, like a vice of drugged fear, holding my whole self down. I’ve visited that feeling so often in the past few years, and each time it’s both a horror and a relief.

If my teenage self is stuck on that floor in that kitchen, all I can do is offer my love and support, to tell her that I and all of the people in this story so far (well, the ones she likes, anyway, which is most of them) are there and ready to help, ready to take her hand and help her up and out the door. I know I can’t rescue her or make any cute boys rescue her, I know it all happens no matter what, but I do want her to know how much she is loved, especially by me, and maybe that will take us forward, really forward and not just to the next void.