Friday before last, it was my yearly work evaluation. It was fine! I'm on my way to a fourth year (!) in a job, that's long for me. I lost a few points in the "positivity" category, which felt vexing at first because with a few accommodations in place and way less masking my autism, this was my happiest work year yet! It makes me sad (And enflames my sense of justice!) that maybe the less-masking cost me those (TWO) points, but I'm thinking maybe positivity is something I can let go of a little. Maybe some of my general Polyanna-ing is armor I don't need anymore. Shrug emoji!
Anyway, that night, I wanted to reward myself! A good work year, a lovely new summer job on the horizon, so much peace and growth at every Codependents Anonymous meeting, OCD a much quieter influence--I'm really really proud of myself. I'm glad I gave myself this reward, I really have been the goodest girl! <3 <3 <3
“Take off your clothes and I’ll be back in a minute. I have
to go make something.”
What I made was this:
I think I see an Etsy store in the making. Sweetie likes
soft touch, so I made it more as a tickler, but it turns out it works very well
as a flogger, too.
I left it in the other room while I was blindfolding her so
she’d have to guess at what she was feeling. Once she was all nice and
blindfolded, I told her to put her hands over her head and did this:
It’s not tied off quite right, but hey, I did handcuffs, go
me! *proud*
She looked beautiful laying there in my pink blindfold,
handcuffed wrists up to her chest, boobs flushed and excited. She still had her
socks on—we often do.
I went and got my DIY ribbon flogger and started to drag it
lightly over her. She didn’t like it on her feet, but everywhere else, she
oohed and sighed. She said she couldn’t figure out what it was, even though,
you know, ribbons seem kind of obvious.
She always likes a little sting to the nipples, at least in biting-sucking-pinching
ways, so I gave her right nipple a little thwack. I liked it, and she groaned.
A little growly aggression rose up in me and it felt good. I flogged her
nipples gently and then harder, alternating with dragging the ribbons softly
over her neck, arms, thighs. Standing over her all powerful like that, I
started to smell like sex, and I lifted up her handcuffed hands and said
“Feel that.”
She scrabbled around desperately trying to get her fingers
inside me, but I pushed her arms back down onto the pillow.
I told her to turn over and smacked her with the ribbons
some more. It felt good to hit her like that. I found a good spot at the center
of her freckled upper back and just struck there lovingly for a while, making
sure she knew who was in charge. I reached down for her breasts and she grabbed
over her shoulders for mine. My pussy was slippery and throbby against her back
and I was moving against her. I would have come right then if I hadn’t pushed
her hands away and made her turn back over.
I kissed her neck and bit hard on her nipples, over and
over. I pulled the back of her hair gently but firmly so that she couldn’t
move. She said “I want…” but got distracted and trailed off. A few minutes
later I asked:
“What were you trying to say that you wanted?”
“I want you to..haha…”
“What.”
*giggle* “I want you to put your fingers in me really hard.”
“And what is that called?”
She hesitated.
“Say it. I’m not going to do it unless you say it.”
“I kind of want you to, well, fuck me.”
So I happily obliged. Later I got to bend over and find out
what the ribbons felt like smacking my ass. The rest of the day was full of
ropes, library books, snuggles, and triumph. I love bottoming and all, but I
guess I can admit to being just a liiiiitle bit of a switch.
Odds are that before too long, I’ll be headed back towards submissiontown, and that’s got me thinking fondly/confusedly of The Song Sender I’m still winning the Not Googling Him Award and I fight the urge to forward him these posts mostly because I know Sweetie’d be superworried if I got in touch with him. As much as I would like to reach out to him, I don’t think I could risk the progress I’ve made in the months since Christmas.
This next part of the story is for the most part something I’ve already posted. I added in some details I originally left out. Whenever I get frustrated that I haven’t gotten over him fast enough, I remember what he meant to me, and that I really did love him.
Love in a Time of Erectile Dysfunction
All of my adult life, I’ve been afraid of men. Because they could hurt me, sure, but mostly because I’ve always felt at their mercy, desperate for their attention, angry and resentful that they had something I needed. But it is, they are, something I need. So when I recently returned to men after more than a decade, I was determined to confront and master these fears. I sort of regret that the fears took the form of a person, not because of what happened, but because I would’ve liked to have known who he was outside of the role I/we created for him.
I need someone to push me past my fears, and push he did. His phone’s wallpaper was Ganesh, Remover of Obstacles, and that’s how I saw him. Before our first date, I drew a tarot card, and got the Devil card reversed: “Release from bondage, throwing off shackles…the first step towards enlightenment.” I told him about the card and he said, “Oh, like a catalyst.”
I wanted someone I couldn’t control, and that is what I got. He was intractable and unreadable and definitely incorrigible. At every turn, he pushed me further than I would’ve thought to go. He called me names I’d always been afraid of, and it was always a relief. One day at work we were watching “Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron,” about a horse that couldn’t be broken; I blushed because the lines all kept reminding me of him.
After a little while, I started to feel uncomfortable with the way things were going. When I first started dating men again, I’d begun to see myself as hot in a way I never had before, but that eroded. He kept breaking dates to go places and only wanted to see me if nakedness was involved, emailed me songs that implied I was fat, old, worn out. He called me “Dummy” and I’d happily agree that he turned my brain into a test pattern, but of course that didn’t sit right. I didn’t complain because I didn’t want to control him, and also because I didn’t want him to get frustrated and go away.
And I still wanted to know what rough sex felt like. I have been having sweet, wonderful adorable sex for all of these years and I can’t complain too much about that, but I’ve always wanted to be taken, it’s both my worse fear and my strongest fantasy. Since he generally seemed to want me so much that I sometimes thought he might eat me, he seemed like the guy for that. So even though things weren’t sitting right with me, I wanted to keep him around for at least until that happened. Well, I really wanted to keep him around forever and ever, but I think I knew that wasn’t possible.
The day that it was supposed to happen was a revelation I didn’t expect. I expected the angry-hot guy who’d so expertly and emphatically ripped off my jeans on the third date, the one who sometimes pounded my arms down onto the couch when I tried to hold him. I expected to feel the way I’d asked to feel, like I had no choice, but instead he was tentative. His façade dropped. He still made plays at ordering me around, but he became self-conscious in a way that I took for tenderness. The guy who’d grabbed and shoved and hair-pulled his way through bases one to three was gone and here was this…friend of mine.
It was hard to find a place to be since we could only ever get together at my apartment and Sweetie has a strict (and very reasonable) no-boys-in-the-bed-policy, we had the choice of either the couch or the floor. He pulled me on top of him on the couch and I pouted a little but climbed on and gave it a go. He wilted soon after I started. I sat on the floor beside the couch and tried for some combination of soothing but not emasculating.
Next we tried the floor—I spread out a Care Bears blanket and down we went. After an awkward moment of “Is it in?” in it went and it felt great, but he lost his erection again after a few minutes. He climbed off and lay beside me, apologetic, and I have to say that’s the moment when I knew I loved him. He was clearly mortified and frustrated, but I couldn’t resist petting his hair and telling him what I believed in that moment, which was that he was perfect. He wasn’t any of my fears or the scary guy he tried to be, he was just a boy trying to do a good job for me. He lay there claiming my body as he liked to do, talked dirty and told me to come until I did.
After that, I thought I could really trust him, and I got up and reached behind the Christmas tree for his present. It was a stylish black gift bag with some pretty Christmassy ribbons to tie me up with. Some said things on them like “naughty or nice” and others were just nice bright colors that could be used any time of year. It was too early to be giving presents, but I am what I am. He never got to use the ribbons, and in fact I’m still looking for my Ribbon Guy.
I was so happy that day because it really felt like we meant something to each other, like we truly were friends. He told me he’d find room for me in his life even when another woman comes along, which is kind of what a poly girl hopes to hear from a single, not-poly guy. We snuggled and played and kissed and watched a whole bunch of Party Down episodes, and I was happy.
His interpretation of events was different from mine, and he was gone from my life by the following week. I’m not sure that I can see him as a remover of obstacles, since the experience brings up more questions than it answers. But I am trying to take the lesson of that day to heart—I am not at the mercy of men. We are all at the mercy of each other, and beneath even the snarliest of us there is a sweet vulnerable human being just trying to do his best. I can’t take back the role I placed him in or the way things turned out, but I can learn to open myself up a little more to men. I can admit that I love him and hopefully find a way to let him go. The song I most associate with him is “Close to Me” by The Cure, and the thing I most want to remember is that aside from all the fetishes, fantasies and fears, closeness is my dearest wish, the thing I truly hope to find again.
