In Which I Realize I Am Really Lucky to Have Had My Adventure Years, Part Three

That week, while my creative coaching client was collaging through her blocks, I made this. Both a staircase and a trapped butterfly, seems about right.

It should be said, friends, that my almost-year-and-a-half dry spell was a literal dry spell as well—I’ve always been the squishiest, but there was a while when I was so dry that I thought I might be starting menopause. I could just have stocked up on lube, but the idea of always having to was something I wasn’t ready to face, so I got by on spit and determination. From the moment I met J, the dry spell was over. I came home with soaked underpants every time, wetter than in all my adventures. It felt like a reunion, like a second chance at being alive, to be coursing with so much life, to be opening up like a flower. That’s why, no matter how it ended up, I’m glad I let my hoo-ha make the decisions for a while—that part of me (literally and figuratively) has been neglected for so long, I’m glad I didn’t begrudge myself a perilous treat.

When I met him, I was in a delicate but thriving state. It was the first time in my adult life that I could say I was truly happy to be single. I was teaching poetry in my pretty apartment, spending lots of time with my friends and at church, and starting to have faith about where I was going. However, back in February I had to resign from the school district due to acute stress disorder, and I’m still pretty jumpy and prone to panics about once a month. The fact that J. was triggering space issues seemed like it was partly due to my own recent and distant past, but typing the story to you makes it seem less likely that that was so. I am still brokeny, but I think I was scared of him because he was (unintentionally, I’m almost sure) scary—sometimes it’s not that deep.

Anyway, the day after our beautiful but ill-ended flower date, he sent a text apologizing and citing grief. I conceded that not everyone can be besties with their exes the way I (somewhat unhealthily) am with Sweetie. (Currently she and I work at the same three-employee store, she’s my boss, and we spend about an hour each morning processing my feelings about various things. All this with a person I once jumped out of a car to get away from. I know.) I told him to give me some time,  that I’d have to do some soul-searching, so we went to radio silence and a love poem proceeded to pour out of me in a way that hadn’t happened in a long time. I felt jangled but fired up. I made art all day that day.

(When I second-drafted the poem with my friends in poetry class, I noticed that it accidentally implied that I wanted to have babies, including feeling the vibration of his Apple watch as “Another little heartbeat.” and, seeing the children in the flower garden wearing glow bracelets, responding with “I want one” meaning but not really meaning the glow bracelets. I hid it pretty well before I posted it, but still, I was like, nicely done, subconscious! Got it.)

Anyway, maybe latent baby-wishes were what inspired me to give him a chance, or his prowess at planning dates, or the cuteness of his texting style. (It was the first time I’ve dated with emoji involved, and I can’t overstate the adorableness of a good morning sunflower rainbow kissy face…) Maybe (probably) it was just plain lust and curiosity. That Sunday, I took a beach trip by myself, to clear my head and make the right decision, and I knew (I always know things best in the ocean, even if it is with a bathing suit on these days.) that if I let him go, I would always wonder if there could have been something real between us. Also I have to admit there was the stupid “What if this is my last chance?” feeling that comes from being socialized to think of myself as ancient at almost-forty-one.

When he asked me a couple days before the date what I was in the mood for, I very brazenly and honestly said red meat. He sent me a couple of menus for fancy places I could dress up for, with very grown-up prices, and I thought, “Is this what regular dating women get all the time? I should start expecting more from life.” That was the central lesson of him, and I hope I can see it through.

The day before our third date, I had an enormous panic attack. The first week of classes is pretty much the only busy time our college bookstore job is stressful, just because of all the extroversion and sometimes-getting-trapped-behind-the-register it requires. The one rude kid on our super-adorable campus found me and I found myself with a pounding headache, unable to work or get myself home. A kind coworker brought me to the campus infirmary, where the nice nurse asked me why I had neither a therapist nor meds. Reasonable question. I got some good rest before the date, but I carried a residue of fear under my pretty black polka-dot dress. (Hello again, red satin heels!)

As I followed my GPS to the suburbs, everything started to look familiar, especially when I turned onto J’s block. Remember way back whenSteampunk Guy pulled over on a quiet suburban street for car sex? THIS RANDOM OKC GUY’S HOUSE WAS THE HOUSE WE PULLED OVER IN FRONT OF. J was one of the nice people I was trying not to wake with my sex yowls three summers ago. I didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one, but I’ve never been more sure that my love life is a labyrinth. So where had I returned to?

I can’t overstate my delight at being properly dated, to be out in the world being shown off in a fancy outfit, being treated like someone who’s someone instead of a dance card afterthought. I ate rare filet mignon and felt like an animal, like a sexy lion, like a woman who’s thoroughly alive. He ordered a good pinot with the inauspicious name “Writer’s Block” but I seem to be overflowing with paragraphs nonetheless.

The conversation turned again to his writing, which was a tricky subject. He’d told me before that he wrote erotic novels, and I (somewhat hypocritically) was scared to read them—I had a feeling we wouldn’t be able to go on if I read his stories, and probably I was right. He confirmed that “Well, let’s just say it’s not all consensual.” I didn’t ask him who in the stories was not consenting to what, only told him I was now A. Scared and B. Too tipsy to flee.

“But sometimes someone just needs a little…push…”

Okay, so this blog wouldn’t exist if that weren’t a little bit true, but I didn’t like hearing it from him. “That’s not up to you. It’s not up to you to decide what someone else needs.”

He rightly pointed out that he’d written it, not done it, but still, I felt so let down and sad. “I just want there to be one guy, one guy, who wants a real person next to him in bed.” Yes, there have been plenty, but I was having tunnel vision, heavy with the burden of trying to keep myself not-raped. In the do-over version, this is where I have the waitress split the check, wait around a bit to sober up, and grouse about it to my friends at brunch the next day. But as he paid the bill, the conversation simmered back to happy somehow and I admitted that what I wanted most in the world was just to tear. Him. Apart. I was getting in that pool, and no stupid thing he said was going to stop me.

Next time: Big moon, hot sex, more stupid things.

How We Won the Party

So many of my adventures lately include leaving-practice, and this was one of them. First Boy (so named because he was the first guy I topped, a few weeks ago at that Halloween party) had invited for me to bottom for him in rope class before the dungeon last Saturday, but it turned out to be a demo-class, not hands-on, and he felt unqualified to tie me up on his own. I’m glad he copped to that, but I had a rejection-reaction that was disproportionate with the situation. I got a sour feeling in my belly that tells me I’m not ready yet for rope class, since it was such a Sweetie thing.

Luckily Cute Master’s birthday party was also going on that night, so I bid First Boy a regretful farewell (I’m sure he found some good adventures…) and set my GPS for the suburbs. Really, I should know the way by now. I was all sproinged up with pent-up energy from the rope demo, but I knew that even if I didn’t find a release I’d still have some good time with pals.

Still, I worried about the vulnerability that rope class had brought out, especially since one of the first people I saw when I walked in was CBATP. He didn’t have the scene-glow that he’d had in my memory of him, but still, pangs. And awkward. When I talked to him later that night, I went with false, slutty bravado which might have been unappealing but at least it kept me from losing out on fun.

Cute Master was organizing a game and asked me if I wanted to play as dom or sub. I picked dom, figuring I’d get to spank out some of the pent-up stuff. He handed me a playing card, and ace, and told me to find the sub with the other ace.

It’s possible that CM rigged the draw, because my partner was none other than… Pretty Slave! We were both delighted at this arrangement.

“Is this, like, a sluttiness contest? Because I WILL WIN.”

It wasn’t really a contest, though, we just had to tell the person what to do and if they didn’t do it to our satisfaction, we’d get a goody bag instead.

We were last since we had the ace, so we had lots of time to plan our strategy while we watched the other (very tame and clothed) partnerships do their things—mostly variations on flogging. She sat in my lap while we brainstormed and I felt her up. I wanted us to do EVERYTHING, especially with everyone watching, but I felt a little reticent about asking. Cute Master kept saying things like “Oh, I know you two are gonna be MESSED. UP. You’d almost think I planned this.”

PS and I continued plotting, and she asked “Can I finger you?”

“Of course!”

“Can I make you come? Will you be able to?”

“Um, yeah.”

As our turn approached, CM kept saying, “Oh, man, I can’t wait to read about this on your blog!” Which made me really, really happy.

“(CM) you have to put on “Call Me Maybe!” PS kept saying.

“No, you reeeeeally don’t,” I said, but she wandered off to find it while I stood in front of the crowd in Wonder Woman stance, completely without stage fright.

Once she’d found the song and come back, she kissed me and I put my arms up. She pulled off my bright pink sweater and told me to turn around so that she could unzip my houndstooth pencil skirt. I’d told her to leave on the heels, as they’re my lucky pair. She unhooked my bra and I flung it into the crowd like an old-timey striptease. I took her black dress off and she kneeled down in front of me, emphatically placing her mouth on the front of my panties.

A jolt went through me and I cried out, reached down and petted/pulled her hair. Buckling from the charge of her, I knelt down and we kissed. I squeezed her nipples hard, held her close, and smelled her hair like I always do, except with an audience.

I reached into her black lace panties and found her clit, making her moan and sucking her nipple. At this point, two other girls decided to join in, both friends I’d never played with before. There was a moment where I didn’t know where I fit, but I found my way kissing the one with the long dark hair and the shiny purple dress.

Pretty Slave and I found each other again and she rubbed her hand over the front of my undies while I kissed her some more.

“I have to lie down,” I said.

“Okay, I like it when you lie down.”

“Why am I still wearing these?”

She took my underpants off me (but still not my shoes) and my very favorite moment was when I opened my legs and gave the entire right side of the room (mostly men, some cute ones) a full view of my hoo-ha. It felt like such recognition, a celebration, a big TA-DA! for such a beloved part. The guys made appreciative noises about having chosen their seats well.

They only got more appreciative when Pretty Slave buried her face in there. Oh!

Up top, the other two girls were playing with each other and with my boobs. The one girl, about whom I wasn’t feeling 100% yes, kept hurting them and kept leaning over me in such a way that her blouse made me feel stifled. It took me a couple of tries and some panting diplomacy to back her off, but I did, and she consigned herself to petting my hair.

I stayed in the throes of Pretty Slave’s tongue. She pushed a finger inside me. Another knuckle just grazed my asshole and I got all full of shivers.

“Can we do this for my birthday?” asked a member of the crowd, and soon they were all naming upcoming occasions we could celebrate in this way. I was glad to be so festive and wanted and seen.

When we were done, I sat up and kissed her hoo-ha-tasting mouth, thanked her, and of course got a high-five. She held me in one of the big circle-chairs and we had giggly aftercare, talking about our odd not-relationship and making up silly statuses to have on Fet. We said how much we appreciate each other and we were both so glad to have pulled aces.

And I’m glad I left the dungeon when I did: leaving-practice tends to have the best rewards.

A Month After Fireguy: On Coming and Writing

A month ago, I had a basement-date with Fireguy that went (consensually) a lot further than it should’ve. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that I could end up restrained and at third base by the end of a first date. It was a LOT of fun buy it was also certainly too much for me.

The next day, I was feeling good but overwhelmed, a little shaky and unsure. I figured I’d give it a few days to let it sink in, then write it through and consider what I wanted to do about that budding relationship or acquaintanceship or playpal arrangement or whatever it was supposed to be. Fireguy, however, went into damage-control mode, quite unbidden and unnecessarily. He texted and said that if I wrote about it that day, it wouldn’t be the “one handed read” that he wanted it to be, but if I wrote about it the next week, then “that would be fine.”

It isn’t that I dislike being jerked off to, either in person or in written form—in fact, until that moment, turning people on had been one of the big joys of writing this. When Fireguy sent those texts, I felt the bottom drop out from under me, both because he was taking ownership of something that’s creatively mine and because he’d reduced this complex personal journey or whatever to something that existed just for his enjoyment. I wanted to handle it properly, so I called him up to talk about it, but I was so panicked that I ended up blubbering and unable to finish my sentences. He seemed irritated: “You just don’t understand what’s going on with me.”

What was going on with him was that he and Varga Girl broke up but were trying to continue as sub and dom, that’s a big deal, admittedly. But what he’d mentioned in the texts was, this guy had embarrassed him on FetLife, and he was very concerned about his reputation. It still makes me so disgusted that he was:

A. A grown man that concerned about his online reputation.

B. Willing to compromise my well-being about it.

C. A dominant man trying to squelch a submissive woman’s point of view.

What I kept asking him, and what I still keep wondering, is what about what’s going on with me? All of that stuff that happened was a big deal to me, and I still wish I could’ve gotten anybody to acknowledge it. I was completely unable to convince either Fireguy or Varga Girl that I was a person in the story, that, for better or worse, something had happened to me, and I had a right to write about it, I had a right to a point of view. I’ll never get them to acknowledge me as a human being, and that is really scary.

I eventually managed to get it through to him that trying to control me creatively was crossing a limit. He apologized for that and for breaking my trust. We had a pretty good conversation (even if he did try to rewrite the meaning of the phrase “one-handed read”) and I was relieved that I didn’t have to stay mad at him.

AND THEN HE DID IT AGAIN.

Paranoid and still trying to Smeagol his precious ex, he tried to convince me again to stop writing about our date, trying at first to shame me about the sex parts, but eventually admitting that he was afraid of his sub reading it. He tried to convince me to take out the sex scenes or “make it more anonymous” even though I already don’t use names or locations. He even suggested switching the entire blog to private. “Everyone knows it’s me,” he said, he said he didn’t want his family to read it.

I was beyond livid, I still am. First of all, I had made a clear limit about trying to control me creatively. Breaking a limit once can be seen as an accident, breaking it again is torture. He knew that what he was doing would have a triggering effect, and he kept doing it anyway. When I got upset and panicked, he told me I was too angry to be in his family.

What I heard in all those attempts to control my writing: “My point of view is more important than yours. Nobody in the scene knows who you are, so you don’t matter.”

So right now, I’m still scared. I’m having trouble getting back to the feeling I had before that night-the feeling of being free and loved and starting to accept myself. I really worry that I will never be able to trust a man again, that I can only find men who embody a secret inner wish to be erased.

Part of me want to jump up and down and say “Why don’t you see, what happened was important,” both the experience and the paragraphs he squelched. After all, he did succeed in fucking up the writing process—I was too disgusted and humiliated to finish telling the sex part of the story.

One part I didn’t get to was, toward the end of the scene that night, I did get to try the “Please, Sir, may I come” thing—he was playing with my boobs and I was finishing myself off down below, and I started to feel the wave crest, so I found just the right moment and asked: “Please sir, may I come.”

“Sure, go ahead,” he said, and I did.

Sometimes you don’t know that you don’t like something until it’s too late. There’s some connection there between his wanting a say in the deeply intimate rhythms of my own body and wanting a say in the way I write about the experience—to me, those things are not separate. If you’re keeping score, that’s “”Come for me, you greedy little brat,” yes and “Please Sir may I come?” no. It’s complicated.

As much as I enjoy the feeling of submitting, it seems very difficult to find a guy whose dominance does not spill over into everyday life. Both Bill and Fireguy refused to let me belong to myself after I left the couch or scene. Both experiences were about losing my point of view, and I am very scared of letting that happen again.

Nice to Meet You!

About a year ago, I started dating men after 10 years of only being with my wife. It’s been mostly-wonderful and very instructive so far, but my first couple of mini-relationships with guys have me asking a lot of questions about my relationship with my body and with the (mysterious and yet not-so-mysterious) male gender.

I love books where the author spends him-or herself on a year’s adventure and then writes about it so see what he or she learned, so that’s what I’m doing. My mission is to find my inner Bettie Page—I couldn’t hope to look like her, but I do hope to access come of the joy and confidence that I see in her face, whether she is clothed or naked, romping in the woods or tied up and being spanked. This is that kind of story.

The best way to start would be to paste in these two entries that I originally wrote on my Fet Life page. Things have gotten a lot better from there, I promise.

List for my First Quasi Sub-Dom Thing

1. He wasn’t doing it right and neither was I. I pretty quickly lost the ability to say which things bothered me, which things I didn’t want to be part of the game.
2. I learned that I am submissive but not a masochist. I like to be held down, restrained, but I only like pain inasmuch as it is part of rough-and-tumble fun, and I don’t like intentional emotional pain or humiliation outside the context of play.
3. There are names that I like to be called, in context. I still get weak in the knees when I think of him gruffly saying “Ah, come for me, ya little brat.” I liked being called any number of nasty names, but when it became clear that he actually SAW me as those things, I couldn’t really go any further. (Okay, I went a little further, but I did know that that was where it needed to end.)
4. Even though my trust in him turned out to have been misspent, I am proud of how far I’ve come when it comes to trust. There are things I have feared with men for so long—roughness, being pinned down and unable to move, being too aggressive myself, having a hand over my mouth, having sex with a guy I adored…he took me past all of those fears. I am really grateful.
5. It was Christmastime, and so I gave him some pretty Christmassy ribbons to tie me up with. It was too early to be giving presents, but I am what I am. He never got to use the ribbons. At a certain point, all he could do was figure out what I really wanted and withhold it. That’s not fun.
6. I get feelings for people. I was really attached to this guy even though I know I wasn’t supposed to be getting all emo with him, so when Someday, You will Be Loved by Death Cab for Cutie shuffled on, I was going to get up and change it, but he wouldn’t let me. I struggled to get up but he held me there, pinned and trapped, kissing and wrestling and fighting to be free. I’m sure he didn’t mean it to be as poetic as it was, but I felt like the song was some kind of cosmic message: “And the memories of me will seem more like bad dreams, just a series of blurs, like I never occurred, someday, you will be loved.”
7. I liked the bruises at first. They’re bite marks, and when there were just a few little ones, I felt kind of precious about them, like they made me his. But they got a little out of control, until my whole left shoulder and upper arm were black and blue. I started having to wear long sleeves. I worried what other lovers would think of me.
8. I’m sure this was unintentional, but the evening after we first went to third base, I posted a makeout song on my blog, and he posted a series of vintage VD posters on his. I started to feel like I was diseased.
9. I loved when he called parts of me his: “This is mine, and this is mine, and this is mine…” but I don’t think that he really understood that I WAS his, even though I have a wife and another sweetie, that my heart can really belong to however many people. Maybe he didn’t think about it that much, or care, but I was his, scary as that turned out to be.
10. By the end, I couldn’t stand myself. I couldn’t remember who I was or how to make myself happy. I was crying almost every day and feeling ugly and full of shame. That was never what I was after. I wanted a game between equals, but I think his fantasy was different, in fact, I knew that it was, and I should have asked. I wanted a safe place to act out my darker parts, a true friendship with someone whose deviations matched mine. He wanted, as he finally came out and said, a “fuck doll.”
11. So I have to find out some way to submit without losing my voice, to find a person who will pull hair and bite and call names and wrestle, but who will also treat me like a human being. That is a lot to ask for, especially since I also would like him to be poly and tall and big and obsessed with music. I am glad that I let him go, if only so that I’ll have my heart ready for my really and truly trustworthy top.

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 Amy 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.

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.