Various Happy Things: You Are What You Love

They don’t really fit the traditional mold of happy poly moments, but some things converged last week to make me feel like I am back on track:

1. Since I’ve known for a while that some (not all) of the troubles between us could be solved with, like, a half-hour conversation and I was having a hankering to watch Mystery Science Theater 3000 and be excellently fucked, I asked the Mayor of Kittentown for some snuggles. He was happy to be asked but says his new relationship doesn’t allow for extracurricular snuggles. It’s hard to let him go for real, but I’m glad to know that there’s at least one guy that I still trust enough to ask for what I want. And! I get a gold star for asking. I hope that MKT and I can keep a friendship going, even if being on his couch isn’t appropriate anymore. And! I’m really happy that his relationship is getting closer, even if it means no snuggles for me.
2. This one won’t seem happy at first, but bear with me: I’m still really sad that my therapist is on maternity leave, and the interim lady didn’t work out—I felt frustrated, confused, and panicky to the point where the interim lady asked her supervisor to intercede. The supervisor lady gave me two very nice gifts: First, she helped me understand that my bond with my regular therapist is really deep and it’s okay to not want to do therapy with anyone else. Supervisor lady asked me to imagine that my real therapist was sitting next to me and to find that sensation in my body—it was in my heart, and that made me cry my eyes out some more.

I think that experience was really important because what I’m really learning here is how to not be freaked out by attachment. Often when I try to fight attachment, it comes out as anger, resentment, fear, a real feeling of being trapped. Once I realized it was okay to have a bond, the pressure was released and I could happily take the summer off from therapy.

The other cool thing that that the supervisor lady told me was to get a pretty notebook and write letters to my therapist while she’s gone. While it makes me feel like a genuine crazy person, it really works—in fact, I decided to use it to write to other people I can’t currently talk to—it’s a relief to be able to parse out all of the emotions instead of being overwhelmed by them. Most of the letters, I won’t share or send, but it makes me feel better and like it is safer to be connected to people. It helps me to experience some of the attachments I have been fighting in a way that doesn’t force me to confront or disrupt anything—it’s another way to help myself learn love.

3. Over the weekend, I went to a couple of talks that were really helpful and inspiring. The first one was a talk on seeing kink through the lens of feminism. I looked forward to it so much that it kind of made my week. I don’t think that there’s anything inherently anti-feminist about kink, but I have wished for a while to have more friends who see BDSM from a feminist perspective. On the way there, I got caught in a romantic-comedy-level downpour—I was soaked down to my underwear and laughing my head off—I felt like I was on a very good date with myself. (Thank goodness Sweetie and I had a date for afterwards so she could bring me a change of clothes.)

While I sat there shivering, I was so happy to hear people’s questions and stories, and it was wonderful to feel safe to tell my story without fear of being seen as a bad girl. (At least, not a bad girl in a bad way!) I realized that the key to making more safety for myself in the local BDSM community is to spend more time forming friendships, so I won’t end up in the power-imbalance that automatically comes with being an outsider. So I offered to be folks’ munch-going pal, and I am so proud that the workshop’s facilitator took me up on it—she’s accomplished so many of the things that I dream about and she’s a fellow badass feminist bottom, so I think she’ll be a good influence. Wonder what her cute nickname will be!

The other talk that I liked so much was a talk on beginning polyamory. I love the way that my body relaxes itself when I am in poly company—my shoulders get warm and my heart floods with well-being—I really should do this more often.

My favorite thing that I heard in that talk was from a gentleman friend of mine, one of the most romantic souls I know. He said that one of the ways he knew that he was poly is that he just doesn’t get over people—they just stay in his heart. He knew he had room for more that one person in his heart because people just stay in there. I love that idea. It’s certainly a more positive way to look at my own never-getting–over-people, even if I do get frustrated from time to time with who takes up my heart real estate.

4. And speaking of heart real estate, in my letters-I-probably-won’t-send notebook, I sat down and wrote a letter to Fireguy. It made me realize something that will probably seem obvious to everyone else, (it sure wasn’t a surprise to Sweetie)—I loved Fireguy. I even loved Varga Girl in an aspiring-to-be-a-metamour kind of way. Though there isn’t much I can do with that love, acknowledging it is a relief and a release.

There was a moment during our public fire scene where he looked down at my face with such a look of approval that I felt like a perfect little angel. I had never felt that from a male authority figure before, and it struck me so deep. That’s why it’s so hard to stay away from him, even though we weren’t a good match. I forgive myself for the compromises I made, for all the hurt we all went through, I forgive myself for the fact that that feeling was so powerful that I couldn’t resist it. I hope to feel it again some day, in a healthier way.

We’re having a Charlie Kaufman movie marathon over here lately, and this scene from Adaptation has really been sticking with me. “I can love whoever I want.”

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.

Nearly-Naked and Fire-Kissed, Part Three

I’ve never been very good at casual kissing, but I want to learn to enjoy sensations for their own sake, and plus I just wanted to kiss him, so when Fireguy offered me an upside-down kiss, I said sure. And of course was a good kiss, of course it was. I’m not supposed to get attached to him, so I was holding back, but it was definitely good enough to make me wonder what it would be like if I didn’t hold back.

I’d like to stop for a second and acknowledge that even though this is a friend who belongs to two other ladies, and there were people are lined up to be next, this scene still seems wildly romantic to me. Even the idea that H and E (They need nicknames. How about Varga Girl and Firewife?) were letting me and the rest of the world borrow him for the evening makes my heart go all mushy because it makes me feel close to them. To The Ladies and to the world. So we’ve established that I am a sentimental poly mushball.

And not a moment too soon because then he asked “Can I give you a fire kiss?”

Um, yeah.

He told me to close my eyes, then lit the fire on his hand. He snuffed the blue flames and then put his hand at the bottom of my neck, just above my heart. I gasped as he kissed me. It was a swoon, there’s no other way to describe it. A falling sensation.

He asked how I’d gotten so good at kissing and I laughed and said, “Well, I’ve been married to a lady for a long time.”

The woman who was next in line makes me rethink my idea of myself as needy. At one point, I opened my eyes and saw her just staring down at me, the flames reflected in her wide eyes. It was creepy, and I don’t know why I didn’t ask her to back off. I guess I just felt like I was safe. I smiled at her and turned my head like I was going back to sleep.

He had me turn back over for “fire spanks.” (Is that not the happiest phrase ever?) I would gladly have submitted to that for seven or eight more hours, but there were other people waiting and he was also supposed to be taking pictures. I sat up all blissed out and glowy and he said, “Now normally, if there were more time, I would wrap you up in a blanket and do aftercare” and I just sort of leaned into him and he said “Aaaand I’m going to do it anyway. Wrapped up and in his arms, I felt special and famous and chosen. Being seen getting treated in this way filled something up in me, gave me a bright feeling of being recognized.

He asked for a few more kisses and I joked that now he would have to kiss all of the girls in line. He said that no, he wouldn’t.

I was planning to stay and do more things with him if he got time, but when I called home Sweetie was already on her way to pick me up. (I really have to stop being a baby about driving myself to things.) It was kind of a good thing I had to go, because I was starting to feel like I didn’t have enough energy left to navigate the place. After I said goodbye to Fireguy, the self-consciousness I’d bypassed earlier kicked in, I felt awkward and threatened, and I was ready to just be home. When I went to the dressing room to change into my comforting flannel PJs, one of the couples I’d watched earlier was in there on the couch snuggled up. They seemed so beautiful and sad and sweet, I was worried that I would disturb them.

Walking out of the place, you know what? Young fetishy people really look at you funny if you are in flannel pajamas with cupcakes on them. Who knew?

I was at a loss for words (Rare for me, obviously) in the car on the way home. I kept trying to explain how I felt but could only come up with phrases. When we got home, Sweetie and I curled up and watched sitcoms. After a good night’s sleep, the fears wore off and the sex-goddess feeling came back, turning Sunday into a blankety daydream.

Typing this story just makes me want more. More him, of course, I hope it turns out that that’s possible. But also just MORE. I’m not sure what my next adventure is, but I am SO ready for it.