What I Want, Part A Million

 

Like what Lorelai Gilmore eventually got, but with fewer hats.

Stars, hide your fires,
these here are my desires,
and I won’t give them up to you
this time around.

And so, I’ll be found,
with my stake stuck in this ground
marking the territory of this
newly impassioned soul.

--Mumford and Sons, “Roll Away Your Stone”

Festive Easter Mumford and Sons are waaaayyy more assured than I am, of course. It’s not that I think new love’s not possible, it usually-to-sometimes feels possible. But I sort of have no idea what kind of person will capture my imagination next—love surprises me and vexes me every time.

At the same time, I want to rid myself of the idea that I have to adapt to any given situation that comes along, as if it’s somehow…undemocratic? to have preferences, as if I’m not entitled to want perfectly ordinary things. Specific things. It’s necessarily a kind of bitter don’t-make-mistakes-again list, but I’m sure time and attraction will soften the edges soon enough.

(OMG someone in my self-compassion group just said that oxytocin is physically addictive and takes around 90 days to…un-addict? I have no idea if that’s true but it makes me happy to retroactively curse every sweet ex with 90 days of jonesing.)

Anyway! The list so far:

1.     I’m a get-in-all-your-business person. I’m a family person. No matter what someone’s situation, I want to know their entire gestalt. I loved the way that The Shy One had begun folding into my family and chosen family, and it would have been so fulfilling if that folding-in could have been mutual.

 

Yesterday one of my neighbors told me she was trying to win over her boyfriend’s kid, and I felt so full of joy for her. Her perfectly ordinary trajectory gave me the hope that those kinds of steps might happen for me AND that I might have the courage to admit I want them. Doesn’t have to be kids, could be family, chosen family, neighborhood bonding. I know it takes time and trust, but I want to be in the next guy’s world.

2.     No closets. There are plenty of reasons to be compassionate toward closeted folks, to support them and listen to them and root for them exactly where they are at. But if I date them, I’ll end up being treated as a threat to their happiness, their safety, their social capitol, their parents’ approval, whatever. That is an AWFUL position to be in, and SO TRIGGERING given my life as my own family’s scapegoat.

So here’s the rule: I have to be able to tag a guy on my main-feed, un-anonymous Instagram and be like “OMG look at my boyfriend’s whole face he’s sooooooo dreamy.”

I feel like a lot of the stuff on this list is what straight (and straight-sized) women feel entitled to as a matter of course. So I’m gonna try to learn that good entitlement.

I want to remember that shame that’s understandable is still shame. It still gets on me and in me, and the world (and past traumas) will provide me with enough shame without me voluntarily signing up for more. Discreet boys can stick with discreet ladies. Maybe the shame makes it hotter?

3.     I’m going to scream the next time someone calls me “Solo Poly.” I think it’s a totally valid thing to be but for me, it feels like I’m expected to be on the margins of someone’s “real life.” That’s really sad and triggering for me, and it’s possible I assign it to myself as punishment.

Or maybe I’ve been afraid to say what I want—I want a guy’s undivided attention. He can be poly, I think, but he has to have the capacity to be ALL IN, to give me his whole heart. I can give my whole heart to lots of people, flowers, clouds, sunsets, etc, there HAS to be some dude who can do the same.

And he should please definitely, definitely, DEFINITELY stay over and make pancakes in the morning. Maybe linger around all day and snooze.

That’s enough for now, I think!

What I Want, Part Three

7. SEE ABOVE.

8. I want to keep getting better and better at the ropes, learn all kinds of new knots and harnesses. It’s time, too, to learn a little more about restraining the cuties. I want all kinds of Ma’am and Sir pleasures. And I ESPECIALLY want to tie The Shy One to the bed a BUNCH more times.

9. I want to take, send, and receive lots more superhot pictures. Lots of beautiful cute-iful pictures. Something about the way The Song Sender saw me made me super-smitten with selfie-ing. I got bolder in asking for and sending smutty pictures, collected so many new ways to photo-flirt! I’d love to keep that going. Photoplay was such a big part of my early adventures-- I can’t wait to see what lands in the Hidden Folder next!

10. I want good communication. I want to learn good communication. I’d love to break through my layers of crush and guardedness and just figure out how to say what needs saying, with way less angst and drama on my part.

That means figuring out how to say “I miss you” instead of panicking that I’ll be forgotten. It means writing though layers of old bitterness and hurt so I don’t take it out on the sweet people of now. I could be so much better at this!

I want to let people be in touch the way they want to, but I’d also like all the cute texts all the time please! With emojis. And pictures of flowers and trees and pets and clouds and hot, hot bodies. I want to know each dear is thinking of me and let them know I’m thinking of them.

11. I want to fall asleep easier when I have company in bed. I love being in The Shy One’s arms listening to him snore sweetly, enjoying the warmth and peace, but it’s SO hard for me to fall asleep that way! That’s partly because of the excitement, my heart won’t stop racing with him no matter how many (SO many) times I’ve come, racing with happiness and exertion and oh-my-goodness-how-am-I-so-lucky-ness! But I would love to relax into him, into any of them, and fell asleep. Not worry about farting. Not worry he’ll disappear. Just know he’s with me, and drift off.

 

What I Want, Part Two: Being a Romantic Slut

4. I want submission.

Near the beginning of the summer (Before it was even Kate Bush Summer!) I was on a mini-road-trip to The Fancy Garden with Rainbow Pal. I haven’t gotten to write about them yet, but they’ve been central to helping me dream up the creative sluttiness of the past couple of months. We’re both tenderhearted artists and I believe we might be platonic soulmates—they’re right up there with Angel Face when it comes to transformative friendships.

Anyway, as I was driving us home, they were telling me about a dom they used to have, and WHOOSH I remembered.

The hush of letting someone take over control. The precious, adorable feeling of being small, so small I’m almost nothing. And yet, seen in a slutty, delightedly filthy way that really happens to me so rarely. As anyone who reads me knows, I’ve been playfully spanked, had my hair pulled, been called a “good girl” during rough blow job practice, but none of it was THAT FEELING. Surrender. Pushing myself to bend and please. And that clearheaded feeling the next day, the one I didn’t realize I’d been missing.

And the DAY AFTER that conversation with Rainbow Pal, I ran into The Song Sender at the movies. So many aspects of subbing that I LOVED him for in 2011 came back again, and so many new games and desires sprouted up in my filthy heart. I assigned myself homework. I told him lovely, rough-to-sweet, elaborate slutty stories, fiction and not, in person and over text. I lost my mind and sent him poems about mystical submission to god. Aaaaaaaallllllllll the pictures I sent him, naked and not.

It’s confusing to have felt so seen by someone who will also never actually see me at all. To have been so fulfilled by someone who both feared and actively got off on disappointing me.

Somehow, in all of that, I got a taste of what a loving dom might feel like. I don’t know if it will be in the context of a romantic relationship (I hope so!) or if it will be its own thing. I’ll never find anyone to replace The Song Sender, yay and sob, but I hope to find a kinder, deeper, more sustainable version of that beautiful, BEAUTIFUL feeling.

5. I WANT ROMANCE and synchronicity.

The night I had dinner with The Shy One and we decided to be some kind of a thing again, it was like eleven million degrees out. But he’s not a PDA guy, so I had to put him in my car to kiss him. We kissed like it has been two years instead of two months. He smelled so him, and we were both dressed up so nice for dinner, and we were SWEATING. But it was so hard to let him get out of the car.

People get so tripped up by the word romance. I think it freaks a lot of people out because they think it’s about wedding dresses, and babies, and all the other Relationship Escalator things. Those things ARE a kind of romance, but they’re not what I mean.

Back to that road trip with the submission conversation, Rainbow Pal and I talked a lot about the Romance of Life, and that’s what I mean that I want. Beauty, sensuality, pleasure, awe, those things are all around us, whether we are partnered or not. When The Song Sender wasn’t passing the Turing Test or when somebody I wanted to date turns out to have been a hookup, I still always have flowers, the ocean, the intricacies of clouds.

There’s always a song that comes along and gives the exact right message. There’s always the advice I give myself in dreams. There’s always the Tarot deck to unstick my imagination when it’s getting stagnant.

I love the romantic moments I share with partners, like when The Shy One texts me flowers, but I’m also SO GRATEFUL that this list item is one I can keep giving myself.

6. And to that end, I want to keep dating myself. It was one of my 10 goals for 2022, and it has opened my world up maybe more than any other goal ever. I would love to keep giving myself the beautiful moments I deserve. Each time, I know a little deeper that I deserve them.

What I Want, Part One (The Easy Part)

There’s always a certain amount of futility in these lists, because the next characters who come along could knock me on my ass just as much as any ever have. If you’d told me in June that “summer fling with The Song Sender” would be in the cards, (Literally. The Lover and The Devil! Yikes and yay. Yay and yikes.)  I would have laughed in your face and told you about a dream I had a few years ago, wherein I was explaining to him: “We just call it strangling now.” More about that guy in part two, but for now, the easy things:

1.     I’m solo poly, and not necessarily destined for the kitchen table, at least not right away. I like my space, and I’ve discovered in the past few weeks that I like each combination to have time to grow before stirring my darlings’ darlings into the mix.

 

That doesn’t rule out future deep relationships with metamours or even some magical unicorn miracle, but I want to take my time. Every person is a LOT. I am A LOT. I would like any given combination to have its feet under it before I start to learn the next humans. Because I will LOVE THEM TOO and that will be, you know, a lot.

 

2.     I definitely do want polyamory. I would love to stop trying to wedge myself into monogamy every few years out of—self-protection? Weird poly/bi phobia left over from my divorcing years? There have been such LOVELY combinations of humans, such bursts or yes-this-is-exactly-it happiness that I would love to see some more.

 

The Shy One, The Song Sender, and a hookup whose name I barely remember but who made for a fucking GLORIOUS week. This Charming Man, The Lovely Guy, and that other hookup who gave me the wrong name. The Good Boy, The Southern Charmer, and The Adorables. Ideally, most of those would have lasted a lot longer, and I know that humans are NOT art supplies, but I felt like an artist working in the medium of slut, and I would lovelovelove for that to happen again.

 

3.     I don’t necessarily want The Relationship Escalator, but I want feelings. Lovey-dovey feelings, friendly feelings, and d/s feelings. Nobody has to love as easily or as quickly or as thoroughly as I do, but I want them to not feel/seem like a trapped animal when the warmth and affection come into play. Talking about relationships the other night, The Shy One said “I just go in kamikaze, and if it doesn’t work, I just try again.” BFF-Formerly-Sweetie has always called my same strategy “jumping in with both feet.” I don’t always, but when I do, I would love to hang around long enough to let them see if they can catch up.

 

To accomplish that, I would like to not get so mad at myself for the feelings. I would like to give myself space to feel them and be a little less quick to flee.

 

And yes, I would like some of them, eventually, to adore me. To love me wildly, emphatically, and forever. Please.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Bittersweet Breakthrough “No”

I was over the moon. It was finally going to happen. Cute Master and Pretty Slave were

planning to come over Saturday night for dinner and a playdate and he was excited to be my (at long last) first ass guy. I’m super tired of that storyline, but because this quest is riddled with a Three’s Company level of misunderstandings and pratfalls, a six-letter word had to get in the way.

Day after yesterday, he was sending me a series of exuberantly smutty texts about how hard he was going to fuck me, and I was getting happier and happier. Turned on and glowing, I wrote their names on the calendar and added a cute little Snoopy sticker marked “sleepover.” And then he said this:

“I’m going to make you cum from raping your ass.”

*record scratch…*

What…huh? Raping? I thought we were friends? Doing this together for…fun?

We had a nice text-conversation about why not to use that word, but really, should this really be a thing I have to tell people not to say? What kind of a WORLD is this? I didn’t want to call off the plan but the trigger was triggered and…I just couldn’t. It hurt my heart to say no to a fun night with favorite pals, but I did. I don’t really know what it means for our friendship and I’m really hoping that Pretty Slave isn’t mad at me. But even if she is, I know I did the right thing.

It’s not that using the word in a sext means he’s likely to do it, in spite of rumored allegations to that effect, my body’s always felt mostly safe with him. It just represents a worldview that I just can’t be okay with. To me, using that word meant that we wouldn’t really be in it together, that one of us would get to be a person and the other one, just a thing. I don’t think that was his intention in saying it, but it’s the feeling I got.

I’ve always felt out of sync with the way people joke about rape and throw the word around, like it’s nothing, like it isn’t a deep horror. This is why watching a Seth MacFarlane movie feels more transgressive to me than, say, getting set on fire. To me, lighthearted use of the word "rape" feels contemptuous not just to rape victims, but to humanity in general. It’s a vicious and untenable thing that feels impossible to fight, pervasive as weather.

Because this attitude that the word “rape” is no big deal is so pervasive and rape culture is so much the norm and on the surface in my local BDSM community, I’ve tried to adapt and make peace with it. Because being a rape victim has caused me to overbuild my defenses, I’ve tried to be a little bit less dogmatic about how people speak and act when it comes to matters of consent. There’s the dungeon owner I really like but who regularly dispenses the advice “Don’t go over to someone’s house unless you are ready to have sex with him.” as if driving over there is somehow an implied yes. There’s the way even some of my favorite kinksters often dismiss rape accusations as “drama.” And of course there’s the Scary Party staff treating its patrons like an all-you-can-take-advantage-of buffet. None of it is okay at all but I’ve played happily right in the middle of it for a couple of years. So what does that say about me?

It’s complicated because parts of my inner fantasy life isn’t super-consensual, but I guess what I’m realizing is that that doesn’t mean that I have to accept a guy for whom rape is part of the fantasy. The idea of sexytimes in which one of the people isn’t enjoying it makes me sick, and I don’t want a partner who’s turned on by that, even as a casual playpal.

From a vanilla standpoint, most of this seems like, yeah, duh, but it has been a boundary that is surprisingly hard from me to draw. I have had this semiconscious compulsion for a couple of years that rape culture is something I need to accept, something I need to compromise with in order to move forward. Because hating it sends me to such a dark place, I thought it would be better to love and accept it, and I have loved a few embodiments of it (though this is not that) but it doesn’t make me any less dark. It tunnels the darkness down to a pinpoint and makes me blind to everything else.

I’ve sometimes grabbed myself by the metaphorical hair and shoved myself into unsafe situations because if I could learn to love the dark things that have happened to me, if I could desensitize myself and not wince at little everyday cruelties, I could somehow reclaim the dignity I’ve lost. If I could love it, then I could make it my fault somehow and just say I’m sorry and move on. But I can’t get the dignity back, I can only hold onto what I have now, which is a choice every time somebody gets in my space.

All of this is a lot to get from one hapless and essentially harmless text, but I’m exhilarated by the breakthrough of it. Saying no to him because he used that word, even though it breaks my heart and makes my ass mad at me, means that I’ve stopped trying to compromise about this. The only rape I have to accept is what’s already happened to me. There’s never going to be a way to swoop in and save myself from the past, but I can do it in little calm ways every day in the present.

When I’m triggered, there’s a little voice in me that says I’m worthless, that if I say no to this person who made me feel yucky then I’ll never learn to be part of the world and I’ll never be loved, that I’ll never go to a party or have any friends. The little voice says no one will want me unless I can be exactly what they want, which sometimes means being nothing. As my readers well know, that voice has stopped me from taking care of myself too many times. I’m glad I was able to slow myself down this time, to see a choice instead of a catastrophe.

Today I kicked the bad little voice’s ass and closed the door on a whole set of compromises that I just don’t want to try and force myself to make anymore. Once the fear simmers down and the horizon widens out again, I think the world will look a whole lot brighter and freer. Welcome to me just not liking the stuff I don’t like. Personhood, huzzah.

Gold Star for a Date That Wasn’t

If he’d been the right sort of guy, it would have been a meet-cute right out of a romantic comedy. I had a headachey time trying to get my prescription updated at my regular glasses place, so I tried another branch and there he was: tall, strong, and cute, a little young but funny and game, promising me no young-guy nonsense. Who giggles through the process of ordering contacts? Me, I guess, and it was fantastic. He wanted me to stay until he got off work in an hour, but I gave him my number and went off to finish my errands.

He seemed really excited to see me and we made a plan to get together Sunday night. I was curious to see what would happen. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for sexytimes, but a real date seemed like just the thing.

But by now I recognize the tactics involved in angling for a couch date. He didn’t make any clear plan on where to take me, he texted “You’re so much fun, it won’t matter what we do.” I told him I wanted to go out and do something, but he suggested coming over and watching a movie. When I mentioned that there’s a movie theater near my house, he didn’t text again. I was happy to put my PJs on and go to bed with my chick-lit book.

Yes, it sucks that he bailed, but I think it’s so cool that I persisted with what I really wanted. In the past, I’ve let guys make every excuse until there they were on my couch, even though I really wanted to be dating. Couch dates are fun but they get so claustrophobic when that’s all there is.

So although I don’t know what I’m really ready for, I know I want real dates and public play. I’m a princessy girl who likes to be shown off, and I think that’s something I deserve. Go me.

Okay, So, Really Heartbroken Over Steampunk Guy

Last night I sat on the stoop outside the laundromat watching the cars go by and trying to write this post in my notebook. I started it two or three different ways but kept getting stuck, mostly because I wanted to be saying it to him and not the internet. So I tried to consolidate all of the emotions into a flirty text:

“Not getting over you very fast. Would rather be under you! ;)”

To which he wrote back:

“The fastest over a guy is to get under another one! ;)”

He was just being cute and encouraging, but that text just opened up a floodgates and let me go ahead and be heartbroken. It struck my frustration so perfectly: I don’t want some stranger, some random other guy, I want him.

When we were first breaking it off, I had faith that I would find someone who is actually what I’m looking for—available, open, willing to offer up the occasional “Good girl.” He believed in that guy for me and I appreciate that so much.

I was so proud of how well we broke up that I never let myself have the heartbreak. I think part of me was still trying to mitigate my emotions, to try and be cute for them so they wouldn’t go away, but they’re already gone, at least for the time being, so I have to figure out again how to stop censoring the feelings.

It may be less fighty, but it’s just like any other breakup. I’m hurt and sad and I wish that I could have found some way to make him see me, make him love me, make him actually clear the time out for me every other week. I have that awful feeling of not being good enough, even though that has nothing to do with it at all. I have that childish feeling of wishing I could be like the girls he loves, wishing I had whatever quality they have that made him go ahead and love them. It’s the thing that I’m still afraid I’m missing, the magical ability to be loved by men.

And yes, I see the pattern here; I see the futility I keep setting up for myself, choosing someone who doesn’t have enough attention and then being hurt that he didn’t have enough attention. Crazy, I know, and I’ll try not to do it again. Though of course I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on this time.

I’m still hurt that what ended up being so meaningful to me—all of those deep, transformative experiences were just sex to him, just something it was easy to scroll past once it was over. And I’m so angry with myself that I have so little experience that everything is still such a goddamned big deal.

I hate my stupid heart for taking away so much fun stuff, past and present. There’s so much shiny and good about the Steampunks that I just won’t be able to enjoy for a while and I feel left out. I feel like another way towards community and connection is cut off, and that makes me feel like I am not doing what I am supposed to be doing. I wanted it to be simple and fun. I wanted to go to their parties and be excited about all the possibilities there. The last thing I want to lose is more parties.

I’ve tried for years to accept the fact that I fall for people so easily but it just seems to cost so much. I didn’t want to love him, I wanted to accept and enjoy what he had to give and keep looking for the one who’s right for loving. Why does that make so much sense on paper but not translate to real life? It irks me to no end.

I know I’m not going to get significantly less lovey-dovey any time soon. I need somebody that I can just go ahead and be bonkers about. It’s just torturing myself to try and fight the current of it. But if I can only have sex with people I can fall for, that feels so constricting. It feels like there’s going to be too much waiting around—maybe waiting around forever. There’s so much about bodies that I’ve just discovered, I don’t want to back away from them now.

Part of the reason I’m having trouble getting over him is that I can’t quite see the way forward—I can’t imagine finding the right guy and being adored when I don’t even know where I’ll work or live. I want to go back to the beginning of the summer when I had a job I loved, three snuggle pals, and a wife with whom things might work out. Or I want to go back to the immediate relief of the divorce decision, that floating, sunshiny powerful feeling that came just before I realized how much work and grief were ahead of me.

I still just really don’t understand why I had to give him up. So much of him (Ha. So very much of him.) was making me happy. I miss the spark of joy whenever I got a text from him, I miss the emphatic kisses, I miss just saying hi and taking off our clothes. It was only a few times. It shouldn’t be such a big deal. But it is.

I so badly miss the person I was at the beginning of the summer, or sometimes was, anyway. I feel a million miles away from the sparkly confidence it took to date him, from the simple faith of just going ahead and giving him my number.

I’m still sad and hurt that he wouldn’t go to the beach with me and didn’t play with me in public. On bad days I still wonder whether he was embarrassed by my age or body, but even if he was, it would just mean that he wasn’t the right person. It wouldn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with me.

One thing I know for sure is that these feelings won’t be solved by plowing ahead to the next partners. As not-romantic as it was supposed to be, the thing with Steampunk Guy was special and specific and I don’t want to move on from it by doing something that means less. With some possible special-occasion exceptions, I want to be really dating the next guy who puts his stuff in me, and I want to like him at least as much as I like Steampunk Guy. It’s such a vexing thing to decide, but I don’t think I can do the less-romantic kinds of sex until I have some basic needs met.

I have to give him credit for raising my standards in a lot of ways. He set the bar pretty high for how attracted I want to be to somebody, for how important chemistry is. In the past I’ve sometimes been able to talk myself into someone because he has nice qualities, but I’m a very sexed-up girl and I want someone I’m superhot for, and who’s just as hot for me. And I feel comfortable saying now that a nice, big, friendly dick is a star priority too. That particular part of him is especially difficult for all of my parts to let go of. Oh, it was a good one. If I were still a poet I would write it poems.

Being mad at myself for loving him doesn’t seem like a helpful emotion. It would be better to just accept it and let myself feel it until it changes into whatever friendly thing is next. Hating my heart is not going to get me where I need to go, that’s for sure. Better just to say thanks and let it do whatever it needs to do, impatient as that might make me.

So thanks, pal. I know you like changing lives and you did. You showed me what I should expect in a man and that it’s safe to trust someone enough to let down my guard. You pulled down a whole set of limits that I was using to keep the world at arm’s length. You showed me what I really want sex to be. And what’s wrong with falling for a really excellent penis? Nothing.

During that text exchange, it felt much better when I stopped trying to be cute about it and just went ahead and told him how I feel, making it clear that I didn’t expect him to do anything about it but still wanting him to know. So many guys would’ve just not written back, but he of course was magnanimous and kind. Knowing he’s rooting for me to find what I’m looking for helps so much even though it hurts too. Even if I love another guy I can’t have, at least this time it’s somebody who was worth it.