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Author Archives: Krissy Gibbs
epiphany
When Tom ended the M/s portion of our relationship (after being directly challenged in therapy) he said: “It’s not worth the effort.” I took that as a statement about his belief about putting effort into our relationship as a whole because as a 24/7 slave… that’s a big deal. We never recovered. He didn’t want to get married or have kids with me. He wanted me to just kind of exist without getting any of my needs met and keep company with him doing the shit he wanted when he decided he wanted it.
It occurs to me this morning that I’m approaching hunting wrong. I go through a lot of effort to meet people where they are. I do the driving. And as a result people don’t value me much. They stop responding to me. I’m chasing them. I think I should stop. Why in the fuck am I out wasting energy on chasing people?
I think I’d like to be chased for a while. I think that I’m going to stop sleeping with people on the first date because the first date is going to have to be really convenient for me. And that means sex isn’t on the table. We aren’t going to do that at my house. I think that part of the problem is that people don’t generally properly appreciate the fact that it takes a lot of time and energy to drive as much as I do. Maybe they should bear some of that cost.
This is where I have this funny side thought. People tell me I should be very careful about talking about where I live. Some one could come after me. My response is, “What are they going to do? Put a gun to my head? Rape me? And this is a change in my life pattern… how?” They can do that whether I am hesitant to list my address or not. I’m not hard to find and I never will be again. There are too many people I kind of hope will come find me. Like Belinda. Or Michael Paul Douglass Goble. If he ever wants to look up Krissy Archer I hope he finds me. That means I have to take the risk of other people finding me.
It’s really a statistically low chance. People are far more likely to be killed by their families. Given what I have survived I’m just not all that scared. I mean, I am. Let’s be real. But not enough to shut up. Ever. I can’t. Never again.
And this is all tied together. I need to feel like I am a destination worth reaching. It’s ok to talk about where I am. I’m in Fremont. If you live in Berkeley and you think I am interesting you had better get used to driving south. And I have a weird ass schedule. You will have to be flexible. And smarter than me.
Or worth seriously traveling for. Once someone has established that they are worth going to, ok. I do want to have sex and all. But I would like to be courted. I have never made anyone court me before. I wonder what that would be like. But I still can’t date or have a boyfriend. I’m just making friends. I’m seeing if there are people out in the world I should occasionally go see when I have spare time. Because I need more of those people, right?
I get something from sex. And I give something. There is an emotional transaction. I need it. I don’t know how this is going to work.
I miss you lj.
Once upon a time I put my more personal blogging on g-blog. I don't think I ever told you the truth lj. You were meant as a dumping grounds for memes. Stupid, light shit that breaks the day up. Things to entertain my friends and not depress them. Then g-blog went away. You were promoted. We had this weird filter tango thing. I discovered that when I am writing for tightly controlled filters I feel more and more constrained until I can't say anything because I might say it to the wrong person and then I MIGHT HURT THEIR FEELINGS. I couldn't take the pressure.
I moved on. I'm blogging at blogspot now. People opt-in or out as they see fit. It's open to strangers on the internet and they have to manage their own fucking triggers. It's great. I don't miss you. Only I do miss you though. Here, how about a meme for old time's sake. I promise, I will tell the funny versions.
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Give me a number (or three), and I'll answer the question that goes with it. I may or may not do this publicly, but the person who asks will get a response one way or another.
| 01. My sexual orientation. 02. What I'm really bad at. 03. The one person whose arms I'd like to be in. 04. My best first date. 05. A description of my self-esteem. 06. Who my best friends are. 07. My favorite book. 08. Biggest turn-offs. 09. My favorite place to which I've traveled. 10. My favorite animal. 11. Someone I miss. 12. The reason behind my last break-up. 13. What I did yesterday. 14. My greatest achievements. 15. The craziest thing I've ever done 16. A description of my last kiss. 17. What I find attractive in a person. 18. All of the pets I've ever owned. 19. My favorite ice cream flavor. 20. The one place I wish I was right now. 21. The most cruel thing anyone has ever said to me. 22. All of the places I've lived. 23. Qualities that make me more likely to love a person. 24. My future plans. 25. One of my internal conflicts. 26. What I'm doing tomorrow. 27. My life's aspirations. 28. My most embarrassing moment. 29. Two of my insecurities. 30. What I would do if I won the lottery. 31. What I love most about myself. 32. My biggest pet peeves. 33. What musical artists I've seen live. 34. How many kids I would like to have. 35. My idea of a perfect date. 36. What I'm really excellent at. 37. My most traumatic experience. 38. Where I would like to live. 39. The nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. 40. Whether I like where I live now. 41. What I can hear right now. 42. My relationship with my siblings. 43. What's currently worrying me the most. 44. Something I've repeatedly wished for. 45. My relationship with my parents. 46. What I dislike most about myself 47. Where's Waldo? 48. Whether I currently resemble the person who I thought I'd be at 18. 49. What I would tell my 18-year-old self. 50. Why? |
Stats are awesome.
I have gotten almost as many hits from Sebastian Marshall’s blog this week as from all other sources combined. The spam percentage is still high, of course. Uhh, fellas? I don’t write about geek shit. I’m probably not going to be that interesting. I will probably eventually get to the point of talking about blowjobs again. And I have a date today at 3 with an okcupid person. So far the plan is to explicitly not have sex. That will be easy because he lives in Concord and we are meeting in Oakland.
Sometimes I think my life would be easier if I didn’t have it as an explicit goal to fuck a lot of interesting people. It’s hard to find a lot of interesting people.
Be Thankful
I often hear people say: You shouldn’t compare abuse. There is no use. Trauma is unique and people react differently. Today I am going to say: yes you should fucking compare. You probably have no god damn perspective on your life and you really should go out and compare. You should find out how good you have it.
I feel deeply uncomfortable with how good my life is now. I’m aware that my current safety and stability is not about deserve. This is not the natural results of a lot of hard work. It’s a fucking fluke. I managed to marry someone rich. Whoo hoo. What. An. Accomplishment. And yet people want to tell me that my life is awesome because I deserve it.
Does that mean I deserved to be raped? Does that mean I deserved to live in poverty when I was a kid? No. There is. no. deserve. I’m kind of angry that people use that word ever in conversations about money. It’s not just the money though.
I think that people should sit down and compare abuse for a few minutes. My father told me that I was a literally-evil-as-in-descended-from witches-evil and a whore. That it was all I would ever be. My father taught me that pain should go with sexual contact. That I should endure it with a stony face. From when I was a baby.
Did that happen to you? No? Well then maybe you should go thank your father. Maybe you could take a moment to realize that if your dad is an asshole, but never did anything actually bad maybe that was him showing restraint. Maybe he is not your cup of tea, but not exactly someone who should die in a fire. Say fucking thank you. Because I’m here to tell you that you weren’t treated how you were treated because you deserved it. You were treated that well because no one wanted to treat you worse. And for one fucking day I think people should stop and realize that it isn’t a birth right.
When people are kind to you, don’t expect it as your due. Thank them for it. It’s a gift. Maybe grudgingly given, maybe cheerfully given.
Did your mother tell you that you deserved what you got after you were raped? No? Maybe you should say thank you to her. Maybe you actually have a much better mother than you know. Maybe you don’t know just how good you have it.
Did your brother tell you that the only career you would be good at was being a prostitute? No? Maybe you should say thank you to your brother. He might be an asshole, but he recognizes that there is a line. And he didn’t cross. He doesn’t degrade your humanity and think you are a piece of shit hole. I promise you he isn’t doing it because you are so fucking awesome that of course you deserve to be treated well. He’s doing it because he has made a choice about the kind of person he wants to be and how he wants to treat people. Even if he doesn’t know it. Because this is a choice. Be thankful.
When I called my big sister sobbing, begging her for help she laughed at me and told me I was interrupting her having sex. Then she hung up on me. I spent the rest of the night trying to OD on crank. Because no really, no one gave a shit about me.
I think people should compare abuse. I really do. I think these conversations should be explicit. I think they should be candid. I think people should stop walking on eggshells around this topic. Given how many people tell me, “Oh I had a hard childhood too” then backpedal fast when I start talking this is a conversation that needs to be had. People don’t know what a hard childhood is. They have nothing to compare their own childhoods to most of the time. There aren’t many books about genuinely bad childhoods. So people don’t know what it means. I think people should. Most people have a lot more to be thankful for than they think.
It’s hard sometimes when people complain bitterly about their families. I miss my family. I’ve spent a month telling all the worst stories I can about my family. I still miss them. I still know my place there. Yesterday was hard. I spent all day rehearsing negative awful things to say in my head. Because I know that my role at big holidays is to be the one who starts a fight and then runs off crying. That way everyone has an opening to say how awesome it is when I’m not there any more.
I used to listen to those conversations as a kid. They would comment idly once I left, “Oh thank god she finally left.” I don’t think there were very many days in my childhood where my mother didn’t comment about how nasty and awful I was. I was too critical, always.
Maybe your family wants you to call on Thanksgiving because they love you and miss you and really wish they got to see you more. And they don’t know how to effect that. You ran away from them to have your own life and they miss you. Is that really so bad? Is that really so terrible? Is a five minute or even fifteen minute phone call really so onerous? Really?
I wasn’t alone yesterday. I have Noah. I have Sarah. I have Shanna. I have Calli. My Complication (who has yet to tell me if it is ok to use her name) was here. A friend named Dave (who doesn’t get to opt-out of using his name because there are 3,000 Daves in my community) also came to dinner. That was nice. The food was excellent. Pre-dinner another couple of friends stopped by for a chat. We all went to bed really early.
I wasn’t alone. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m still the problem. I’m still the wild card. I’m still the one who might break out crying and stomp off. I’m still the one who is difficult to predict and triggery and an asshole. I’m so fucking self-absorbed.
But I tried really hard to talk about the things I am thankful for. Because I don’t deserve them. I didn’t deserve the things that happened to me as a kid and I don’t deserve the things that happen to me know. It’s not about deserve. I changed my luck. I’m excited that my life is different now. But it’s not about deserve. It just happened. Life is like that. I think that people can work their whole life and never get what they want. I think that people can work for five minutes and get more than they ever dreamed. It’s not about deserve. It just happens.
I have relatively good health. I have a safe, stable home. I have friends who are willing to tolerate a torrential flow of shit-talk from me. I have a husband who thinks I can do or be anything I want in the whole wide world. Well, maybe not an NBA player. Or an astronaut. Oh well.
I am thankful for the privilege and security I have because it is allowing me to be a good mother. Other women can be good mothers with less support. I don’t think I would be able to. My life is set up around babying my mood swings and impatience. I have created space for dealing with my rage. Because I have Noah and Sarah and a big pile of money. I’m not a good mother because my kids deserve it. I’m a good mother because I am lucky enough to set up my life in a way that allows me to be. I can play to my strengths and minimize my weaknesses. That isn’t about deserve. But it is really nice that my kids get to have that. I would like to find a way to teach them that it isn’t a right without having to hurt them in the process.
I am really thankful that I get to sit down and think about these things and make decisions about them because of my raging privilege. I am so fucking lucky. That makes it harder that I’m still bitter.
I’m bitter when I hear people sit around trading off how onerous it is to have families. I can’t have a family because I believe that it is unhealthy for me to have ongoing relationships with people who enabled me being raped for more than a decade. What’s your fucking excuse? Oh, they aren’t your same chosen culture? Uh. Grow some fucking balls and learn to deal with the fact that world isn’t just like you. I promise you that the world isn’t just like me. I have to find a way of talking to them anyway or I get to be alone. I think it is hubris to toss away your family. You never know when you might want them again. And some wounds can’t heal.
I think people should catalogue their abuse. And then actually compare. No really. Make a decision for yourself. Either be ok with it or walk away. The back and forth is bullshit. Holding on to bitterness for things that happened decades ago is bullshit.
And I do it. I know I am hurting my life with this bullshit. This was one of the best Thanksgivings of my life. Yeah, I spent some of the day in my room crying. But less than usual. Far less than any given year from my childhood. No one had anything resembling a fight. I had one explosion where I told people to stop bitching about having to call their families. That was it. That’s pretty good for me.
I feel really bad that I know that my pretty good would be unacceptable for most people. Only one melodramatic meltdown ending in tears. But if you are going to compare you have to really compare. I had 18 years of people telling me on Thanksgiving that I was unpleasant to be around and difficult and I should just leave. Was that the experience of most people? Probably not. Maybe it’s ok that I still cry.
But I also try really hard to notice that I have it really good. My life is exceptionally easy and good right now. I have the kind of life that people dream about. Maybe I need to stop crying. I may have had a bad childhood, but whether I have a bad adulthood is up to me. I can choose to spend every Thanksgiving crying or I can work on not doing that. It’s not making my life better. It is no longer a good thing for me to isolate myself. Once it was a good and necessary thing. I need to learn how to deal with the discomfort of being around other people. Even though it is hard and it hurts. Because I have these amazing people who have stepped up. I need to be thankful for them, not bitter about my bio-family. Because there is no deserve. I don’t have this now because the universe adjusted from an inappropriate tilt and now I have what I deserve finally.
I’m just really fucking lucky. And not everyone is as lucky as me. For me to piss and moan and whine is pretty disrespectful, honestly. It’s bullshit. And I should change it.
A little light reading.
I’m working through TCTH again. I love the part where these women rabidly go off on how evil SM is. You are better off breaking up your marriage and being celibate for the rest of your life than engaging in SM if you are a survivor. Interesting priorities. Sex is like alcoholism. I’ve had bad experiences therefore what I do needs to be tightly controlled.
My mom used to refer to Tom as my sugar daddy.
mopey
I wrote a lot on the book today. So I’m kind of anxious and fussed. I went over to Pinterest. I like not having to read. But the wedding ones get me. Mostly the pictures of the happy brides with their fathers. Why do I have to compulsively talk about being an incest survivor? Because it impacts every part of my life. This isn’t something that happened to me one time. I have not lost the rest of my life because I was raped when I was seven or eight or nine or or or or.
I hide in my house because my father filled my head with poison. He convinced me that I was a worthless piece of shit. He convinced me that I should present myself to people as someone who should be raped. That it was my destiny. That is what my parent told me to be. My father wanted me to grow up to be a whore.
You want to know why I don’t follow polite social rules? Oh good fucking grief. When in the hell was I going to learn them? In one of the series of schools where I was brutally beaten because I compulsively talked about sex and made everyone uncomfortable? Or I was cussing. Or my handwriting sucked. There were a lot of reasons for beating me. At home? With the rednecks? My ignorant family? From my father? Ha.
I think it is hilarious that people think that American culture is apparent and obvious and easy to follow. I don’t know what the fuck you people want. Other than to not be uncomfortable. Well then don’t talk to me. I may or may not be able to accommodate you. I would apologize only I’m not sorry. I don’t think it is my responsibility to ensure that everyone is comfortable. My responsibility is to say what I need to say in order to get through the day. If I don’t say what I need to say then I get bitter and nasty and carping and desperate. I start breaking things. I start cutting. I start doing all kinds of other festive things.
I’m sorry motherfucker but you get to feel uncomfortable for a few minutes. It’s your fucking turn.
In which I reveal the extent of my ego.
I wrote just over 5,000 words on the book in two hours. During that time I also did major reorganizing on the whole book. And ate breakfast. And wrote a few posts in a few places. Last night Noah and I had a very intense conversation about what being a slave was like. I’m getting closer to being able to write about it. It won’t happen until after this book is done. I’m getting so close. 45,000 words. It’s not done. It’s far from perfect. It needs a lot of editing. I want to hit at least 60,000. 8 more days. 15,000 more words.
I want to be the kind of person who gets things done. I want to be the kind of person who really can sit down and write a book in a month. I want to be the kind of person who completes a marathon. I didn’t say run. Pay attention to that word. I may be the last person over the finish line. I’m ok with that. I will do it. As one step on that journey on Thursday I’m walking a 10k with a friend. I get to start seriously running in December. So far I’ve been half-ass running but mostly just working on being able to walk farther and farther. I’m trying to build up to running slowly. My knees are not used to this shit. I don’t want to push it.
I don’t want to be famous because my father held a gun to my head and raped me. I want that to be a small footnote in my life. Right now that takes up too much space in my brain. I need to find other things I want to do and talk about. Sex is always going to be a prime topic. But I need other tracks. I need other roles. Why not running?
And if I’m going to run I’m not running to get out of the house. I’m doing it to accomplish something. I need to have a goal. Something big enough and hard enough that people will be impressed. Or I won’t bother. Because that’s just how I work. I have to be fighting to do something uncomfortable.
That was part of why I had to leave the bdsm community the way I did. I always have this compulsion to be the biggest bad ass. Even if only this one small secret way I don’t tell anyone about. I want to be the edge of the bell curve in intensity. That’s frankly dangerous in some communities. So after I broke up with Tom I knew I had to get the fuck out of that community. I wouldn’t survive more intense than what I did with Tom. I would have wanted someone who was a cocky asshole who had something to prove. If you’ve been hanged by the neck once you don’t need to do it again. I feel fairly certain that some day someone will fuck me with a gun. I don’t know who or when. That’s why I’m not in the bdsm community. I don’t need to find that person any year soon. I don’t need that temptation any year soon.
It’s hard knowing that I just don’t have the same attitude towards the sanctity of my life that other people have. I want to know what else I can survive. What else will get me off?
And I want to serve. It will happen again some day. I will find a way. I will figure out what I mean when I say I am a slave. And I will find a way to make it real in my life. I want to be part of building something. I want to subsume myself. I want to make a King.
Clarification.
So uhm I said casually that I was glad that my affair fizzled out. I just realized that. Uhm, I’m glad that I am not giving up more sleep than I am giving up. I’m sad that muse wasn’t up for more of what we had at the beginning. It was really hot and fun. I’m sad I’m not writing the torrid IMs planning for sex. But my wrists are thanking me that I’m doing less typing.
Life is about finding the balance. I’m sad about not having the affair work out because I was enjoying it. But I was really operating past my body capacity and it’s a good thing I stopped. Uhm. Just to be clear. Some day he won’t be celibate anymore. I hope he’ll call me.
Email to middle school core teacher.
Dear Mr. S-,
Hi, my name was Krissy Archer. I’ve been married for five years at this point and that doesn’t even feel like who I am any more. I’m Krissy Gibbs. I’m a much happier person than I was. This year for NaNoWriMo I am finally getting around to writing about my childhood. I’m a survivor of incest and rape. Some of that was happening while I was your student. Right now I’m writing about when I was in Fisher and I was looking through the year book. You signed it: Krissy– Hope you enjoyed my class a little. Your hard work is appreciated. Keep it up. Have fun.
I’m sure that was a fairly standard thing for you to write. I think I was in your first year of teaching. You were a good teacher. You let me spend a lot of time in your room. Teachers like you gave me a haven from a pretty horrifying life. I taught high school for three years before I had kids. Reading your inscription in the yearbook made me think of all the times I wrote similar things on the yearbooks of students when I had other things I wanted to say. The professional boundary is an interesting one.
I’m curious if you remember anything about me. I no longer have any contact with anyone in my biological family. I am trying to write down everything I possibly can about my life. I feel horrified by the idea that if I died there is no one in the world who can tell my children anything about my life before I met their dad. So I’m trying to write it all down. But my memories are all bad. It’s hard for me to remember anything positive. I was wondering if you did.
Krissy Gibbs
—
I’m a big fan of people wanting something different.
Last night I once again went to a sex party and didn’t have sex with anyone. This time I did play though. It’s a subtle distinction. I also noticed a few interesting things about my anxiety. I’m really glad I’m not allowed to really date anyone right now. I’m glad that the affair kind of trailed off. I’m not hunting for a partner. I’m looking for friends. And I’m not hard up for sex. Why am I acting desperate? In November we’ve been having sex more or less daily. Before that we were having sex three to five times a week. Why am I out hunting so hard?
Part of it is that I’m lonely still. There isn’t much to compare to NRE and I’ve been in a stable relationship for a long time. Mostly I want friends. But I want friends I can have sex with because that is how I get my touch needs met. Yeah yeah I “should” get over my issues and be able to handle getting my touch needs met non-sexually. Whatever. I don’t wanna. I want to figure out how to get them met without doing damage to my life. Whatever that means. What does it mean to be stable? To be consistent? I’m not sure I know.
What do I want to be doing in five years? In ten years? In twenty years? What parts of my life will be the same? What parts will be different? How much leeway do I want to leave in my plotting? By which I mean: which things are non-negotiable if I am going to qualify as “stable”?
I don’t think that most people think about that in advance much. Not really. Not what that might mean. They don’t think about how hard it might be. I do not like that Noah wants to sleep with other people. Only I do. Only I like that he is the kind of person who likes that. Only I like that he loves that I’m the kind of person who likes to sleep with other people.
I feel bad that Noah wants to sleep with other people because I’m afraid to trust him. More than most people, he’s all I have. I have spent more time talking to him than any other human being. By far. And I’ve known him for almost eight years. He knows me. If I risk him getting to know other people I risk him deciding they are better than me. Letting him fall in love with someone else means that I have yet more lonely hours to fill as the people that I want to be with have something better to do.
Only it doesn’t have to mean that. Even when I choose to be alone in the garage, why does this have to be a banishment? Why does it have to be some terrible thing? I have massive social anxiety and I am the mother of two young children and I have the weirdest damn sleep cycle in the world. Of course I’m socially isolated. This is not a statement about my character. This is a natural part of my life cycle.
It’s all tied together. It’s hard to believe that I still exist. It’s hard to hope that this hard cycle will end. It’s hard to believe that this much hard is worth it. This much hard meaning dealing with my intense abandonment fears, parenting, being a partner to a disabled person, and having to support Noah in his career aspirations. I picked these roles. They are all hard. They all take a lot of physical effort and emotional effort. No wonder I want to hide in a dark room. At least it’s quiet.
I have some weird ideas about who I am and what I should be doing. I don’t think I understand them all yet. I’m not sure I need to because I need to change a lot of them. I really only look at myself in the most negative ways possible.
Today Shanna was resisting putting her underwear on after taking a shower. She put her face in her hands and started rocking back and forth. She was chanting, “I can’t. I can’t.” I stopped. I asked her, “Are you doing this because you see me do this when I’m upset?” She perked right up, jumped out of role and said, “Yup!” I told her that we try to reserve that kind of display for something slightly more life impacting than being cold after a shower.
I need to stop saying I can’t. I’ll make it true. I can. I’m just shy of 39,000 words. I am trying to decide if I should try to push through to 40,000 tonight. I kind of think it would be better to rest. Right now I’m writing about 1994-1995. Fisher Middle School. Oh boy. This is when I start to introduce people who are in the current cast of characters. People I don’t want to piss off. But no pressure, right?
This is why people don’t write this shit. It’s a lot of fucking pressure. Do you want to know why I am chickening out about making the book about more than just the first 18 years of my life? Because I’m almost 40,000 words in and I’m not even close to done and I still have a few years I haven’t even started writing about yet. Because I think Jenny will forgive me for things I say about then, but I’m not so confident about the other people in my life. Time to write.
I’m going to talk about triggers.
I've spent the past few weeks reminding myself that my early life was a festering shithole of despair the likes of which very few people survive. I'm running low on empathy for other people. So that seems like the perfect time for me to talk about my expectations of how other people will manage their shit. We all have it. That's fine. If you feel upset by things you are reading on the internet, close the window. If you feel upset by things you are hearing said in person you have two choices, you can try to tactfully change the subject; this is done by hearing a conversation segue and going full steam ahead towards that Shiny Change Of Topic!. Heck, you can even announce, "Look! It's A Shiny Change Of Topic!" as you do it. That's ok. That's a way of trying to be comfortable in conversation.
Or you can get off your ass and walk away. At no point it is it ok for you to start ranting about how people have triggered you and they are all bad bad bad bad people for daring to say something that Hurt Your Feelings.
Wow. Do you think you are the only important person in the world? Do you really believe that in order to be in your life people have to spent 100% of their time doing only activities you approve of? You have issues. Big issues. The kind that can be manipulated by fucked up professionals with lots of training on how to manipulate peoples emotions.
I have a lot of triggers. I could not begin to enumerate them all. They change over time. When I am in a period where I am heavily triggered, I stop participating in the world. I go home. I stop reading other peoples blogs. I stop participating in forums. I still post, because I do so compulsively and I could not stop if I wanted to. But I'm not reading. I don't have the emotional energy to risk looking at other peoples lives. I might get upset. If I get upset I will have days of back lash. I will feel this constant internal struggle between rage and despair because dear god why do people always do this to me? The truth is, they don't always do that to me. It happens sometimes. But when your brain is in whatever chemical state it is in right now sometimes… that's the only state you can remember being in. That's not a rational feeling. That's not a true statement. You have other moods and other ways you feel. Maybe not recently. But life is long.
Deciding that who and what you are right now is so important to preserve that everyone around must change in substantial ways to make you more comfortable uhm, well… that's fucked up. I'll be flat with you. That's disordered thinking. That's having omniscience problem. Get over yourself.
People need to go live their lives and have the experiences they have, for good and bad. The more you try to step in between other people having their lives the farther you are away from having an actual relationship. People are not puppets. The kind of person who will only do what you say is generally kind of icki and I don't want to be near them. People who want to "call the shots" on how I talk about my life makes my skin crawl. That's my fucking trigger. And guess what, I'm a grown up. I go back to my fucking sandbox and I deal with my emotions. In an appropriate way. In a limited way. I'm going to rant through this post and then I am going to roll my eyes and go back to my life. Because I don't need to deal with other people being passive aggressive and control freaks. I have better things to do with my life.
I modify my behavior willingly for the people I live with. They have a right to ask me for concessions. At the same time, I push for time to write because I need it for my mental health. I have to push back there. I have to push back about that universally, across the board. I need to not only say that was an epic party, but holy shit I got to play with two hot girls. One I made smile and one I made cry. I felt honored by both. They both teach me different things about life. And I need to honor the lessons I am learned. That is something that I need for me. I need to figure out how to navigate my triggers in life. Because I have a lot of them. I'm trying to figure out what that means. What can my life look like.
I'll tell you that declaring subjects or locations off-limits for other people… that's not part of the agenda. If it is on your agenda then you should stop dicking around and commit yourself for a while because you are obviously in a place where you are not able to have healthy relationships and you need some intensive therapy for you to figure out that you are not God.
One of the problems with polyamory
I don’t know if other people sit around in their off-time listening to songs and trying to place them onto various relationships. Particularly, today I am listening to Adele’s Someone Like You. The way she talks about the song in this video is striking. It has dramatically altered my hearing of the song.
I miss Steve and Tom. I think I would be able to be the kind of person Steve could be friends now. I think I have changed my reactions to some of our patterns. I didn’t like how I treated Steve, but I liked Steve. I would have broken him if I had stayed with him. Instead I ran away. I didn’t just break off dating him. I stopped going any place he might be. I avoided his friends like the plague. Anyone who knew us both lost me after the break up.
I walked away from my life. I broke all ties. I changed my major in college. I dropped out of college. I broke up with Steve just a few months before our wedding and then I evaporated like a drop of water. But there were a lot of reasons I wanted to marry him, you know? He was a really amazing person. I miss him. I miss the things he brought into my life. I don’t want to have sex with him, that part didn’t work well for me. But I miss him being my close friend. I dated him before I had ever told anyone the full story of my abuse. Before I was out publicly as a rape survivor. I could still name every single person I had ever had sexual contact with. I had two lists. One of girls, which was very long. I didn’t tell people about that list. And the boys, which was long but not frightening because I don’t count my rapists. Oh wait, there was a third list in my head–the rapists. I could still count my positive boy-sex experiences on my fingers with Steve. Steve was the first boy who ever gave me an actual orgasm. I faked it before that. Uhm, sorry people from high school.
I miss Steve a lot. He was passionate about things the way Noah is. I love basking in that kind of joy in the simple act of attaining knowledge. Steve liked to learn. He was inspiring to be around. He isn’t book smart, and it was by choice. He came from a highly educated family. He was a self-didact though. He knew how to do an amazing array of things. And if he didn’t know how to do something he would figure out how to learn. Nothing daunted him. I miss that. I didn’t know how to deal with it when I was 18. I didn’t know how to explain to him that things were harder for me than him because I didn’t have this loving background telling me I could accomplish things, I had to move slower than him sometimes.
Enh, I don’t remember the particulars well enough to analyze it. Whatever. That’s not the point. I would really like to know what kind of man he has become. I’m pretty sure I was right back then when I knew that I wouldn’t enjoy living with him long-term. But I think I could be his friend now. I think I would know how to listen to his interests without bashing him over the head with my issues.
I ran from Steve to Tom. In a straight line. Jumping on a few nice people along the way. I was 18 and living with a lonely old lady who wanted company and I wanted to be surfing the internet looking for sex. As soon as I became involved with him I started using his house as a base. I was there a lot when he was at work because I didn’t have anywhere else to be. His internet was paid for, he didn’t seem to care.
I’m not sure he understood how much time I was there. How much time I spent auditioning a life in that house before our relationship got all that serious. I picked him. I wanted him. I didn’t have to look around the local community for more than three months before I was damn sure he was the only person in that lot I wanted to seriously pursue. And I did. And on our first date he told me that he was looking for the One. The One he would marry and have children with.
I am not going to get into it much right now. That’s too big of a story. I can’t do that today. I can’t write it down today. But I can sit here and listen to Adele sing. And I cry. Because I can’t write that story yet. I am in the middle of another one.
I date Puppy because I was trying to replace Tom. Puppy was the most abusive relationship I have had as an adult. If he had not ended it when he did I think he would have hit me. He was escalating in his violent displays when I didn’t react how he wanted. I wasn’t good enough for him. His family hated me and picking me would have meant ostracizing his family. Or having to have relationships with them that involved no discussion of his life with me. He didn’t think I was worth it. He was a nasty piece of shit to me trying to get me to break up with him. When my response was to cry for a while then try to problem solve he freaked out. He wanted me to do something nasty so he had justification for his behavior. I feel like my relationship with Puppy absolves me of my guilt for treating Steve so badly. I learned how to control that anger. I’m really sorry I fucked up like that at 18. But I learned. I changed. Some people never do. I’m proud of myself.
I am too angry with Noah. Almost none of it is directed at him. I’m not angry because of anything related to Noah. I’m just angry. At so many stupid things I remember and can’t let go of. So many things that I’m trying to write down and be done with. Puppy left me with a nasty email about how I will end up bitter and alone. Just. Like. His. Mother. Yeah, that’s about me? I think not.
I don’t need to feel bad for my part in that any more. That was a shitty relationship. I don’t think it escalated to abuse but it wanted to. It didn’t partially because I learned to control my temper. That’s pretty cool. I needed to do that. It was essential in helping me be a good teacher. And oh boy is it more important as a mother. I’m sorry I hurt Steve. But I forgive myself. I had good reasons to be angry. The more of this book I write the more I understand why people in authority positions widen their eyes when I tell my stories. I should be exploding with anger. I should be standing on top of a tall building with a machine gun taking my rage out on all of humanity. That’s what a wounded animal as smart as me would do.
For all that people tell me I’m an angry person, I’m not. Not really. I was. I’m sad. I’m afraid. Writing my story down all in one block and thinking about how many years of my life I have spent alone in a room is hard. I don’t know how to have a real live actual family. I’m scared.
I dated Tom for more years than I lived with my brother Jimmy after the age of three. I lived with Tom for almost as many years as I lived with Tommy. We were very close. But he could never decide if I was really worth so much effort. He wasn’t interested in getting married and having kids with me. I think that given his life priorities, he made the right decision. I’m not the right kind of girl for him. And that still hurts. I wanted to be. I tried so hard to be what I thought he wanted. Oh so many things I want to say. They come over me in waves, these memories.
But I don’t think I can be friends with Tom. We were too much. I want too much. I miss too much. I want too much of him still. I don’t know if anything could ever actually work. I’m not going to let myself think about it. I can’t. I ran away. I slammed the door on that part of my life pretty hard. It has taken many years for me to figure out that some people in that community can be my friends because they aren’t actually interested in being his friend. I didn’t have to ask them to pick a side! They came pre-picked! I’m a shallow piece of shit.
No, I have problems with boundaries. I don’t think I would be able to have any if I spent extended time with Tom. Once again, I don’t know that it is even sex I want. I want to crawl back into his head. I want to once again hear him tell me about the most intense parts of himself. I want to watch him enjoy driving. I want to be tied up. I wouldn’t mind it being non-sexual. I miss being enjoyed for just being there to look at. That’s something that’s hard to communicate about objectification. It means that someone doesn’t have to know all of my dirty stupid little secrets, they can enjoy looking at me. Maybe I am beautiful.
Maybe if I write about what I really miss in enough detail I can find a way to get those specific needs met in other ways. It’s worth a try. But not today. Maybe someday I will find someone like Tom. Maybe I will be able to figure it out.
Daydreaming is weird. Because I have these thoughts. I have them a lot when I’m driving. Polyamory means that I can have my Bridges of Madison County track in the back of my brain and know that I am not being disloyal to the people in front of me.
I feel sad that Noah does the same thing. I don’t know that he does it exactly the same way I do. But he has similar yearnings to not feel like doors are closed. There is one girl he is kind of bitter about. I handled it badly. He really was falling in love. It felt like watching my chance at stable happiness leave every time he went on a date. I don’t trust that anyone else can love more than one person at a time. My family couldn’t do that. One kid at a time was “special” and whoever wasn’t in the center… well… when my brothers weren’t at the center it was because they weren’t there. Sometimes when my mother and I lived alone somewhere I was the center. That was wonderful. Anytime there was anyone else around I was ignored. She had missed those kids the whole time she had me. She had talked about that endlessly. She didn’t talk about me in glowing terms the way she did them. She didn’t idealize me. She lived with me.
I don’t want to be that for Noah. I’m scared. It is so hard to trust him. It is so hard to trust anyone. There is no one else in the world I would even bother to try to trust like I trust Noah. I can’t. I’m not capable. And that hurts. Once people have been close to me like that, if they fuck up even slightly then I have to completely and totally evaporate from their lives. I can’t handle being demoted. When Noah starts paying attention to someone else I feel demoted. I go from being the wife to being part of the harem. Now I’m “one of Noah’s girls”. I feel disposable. It’s not true. I know Noah doesn’t feel that way. Not even slightly. But that’s what I feel.
You know. Once I get the problem nailed down this specifically it’s time to talk to the California Mindfucker. I like NLP. It’s a convenient tool. I keep hitting this same wall. And it’s not rational. I can explain it 50 more times and they will all come down to the same thing. I want to change my irrational feelings and I’m not managing on my own. There are tricks for that.
Different facets.
Today is hard because I have already been a friend, a lover, and a therapy client. Any second now I need to be a mother. I need to be a partner. I need to be a wife. I need to be a boss.
It’s hard to be these different parts of me. They feel like they don’t add up to a person. I’m not sure if they are less or more than a person, but not really a person. A host with many guests. I hurt. I hurt inside my heart. I am all these things and more and it feels like a terrible thing I am doing. I am supposed to pick. Ok, probably not one. But just two or three. Fine, I can be a mother and a therapy client and a wife. Those are supposed to be my priorities, right?
But I really enjoyed being a lover today. Today I felt beautiful. Noah tolerates a lot of my derogatory self-talk. Well, he ignores me. He tells me I’m beautiful. He tells me he likes me. Today my Daddy made me stand in front of a mirror and he touched me and made me look and told me that I am beautiful. I feel like I can still barely lift my head. I can’t look up at someone saying that about me. I’m not. I’m so ugly and mean and bad. You don’t know how bad.
Maybe. There are parts of me that are ugly and mean and bad. I have done things I am ashamed of. I have hurt people. But maybe this isn’t an ‘or’ situation. Maybe I’m ugly and I’m beautiful. Maybe the most beautiful thing I have done in my whole life was standing up to my family and prosecuting my father and preventing him from ever victimizing another person. I did that. All by myself. My father was a serial rapist. He had molested many people from childhood to adulthood. I. Got. Rid. Of. Him. As sure as if I put a gun to his head. I made sure he could never hurt anyone again. Ok, so I didn’t expect him to kill himself, not really. I was surprised. I was devastated. I knew it was a risk. Everyone thought he would put a gun in his mouth. But he didn’t. He sat, like a chicken shit, in his garage and ran his truck. While he sat there he wrote notes of hate to me and my mother. I burned that note many years ago after Tom urged me to. It ate at me. He told me, essentially, that he was committing suicide because I was an evil liar and he didn’t want to go to hell for the sin of murdering me because I murdered my brother. Did you follow that? His grammar (and spelling) was worse. But the hate was god damn obvious. What a piece of shit. He sent that note to his daughter.
It’s not like he could tell himself that he was innocent. Give me a break. He didn’t want to go to prison. He was too fucking chicken shit to accept the consequences of his actions. I’m not. My father is dead. I’m glad. I made the world a more beautiful place by effectively killing him.
But I am still what he made me. I still thrill to the touch of my Daddy. Maybe I can find a way for that to be ok. Maybe that’s just one way that my friends can love me and touch me and heal parts of me I can’t reach by myself. Every man I call Daddy has been in my life for a long time. Specifically, Dad has been active in my life for nearly as many years as my biological father. I stopped seeing my biological father when I was thirteen. I have known Dad for eleven years. I have spent considerably more time in Dad’s company than I did with my father in my entire life. Dad is also a really good grandpa to my kids. He loves them.
And Daddy? Well, he sure knows how to make me come. And he is ok with me waking him up in the middle of the night when I need to talk. He has been for more than seven years. I have done so, whenever I needed to, for over seven years. And I’m crazy and bossy and difficult and he loves me. It was really nice to come home to my Daddy today. I am feeling pretty shocked by how this feels.
Maybe the only kind of love I have ever known how to get from a dad will be met. And it will be met in a way that allows me to be healthy and whole. I’m not a hole. My Daddy may be a big slut, but I’m special. I always have been. And Dad? I’m his first daughter. He introduces me that way, which is funny because he has a biological daughter. He’s had several girlfriends after me who are also “daughters”. But everyone knows it’s different with me. I’m not a girlfriend and I never was and I never will be. He just takes care of me when I don’t know how to do it for myself.
I feel very little. And happy and sad at the same time. I feel like I am holding the hand of my best friend at the funeral of a very bad person. I am safe now. I will never be hurt by my dad again. I may be single tailed by my Dad. I may be fucked by my Daddy. But my dad will never hurt me again.
Maybe I’m not over the incest thing.
Someone like you
Writing about my family makes me think about every romantic relationship I’ve ever had. How and where was I looking for Daddy? It’s interesting that I don’t like dating tall men. If they are over 6′ I’m probably not interested. My father was 6’7″. My mom was 5’2″. I had one date with a guy who was 6’10” and that was too much for me. I couldn’t deal with that. It felt really disgusting and inappropriate. Which is kind of a strong reaction to an otherwise really nice guy.
I forgot something when I went looking for an affair. I forgot that I want people who give me a lot of slack and a lot of space around my “issues”. I want people who are already broken in because I don’t know how to tell the story piecemeal any more. I lost that because of Noah. Noah can handle such ridiculous intensity from me that I don’t know how to tone it down for other people. Noah can handle me sobbing and screaming and beating on pillows in the middle of an otherwise normal conversation and transition straight into sex when I want it. I’m pretty sure I have scared Noah or made him feel put-off at some point, but I’d be damned if I could remember when. Whatever I throw at that man, he just rolls with it.
I forgot how special that is. I’ve been alone at home with Noah for years growing ever more entwined. I can use increasingly terse shorthand and he knows these elaborate stories. After Noah talking to a new person is hard. It feels frustrating because I don’t know how to explain things in easily digestible chunks anymore. Now I want to hurry up and finish the book so I can hand them the whole story in advance and say, “Either you can handle this or you can’t.” That’s not how normal relationships go though.
Last night I went to sleep with my muse. When I woke up I came over to Daddy’s house. I haven’t had sex with Daddy in… six? seven? years. It’s been a while. It was similar to and different from what I remember. I feel like we make fewer assumptions now. He has so many years of being a close friend that there isn’t much I can’t say to him. I can be as stupidly blunt and tactless as I am without feeling like it’s going to alienate him. If he was going to be alienated, it probably would have happened when I dumped him seven years ago. Instead he remained one of my close friends. There have been many times over the years when I have shown up at his house at odd hours and he has held me while I cry.
It’s weird sitting in his house now. I’m killing time until I go to therapy. He’s working. It feels comfortable and uncomfortable. This isn’t where he lived when we dated. Somehow that’s a good thing. I’m kind of sad his housemate hasn’t come out of her room. She is another former lover. I haven’t seen her much in years and I miss her. She is one of the few women I’ve had one on one sex with in the last ten years. I kind of hope I get to give her a hug before I leave. She came out! I got my hug. Yay.
This feels like visiting a part of me I left behind. These are people from my old life. In some ways this is like walking into a weird old movie and in other ways it feels like getting to relax. I have nothing to prove. I don’t need to show them who I am. They know already. If I start crying in the middle of breakfast fairly randomly I don’t have to worry about that being a deal breaker. I’m not going to risk rejection in this house. Not unless I do something extraordinarily egregious, which I can’t imagine doing. This is nice.
I’ve been sitting here thinking about similarities and differences among the men who have tried to handle me. I do best with men who are able to be still and silent while my emotions rage. It’s hard on them. I know. It’s hard not to take it personally when I’m freaking out. Noah handles this better than anyone ever has. He listens really intently to what I am saying and to what I am not saying. He’s good at ignoring the hyperbole and figuring out why I am actually upset. He has spent so much time listening intently to me that he knows before I do when I am avoiding a point to get upset about something standing next to it.
Daddy doesn’t make the same leaps. But he listens. He stays present. He has yet to be scared off by anything I’ve told him. This is why people are poly. Because there is more than one person who can be present with me. It’s hard to have the same reservoir of trust with a “friend”. It’s a different kind of trust and support. After more than seven years he has certainly earned my trust. It’s neat finding out what it is like to evolve in a relationship. I’m doing it with Noah. I’m trying to do it with Sarah. I’m trying to do it with Daddy. I wonder what my life will look like in five years.
Daddy told me that it’s been neat watching me grow up. He doesn’t think I would have been able to be a mother when we met. I was still too hair trigger on leaving. He’s probably right. It’s really nice knowing that he can look at me and see that I’m not perfect, but I’m still pretty good. I’m still worth keeping around. Because he loves me. Even though I’ve hurt him. Even though I feel like an unending river of fucking up.
This is so confusing.
The Daddies
In my adult life I have picked up a lot of men who love me and call me Princess. It’s a special breed of man. I have had sexual contact with all of them though I haven’t ever actually had PiV with one of them. I got the impression recently that it might change soon. We’ll see. Gosh. How do I differentiate them for this article. Hm. Well, there’s Dad–he’s up in Portland. And the other two are both Daddy J____. So that’s inconvenient. Uhhh, one is in San Jose and the other is in Oakland. That will have to be the detail.
Dad came into my life first. I met him when I was 18 at the Power Exchange in San Francisco. He was some skeavy old man and called out to me, “Hey you! Come here! We need bottoms.” Always classy, that’s my Dad. For the record that night I gave him a dirty look and avoided him. I warmed up to him as I saw him at events around the bay in the subsequent months. He spent a lot of time wasting his breath with lectures on how I should respect my elders. He had no idea that I was innately hostile to any and all authority. When he told me to respect my elders I would nastily snap back, “Yes, Dad.” It gradually grew less heated.
At some point I acquired a bacterial infection. Given my horror of all things medical I did not get it treated right away. But I did hang out on IRC whining. Dad spent a lot of time in the channel. He offerred to meet me at the hospital so I didn’t have to be there alone. He gave up watching a Sharks game with me. We had a fun conversation with the orderly. He made sure I was safe. Not very many people have ever done that for me in my life. I always have to go alone. I would walk through fire for that man.
We’ve been friends for almost 12 years. I will be going to his 60th birthday party in February. I was at his 50th. I will be at his 70th. He’s my Dad. I’m really glad I have him.
We have a weird play relationship. There are specific techniques he has that I appreciate a lot. Otherwise we aren’t much of a match. And sex just didn’t work. I couldn’t handle that. AHHHH. It was squicky for me because of the Dad thing.
I have a friend in San Jose who is my Daddy. He is slightly twisted with it. We’ve done some bdsm play and a little bit of light sex play, but we haven’t gone all the way. This is weird because he’s one of the local poly gods. I’m close enough in that I have a good relationship with him. I don’t know how I would fuck that up if we had sex. I do tend to make things more complicated than they need to be. I actually think it wouldn’t fuck anything up. I have no expectation that our relationship would change in the slightest if we shagged. I would giggle more when he makes certain jokes and turn red. That would be pretty much it. It’s kind of nice to know that.
And uhm, my other Daddy. I dated this man back when I dated Noah the first time. I met him right after breaking up with Tom and I was looking hard for a Daddy. We didn’t work out because we had different hunting priorities and I couldn’t handle that in a primary. But we’ve remained close friends. Recently we started kind of sniffing each other out. I asked him why he was interested in putting up with something as difficult and complicated as this is going to be. He said, “I love you.” Yes. That was the right answer. He has proven over many years of me being really irritating that he does love me. He never stopped.
This is why polyamory is so complicated. How do these friends who are more than friends fit into life? How do people build a tribe? I’m still not dating so it is pretty irrelevant right now. But it’s nice to fill my idle moments with thoughts about what it will be like when we don’t have babies any more. What kinds of things will we be doing?
I want to travel and camp and go out into the world in a way Noah doesn’t. I will take my kids with me most of the time, but I’m going to want to do grown up things too. That’s going to be complicated to navigate.
When I think about my Daddies I think about how I ask for love and support from people. These three men (along with the California Mind-fucker) have been my support for a very long time. It’s interesting how our interactions change over time. It’s interesting who we become to one another.
I stopped thinking about incest stuff during masturbation and sex a couple of years ago. It became unacceptable to me in sex. Not as a mother of daughters. Ugh. Ew. No. It helps that I’ve only been sleeping with Noah and I don’t want him thinking sexy incest thoughts. Ew. No. I can’t handle that. I know it would be a roleplay. Don’t care.
But uhm, I’m going to be crawling into bed with my Daddy in about 12 hours. We’re just going to snuggle. So he says. We’ll see. I’m chanting downwards, “Stop bleeding. Stop bleeding.” He wouldn’t even care. He has a cold. I don’t care. I have a cold sore. He doesn’t care. This is the difference between an old lover and a new person. I don’t have to feel like I am “up” to this. I can just go as I am. Because I’m good enough. Because he loves me.
Hypocrisy
Last night I told Noah that I am willing to have sex every day, even on days I’m not into it, in exchange for him giving me the courtesy of the public lie that I am interesting enough to be enough for him when we are out together. That’s the kind of thing that makes him furrow his brow and take a long deep breath. It always looks like I’ve kicked him. I probably did.
Everyone makes a different kind of peace with nonmonogamy. Mine is tattered and barely existant. I wish I didn’t have this deep compulsion to sleep with other people so that I could declare it off limits for Noah. But I do. This really sucks. He wouldn’t be happy about me trying to require monogamy, but he’d deal. He took his marriage vows seriously. I don’t think I can give monogamy. I think I would become obsessed with cheating. I think that my periodic times when I am driven to obsessively check okcupid (even though it’s just about a dead end at this point) would be a problem if I was monogamous. It would feel different.
As a nonmonogamous person I’m allowed the freedom to think about looking pretty much any time. That’s fun. That lets me think about myself as a sexually available person and that is linked to all kinds of fun energy. I like that part of me a lot. NRE just isn’t available in long term batches. I think Noah and I have a more affectionate than average marriage… it’s not NRE. It’s not new-person-hot-sex. It’s different. There is a kind of being seen I get from making sex work with new people. It’s important to me.
It’s important to Noah too. Fuck him. Jerk. Meaniehead. He doesn’t want me. I am not enough. This is tinged because I can see him raising his eyebrow at me. NO IT DOESN’T MEAN THAT ABOUT YOU, JUST ME I AM THE ONLY INFERIOR ONE IN THIS RELATIONSHIP. ahem. Emotions are really stupid.
All of this comes down to a horrible hypocrisy on my part. One I’m not sure how to resolve in myself. I feel like part of my current issue is that I don’t like seeing Noah play with other people unless I was actively involved from the get go and never walk away. I can’t walk up on Noah playing. It makes my stomach flip flop and I want to cry. I hate it. He’s mine. He’s the only person on the whole fucking planet who is mine and how dare someone else touch him.
And I hate that my awesome, wonderful husband wants to make other women fall in love with him. Because he does. I really kind of hate him for that. It hurts. He’s not as into the fuck and run as I am. He can do it when I’m putting that requirement on him, but it’s not his preference.
I am going to fall apart when he finds someone. This is going to be awful. I don’t know how I will handle this. I really kind of hate nonmonogamy. I feel bad for the women who have to deal with me in order to get Noah. I feel like a horrible partner. I feel like a bitch. Like I just suck at doing this. I don’t know that I can be nice to someone Noah falls for and that’s not ok.
I’m borrowing trouble. I have a little less than four years till he’s allowed to go after that kind of thing. In the mean time I think he should start going to parties to hunt alone. It’s not don’t ask don’t tell. I just don’t want to watch.
Queer
Sometimes I wonder if my fanatical devotion to this word springs in part from my former therapist, Traci. She was probably the most queer person I talked to about myself. That sounds weird. She was visibly part of queer culture in a way I have never been. I’m cis-gendered and I primarily partner with men. I pass. I loathe the word bisexual because of the gender binary it mandates. Early on in my dating I met someone who was transitioning. If I’m honest it was always something I felt in the pit of my stomach that she was different from the other girls I dated. She was not less than, just other. A whole different kind of person. She told me that fucking her made me queer.
Traci told me that it doesn’t matter who I fuck. It matters how I see the world. How I love people. She said I was queer and laughed. She thought it was funny that I treated queer like a merit badge to be won and I hadn’t worked hard enough yet. I feel like marrying a man forever revokes any authenticity I have in using that word.
Just like I don’t say I’m a dancer any more. I love to dance. But I’m not a dancer.
I’m thinking back over my laundry list of lovers. I’m naming a lot of them and making references to the people I can’t name any more. I’m thinking a lot about why I engaged in this sexual behavior. Did I want it? Do I want it now? It’s hard to say. I did and I didn’t. I do and I don’t. I was conditioned. I am supposed to behave this way. I don’t know any other way to be.
What way? Promiscuity is never as easy as it looks on first blush. People have sex for so many reasons and if you want to have sex with a lot of people you have to accept that there will be a lot of reasons. I don’t always get to decide what kind of sex I am going to have if I am going to have it at all. I think the sex I enjoy the most is when I know that someone is getting off in my presence because I am so hot. I have a hard time with partners who don’t orgasm. It’s part of the reason I don’t go after women any more. They are so hard. I have a lot of gratitude that guys are continually willing to put up with women despite the fact that we are such a pain in the ass. It’s hard getting women off. It takes commitment. It takes not just finding out what scares them, but finding out what makes them feel safe.
I can deal with the scary stuff, I’m not so good at safe during sex. Safe during sex means that it’s glorified cuddling, not sex. There isn’t much to get me off. I have to have that edge of fear, pain, despair, objectification… I have not run into a woman who wants to treat me that way. Thus, I haven’t had sex with a woman in a while. When I have had sex with women in the past few years it has been very safe friends who feel like they are there for a game of racquet ball. Sex is awesome, but it’s better with friends. I don’t know if I got them off, I think so? I hope so? I tried? But I wasn’t able to get that emotionally invested in the outcome because we were in a party situation and I wasn’t going to be able to pay that much attention to them anyway.
This leaves me with men. Or folks somewhere off the gender binary. I don’t even know how to meet them. I don’t know how to find people who want what I want. If I knew what I wanted it would help.
I want to be special. I want to be important. I want to be worth winning. I want to feel like the prize.
My issues with our house.
Alternatively titled “Noah’s House of Whores” but I thought it would be pretty fucked up to have that be the URL. I have a lot of deep seated issues around my sexuality. I am increasingly comfortable referring to myself as a whore. I can’t tell if this is a sign of my lowering or raising self esteem. Well, at least if I’m a whore I’m a damn good one. I picked a very specific flavor of being a whore. Yes, yes, he married me. That “sanctifies” the sex and justifies him supporting me forever just because. Only that’s not true. There has to be a balance or relationships don’t work.
I think Noah would be capable of turning off his voracious need for sex if I required him to. I think he would become a shadow of himself. I don’t want to break him. That’s not why I married him. I want to see what he can do. I knew that it was going to be an E ticket ride. Noah married me because he likes my extremes. My willingness to communicate.
I chose this relationship because it felt right. Because this meets my needs. It bothers me that I need to have a partner I can think about the way I think about Noah sometimes. To back up, I never wanted to live in this house. To me places kind of absorb the energy of the people in them. Noah has dated a lot of women here. I saw a fair bit of it. I know even more of the women who came and went. I’m actually on good terms with the majority of them. (Uhm, apologies for referring all of you as whores–it’s about me, not about you.)
When I am out with someone I tend to feel enormously bad if they pay attention to someone else. If I come back from the bathroom and Noah is cuddling someone else? I feel like I’m about to vomit. It’s instant and visceral. I have this flash of terror I knew he would stop wanting me soon. He was just waiting until I stepped away to show it. It’s even worse if he keeps his arm casually around said other woman and beckons me closer. Because then it’s not that he doesn’t want me. It’s that I’m not special enough to be interesting by myself. I’m better with a friend. Anyone improves the experience. The writing over the past few days has been about my dad and how he treated me when I was five and under.
I don’t like the parallels about how I picked a partner who wants me to be an enthusiastic whore with no ability to say no to sex. Very uncomfortable feeling. I’m supposed to be available to anyone and everyone at a whim.
This is not true of course. This isn’t how Noah feels. But it’s how I feel. This is my internal dialogue. This is the pressure I put on myself. I feel like it is my duty to be sexually available, even if I don’t want to. Even if I’m not enjoying the sex. Especially if the person wants to hurt me. I don’t like the fact that pain makes me orgasm when gentle touching does not. I don’t appreciate the fact that my husband doing any amount of vanilla foreplay can’t do much of anything for me. But pain does. That’s part of why I feel like a whore. My sexuality has to involve degradation and pain or it doesn’t count as sex. It really sucks.
That’s hyperbole. But it’s more true than not. I have to be objectified. I have to be used to get someone else off or I feel like I have failed at what I am obligated to do during sex. Thing is, my husband doesn’t really like that I need to feel that way. For all that Noah has done some heinous shit to me, he doesn’t want to be that person full time. He doesn’t want to make me feel bad about myself daily.
So how do we handle sex? Gingerly. In ways that feel fairly unsatisfying sometimes. I feel dirty and used. He feels sad and like he is hurting me. But he isn’t. It would be much worse if he stopped having sex with me. I get most of my touch needs met through sex and massage. I can only afford to pay for so much massage. I can’t handle having people touch me non-sexually most of the time. I don’t know how to react. I panic. I feel scared. I don’t know what they want from me and my impulse is to run as far and as fast as I can.
Nonmonogamy makes this all more complicated. Noah sleeping with other people reminds me that my hooha is not glittery. I have to be honest and say I’m bitter. I feel let down. Me sleeping with other people reminds me that I’m not good at following rules or bonding or doing the things people are supposed to do in relationships. Like be faithful. I suck at that. I get antsy and then I feel absolutely compulsive about finding a new partner. There is some gaping need I have and I know no other way to fill it. I need that attention.
God I resent the shit out of Noah needing it too. Then I feel like an asshole hypocrite. He’s supposed to just know that me being nonmonogamous is because I am defective and icki and kind of ignore it and be above such base needs. Or something. I’m so emotionally raw we shouldn’t make any long-term decisions. I don’t know what I want.
I know it has been true for a long time that sex always feels taboo and like I’m doing something bad. I wish that would change.
Some times it feels not worth thinking about.
Uncomfortable conversations about current sex issues I have is causing me to see direct paths to things that happened in kindergarten. I really wish that I didn’t have so many decades of sexual issues to deal with.