Category Archives: sex

You are good. You are smart. You are kind.

Leave a reply

Noah agreed to be married to me for better or worse. I think he might actually mean it. I think that even though I’ve been miserable and mean and sick for almost five years he shows a remarkable resiliency in cheer. All I have to do is have sex with him and he’s suddenly good to go again. It’s kind of weird. I don’t have quite the same system. I need so much support in so many areas and I am deeply ashamed of that need. I feel like my need is a sign that I am pathetic and lazy. I feel like I am a failure because I cannot completely do every thing in my life by myself. I’m a stay at home mom. I don’t have a job. All I have to do is keep the house clean, the kids fed and clothed, and at this stage… play with them. It’s not exactly hard. Right?

It’s really fucking hard because it takes so much patience. I am not a very patient person. I am a very demanding and exacting person. I don’t like delays at all. I spend most of my days wanting to bash my head through a wall as a pressure relief. Instead I take a deep breath, count down from ten silently, then I try to smile and say, “Let’s try again.” That’s my fucking job.

I have always been very clear about the fact hat I behave differently “at work” than I do “in my life”. In my life I do a lot of things I have to hide from my work. When I was teaching I was not particularly “out” about talking about my queerness or sexual history. I didn’t talk about going to raves and doing drugs on the weekends–although I did. I think that being in the closet about those things was wise. It meant that when kids started talking about things I understood the language but I wasn’t their “buddy” because I wasn’t an obvious peer. I’m not sure I am phrasing this right–I need to make my mistakes past-tense. I can’t talk about them while I’m doing them because then I get muddled up and unable to be honest about my mistakes. I know that I am doing stupid shit but I can’t admit it yet because I want to keep doing it for a while. I didn’t need to tell students I did that.

Noah came in to talk to me so whatever train of thought I had was gone. As Calli likes to say, “Whoops!” She also spreads her arms and yells, “Ta da!” I can’t wait until she can really talk. End sidebar.

And a new day dawns. I still don’t know exactly where I was going with that train of thought. I’m going to keep going instead of hitting post because I don’t get comments anyway. So what if things are long and complicated. I’m apparently just writing for me. And Noah. He talks to me about my writing. That feels like a manipulative ploy but I don’t mean it to be. People talk to me about my writing when I can get them in person. I’m not subtle in asking for feedback. I really like finding out what my writing makes people think about.

My wonderful complication was over for dinner recently and she told me that she thinks about me. It was said in the context of, “I’m glad it is ok that we don’t IM very frequently because you just know I think of you.” No, actually I didn’t know that you think about me. Wait. You think about me? Oh shit. What do you think?! When I get to that point I am trying to learn to reference something I got from Ashley Judd “ I hold that it is none of my business what people think of me.”

That’s hard for me to wrap my head around.

I was taught that it is my responsibility to influence and control what other people think of me. I should be careful what I reveal. I should tell different people different stories so that I evoke the right reactions from people. It’s a lot of why I do large information dumps on people and then run away. I believe in the core of my being that I am “doing it wrong” and I am bad for what I am doing. It is bad for me to be rude and inflict my inner stupidity on other people. No one wants to hear about how pathetic I am. No one wants to read the same whiny bullshit year after year. Grow the fuck up already. Stop being sad. But I can’t. I can’t stop. I wish I could stop. I don’t know how to stop being sad. I am sad. I just am. And while I am sad I have to make believe that I am happy and cheerful and that we live in basically a good world. That’s my job.

I need to have some place where I can say over and over again that I was hurt very badly and it still hurts. I would give anything to make this pain go away. I would give anything if I no longer needed to sit in a room by myself and cry every single day because I am so fucking sad. I cry and cry until I am dehydrated. I drink nearly a gallon of water a day. I shouldn’t be able to get dehydrated. But that pee doesn’t lie. (See, there I go with the tmi.)

It hurts. I miss my mom. I’m horrified every day because I look at Shanna and I think, “I was out having oral sex with multiple children already.” My mother didn’t keep me safe. I look at Shanna and wonder what I would be like if I had been allowed to be innocent. What would I want in life? How would I feel about the world? How would I be different? And it bothers me. It bothers me all the time.

I feel like I am a dirty, bad, mean piece of shit. I’m really glad that other people tell me, often, that they do not have that experience of me. I feel pathetic and stupid for needing to be told that. I’m told that you have to say ten nice things to balance out every bad statement to a person. That’s kind of the way it affects your sense of self.

I spent my whole childhood being told I was stupid and bad and a whore and little bitch and worthless. I’m thirty years old and I still sit alone in a room and cry about it. Because it still lives in me. I was told those things so many times that I agreed. I thought they were true. If fucking everyone tells you the same story how can you believe anything else? If it walks like a duck and it sounds like a duck and it swims like a duck? It’s probably a duck–right? If one person tells me to buy horse shoes I’m going to look at him funny. If two people tell me to buy horse shoes I’m going to think about it. If three people tell me to buy horse shoes I am going to get moving towards the store; I probably need them, right?

I spent my whole childhood being told I was stupid and bad and a whore and little bitch and worthless.

It still hurts. I’m not a fan of that old saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” I have healed from every broken bone I have had. My arms work fine. My hand works fine. I have been hit with sticks. I have been hit with stones. Those things heal. I can forget that kind of pain. It isn’t important. I believe I am a worthless piece of shit. I believe I am dirty and bad.

Noah gave me shampoo and conditioner for Christmas. This is kind of funny because I haven’t used such products in years. Since my hair is hella short I’ve been using them because it really doesn’t matter if my hair frizzes. I’m discovering something I had forgotten when I switched to baking soda and vinegar. It doesn’t matter how many times I “soap” my hair it always feels dirty to me. Dirty in that way that indicates “not washed”. I feel like there is no way to get the dirt and the bad off of me. It is a physical feeling. I remember my mother complaining about my hair. The only way my mother liked my hair was about an inch long so that she could ignore taking care of it. She was very resistant to me having long hair even though she complimented me on how I looked far more when I had long hair. Hair has such a weird place in my life. My mother was always thrilled when I wanted to play with her hair. Sissy loved to have her hair brushed. I don’t like having other people care for my hair because no one ever wants to be gentle enough. It hurts when other people touch my hair. My mom and sister liked it when I did their hair because I was more gentle than them. I was taught to touch my head and hair roughly. To treat it like something gross. Because I am dirty. When I switched to baking soda and vinegar I had a feeling of at peace with the feeling of my hair. It didn’t feel “clean” but it did feel soft. It’s interesting to use shampoo and conditioner again. My hair feels rough and dirty again. Specifically dirty. And I think it is making my dandruff worse. See, more tmi.

I feel stupid because I want to talk about how bad I feel about being an animal and having hair and being dirty. I need to talk about this because I don’t want to teach my daughter to feel this way. My brother is a stupid moron because he thinks the way to break behavior patterns is to not talk about them and pray they go away. Yeah. That doesn’t work. Not talking about things creates a festering wound because GUESS WHAT?! It is still a wound. It still hurts. Just not talking about it isn’t working.

I have to work very hard every day to decide what I want to teach my children because what I was taught was that I am bad, dirty, worthless, useless, and a whore. I know that I must be something else. I must be other than just what I was taught to be. Somehow I did that. How did I do it? Where did I do it? What should I do instead? I don’t know what to do. You can’t deal with a problematic behavior by just “not doing ‘x'” you have to replace ‘x’ with something. You have to have some idea of what you are moving towards. I don’t know. I don’t have very many good examples.

I don’t get to watch other parents very often. When I do I spend most of the time thinking, “Oh they do ________ better than me.” Of course this means that I offer criticisms. Because I’m like that. I expect that they are judging me so I start first. Just to get this going. I guess. I need to hear peoples criticisms of me. I suppose this is why I am asking people for feedback in person. I don’t need to hear the random criticism of people on the internet who don’t know me or what I actually do. When you only know me through my writing you are hearing a very random sampling of things from my brain. It’s a poor example of my life. That’s the joy of mental illness. I can be totally fucked up in my head but life just keeps plugging right along. I’m doing my best to be functional at my job and how that works is going to change over time. I’m trying to figure out the right way to act. I’m trying to figure out my idea of the best mother for my kids. It’s not exactly like me. I’m having a very hard time figuring out how it will interact with my sex life. We have a lock on our bedroom door.

I feel disgusting for needing sex. I am developing more of a complex as time goes by. Noah is, understandably, not thrilled. This is going to be hard to work through. For some strange reason he seems to be willing to go through this with me. I ask so much of him. Far more than I should ask. I know that it isn’t ok to need as much support as I need. That doesn’t change the fact that I need it. And he is willing to give it. He says. We’ll see. I’m so scared. I hurt so much. I need so much. I know I’m not supposed to talk about it. No. That’s not true. I’m supposed to talk about it one hour a week in a therapists office and then be all better. Right?

I hurt so much. I cry so much. I am so fucking sad. But my personal time is long over. Really I’m being kind of an asshole to Noah right now. I need to cry though. I have to. I can’t not cry today. And I don’t like doing it in front of the kids more than necessary. They will see enough sadness from me this lifetime.

Always with the defensive, this girl.

Leave a reply

Yesterday was one of those magical running days. The kind where the beat of the music and my grief match up perfectly. It’s hard to describe what I enjoy about running. There are several stretches of blocks in my neighborhood that I use for sprinting. The lines on the sidewalk just require it. When I get to those specific streets I pray for the right fast song. I run until I can barely breathe. I run until I am gasping out sobs and I can barely see anymore because I am crying so hard. There is so very much to cry about.

I have so much grief. I feel like I will never stop grieving. I will never feel like I can move past these feelings. I’m trying to trust the process. I’m trying to believe that even though this cycle of mourning isn’t over it will end some day. I just don’t know when. It’s hard to keep going.

Why was I crying yesterday? It’s hard to remember specifics because I cover so many topics in my head. I spent a lot of time thinking about why I am the sort of person to send nasty judgmental shaming letters to. I get them every so often. I trigger the shit out of people. It’s the same reason my former therapist fired me. I don’t do things how other people think they should be done. In the process I am deeply distressing. People don’t like feeling distressed by how “off from the norm” I am. They want me to fall back in line, damnit. I should do _________ in order to be acceptable to them. I can’t.

I can’t ever be acceptable to everyone in my life. That isn’t an option open to me. I will always bother people in some way on some level. Pretty much everyone. I will always talk about subjects that make you uncomfortable, no matter who you are. I will search for that topic that bothers you the most and then I will harp on it constantly. I do this on an unconscious level. I default to challenging people. A lot of the time I’m not doing it on purpose. I believe with every part of me that I would not have survived if I was willing to let other people set the terms of my reality. I would have crumbled a long time ago. I would have to believe that I was who they say I am.

This time I would have to believe I am an addict. I am bad. I am helpless before these things that control me. My cutting, anger, drug use, and sexual activity are bad. I am bad for being addicted to these things. Bad. Bad. Bad. I know. I’ve always known. I know that you think I am bad. That doesn’t mean that you are right or that I have to agree. That’s an opinion not a provable set of facts. I’m obsessive (even though I hear this kind of pedantry means you lose the argument I am going to do this anyway because it is my fucking blog and I’m only arguing with myself which means there is no such thing as losing) so here’s a definition for you:

Addiction is defined as the continued use of a mood altering substance or behaviour despite adverse consequences.[1] This can include, but is not limited to, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, exercise abuse, and gambling. Some defining characteristics of addiction include: impaired control over subtances/behaviour, preoccupation with substance/behaviour, continued use despite consequences, and denial.[2] Habits and patterns associated with addiction are typically characterized by immediate gratification (short-term reward), coupled with delayed deleterious effects (long-term costs).[3]Physiological dependence occurs when the body has to adjust to the substance by incorporating the substance into its ‘normal’ functioning.[4] This state creates the conditions of tolerance, and withdrawal. Tolerance is the process by which the body continually adapts to the substance and requires increasingly larger amounts to achieve the original effects. Withdrawal refers to physical and psychological symptoms people experience when reducing or discontinuing a substance the body had become dependent on. Symptoms of withdrawal generally include but are not limited to anxiety, irritability, intense cravings for the substance, nausea, hallucinations, headaches, cold sweats, and tremors.

That’s from Wikipedia. I use marijuana under medical supervision to deal with psychological issues. Yes there are technically adverse side effects because smoking is bad for your lungs. Overall it makes my life so much better it isn’t funny. I repeat that it has fewer side effects than any other drug I could be on.

Cutting, sex, and anger are all in a hand wavey category. I have a problem with the 12 step language of weakness. “I’m not responsible. A higher power has to save me.”  Well… I am certainly addicted to harming myself. I do it in a variety of ways. I don’t give any particular method much higher billing than any other. I think that is what he really meant by saying I am addicted to these things. But of course he’s blowing hot air out of his ass so he doesn’t quite see the pattern. I go through long periods without cutting. I have gone many years between periods where I feel bad enough about myself to need that release. I can easily channel that frustration and rage into other areas if given the slightest chance.

Cutting works to put an end to bad emotional states that would otherwise lead to suicide. Is it a great approach? No. It isn’t. But for an awful lot of my life I didn’t have a better choice and I think that cutting was significantly better for me than suicide. No one is going to take that belief away from me. I had to cope. I managed. I survived. The last time I cut I had kind of an epiphany that it wasn’t working any more. I threw away my scalpels. I have moved beyond the utility of that as a coping method. I didn’t stop because someone shamed me or told me I was bad for doing it. That kind of response is only likely to cause me to go do it more and more and more. I stopped because I realized it was insanity to continue. Insanity in the sense that it doesn’t make sense to keep doing the same activity and expecting a different response.

I no longer have a life where I need a physical outlet for my emotional pain. Thank you, Noah. Thank you for being my bulwark against the dark. Thank you for providing me with a safe place to live for the rest of my life. Thank you for supporting me so that I can do work I am better suited for and I don’t have to go out and “get a job” to prove I have worth.

The emotional pain I feel now I can talk about and find solutions for. I think the only place where the language of addiction is particularly useful for me is where it talks about the diminishing returns issue. Or if you talk about the cost being too high for the benefit.

I asked Noah for monogamy partially as a way of providing myself an ‘out’ on dealing with a lot of my problematic behavior. I’m not good at self-regulation when it comes to sex. Now I am safe. Now I will always be able to say, “I’m in a monogamous marriage; I can’t have sex with you” instead of having to be able to say “I don’t want to.”  Saying I don’t want to have sex with someone is hard. I feel unworthy of doing so. I feel like if someone is suffering for lack of sex it is my job to fix it. I can be a sacred whore, that’s fine–but I must be a whore. I don’t say no very well. I am going to hide behind monogamy and be grateful for it. I feel guilty that I am dragging Noah behind me kicking and screaming into this change. I feel like I am unfairly punishing him for a problem he doesn’t have. But I asked and he agreed and he doesn’t really want to talk about whether it is fair or not. It is. Move on.

I cried yesterday because I feel terribly bad that in order to protect myself from my own impulsive behavior I have curtailed Noah. It seems selfish and immature and just flat mean. I am such a bitch. And I’m trying to learn how to tell him “no” in general. I no longer close my eyes and go away and let him have sex with me. It’s hard. It’s hard to feel like I am not breaking rules. It is hard because I feel like I am bad for not giving him release when and how he wants it. I am not holding up my end of the deal. He is supporting me–don’t I owe him?  I told him that thirty years of being a whore is enough for anyone. It’s time to retire.

Noah isn’t attacking me. Noah doesn’t require that I put out because he wants me to. I project that onto him. I fear that belief. I have it. That’s enough.

Am I an addict? Maybe? Yes? It seems to be an irrelevant question.  Unless you believe that someone who takes thyroid medication is also an addict it is simply a innate bias to say that the pot is a problem. It’s not your preferred kind of medication but I’m a hippy and my doctor agrees that it is good for me. Imagine me sticking my tongue out at you. I also see a massage therapist and an acupuncturist (ok, not since pregnancy but I will get back there some day–I believe in the benefits). I think I should see a chiropractor about something going on in the lower right hand side of my back. That has been a problem since Jeremy sodomized me when I was like ten. I have never been able to get it to stop hurting. Running is teaching me a lot about my body. I think I have a better idea of how to deal with the pain.

So! Am I an addict when it comes to pot? Wikipedia says no. I’m going to go with that. Sex? Well… obviously I’m doing as much “recovery” from that as I can do. I am not actually interested in celibacy and trying to be celibate just because someone else might think I should be would result in me not being married any more. Noah wouldn’t tolerate that. He’s dealing with me saying “no” a lot and he’s dealing with not being allowed to have sex with other people. I think he’s a god damned stand up guy. No more can or should be asked of our marriage as I’m figuring out this shit with my relationship to sex. So am I addicted to sex? Maybe? But it doesn’t matter because I’ve figured out how I can have a healthy relationship with it and I’m moving forward. Kind of a useless thing to sit around and go to meetings on at this point. Just sayin’.

I haven’t cut in nearly a year and I no longer have my favored cutting tool. I could some day acquire another one, sure. I don’t think I will though. I don’t want that modeled for my children as an option of coping mechanisms.

It’s interesting to me how this evolution has happened. I cut for many years. When I stopped cutting my body as a teenager I started cutting my hair. It got shorter and shorter till I shaved it when I was seventeen. My mother was so angry with me it wasn’t funny. I felt like the whole world was radiating anger with me for cutting my hair. I was told constantly how ugly I was and how unflattering my “new look” was.

It’s been very weird and uncomfortable that people keep gushing about how good I look with a shaved head/short hair this time. It makes me cry. Because when they say it I hear my mother ranting in my head and I want to hit them and cry that they are lying to me. I feel rage that this person is lying about finding me attractive this way. I try to not do more than clench my fists. I try to not stomp away. I smile. I say thank you. I think that I flinch sometimes and then people simply become more emphatic. Noah certainly tells me that he likes it often. That is one of the things I cried about yesterday. “Hair” was on.

I wonder if my family hated this as a hair cut because of how intense it makes me look. I feel like I have to plaster a fake smile on my face all of the time or I look like I might punch you in the face as soon as say “hello”. It’s weird. I feel like the effects of aging are doing interesting things to my face. I am going to wrinkle like fuck. All the women in my family have deep lines of care from a fairly young age. We live hard lives and it shows. I look at my hands and I see my mothers hands. I see the rope appearing. My hands are the hands of someone who does manual labor. Well, I don’t have deep callouses yet. But I will as soon as I get up the energy to do more gardening. I would have done anything to prevent aging the way I am if I had stayed in a relationship with Tom.

One of the things I cry about when I run is thinking about how resentful Tom would be of the changes in me. It’s strange. I cry because I loved him so much and he wanted such a small piece of who I am. I feel bad that after my family he felt so very good to me but we didn’t know how to be real people together. Tom lives in a world where “pretty” and “sexy” are such a high bar that they become a vocation. I’m naturally pretty lazy. I don’t think I am that pretty and I don’t see much point in dressing up a plow horse to take it to town. I know I am attractive but it’s different. As I age it becomes more dramatic to me. I am intense in a way that precludes pretty. Pretty is about unoffensive and I will never be that. My perception of the world Tom lives in is honestly kind of bleak. I would not be happy in it. I can’t stay dedicated to something I feel like I will never actually attain. It involves a lot of specific activity and specific idleness that I just don’t want. I think back over how I lived my life and I feel glad that I made most of the choices I made. I was always running.

A boyfriend from high school sent me a congratulatory message about the half marathon and sent me a link to a marathon training program that is way more awesome than what I had been doing. By which I mean I am so grateful that this program wants me doing two miles for the first few weeks because it feels like such a wave of relief I can barely stand it.  Doing only two miles for the last two days of running has meant I have practiced sprinting. It uses different muscle groups and it feels good to stretch my legs once in a while.

I lost my train of thought a while ago because my cat jumped on the keyboard and then I got mad at her. We had to pause and have a negotiation wherein she glared at me and looked sad that I had thrown her the floor. I sighed deeply and went and got a blanket to prevent her from drawing blood and I moved my computer so she could lay on my lap. Puff’s mother gave her to me when Puff was only a few days old. Her eyes were still closed and I bottle fed her to keep her alive. Puff’s mother brought us the babies to save them from a rain storm that would have drowned them outside. The feral mama wasn’t willing to come inside and care for the babies and she didn’t want anything to do with them later, but she did save them. That feels important. I have had Puff for fourteen years. My niece named her. T said, “She looks like a puff of clouds.” She is white with grey nearly-Siamese markings. For a couple of years after Shanna was born Puff avoided me. I feel like our relationship has deepened a lot over the last year or so. She doesn’t mind Calli the way she minds Shanna. She loves that I sit in the garage alone. I attribute a lot of our relationship growth to the smoking, actually. It keeps me away from the kids and she is quick to remind me that our alone time should be special, darn it!

I feel the need to apologize for my many typos. I stop writing when I am abruptly pulled away to do something else and I really don’t have time to edit. I’m not a professional writer so it feels ok to be sloppy.

2 Replies

I don’t feel like I have a good grasp on normal.  I’m a freak and I’m going to raise little freaks.  I’m sorry for that only I’m not.  My demographic doesn’t need to fade out of existence.  We aren’t bad.  We are just weird.  On the internet when people bandy about numbers I have seen the figure 1 in 17 men are rapists.  I usually see that put right next to the figure that 1 in 6 women/girls will be sexually assaulted.

You know at least one rapist.  No matter who you are.  No matter what you think you know.  Unless you know fewer than twenty men, you probably know a rapist.  How do you live with that?  How do you account for that?  Do you think you are safe?  I never understand why other women have the hubris to feel safe.  I hope that I am never raped again.  I’m not going to put money on it.  I understand that part of the human condition is the need to play power games and at some point I may have the misfortune to be in the room with someone more powerful than me.  Or maybe I will be attacked while running some day.  Who knows.
Short of staying in my house and never associating with anyone again, what choice do I have?  I can do all of the little “avoid being raped” tricks that they pass around but in that last vital moment… really… there isn’t all that much I can do.  Some day I will have to depend on the kindness of a man to not rape me.  Really I will have to depend on it over and over.
Recently I was spending time with a good friend/former lover.  He suggested Watercourse Way, which is a hot tub place.  From the minute he suggested going there till when we left there was a part of my brain and body that was on high alert.  I was really afraid he was going to push physical boundaries.  He didn’t.  He has proven to me before that when he’s told to not touch me he is likely to stay 12′ away from me so there is no muddy area.  But I was taking a risk.  A fairly big risk.  He’s a big man and if he wanted to over power me it wouldn’t be hard.  I’ve known him for twelve years.  When I spend time with him I worry and I keep escape routes in my mind.
The guy who came over for dinner?  I don’t worry about that kind of thing as much.  When someone is going to be with me and my kids I’m far less worried about what they will try to pull.  Shanna’s speech is prodigious.  She speaks like a nine or ten year old.  If someone came over and tried to do something sleazy with me and Shanna in the room I am very aware that we will be one anothers witnesses.  It would be hard to over-power both of us at the same time and we could both speak to police later.  Right there it becomes a less powerful situation for anyone.  There is more than one person on my side.  It’s interesting to me that other women don’t see their children as a resource in the same way.
Sexual assault primarily happens among people who know one another.  Stranger assault is somewhat uncommon.  Most of the reason for this, in my only-slightly-educated-opinion, is because rape is about power and it is very difficult to assess the power of a stranger.  You pick victims you know because you know how to get past their boundaries.  A guy I barely know isn’t going to push his luck to hard because he will come up against my massive social hostility.  I do not appear weak on first blush.  You have to get to know me a little before you see the chinks in my armor.  From what I hear, on first blush I am often terrifying.  I’m really not concerned about shy gamer geeks coming over for dinner.  
Noah feels a little weird about the fact that I am still thinking about why nonmonogamy is a bad idea for me.  He thinks we have made the monogamy decision, ok those reasons are done–move on.  I don’t do that.  Monogamy is going to be a behavioral choice for me.  It’s not really a relationship choice.  I need to stop picking up sleazy men.  Some of my former lovers may read this.  I love you dearly.  You scare the shit out of me.  I am far more afraid of my former lovers than I am random men I don’t know.  
If someone I don’t know touches me physically in an even barely intimate way, say stroking my arm, I am extremely likely to haul off and hit them.  I’m rather reactionary with such things.  If someone starts touching me in a way I don’t like but I’m worried about preserving the relationship… I’m in trouble.  Because there is a battle in my head between, “Do I mind this boundary incursion enough to risk fucking up my relationship?”  Part of the problem with my anger issues is I don’t have softball defenses.  If you put a toe over my boundary line I can’t drop a beanbag on the toe.  I’m going to throw an anvil at your head.  It’s hard to survive being in my inner circle.  People don’t seem to make it much longer than a decade.  I’m glad Jenny is in another country.  Maybe she will manage to stay one of my intimate friends for life that way.
There are a lot of ways I am deeply broken.  I don’t ask for help well.  And I don’t defend minor boundary incursions well.  I don’t ask for help until I am in serious trouble and I should have had help an hour or a week ago.  For someone to waffle or hesitate or decide slowly what part of it they want to help with… I can’t stay and watch that.  I laid bare my need to you and you didn’t say, “Oh let me help” fine.  Fuck you.  I’ll fucking figure it out by myself.  That’s not very useful.  And minor boundary incursions are ignored until there are a bunch of them and then I explode.  Because I decided along the way that the relationship was more important than pointing out all those nit-picky things… and then by the time I build a list the relationship isn’t more important any more.  I feel bad saying that.  But it’s true.  Avoiding saying it doesn’t make the situation better.
Near as I can tell a rather large percentage of “rape” is sex that is coerced and unwanted but the woman never says no or actively resists.  We just shut up and take it.  I wish that I had another word for sex I don’t want but I never said no to.  I often or usually said no or resisted during many of the times I was raped.  How wishy-washy can I be.  I know that right now I don’t want to go through my list of rapes in my head but when I casually think, “Did I resist or say no?” I can think of multiple times I know I did.  I’m only seeing a few though.  And I’m tired and fuzzy headed and I don’t want to try and examine if that is close to the full list.  That hurts my heart.
I have a lot of shame around my sexuality.  I have a lot of shame around the fact that I have used fantasies of my father to fuel most of my masturbatory life for most of my life.  I don’t do that any more.  My orgasm response is nearly entirely gone.  I can’t help but feel that I put a graduate-degree level of work into learning my body only to decide that everything I knew was bad and I shouldn’t have ever wanted it and I’m disgusting for having ever done any of it.
Learning to feel horrified by that part of me feels inextricably tied to being a parent.  I am one of those loathsome people who shouldn’t be allowed near children.  Oh my god.  The idea that someone would allow a person from a sex community to meet their children is horrifying and disgusting.  What about when the parents are from that sex community?  Why do I have any morally superior ground?  Because I dropped some crotch fruit?  Oh give me a break.  I am the youngest child in an incestuous family.  It went on for generations.  I do not believe that being a parent means you are more likely to be safe.
Do you know what I like the best about the sex community?  The gossip.  Your reputation will make you or break you.  Having deviant sex requires finding deviant people who are willing to trust you.  Folks like to talk.  If you step out of line in the community, often word gets around.  It’s not infallible. But it’s fairly effective.  I depend on that network for a lot of my baseline assumptions about people.  Like: should I let them in my house or not.  Past that I tend to rely on the fact that I am twitchy and aggressive to get rid of most people.  Only people who are willing to deal with me loudly and aggressively dealing with them come multiple times.  It’s interesting to see how it shakes out.
But I’m not stupid.  I am well aware that the danger isn’t in the first few times someone comes over.  Who might pick me as a target?  Lots of people.  But going forward I have the hard and fast line in my head.  I’m monogamous.  It’s a behavior choice.  It changes a lot of how I talk to people.  When I am hunting people often mistake me wanting them.  I’m a chick and breathing and willing to fuck anyone–that means them, right?
Lately I spend a lot of time examining my behavior choices.  I don’t want to send mixed signals.  How do I physically hold myself when I am hunting versus when I when I am not looking for prey?  That kind of “being nice” is bad for me system wide because it fucks up my boundary defenses everywhere.    I’m having a very hard time with keeping my boundaries so active with everyone else and not with Noah.  It feels all or nothing for me.  Either I don’t get to say no to sex, with anyone, or I’m just not interested.  I think it is a lot more useful and productive for me to work through this than to try and deal with the issues around nonmonogamy.
I want to be with Noah for the rest of my life.  Some day I will probably have to deal with him dying.  I have some attachment issues.  I’m worried about being flighty and scared and unable to commit.  I’m worried about breaking us.  Nonmonogamy brings a whole series of big rocks into our lives for us to throw ourselves against.  Monogamy brings much smaller rocks.
The past few weeks since writing the book I have had some fairly frank conversations with myself about the level of trauma I went through.  I understand more of why people say, “I don’t understand how you survived.”  Because I did.  Because I got back up every day and I kept moving.  I don’t know how many of those I have left in me.
There is a song out on country radio right now, by Martina McBride.  It’s about surviving cancer.  I’m fairly terrified of the future.  I’m well aware that life has no obligation to be kind.  I need a partner.  I know people tell me that I am strong enough to be alone if I need to.  Yes, I suppose I could survive that.  But I wouldn’t really live through it.  Noah has the biggest piece of me of any one on this planet. It’s only going to grow by the year.  I can’t do this and keep my awareness up for big rocks.  Things will happen that are unavoidable.  Things we can’t ignore.  Things we have to deal with.  They have to be things that I can completely and totally have the right to be surprised by.  I can’t keep my expectations of life low enough for nonmonogamy.  I can’t expect to be kicked that hard on a regular basis.  I won’t be able to keep surviving.  
It feels like a melodramatic asshole thing to say.  Other people do just fine with the fact that their partner wants to give part of themself to someone else.  I’m not as fine with that.  Noah is a bonder.  I only kind of am.  I’m just fine with the scorched earth policy in life.  There are always people still standing.  There are always people standing because there will always be people who are genuinely innocents in this life.  They haven’t done anything to me or anyone else.  I try my hardest to be nice to them.  They seem to be able to forgive me for a lot of temper.
My approach of scorching earth when someone has transgressed enough on a close relationship is problematic.  A lot of the reason I blog the way I do is because I am releasing these words onto the open internet.  I can’t really come back later and deny doing it, now can I?  I need to have that accountability.  I need to have it so that I can’t become a liar.  I was pushed hard towards sociopathic behaviors.  I don’t come close to being a sociopath, but I certainly know how to manipulate.  I certainly know how to lie.  I don’t want to.  I want to tell the truth.  I want to be consistent.  If I make a record of my real and true beliefs I can’t end up being a liar, right?  
I don’t know how to communicate about the small things in a useful way with most people.  Luckily Noah seems to be able to handle the conversational equivalent of an anvil to the head.  When I am upset with Noah I can write about it as much as I want and he doesn’t feel slighted.  With other people I worry about discretion.  I don’t know how to handle that.  When I can’t write abou things I feel like I shouldn’t even be thinking them because they aren’t nice.  Then in order to feel justified in defending my original boundaries I have to over-defend them.  Because not am I dealing with whatever the original boundary is, but it was hard for me to buck myself up enough to say, “Hey!  I deserve better.” Because I feel like someone treating me like shit is pretty normal and par for the course.  It’s hard to believe otherwise.
And that leads neatly into something I’ve been observing in my social circle lately.  Has anyone else noticed how many of the geek boys who grew up being taunted and abused have gone on to be nasty bullies?  Some of the girls too, but I see a lot of the worst nastiness from guys.  I don’t get out much so I don’t pretend my experiences are the only ones.  I think about it because I know that by the time I try to defend my boundaries I sound and look a lot like a bully.  I’m trying to figure out how I want to deal with that.
Being a parent is teaching me who I want to be.  Shanna’s facial expressions lately are always angry.  She’s patterning off of me.  I don’t get to decide who she becomes.  But I get to decide who she has to put up with today.  I want my children to remember a stable, happy life.  I want my kids to remember parents who were enthusiastic about life–not people who put their head down to sludge through the misery.  I don’t want to show my kids that I am strong enough to survive any misery dumped on me.  I want to show my kids how to change your life so that you have fewer problems.  That means making different choices.  That means learning how to say that something isn’t working for me without having to scorch earth.
Parenting is really complicated.  I’m having a hard time being the person I think I should be.  Given the people I know and how they parent I don’t think anyone else has it easier.  My mother did her best for me.  It wasn’t good enough.  I am trying to figure out what my best would be for my kids.  I don’t have the assumption that I can muddle through and whatever I do will be good enough.  I know that the economists tell me it is.  But I can’t.  I have to have to actually change in order to be my best.  Otherwise I don’t know what will happen.  I don’t know how I will pass the cycles on.  The children of Adult Children of Alcoholics act like they grew up with a drinker in the house.  It’s about behavior patterns.  I don’t want to recreate the family that I had.
Who do I want to be when I grow up?  Well, I will be someone who invites people from sex communities over to my house for dinner.  Because I know how to keep the conversation G rated.  People who have sex are regular people too.  I do a lot of gardening.  It’s getting to the point where I am starting the beginnings of plans that are going to take me twenty years to finish.  I guess this is my forever house.  It’s a good thing it will be paid off in ten or so years.  Some day it will have more light.
Who do I want to be when I grow up?  I think that deserves ten minutes of writing on its own.  I want to be the gentled version of me.  I want to be someone who feels safe.  I want to be someone who experiences joy in my body.  I want to feel like I am a decent person to know, even if you met me at a sex party.  I want to feel like I am not a dirty little secret.  I want to be someone who is allowed to be complicated because there is far more good than bad.  I want to be someone who has a company-ready house every day.  I like making last minute plans with people and I have a lot of shame issues around house cleaning stuff.  I keep my house neat-enough.  Lots of people see it covered in toys and I barely shrug.  But I did mop and vacuum that day so it was perfectly neat at some point.  I clean a lot.  I think that is going to be part of who I am as a grown up.  I like things to be shiny and I need to just put that into my morning routine as something I do for me.  
Oh that’s pathetic.  Who do I want to be when I grow up?  I know I would like to talk about sex stuff again.  I don’t know in what capacity.  SFSI already turned me down.  I’m not very good at round table discussions.  
I will always be a person who likes to teach and who likes working with groups of people who are learning.  I don’t know what shape that will take when I grow up.  When I grow up I will feel a lot more comfortable with living in the town I live in.  I will have been here longer than anywhere else.  I am training for a marathon here.  I am learning these streets intimately.  I am meeting my neighbors.  I will be a person who knows a lot of people here.  I’m going to be that crazy lady down the street with the weird yard.  The one who used to dye her hair funny colors but then she shaved it.  They do recognize me and take double takes.  It’s pretty funny.
When I grow up I won’t seem weird.  I’ll just seem like Krissy.  I will be comfortable in my skin and I will make people near me feel comfortable in their skin.  Because it’s just as ok for them to be them as for me to be me.  Yeah, I’m not much like other people.  But that’s not actually weird.  Once you know me it makes sense that I am how I am.  It works really well for me.
That’s who I will be when I grow up.  I will have fucked up over and over and changed as a result.  I will learn how to actually live instead of just surviving.  That is who I want to be when I grow up.  I want to be someone who travels and meets people and has stories to tell.  I don’t want to be overwhelmed by how hard it is just to do the basics to survive.  I want to thrive.  I want to know that I have extra energy lying around for random people phoning and telling me they have to drive past my house, can they stop for dinner.  
I want to be someone who lives.  I want to be someone who loves.  I want to be someone who is safe and knows it.  I want to know that if some day I am raped again in a chance encounter it will be something that does not make me want to jump off a bridge.  I want to be someone who is actually attached to the people standing near me and they can actually give me support.  That is going to be a big change.  I don’t think I can be alone with such things any more.
I think that’s the line.  I’m strong enough to just survive and put my head down and get through everything that happens to me, no matter what.  I am a dumb animal and I have a strong will to live.  But I can’t do that and really live.  I will be so bitter.  So angry.  The hurting has to stop in order for this to change.  I know that happiness is a state of mind and not a circumstance.  I know.  I know I could just change it.  But I don’t know that I can by myself.  It’s too hard.  I need to stop hitting rocks for a while.  I can’t change my response pattern if I am constantly in flux.  It’s too hard for me.  I’m sorry.

Part of the road to Noah

Leave a reply

This fine morning a friend asked me about a link on Facebook about Mansplaining.  It lead to an interesting conversation about whether men or women (sexist language abounds.  I’m going to do an aside to say that there is a really odd mixture of statistics on whether rape is a female problem or a problem that is closer to equal than anyone can handle admitting.  I am defaulting to standard sexist language because that is my experience base.  I do not mean to say that my experiences are universal–they are not.  Carry on.) bear responsibility for rape.

I’m going to call myself out for being an asshole, because I was, but I was a persuasive asshole.  I said, more or less, “Oh reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally?  How much responsibility do I bear for being raped?”  I then proceeded to go through a list of the times I have been arguably raped as an adult when I should be responsible for my ability to pick “safe” people.  I decided it was time to tell the story of Dan Morgan.  I haven’t before.  Not really.

On December 18th, 2005 I posted this in my livejournal:
I am about to climb out of my head with wanting sex. But I still don’t want casual sex. I feel kind of lame. It has been just over three weeks and I am already going batty? Damn the time is going to pass slow… This is longer than I have gone without sex in… oh god… uhhhhh… two years. For the record: I have really enjoyed how much sex I have had in the last two years. *sigh* Thank you to all the lovely people who have made the last two years so much fun. 🙂 I was asked on Friday if going back to casual sex would be better than waiting for more meaningful sex. I told the person that I am coming out of a relationship where I have had the best sex of my life and going back to more mediocre sex would be a serious let down and I am not quite ready to do that yet. I think a lot/most of what made that sex so awesome was I was more present for it than I usually am. I asked Puppy for what I wanted in ways that I have never been comfortable asking before. Other than the actual technical amount of time spent having sex I got exactly what I wanted pretty much when I wanted. There was also a variety that blew my mind. I kind of feel like I rediscovered vanilla sex. And it can be GOOD. 

I miss every part of sex. I miss having his body over mine. I miss the scary intensity of having him slide into my ass. I miss feeling a cock in my throat. I miss feeling his tongue on my clit. I really miss having a cock in my pussy. The discerning reader will notice the change in possessive pronouns in the previous statements. There are some sex acts that were very specific to him that I miss him for. There are some that I am just missing in general right now. He is the only sex partner I have ever received regular anal or oral from. 

I didn’t mention this part to the person who asked, but I actually don’t really want to go back to casual sex because I don’t want to go back to the fanaticism I have when I am being a slut. I don’t particularly like getting STD tested every three months. I don’t particularly like condoms. I really really really like unprotected sex–which is a scary and dangerous thing. I can’t have it casually because I am not willing to risk my life. I am still on the pill. The first time he tried to break up with me I asked him if I could maintain booty call rights. I think I have it in the back of my mind that waiting a couple of months until I am less emotionally attached is a good thing, but eventually having him as a booty call would be a good thing. Although this is just mental masturbation. I really think that in order to not hurt myself emotionally it would have to be 4-6 months before I would be able to have sex with him and not cry through the entire event. And yeah. I am well aware that I technically can wait that long to have sex but I really don’t have to and I won’t go back to unprotected sex with him if I sleep with someone else. Ethics are annoying.

Right now, all I know is that I have a stronger desire right now for being beaten, for being held down and fucked unmercilessly than I have had in a very long time. I want to be slapped and taunted with how very horny I am right now. I want to have someone revel in my lustiness and appreciate the fact that I can wear someone out right now. I want to have someone fuck me until I beg them to stop because I am so sore. I want to be restrained and hurt and threatened. I want… sex.

The person I had been talking to on Friday was Dan Morgan.  I don’t know how we started talking.  I’m sure we met through Dickens Fair.  No!  Tribe?  Was it Tribe?  I don’t remember for sure.  That sounds right, though.  We were having these really awesome long conversations over IM about fun kinky sex stuff we were interested in doing.  I was adamant about casual sex meaning condoms.  He didn’t like that bit.  He told me quite a bit about how condoms were annoying.  My response: tough.  No cover, no entry.

Our first date was on Christmas Day in Disneyland.  I uhhh kind of bought his ticket in.  He was really broke and said he couldn’t afford the trip if he had to pay for theme park tickets, though he had friends he could go crash with who would go with him to the park if I got him in.  I didn’t have a problem with this.

We had a really fun date.  Involving upsetting his friends when Dan fingered me in the Tiki Room.  We were shit-faced drunk from the bar in downtown Disney.  Disneyland as an adult is very different. Other people go and treat it very differently than I do.  Anyway.

He went off with his friends and I went off with mine.  On December 27th I posted:
Disneyland is still cool.
First dates… are interesting.
Still not up for sex even though I am crawling the walls.
I went to the gym and I am proud of myself.
I haven’t made one itty bitty movement towards cleaning my apartment.
I have food now.
Tomorrow I have three netflix movies to send back.
My cat is hella clingy.
My family sucks even more than usual.
I am really drunk.
I told Puppy that he is an elitist piece of shit tonight.
I am tired of planes.
I am really tired and uninterested in sleeping for some strange reason… I think I am going to lose that battle in the next 10 minutes though.
I missed country music.
Zzzzzzzzz
sleep. 
I love my friends.

And then on December 29th I posted:
Tiki Bar TV

London Fogcutter, episode 8. That is the reason for my hangover.

I didn’t bother to mention that the real reason for my hangover was because Dan came over.  We had a pleasant afternoon together.  We dealt with a motorcycle gear acquisition for him.  There was a good store near me.  We tried to get to know one another.  By evening he said we should start watching the show.  He started making drinks.  He made more and more.  Dan is a really serious alcoholic.  I don’t drink much and never have.  Alcohol makes my stomach hurt.  He kept topping up my glass.  “Oh come on.  You don’t want to get behind now, do you?”  He was very antagonistic towards me trying to get me to drink more.

I wanted him to like me.  I will freely say that.  I thought he was shiny.  I’m sure there was an element of star-fucking in it.  He seemed well-liked.  Maybe if I stood next to him I would feel like not-poison for a while.

I woke up at about 3am in my bed confused.  I couldn’t remember anything past Tiki Bar TV.  And I don’t know that I remember more than two episodes of it.  I reached down between my legs and felt a lot of wet.  I rolled out of bed (because I had no other way of getting to the floor) and crawled into the bathroom.  There I proceeded to vomit until I thought I would die.  It was awesome.  This was when I was living in San Jose by myself for the only time in my life.

Puppy dumped me on Thanksgiving day.  Noah asked me to marry him in March.  Dan was right in the middle.  Of-fucking-course I said yes to Noah.

Anyway.  When I stopped puking I looked for my phone.  I sent Dan a text message asking where he was, when he left, and uhm, did we have sex?  He said he was at home.  He had left at 2.  Yes, we had sex.  I sent back another message saying: …unprotected sex?  He said, “Well you are on the pill so it doesn’t matter, right?”

I said basically nothing about this event to anyone who knew me.  It wasn’t exactly rape, right?  Only legally it was.  Regardless of whether I intended to have sex or not, once I was passed out drunk it wasn’t ok.  I had text evidence that I wasn’t interested in unprotected sex.  And I bloody well thought about the fact that I could go in for a rape kit and it would be bloody obvious that we had unprotected sex.

I was afraid of people saying that I was having second thoughts.  I was afraid of people saying that I was stupid or that I deserved it.  I believe that unprotected sex is a disease vector.  At that point in my life I was still really focused on the fact that I wanted to have children.  I didn’t risk any more disease than I had to.  I already have herpes and I’ve already had an hpv outbreak.  That damage was done long before.  I did the best I could with the information that I had.

Do you know why I was so afraid of going to the police?  Well.  That’s another story.  I can’t give you a name because I honestly don’t remember it.  I don’t really want to.  I wouldn’t remember Dan’s if he wasn’t a trusted member of my extended community I thought was safe.

The summer I was 18 I was drunk with the sexual power of being a woman.  Finally, for the first time in my life what I was doing and mine to decide about.  I finally had the legal right to consent.  It did actually matter to me.  It has always bothered me that my early partners could have gone to jail for what we did.  It feels like an unfair balance of responsibility.  Anyway.

So when I was 18 I was on match.com.  Don’t judge.  I was hanging out in the chat rooms a lot.  I met up with several people.  The first was a guy who was in the Coast Guard.  He lived in Alameda.  Anna was housesitting for a family way the heck up Summit Road.  The other side, not the same side as Redwood Estates.  Way up in the fancy-pants part of the mountains.  The house was beautiful.  I can’t remember if there were three or four stories.  Elaborate wine cellar (like a huge vault that was about 1/3 the size of the bottom floor of the house), sauna, steam room, exercise room, pool, hot tub… everything.  The family was having a lot of work done on the house.  They gave Anna permission to have me stay up there with her.

I know they regretted that.  It was all my fault.  Anna had worked for them successfully for years at that point.  I ruined a very profitable relationship for her and I still feel bad about that.  That is part of what I mean when I say I am poison.  Anna bore a lot of the brunt of the backlash for this.  But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

We invited a couple of my theater friends and this random guy from match.com up to the house for a party.  It wasn’t that wild because my theater friends were young and sweet and inexperienced.  I think back on them with this really nostalgic color.  They were really awesome and I didn’t know how to stay one of them.

Of course there was drinking.  Unless I snuck off behind Anna’s back she said I had three shots of tequila and then I begged off because my stomach hurt.  Everyone else kept drinking.  I don’t remember much after the second shot.  I woke up in the morning feeling fierce and disgusting.  I couldn’t remember any sex and I was kind of sad.  I was confused though because I couldn’t remember much of anything, really.  But I had to hurry up and get moving.  I was working at Pride in San Francisco.  I was working a booth for the Same Sex Marriage organization.  It was awesome.  I met people and did things I’m really glad I did.  In between doing all of them I had to run to Port-A-Potties to vomit.  I did that all day long.  When I went back up to the house in the mountains I took another shower and curled up on the bed.  I happened to lean over and look in the trash can.  There were three used condoms.

Funny.  I didn’t remember having sex.  I asked Anna what happened.  She told me about the party and said that eventually I stumbled back up to the room with the help of this guy.  I asked her how I looked and she said, “You looked really out of it.”  I nodded.  I told her that I think that what happened technically qualifies as rape.  I called the Sheriff.  She was dubious.  She was right.

The particular officer who showed up is one I have met before.  When I was 11 Al Smith, my next door neighbor at the time, asked me if I would have sex with him.  Our other neighbor overheard the whole exchange and reported it.  That’s why the officer came to my house when I was 11.  When I was 11 he told my family I was crazy and that I needed help.  He wouldn’t prosecute Al.

When I was 18 he told me, “What did you expect when you bring a boy up to a house to drink?”  He took the (outrageously expensive) sheets as “evidence” and then told me he was not going to fuck up the life of some nice Coast Guard boy for a girl like me who gets cold feet after the fact.

The fall out was really bad.  The family had to be told why we disappeared their sheets.  We would have been better off lying.  Given the response of the sheriff it looked really bad and hysterical.  It was even worse because I had gone skinny dipping in the pool and flirted with the guy painting the house. I was obviously horrible.  The family was really angry with Anna for bringing someone like me into their house.  They told her if she wanted to know people like me they didn’t want to know her.

Years later I was behind their car on the freeway.  The license plate has their last name on it.  I felt such a sickening wave of shame.

Why didn’t I call the police after Dan fucked me without a condom?  Uhm…. good pattern recognition skills?  Every time someone tells me that women bear some of the responsibility for being raped I want to scream.  I HAVEN’T EVEN BEEN ALLOWED TO GIVE CONSENT WHEN I WANTED TO SO SHUT THE FUCK UP.  Rape is an abuse of power.  Rape is putting a body part into someone else when they have not consented.  That is not something that is about mutual responsibility.

That asshole when I was 18 raped me.  I could not consent by the time he had sex with me, but at least he used condoms.  When I was 24 I was raped because having unprotected sex with me after I had it in writing many times that I don’t do that is illegal.  And I was too chicken shit to say anything because I am well aware that no one in power gives a shit what happens to white trash whores like me.

And then Noah showed up.  I would have been manifestly stupid and crazy to continue the life path I was on without him.

monogamy

Leave a reply

Monogamy.  It’s a weird concept for me.  I need to spend the rest of my life learning how to have relationships with people without having sex with them.  I think that will be good for me.  Weird and awkward, but good.  What does that mean though?

I hesitate to talk about this.  I don’t want to eat crow later.  Mmmmm crow.  Never say never.  I remember a friend of mine, years ago, telling me, “Of course I don’t like that he plays with other women.  But I want to play with other men so I shut up and put up with it.”  I think I’d rather not play with other people than feel like I have to bite back my actual opinion.  I don’t want to have to learn masking behavior that I use only at certain times.  That feels like lying.

Noah playing with other people makes me cry.  It reminds me that I don’t ever get to be special.  Which is stupid, right?  He married me.  He didn’t marry anyone else and he is not going to leave me.  Why isn’t that enough to convince me?  Sex is so mixed up for me.  Near as I can tell most people have enormous sexual hang ups without having to be abused starting in toddlerhood.

I don’t want to feel like I have to have sex with people in order to be interesting and I do.  I really do.  I don’t like that part of myself very much.  I feel rather disgusting, really.  This is bordering on a lot of things I’m deeply conflicted about.  I am an exhibitionist.  No one reading this is surprised.  I’m not sure how that ties in with a lot of my need-to-feel-available.

I think I want to find out how forever feels.  I want to realize that I’ve probably kissed someone else for the last time.  Really.  He’s it.  Forever.  I’m kind of excited.  I should decide that I deserve to be touched only by someone who wants me enough to actually want all of me.  Not just that piece of me.

How am I going to connect with all the people I want to connect with?  It’s kind of terrifying, really.  What do I have to offer?  I don’t know.  I have spent my adulthood with people who believe that monogamy is terrible and limiting and to be avoided at all costs.  I feel kind of ashamed that I want to keep Noah all to myself.

I feel like I am doing something wrong by joining the Embargo and refusing to sleep with anyone ever again.  It’s not fair that all these guys want sex and I won’t sleep with them.  This is not a guilt I should carry.  It should never enter into my mind that it isn’t fair that this nice guy isn’t getting _____ need met.  Life isn’t fair.  I bear no obligation to anyone but Noah for sexual needs.

That’s complicated too.  I think in some ways monogamy is terrifying because it means that we will both have to be a lot more honest about what we want.  If we want to get our needs met, really met we have to talk about them even when it is hard.  Even when he’s afraid to say it to me.  Even when I’m afraid to say it to him.  I do not need to agree to do more than I do in order to be GGG.  I need to say “no” a lot more and have more ownership of my body.  We need to find a way to meet our mutual needs without me biting my lip and doing things that feel bad.  I can’t hold Noah accountable for the consequences of his actions if I withhold information.  I can’t decide it is proof that he doesn’t care when he doesn’t notice.

I can’t relax and enjoy this relationship while I feel like I am constantly preparing to be paranoid about Noah running off to fuck someone else.  And that is how I feel in an open marriage.  It feels like every day is just a count down until he gets to do that again.  I feel like I am always doing something wrong by wanting to spend time with him.  I should be giving him lots of time away from me to go do and be lots of things away from me because obviously he wants to reserve a lot of himself away from me.  He is waiting for someone better than me to give that part of himself to.  I don’t blame him.  I constantly feel like I am waiting for him to go find someone more understanding than me to go talk to.  Someone who is entirely on his side.

I have signed on to be completely dependent on Noah for the next twenty years.  No, I am not going to relax my hypervigilance as long as I know that is coming some day.  It means I have to steal myself that whole period until that day comes because I will not be able to bear the loss otherwise.  I have to create a big hole in my heart and leave it that way and never let you touch it or come near it.  Because that is where I will have to go when you are fucking someone else.  It’s the same place I go when I sleep with other people.  It is a space outside of me, outside of my life.  I don’t really bond with casual sex.  I have an experience.  It is outside of me.

I’m afraid of monogamy because Noah really likes to take it to 11.  If I have clamped down so hard on him that he isn’t allowed to go play with other people, how much will I egg him on to do because I feel guilty?  I don’t know how to do this in a way that is good for me.  Nonmonogamy gives me the eternal out that I can say, “Fine you have this part of you that I can’t deal with… take it somewhere else.”  I never have to deal with my own actual limits that way.  I never have to deal with telling him, “Fine but no really you have to stop at 8 because my jaw hurts.”  That’s harder.  Telling him no is a lot easier than having to figure out what I can do.

I’m afraid because I think we are going to have some difficult periods and a lot of crying over sex.  I think this is going to be hard.  I think we will both have to do a lot of forgiving one another for mistakes and that’s hard to think about.  It’s weird to be discussing monogamy after five years of marriage.  We really know what we are getting into, you know?  Only we don’t.  Because things will be very different in twenty years.  We will be very different people.  Can I really require that he never again touch anyone else intimately?  I’m not going to do poly-anything.  If he is going to follow my boundaries well, I feel weird about that.

I feel very pressured as the gate keeper.  It’s weird to feel so conflicted about this.  On one hand I feel uncomfortable with the idea of keeping him from having sex and other hand I’m not thrilled about feeling required to have sex absolutely as much as he wants forever.  I don’t have any idea what my limits are.

I don’t like the way I dissociate rather than deal with feeling uncomfortable during sex.  I have a hard time dealing with my anxious feelings in the moment.  It’s hard to say when I really don’t want to be pushed.  He likes pushing so much.  It’s so weird to me that he worries about me wanting him.  I worry about wanting him so much that I break myself trying to meet needs I can’t meet.

Because the thing is, I don’t actually think there are needs of his I can’t meet.  Because I think that if he picks the right days, I probably can actually meet all of his needs.  I like to go to 11 too.  I feel scared that he isn’t going to be willing to walk around the cracks.  I really do like the image of myself as a mosaic.  My picture was broken so long ago and put back together so clumsily that it is an entirely new picture.  On even median days I like me.

I don’t think he can really just learn a “set of triggers” and avoid them.  It’s quicksand.  And it moves.  I want to find out how it moves.  I want to be able to try things many times and know that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  I want to be brave enough to not be angry when I say, “Ok not tonight.”  I’m not failing if I say that.  I’m not failing if my body is not up to something on a given day.  I am not failing if sometimes I need to be held instead of hit.  It’s hard to admit that I’m not instinctively automatically in the same place as Noah.

It feels like I don’t deserve him.  Because I cannot do that.  Because I cannot just accept whatever he wants to do whenever he wants to do it.  I feel like I cannot require monogamy because I will never be good enough to satisfy him.  I will never be enough.  I will always fail.  I’m scared.

I’m terrified to believe him.  I’m so afraid that I will believe him that he wants to be monogamous.  Only in twenty years things will be different and I will be expected to just understand.  People evolve.  Needs change.

I know that I will want to sleep with people.  That’s just a fact.  I’m not actually in denial about that.  I will want to do it a lot.  It will feel compulsive for the rest of my life.  But I’m going to choose not to do it.  I don’t think that I am actually served by following my pointer through life.  My compass is broken.  I need to think about the long-term and understand that sleeping with other people does not feed any of my needs (ok hyperbole for effect but the problems outweigh gains) and does not meet any of my goals.

Ok, maybe the hookers in Vegas.  Because I can get behind you being motivated to attain that salary.  Especially because the deal was always that they would be there in case I wore out.  You haven’t done it yet.  I don’t safeword.

"Go see a therapist"

Leave a reply

You go see a therapist when you are stuck in some way and you can’t change by yourself.  Otherwise you just change by yourself and save the money.  Therapy is expensive, yo.

Who do I want to be when I grow up?  What patterns am I actually stuck in and which patterns can I change if I think about them?  What is a happy life?  What do I want to do with my time and my life?  That really is the crux of it, isn’t it?  The way you spend your hours is the way you spend your years.  I think I am saying it wrong but someone had something like that as a sig line on MDC.  Where is my Zen place?  What is it that I should be doing for my spirit to be in alignment with my body?  (By the way I don’t use the word Zen in a way that is associated with any actual definition or official usage.  I am a co-opting piece of shit.)

I told Noah this morning that I don’t feel like I am having sex for me and I don’t like that feeling any more.  I am having sex so that I can continue to be this construct in my head.  I am not really getting off much these days.  That’s a big change.  Sorta?  It started with pregnancy.  It kind of came back and then it seems to be gone again.  I can get close and I have all these nifty hypnosis tricks in place so I can trigger muscle spasms in the appropriate way such that I suppose it feels like an orgasm, kinda.  It’s like eating soft serve.  It’s just not ice cream even if it looks like and is presented as the same thing.  Even with sprinkles.  It’s not ice cream.

You aren’t supposed to say that on the internet, right?  The way we are having sex isn’t working for me.  I don’t want to be this right now.  I’m not saying never again.  I am saying I need something other than what I have right now.  This is hard to write about because I am trying very hard to not represent what Noah wants.  I don’t think I really know or understand what Noah wants.  It’s not his fault, but I think we are operating with a lot of unspoken assumptions and I should only speak for me.

I’m sitting here thinking and thinking and thinking.  In these arguments I always get stuck with this huge load of rage and I scream that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing laundry.  Dude.  The rest of my life will involve laundry.  Shut the fuck up already.  Why does this become such a sticking point?  I could dissect it.  I could start having the other adults in the house do the laundry; they would if I required it.  Really and truly, they would.  But it would require reminding and fussing and then I would never be satisfied with the results.  They would fold the damn shirts wrong.

This isn’t about laundry.

I don’t have very many pictures of my mother.  But in several she’s doing laundry.  I remember the sighs.  The long tirades about how much she hated having to clean up after me.  I remember her bitterness at having to go out and earn money and come home to the messes I made  It’s honestly one reason I don’t want to have a job.  If I had a job I would resent the ever loving shit out of my children for having the audacity to live in the house and make a mess when I wasn’t there.  It offends my dignity.  Oh God help someone who breaks a dish when I’m not home.  I’m completely unreasonable.  But if I’m standing in the room and not the one who does it?  My reaction is, “Thank God it wasn’t me!”  And I’m not mad.  Mistakes happen.

I don’t forgive slights that are done when I’m out of sight.  I’m not sure what is up with that.  Hunh.  Ok, that’s actually a big one.  I’m going to have to think about that one for a long time.  I resent having to be a support network for a life and for happiness I won’t get to share.  It really bothers me.  It makes me feel angry that I spend ‘x’ hours of week doing extra work so that Noah gets to have ‘y’ hours of time completely alone.  Because the hours aren’t equal.  Not in my head.

There is a tally.  He doesn’t understand it or track it.  It is totally invisible to him if I do it right.  Sex is part of the tally.  Part of the things I “have to do”.  The tally that “should be” invisible to him.  Which means the cost should be invisible as well.  I’m having trouble writing a coherent sentence about this.  If I don’t explain the tally system he can’t change his behavior based on the different costs.

For the whole rest of my life Noah will have more effect on me than anyone.  Dealing with him is effort because he is a human being and that’s just life.  That’s ok.  That’s more than ok.  I want to put a lot of effort into him because I like him sooooooooooo much.  If he doesn’t understand where I am putting effort and why… it’s kind of silly, you know?  I don’t know that I am using my effort to good effect.  I don’t know where I am spinning my wheels and trying to do things to please dead people.

Who do I want to be when I grow up?  What would I be like if I had grown up believing that my body is mine and people should only do things to me that I want them to do?  I wonder if she is more or less fierce than I am?

Obedience.  What is it?  Obedience to what?  To blind ideals?  To stupid short-sighted goals?  To instant gratification with a high opportunity cost?  What cost can I bear?  Honestly–a high cost.  I really can.  But where should the cost be spent?  I don’t think that decision should be made in a vacuum.  Years ago Noah offered me an abusive relationship with off-switch.  What does it mean to be off?  What does it mean when it is turned on?  I’m not afraid of Noah, not really.  Noah told me flat out this morning that he doesn’t believe me when I say I won’t leave.  He’s a smartie, that one.  The part that I don’t think he understands is I wouldn’t be able to stay gone.  I can never actually walk away from him.  He is the father of my children.  Until his death he will be in my life.  That is complicated.  Noah doesn’t actually know what it means to talk about a broken home.  I do.  I want a home.

Even if it is soft serve, it’s home.  That sounds terrible.  Even if I am nothing exciting you will still stay.  Even if I am a poor imitation of what a wife should be.  Even if I am not anything like advertised.  I feel like I am ruining Noah’s life by being so conflicted about sex.  I don’t think Noah’s sexual performance has suddenly gone down hill.

Who do I want to be when I grow up?  I don’t think a therapist can just fix me.  I need to figure out who I want to be.  No one else can tell me that.  What would I be like if I could move through the world without the sure knowledge that if someone asked me for sex I am essentially required to say yes, or at least only say no to a very small number of people in specific categories.  Anyone in category A should be good enough.

People are not interchangeable.  They really aren’t.  And I don’t fucking owe anyone anything.  The Embargo is not my fault.  It really doesn’t matter what my father told me.  I don’t have a cunt so that I can get as many dicks as possible.

training

Leave a reply

When I was 18 I started dating a man who was 11.5 years my senior.  His friends made a lot of jokes about how it was important to catch them young so you can train them right.  It’s far truer than I like admitting.  At 18 I started dating someone who has a fairly low appetite for intercourse and a very high appetite for watching women suffer.

That partner has a very hard time orgasming.  In my opinionated opinion there are several factors at play there.  The first and most important thing contributing to that is too many years of extremely rough masturbation.  Boys, please be gentle with your junk.  But nearly as important is the fact that he was kind of freakishly huge and I think his circumcision was made too tight.  Just my opinion.  He had issues and I think they were related.  All the pro-circ people in the world can tell me there is no relationship and I won’t believe them.  That’s fine.

But when I was 18 I hooked up with this guy who was freakishly endowed who was almost impossible to get off.  I made it my life’s mission to get him off.  It really didn’t matter what I had to do.  45 minutes of intensely elaborate oral sex, sure no problem.  Hours and hours of intercourse, sure no problem.  You want to tie me up, sure.  You want to hang me from my neck, sure.  You want to break my arm, sure (ok, that was an accident–but it happened in the first six weeks we were dating and it didn’t slow me down).  We egged each other on.  No matter what he could come up with that was embarrassing, humiliating, or painful… I could suggest worse and beg him to do it.

It’s fairly unusual for me to ask someone to stop what they are doing to me.  I whine and I complain and I give suggestions and I cry and I scream.  I don’t ask people to stop.  Ok, I did “safeword” when someone used a cattle prod on my genitals when I was 19.  I honestly can’t remember if I have tapped out any other time.  People tend to not push me hard.  I don’t have to ask people to stop, they stop because they are afraid of my crying.  They stop because they don’t feel comfortable ignoring my less-than-subtle suggestions.  Not very many people notice that I don’t ask people to stop.  Most people take it as written that suggestions mean stop.  But sometimes people notice.  Then I’m in trouble.

I didn’t take much responsibility for my needs in my relationship with my Owner.  Instead I elaborately wrote contracts with him and tried to get them met that way and it didn’t work.  I think that a fair bit of the problem was, I needed far more sex than him and being pestered for sex, especially sex where you have to put a lot of energy into hurting someone… that’s hard.  My Owner didn’t actually want to hurt me as much as I wanted to be hurt.  He wanted to do some of that, sometimes.  But not the way I wanted.  He couldn’t keep up the steady stream.

But I did learn how to make him orgasm.  I did gain enough trust to have that with him.  Not every time, of course.  But I learned how to go about putting in enough effort to get that result.  It took a long time.  In some ways he was kind of the ideal partner for me–he represented a real challenge that I had to work on my skills for; but in other ways he was rather a nightmare because he represented nearly-constant failure at the thing I work hardest at in life.  It’s kind of embarrassing to admit that I work harder on being good at sex than I do at being good at anything else.  I think about it harder.  I think about it more.

I think that is a lot of why I think I can not be a good person.  Good people aren’t this obsessed with sex. Good people don’t think this hard about being used and hurt.  Good people don’t orgasm on command after being called a whore.

I’m thinking really hard about the forward to the book.  This story requires one.  Why did I write it?  What tone do I want to set?  Needless to say I’m feeling kind of mixed on what I want to say.

Earlier this year I woke up and realized that if I got hit by a bus there is no one to tell my children about my life.  No one who knows the pieces.  No one they will know even can.  They don’t know the people who populated my childhood, and that’s something they will need to know some day.  Some day they will want to know why I have no family.  Why they have no family.  They will want to know why I am so harsh sometimes.  Why I cry sometimes.  They don’t need to know the specifics of my life when they are young.  It’s totally irrelevant to their life at this point.  But some day they deserve to know.  I will do things during their lives I will have to apologize for.  I hope that I always apologize immediately and in the ways that they need.

I have it in me to do irreparable damage.  Damage that can never be apologized for.  I know that edge.  I know why I could do such damage.  I know that I walk a tight line.  You wouldn’t know it if you met my children.

I surround myself carefully with people who were wounded by too-harsh mothers.  They give me feedback.  My children are joyous examples of the species.  They have not been hurt by my too-harshness.  I have successfully balanced giving them far more positives than I give negatives.  Even if I do feel too dirty to touch them.  Even if I do feel undeserving.  I know it isn’t about me or what I deserve.  I give to them all the love I wish I was given.  I tell them over and over that they are good.  They are wonderful.  They are sweet.  They are kind.  They are thoughtful.  They are strong.  They are brave.  They are allowed to ask for help.  They are children and not yet responsible for themselves, but some day they will be ready.  I hope in telling them all of these things I hear them about myself.

Sex is a good and wonderful thing between people who care about each other.  It is affirming.  It is bonding.  It is loving.  It is friendly.  It is compassionate.  But it can be twisted.  I was taught that my only value was in getting men off.  I was told I am responsible for getting anyone off who wants to get off, no matter how I feel about it.  I never really believed it.  I always knew there were limits.  I knew I wasn’t supposed to be getting my brothers off.  I knew I wasn’t supposed to be getting my father off.  But I sure listened and believed that it was true of any other man who was willing to agree that I should.

My daughters will not grow up believing that promiscuity is a required part of life.  They will not be taught how to get men off before they hit puberty.  They will not believe that it is their job to dress like whores.  I don’t care if we have to be weird creepy shut-ins who are not part of normal society.  I “slipped through the cracks” and got this message over and over in so many different places.  It won’t happen to my children.  I will god damn prevent it.  My children will not be brought up to be like me.  My children will be brought up to believe that their body is theirs and they can use it as they choose.  I hope that my children never feel like they owe sex to any one.  I want them to feel like they can say yes and I want them to feel like they can say no.

I don’t want my children to move through this world with the sure knowledge that any man at pretty much any time might rape them.  I do.  If I am going to be alone with a man I very carefully weigh how I will respond if/when they initiate sex.  Normally I simply avoid being alone with people if I don’t want to have sex.  I know that I am not really able to say no in the moment.

It’s hard admitting to my friends that if they pressed me for sex in person there is an extremely low chance I can say no.  Unless they approach me as a submissive man expecting me to do the work.  That I can say no to.  Laziness trumps everything.  If someone is willing to just show up and fuck me?  Yeah.  I don’t say no.

That’s a lot of why I think I should stop sleeping with people.  I do it compulsively.  I do it because I feel this really strong internal push to do it regardless of dithering or reasons I shouldn’t.  I feel compelled.  Not absolutely all the time, obviously I don’t go out fucking people constantly or the internet would hear more of it, but every few years I go through a phase.  And my sprees can be prodigious.  I think it is safer that I just try to wear out Noah.

It is dangerous liking rough, harsh, use-me-like-a-whore sex.  Not very many people can do that and still treat you like a perfectly nice individual later.  Things bleed.  It’s hard to have boundaries.  In order for people to think about you and treat you like that… they have to cross some line in themselves.  I like to do things that people are normally told not to do.  That makes it really hard to understand that there are still boundaries.  It’s even harder to guess where they are or what they might be around.  That’s a lot of why I tell people not to worry about my triggers.  They aren’t where you think they are any way.

What is a “healthy relationship” anyway?  My emotions in my day-to-day life are far more stable when I get the extremes out during sex.  Ridiculous amounts of sex.  Painful sex.  Degrading sex.  Noah is very polite to me outside of sex.  That sounds underwhelming.  Noah is a truly amazing husband.  And he does nasty terrible things to me so that I feel safe with him.  I have a lot of conflict around that.  I kind of wish that all of the healing-from-sexual-abuse books stopped telling me that as a compulsively sexual person I really should be celibate.  Maybe not forever, but at least for a while.  I am not going to do that for a wide variety of reasons.  Whether or not I should.

I’m just about out of pot.  I don’t think anyone would be able to live with me if I also stopped having sex.  I would not be a nice person to live with.  It’s time to make running just about daily.  It’s time to edit the book.  I’m scared.  I’m going to go through and do another pass to see if I’ve left out any glaring omissions.  Then I will send it off to my editor.  I can’t do the paring down.  I really can’t.  Oh gosh.  This is frightening.

Life just keeps happening.  Sometimes whether I like it or not.

aftermath

3 Replies

I told Noah that I would be fairly ashamed to tell people how we are moving forward.  According to my personal religion that means I am committing a sin.  It’s mixed.  Mostly I would say we are getting along very well.  I’m not starting fights or insulting him or picking on him.  Noah is his usual polite and adoring self.  It’s like nothing happened except we have massively increased how much sex we are having and how degrading our sex is.

We have spent a lot of time talking about how compulsive I am about sex.  About how that works in my head.  We have spent a lot of time talking about how impulsive Noah is about sex.  So far we seem to be at the point where we are both acknowledging that we qualify as “sex addicts” by any reasonable definition but maybe if we stick with each other we won’t cause too big of problems?

Apparently the task of the week is to see how much sex we have to have before Noah can’t handle any more.  So far we have managed three times a day every day.  Then I fall asleep.  I feel mixed about this.  He knows I feel mixed about this.  Hell, I’m writing about feeling mixed about this–everyone will know.    It’s hard talking about the actual needs that casual sex meets for me.  I can meet some pretty fucked up needs without telling anyone what I am doing.  I never have to tell my partners what my internal dialogue is.  I don’t have a very high opinion of myself and my voracious need for sex.

I don’t have a very high opinion of the fact that my preference is for most of the sex I have to be quasi-consensual.  Noah is well aware that a large percentage, possibly “most”, of our sex involves me not being in the mood at all.  It doesn’t really matter if I am interested in sex.  I am interested in being a good whore.  That means I will do what I am supposed to do.  I feel manifestly uncomfortable admitting that.  A large percentage of the sex I have I only have because I feel like I am required to do so.  That is what someone like me is good for.  That is what I am supposed to do.  And I’m really good at it.  And I fucking live for the post-sex adulation.  People I fuck tend to be willing to tell me at great length how good I am at sex.  I try very hard to make sure I work far harder at sex than most women.  I really really want the approval I get after sex.

I feel like something is broken in me.  That I chase this so hard.  Noah and I have been talking a lot lately.  I don’t think I am going to sleep with other people any more.  Regardless of what Noah ends up doing for the rest of his life, I need to stop buying affection with sex.  I need to stop begging my friends to like me by proving that I am better at sex than anyone they’ve ever slept with.  It’s not really a strategy that is working for me.

I like to pick other sex addicts and go have multiple hours of sex with them.  Most of the time they are so shocked by finding a woman who is also as motivated by sex that they are willing to tell me pretty much anything I want.  It’s broken.  I have a partner at home who is willing to do the Jekyll/Hyde thing with me.  He will degrade me and talk about me being a whore during sex.  He will tell me that if I am so motivated by cock I am required to show up at 5am every day and wake him up with my mouth.  And he’s pretty nice to me the rest of the time.

I feel worried by the duality of our relationship.  Most of the time in most ways he really is an amazing partner.  He is a good, stable provider.  He is kind.  He is great with our children.  I have been able to push him towards mutually agreed upon improvements in behavior over the years.  He’s very willing to accommodate me in just about every part of life.  He bends over backwards for me in nearly every way.  He will even call me names and hurt me tremendously during sex if I tell him I want him to.

There is this mythos in my head that slaves and masochists should experience no internal conflict over what they do.  I have massive internal conflict.  I am still upset that Noah lied to me.  And my response is to tell him more and more complex stories that I am terribly ashamed of.  Things that hurt me very much.  And I ask him to use them against me.  I want him to agree that I am just a dirty whore.  There isn’t much else that someone like me is good for.  But I want him to gift wrap it in a package where I don’t have to be at risk going forward.

For me to keep having the kind of casual sex that I like is for me to risk my life.  It really won’t be much longer before I go back for hunting for rough, dangerous sex.  Sure I’m being all loud and snotty this round of hunting because I want vanilla sex right now.  That would fade.  I would go back to wanting people to do dangerous things to me.  I’ve already had a broken bone in the pursuit of good sex, what else will happen?

It is a lot safer to stick with Noah.  He will be able to hurt me as much or more than anyone else.  He doesn’t flinch from doing so.  Noah has not yet inflicted as much pain on me as a small handful of other people, but he has every intention of doing so.  I get the impression that some day he will be the one I have done my most intense play with.  That kind of terrifies me.  Because he has a high bar to reach.  I have already done things that were a really bad idea.  I’m sure I will do more.

If I do this instead of cutting or sleeping around or drugs or whatever other self-harming behavior I can dream up… is that better?  I don’t know.  I don’t know how this life thing is supposed to work.  I hear I am just supposed to magically decide that I shouldn’t be harmed any more, not by anyone.  Not by me, and not by random guys, and not by my husband.  But I need this.  I am so used to feeling shit on.  I require it so much.

Noah has been nice and patient for a long time.  We haven’t done intense or painful or degrading sex in a long time.  He’s been more respectful than that.  So I got bored and went out and slept with other people.  And the thing is, it’s not enough that he does these things to me.  I need people to know that these things are part of my life.  I need for people to know that I am this person.  I can’t have this done in secret.  I can’t keep secrets.

It would be a sin if I did these things and kept them private and secret.  I believe that.  That is something that I have to hold on to in life.  Something is only a sin if I am ashamed to talk about it.  If I am talking about this now, does that mean I am released from the power of it being a sin?  I don’t know.  I worry about needing what I need.  It’s mixed.

I can point in a straight line from events in my early childhood to what I do now.  Come March, other people will be able to do so as well.  Noah already can.  And he stomps all over me with that knowledge.  Only in ways I find hot, of course.  Is that the difference?  Is that the line between what we do and some amorphous “abuse”?  If I tell Noah to stop doing something on a given day he does.  Except by prior arrangement.  Except that I know that I just don’t bother to say no when I’m not in the mood.  I figure out how to let it happen.  I figure out how to permit him the access he wants whether I want it or not.  I don’t generally bother to communicate whether I am in the mood or not.  If he tells me to do something, I do it.

It’s interesting when people talk to me about how self-assured I am.  How self-possessed.  How willing to stand up for myself.  Ha.  Only sometimes.  Only in some ways.  If a sexual partner is telling me to do things I frankly don’t want to do I have limited ability to communicate my wants.  It depends on how I am doing emotionally and it depends on how much I am invested in the partner.  I have casual sex because I can have boundaries with strangers.  I have repeat sex with long-term friends because I have beaten them down in non-sexual settings and they don’t push real hard out of fear of a backlash that will never come.  I don’t have boundaries with my long-term partners.  I barely communicate anything about my limits beyond telling them what buttons will get them the biggest reaction today.  “Today is ____ anniversary so why don’t you hurt me by doing _________.”

It’s not a sin if I talk about it.  I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a sin.  I have decided this for my own personal pantheon of beliefs.

These needs all predate Noah.  They are not because of him.  Most of them are not really about him at all.  These are things that were broken in me as a child.  But he frankly enjoys many of the ways I am broken.  He feels no shame whatsoever in enjoying what I became as the direct result of years of sexual assault.  Well, maybe he feels a little shame.  But not much.  Not enough to prevent him from trying to behave in ways that will keep me from getting bored in the future.  Not enough to lessen his enjoyment of what this deep feeling of shame causes me to do during sex.  His favorite part lately seems to be that I’m really ok with him fucking my throat until he causes me to vomit.  I have a fairly reactive gag reflex.  I consider vomiting to be just part of serious blow jobs.  I don’t think that is normal.  It never feels like it is really a good time to say, “Could you back off on the deep throating?”  I don’t get to set terms like that.  I get to accept.

In about ten minutes I have to get up and close the computer.  I will walk across the house and I will do what I was told to do.  Do I want to?  Enh.  Not really.  My throat and cunt are sore.  I could use about a week off from sex to recover at this point.  But I draw comfort from the fact that I have confessed so I go forth without sin.  I will smile.  I will encourage him.  I will beg him for more, in fact.  It doesn’t really matter that I’m sore.  That’s beside the point.  I don’t think I should go have sex with other people any more.  I don’t think that is a good decision for me.  He says he is going to be monogamous as well.  No, let me be clear.  He will be as monogamous as I am.

I fell compelled by my shame.  I told him he would be allowed to sleep with whomever he wanted, forever.  I promised him that.  At no point did I tell him I would like it or feel happy about it.  I feel like I did a bait and switch.  I feel like I owe him for all the sex he will never get to have because he was stupid enough to marry someone as insecure and selfish and possessive as me.  I feel guilty that I seem to have tricked him into monogamy.  In turn I fell compelled to say, “Ok fine, I guess I can’t be monogamous either–go have fun.”

I sincerely believe I should stop having sex with other people.  I should not act on feeling compelled to earn love and affection with sex outside my marriage.  It’s bad enough that I do it with Noah.  I don’t actually think I should go out and find a harem of men who will cheerfully call me a whore during sex.  I don’t need that.  I do enough of that all by myself.

I feel so broken.  I seem to have absolutely internalized that anyone who fucks this many people is kind of disgusting.  And all I want to do is increase the number so I can increase just how many people will think I am disgusting.

But Noah doesn’t care.  He doesn’t care at all what I’ve done or what I might do in the future.  He wants me.  He takes great pride in me.  He loves me and adores me.  He bends over backwards from me in pretty much every part of life.  Except when he’s being impulsive.  Oops.  His friend told him, “The problem with your situation is it’s hard to know when you are cheating.”  Maybe if the rules are clearer then it will be easier to figure out what to do?

I feel like I have taken something away from him.  He was poly when I met him.  How dare I take that away.  I seem to be the epitome of what Dan Savage and Mistress Matisse warn about.  That evil double crosser who promises poly and can’t hack it.  I’m sorry I am so broken.  I really am.  I wish that I could encourage Noah to do anything he wants with anyone he wants.  Hell, I do encourage him.  But it hurts me when he does it.  I’m sorry that is true.  I really am.

Good thing I have therapy today.

Leave a reply

The song right now is Tonight I Wanna Cry.  I wish he had used a real word, but whatever.  It’s kind of funny because I’m not crying.  This is the first time in a week I haven’t been.

I’m thinking hard about what marriage means to me.  You see, I’m at a weird tipping point in my marriage. A point of leverage.  Most people don’t get to the point where they have lived with their spouse longer than anyone else ever in their lives until about twenty years in.  I’ve been married for five years.  I have lived with Noah longer than I ever lived consecutively with either of my parents.  It really doesn’t matter if it is not fair that I hold Noah to a higher standard of truth telling than other people use in their marriage.  I do.  And that’s the fucking deal.  You take it or…

Ok, now I’m crying.  I will get to the point where I am not angry all the time.  This is a stage.  I know that.  But I will never stop needing that level of trust.  Noah is already the only mirror my life has.  I won’t leave Noah.  It really doesn’t matter if he breaks my trust over and over.  I will never be willing to walk away from another person.  I will be mean and nasty and vicious sometimes and try to drive them away because I am angry.  But I can never leave again.  I don’t have that in me.

Yesterday I talked to the friend who was born across the street.  She asked me if I could bear living with it because her mom couldn’t.  I remember how that happened.  I visited during that period.  It was bad.  I remember what happened to her family.  I know what has happened to her mom.  Noah will never leave me and I will never leave Noah.  I’m afraid we may hurt each other very badly though.

Given that everyone in this house agrees to the basic premise that our kids deserve to grow up safe and happy we will make sure they do.  I’m really scared.  As much as people mock me fucking constantly for being angry, oh my fucking god you have no idea.  You have no fucking idea what I sit on.  I am direct and I am female.  Stop fucking commenting on my anger.  If a man said the same thing you wouldn’t fucking say, “Don’t hold back, tell me how you really feel.”  Well, Noah might.  And he does it on purpose to be a fucking asshole.  (He does not say it to me.)

I have to choose to not be angry.  I have to choose to bite my tongue and not escalate.  I have to choose to not make nasty comments.  When he goes out with people I have to not snap, “And you had better fucking come home this time.”  He knows already.  He knows I am on edge.  He’s not going to push that again, maybe ever.  What will he push instead?

I apparently get to hold him hostage for the rest of our lives.  His level of nonmonogamy will mirror mine.  I guess that’s a good way of seeing how effective of a whore I am.  How long can I hold out?  How long until I have to admit that he is right and he should be allowed to do whatever he wants whenever he wants because I want to do the same.  I don’t know.  It’s not worth the fucking drama.

I have to decide how to tell this story.  What story is this?  I’ve already been monogamous for most of the marriage.  I guess I’m supposed to be one of those stories about how open marriages don’t work.  Swinging?  When I know that everything I do is giving Noah a free pass to go do it with someone else.  Wow.  All of a sudden it really makes me feel sick to my stomach.  It’s not about him having the sex with someone else, although I do try hard to not picture it.  Noah wants to egg me on to do things with other people so that he can do it.  I don’t want to be used that way.  I don’t want to feel pressured to have sex with other people because I know I have to in order to give Noah “permission” to go do something I’m not thrilled about anyway.  I am really unhappy about being part of the Embargo Noah, I’m not fucking doing this arrangement.

No.  I am not going to be a gate keeper.  You can’t blame me for the rest of your life for what you do and do not get to do.

I feel like what I am going to do is learn to shut my mouth.  I’ll perfect my come on.  I’ll do what Noah wants me to do and I’ll sleep with other people.  I will learn to tell the story perfectly so that I don’t talk about the fact that it always hurts.  It always leaves me uncomfortable for days.  Even the fairly nice stuff with lots of lube.  I don’t fit other people.  It always rubs wrong.  It’s feeling increasingly apparent with each person I sleep with.  I have intense feelings about that.  I feel intense compulsion to figure it out because Noah wants me to.  Noah wants me to be slutty.  He wanted that kind of wife.  He really did.  He went out and picked the woman with the highest body count he could find who wasn’t already married.  I guess I didn’t tell him up front how much of that sex was quasi-consensual childhood experiences did I?  It kind of changes the picture.

It’s going to be interesting when people see the blanks filled in on my promiscuity.  I wear it like a bragging badge.  I am such a whore.  Everything is complicated.  I don’t feel bad about the sex I had recently.  I don’t feel like it makes me a bad person.  I didn’t break the sanctity of my marriage, blah blah blah.  But it was remarkable to me just how weird it felt to me to be so uncomfortable during and after sex.  I had forgotten that part.  That used to be such an understood part of sex for me.  Oh yeah.  It always hurts.  It doesn’t with Noah.  And it’s not that he has the smallest penis I have ever had sex with.  (Uhm, err should I insert a disclaimer?)  Smaller penises often hurt more than him.

We fit.  I don’t know why.  It’s one of the most intense parts of our marriage for me.  He is the first sexual partner I’ve ever had where I am not uncomfortable and/or in pain during and after.  I mean, he can but it takes effort on his part.  Sex is such a huge part of me and my life.  I am so intensely conflicted about it.  I finally have a partner who doesn’t hurt me every single time we have sex.  I don’t want to leave this.  I don’t want to give up on sex for the rest of my life.  That’s what my mother did.

I wouldn’t really do the single and dating thing while raising my kids.  I would stay home and cry that I fucked up my ability to watch their whole lives.  Being a mom is a way of finding out what it would have been like to have a mother who was continuously with me throughout my childhood.  Yes, I’m doing it in a much more high intensity way than most of my friends who are mothers.  You don’t have similar wounds to heal.  I need this consistency.  I need to have a stable period in my life of twenty years.  At least once.  I need it.  I have to choose this.  If I left I would never have a stable period to finish growing up in.  I would never get to have that safety.

Tom gave me the first period of safety.  But he wasn’t willing to let me finish growing up.  Noah will let me grow up.  He will let me change.  He will encourage me whole-heartedly.

But he doesn’t want just me.  And I am very compulsive about sex for a long list of reasons.  I don’t have a good excuse, and I’m not sure I need one given that I’ve been honest and up front and negotiated to be allowed to do the things I wanted to do for a very long time.  So did he.  He doesn’t need an excuse either.  He just wants it.  New-shiny-sex is pretty hot.

But it always hurts.  There is always a down side for me.  Not to mention that I feel intensely conflicted about being out of the house and not present with my kids.  It’s not like I do night-time parenting any way.  Noah does, except when he’s out.

It is hard to not be angry all day every day.  I’m not.  I’m a little snippy.  I’m generally very polite with my children.  But small irritations are escalating too fast for me these days.  I get so mad so easily.  I’m not doing anything other than making terrible facial expressions and having a shitty tone of voice, I hear. I don’t want my kids to remember this.  I don’t want to be this person.  I really don’t know what the road forward looks like.  I’m so scared.

Bonding

Leave a reply

I think a lot about why I want to overshare my emotional experience while hunting.  I think that part of it is, I don’t know how these things go for other people.  Does everyone waffle like me?  Noah says he doesn’t.  Does anyone?  I don’t know.

I feel like my whole life has been a weird balancing act.  I have to do enough hard things to balance out the easy things.  I’m not really even sure what that means.  Why do I feel utterly compelled to promise elaborate sex acts to strangers?  I can’t do it with people I know very well because then I feel like I have to live up to that promise all the time.

Last night I did well.  I closed.  Three times.  Excellent.  It helps that this was one of the rare times when I have taunted this person in real life previously.  He was ready for some follow through.  I feel giddy that I managed.  It’s like checking a box on a treasure hunt.  w00t.  Inspired hot sex three times in one night.  And he didn’t finish quickly.  Excellent stamina.  I feel like women are judged this way, why shouldn’t men?

Why shouldn’t I talk about sex as if it is a perfectly respectable hobby?  Excepting religious reasons… no really, why should anyone care?  Granted not everyone wants to hear about it, but I don’t want to hear about golf either.  So?  Why are most hobbies morally neutral but sex is bad?  Why am I bad because I like to feel this way?

It’s not like I have devoted my entire life to it.  I’m doing a few other things as well.  Like writing about it.

Sarah is taking Shanna to Arizona tomorrow.  I will miss them.  It’s always hard for me when Shanna visits people without me.

I have a date Thursday night.  I need to go to bed early on Tuesday and Wednesday if I want to be in the mood.  If it was for tonight I would cancel.  I’m burning too hot.  I’m using too much energy and way way too much at night.  I’m so tired.

I feel the kind of tired where I am emotionally raw.  This is how I always came home feeling.  And my mother would pick a fight.  When I feel vulnerable like this I am sensitive and I easily feel shamed and unwanted.  It doesn’t always happen after sex with new people and it can happen with Noah.  When I feel like I am breaking taboos this sometimes hits.

I feel really bad about telling the guy last night “Maybe” when he asked for a second date.  I feel like I made promises I don’t intend to keep.  I kept my mouth shut about things he said or did that were complete relationship deal breakers for me because oh man is that not a battle I’m interested in.  I’m not trying to hurt him.  I think he is a fine individual.  Just not someone I want to be in a relationship with. Oh the sex was hot though.  If we run into one another at a sex party… maybe.  If I’m in the mood.  He certainly did most of it just right.

It feels like as a slut/whore/whatever word you want to use having those kind of preferences is kind of mean.  I’m supposed to just take people as they are and like them.  Mostly I do.  But there’s always one thing… I know it would drive me batty.  I go home and thank God that Noah doesn’t have/do/think/whatever the thing was.

This is why I don’t feel polyamorous.  Not really.  Only I have my boys.  I do feel a connection to them.  It is pretty much always more intense on their side.  I have a date scheduled with my shaman.  We haven’t been on a date in about six or seven years?  And it was a four or five year gap between that and the previous set of dates.

I have a long cycle sometimes, apparently.  It’s interesting to learn that about myself.  I’m glad I didn’t stay with Steve because I would not have had the room to grow to be the person I am now.  I like who and what I am.  He wouldn’t have stood next to me for this journey.  He wasn’t my partner.  Not like this.  Tom didn’t want to have kids with me.  That is why I left him.  Having children was more important to me than being with him.  I made the right choice.

I am strongly dyadic in my bonding.  I do very intense one on one bonding.  And then it scares the piss out of me and I run away.  Noah is the only person I have ever met who can really match my intensity in an on-going way.  We take breaks occasionally when we are escalating, but we always come back to a topic.  We can always finish talking about something no matter how hard it is.

I have never had a person in my life who will do that.  I would follow him off a cliff because no one will ever make me feel seen the way Noah does.  I’m protective of this space.  I feel terrified of it being encroached on.

That’s why I only go on first dates.  I have no interest in finding a new bond right now.  Fuck you all.  You all suck compared to Noah.  I’m not going to go on a second date and start dealing with the fact that you can’t have conversations the way I want to have them.  It feels like a waste of my time.  I’m not interested in sitting through multiple dates where I have to silently roll my eyes and put up with shit that irritates the fuck out of me.  Everyone irritates me.  Everyone.  But I can turn around and tell Noah what he is doing that irritates the fuck out of me.  I can’t do that with anyone else.

It’s very stressful being around people and being polite.  I’m really not very polite in my head.  But I want polite children.  I have gone most of the way towards creating polite children.  When they start behaving in a way that irritates me it is because they are mimicking something I’ve done.  If I want to change their behavior the first thing I need to do is identify where I am behaving in a sub-optimal way and change it.  I put a lot of pressure on myself right now.

But people seriously irritate the fuck out of me and I’d like to yell at them a lot.  I don’t.  It’s not personal.  I’m sorry I feel this way.  But I do.

I don’t go on second date because that one little thing that irritated me?  I left thinking about it.  I constructed a story in my head about that little personality tic becoming part of my life.  Oh god that would require a lot of patience.  Can’t do it.  I’m sorry.

I’ve done a fair bit of recycling old hits in my head, lately.  I’ve gone on dates with several old flames, with mixed success.  I’m interested in seeing how things have changed with my shaman.  I feel weird about the fact that he is ok with being available for me whenever I want him over the course of more than a decade.  That’s… holy shit that’s commitment.  I love him.  But I’m not and I never have been “in love”.  It’s dramatic that I now have Noah to compare everyone to.  He changed the whole scale.

I like inspiring people.  Really good sex can change your world view.  There are so many good chemicals.  The aftermath of goodness can be bittersweet.  I like inspiring people to feel better about themselves.  I want them to feel affirmed for the one gift I am willing to accept from them.

I’m tired.  I’ve had a week of bad sleep.  I feel guilty that I avoided conversation last night by falling asleep.  He woke me up after an hour and a half to put me on bart.  Fucking slick, Krissy.  I feel bad.  It’s not like I did it on purpose.  I’m really tired.  But uhm, that shouldn’t be part of the first date.  Kind of poor form.

Noah is trying to schedule a date for Thursday.  I have extra impetus to not cancel.  Bother.  This is the kind of thing that inevitably happens around him dating.  If I cancel it gets weird.  He’s just as (or more) twitchy than I am at this point.  He acts like he should be kicked.  I have a hard time when Noah puts his head down and looks like he is in pain.  Like I have already been berating him… just because he feels guilty.  I haven’t said anything.  It makes me angry.  And then I’m going to say things.

This is a bad cycle.  Mostly in our life he acts like my ambient anger isn’t about him.  He goes about his life being cheerful and dandy and on his own time.  This is a good thing.  When he feels like he is to blame for my anger the dynamic changes.  I feel like an abusive asshole because he starts flinching.  It’s hard because it feels like my anger isn’t much higher than normal but all of a sudden I am bad for feeling it.  WTF?  Why do I have to be Miss Susie Sunshine on this sacred topic above all others?  I’m a cranky person.  I just am.  Why is it surprising around this topic?

Why am I only not allowed to feel feelings about this.  You are fine with them on every other topic.

I’m going back and sleeping with my friends because I have already been fierce and aggressive and they have proven they really like me.  It’s weird to show up and let them surprise me with how they actually want to touch me.  It’s weird finding out what is on the other side of the brick wall I build around myself.

First date sex has a certain loneliness to it.  That’s the bittersweet part.  You know that this person doesn’t really know you.  When you plan to disappear in the morning you hide behind that knowledge.  You carefully don’t present yourself at certain times.  It’s not worth finding out how this person feels about ‘x’ controversial topic.  For me to carefully censor what I’m saying…

This feeling.  It’s like what I had as a child.  When I was being sent to a new place.  I desperately wanted to please them.  I wanted to be liked.  Not being liked was so bad.  So very bad.  When people don’t like me they tend to loathe me.  They feel free to say the nastiest, meanest things possible.  They do this because I reveal a lot of intense personal feelings quickly and then other people bond to me.  Then when I reject the bond, because it was ephemeral for me, something that was completely true in the moment and not true later, they know personal things.

I’m being vague.  There is no way for me to recount the people and ways I have been told I am disgusting for the kind of sex I like to have.  I had a good night last night.  I don’t want to do it again soon because of my own issues with being patient with people.  He did nothing wrong.  He’s awesome.  My shaman is wonderful.  I feel much more connected to him than I do to most people.  I only want to go out on approximately a dozen dates over a decade.  It’s not because he has done something wrong.

I feel like running away from intimacy this hard is a sign that I am deeply broken.  If people cannot be everything and perfect then I have no space for them in my life.  And I judge everyone against Noah and find them wanting.  I’m lonely.

A lot of the impatience is just that people feel weird to me.  I never feel comfortable.  I always feel fake and like I have to be thinking very hard about not saying “the wrong thing” because inevitably someone will blow up at me.

Talking about sex and relationships feels especially charged and fierce.  People always feel weird to me.  I’m not very adaptable.  I have times where I can do it, but it’s hard.  I’m always poised for inevitable rejection.  Some woman who wrote me a nasty dear Jane letter felt the need to go back and change her RSVP to a no for an event I had in 2010.  Uhm.  Wow.  Thanks for letting me know, again, that you still dislike me.

I feel inadequate to the task of living my life.  I feel like I keep writing checks my body can’t cash.  I haven’t run in a few days.  I’m too physically exhausted.  Shanna and Calli and I did help shut down the port yesterday.  That was a walk.  I was impressed with Shanna’s tenacity.  I gave her multiple opportunities to wuss out when she got tired.  She said, “No!  I can do it!  I’m buff!”  My strong girl.

I feel a vague desire to probe her for why she introduces herself as She-Ra.  But that’s people hacking and she can’t consent.  So instead when she does it I just smile along.  I don’t know what to say.  Why should she feel more attached to the name I picked out?

I’m teaching her to be kind of weird.  I feel bad about that.  I’m very good at talking to strangers… if I initiate it or if they follow a pattern of questions I recognize as “valid”.  I can answer some questions easily.  Other times I freeze up and feel really dumb and walk away muttering about my inadequate social skills… she notices.

Today there is a park day trip to the park where I used to meet the above mentioned Dear Jane woman.  It’s a great park.  The homeschool group is going.  I keep thinking to myself that I’m not there to make friends.  I’m there to let Shanna make friends.  I don’t know that I can do it.  I can’t sleep in, ok fine.  I need to start going to bed earlier at night.  I’m so tired I can’t function.  This is not useful.

This is part of what I mean when I say I can’t date.  I don’t regulate my energy well.  Right now I’m trying to do too many things.  I can’t do everything.  Time to drop some balls.

Hunting is hella awkward (this whole thing is tmi)

2 Replies

We went from having a weekend of lots of planned sluttery to only having sex together.  This is rather hilarious, I think.  But Noah was approached on okcupid.  He’s making a date.

I love masturbating right after sex.  I’m sore and overly sensitive so it kind of hurts and it takes me a long time to have an orgasm.  I have to really make up a story in my head.  I’m just starting to do this again.  I haven’t done this in years.  I don’t masturbate when my kids are in bed with me.  I like to follow the stories that come up.  Often they involve sex with one or more of my friends.  It usually involves me getting to meet some need in their life.

Having sex with your friends is shitting where you eat.  It’s hard because having your needs met feels really good and it’s easy to get upset when you know people in your life can make you feel that good but they choose to schedule their time elsewhere.  That’s a hard thing emotionally.  It’s a lot of the reason that I am gun shy about polyamory.  I have my priorities set where they are set and no I am not fucking adjusting them for someone else.

I don’t think I have ever hunted the way I am hunting now.  I have never gotten to set the terms before.  It’s really hot.  It’s really hot to have people be willing to seduce me by email before we ever show up in person.  I have a great correspondance going right now.  The problem is that people get to the date and then have performance anxiety.  I don’t have performance anxiety.  I’m that good at sex.  As good as I say and better.  Because if you write me a script in advance I will make sure it is a script I can play and then I will play it to the hilt.  It’s really fun.

People who know me have a hard time engaging with this part of me.  They already have so many experiences that have made them gun shy.  I should make people gun shy on a day to day basis.  I’m kind of twitchy.  You don’t know how my moods will flow, it’s true.  Pushing an agenda on me is normally a questionable idea.

Except when it isn’t.  And I don’t know how to figure out the boundaries around this with people I know.  But I am learning how to do it with strangers and it’s really hot.  One hiccup is that I was asked if choking is really a hard limit.  Uhh, yeah.  It is.  No hands around my neck at all.  I don’t care that you like to assert your dominance that way.  Find another way.  Hey, I’m a nice girl.  How about if I tell you that I have been thinking a lot about face slapping?  You’ll believe me because I’ve been so clear about my boundaries in every other place.  Start slow, of course.  I’m sensitive.  But if that is interesting to you… I would feel put in my place.  Just sayin’.

It’s hard to do these exchanges with people I know.  I don’t trust very many people to that level.  It’s hard to use your friends as one night stands.  They feel bad.  Friends feel used and abandoned.  It’s important to not spike that oxytocin too high with people who already are more emotionally connected than I am.  That’s shitting on people I like.  Because they get hurt.  I don’t like doing that.

I am really thrilled about how many dates are happening.  I’m having fun.  I’m thrilled that Noah’s response to me hunting is to start talking about going to the gym because now he has to compete.  He totally doesn’t.  But I like it when he is in better shape.  Our sex life improves.  And given where it is… oh my.

I think it is funny that I hunt so hard for sex with other people when I know that Noah will be a better lover.  Every time.  It’s kind of like how Noah won’t eat McDonald’s, so I go without him.  I have these tastes for things that are bad for me.  My vices.  I like McDonald’s, ramen, and dates with new-to-me-men.  I’m going to get to the point where those are it.  (I eat McDonald’s like once a month.  Just sayin’.  Happy Meal joy.)

Noah tried to wake me up for sex on Friday night and I bit his head off.  Thursday I didn’t sleep much so I was cranky.  I made it up to him by waking him up on Saturday morning.  And we went to a party and played together on Saturday and had hot sex.  And we came home and had hot sex.  And Sunday afternoon Sarah took the kids out and he tied me up and did wonderful things to me and we had hot sex. And Sunday before passing out we couldn’t stop pawing at one another… so we had hot sex again.

Sometimes just being near him makes me shake with wanting him.  I have felt this voracious need for sex basically all of my life.  For the first time it’s not only ok it is preferable.  Because Noah actually likes me and appreciates me.  I worry about how other people will perceive me for being this kind of person.  I worry and feel stupid for worrying.  Of course people judge me.  So what?

I am not at risk of being hurt.  It would be very hard for anyone to hurt me just because they disapprove of my behavior.  My kids are far more sheltered than average.  They have a fierce sense of body autonomy and you can’t get that if you are abused.  They shine with good health and love.  I don’t have a job that is at risk.  Noah tells me he doesn’t care what I write.  He’ll take the hit.  Because I’m worth it.  I am financially secure enough that I will never have to play a public game again in my life.

Still I feel this fear.  If I feel this afraid, what is it like for people who have something to lose?  I have hubris on my side.  I can limit my hunting pool ridiculously.  I seem to be only hunting among people who have college degrees, often PhDs.  Not because I care but because those are the ones with the cajones to message me.  They are the only people who are willing to put up with a long list of nitpicky requests and demands from me before they meet me.  People who will write a sex script with me before meeting me and allow me to call a large percentage of the shots.  Am I actually doing risk management this way or am I lying to myself?

Communicating clearly that I am a sure thing gives me this sensation of butterflies in my stomach.  That moment of revelation, when I have to say I am interested in sex feels incredible.  Because I am interested in sex.  Not with anyone.  With people who can talk to me and help me make a script and help me figure out why I am there.

That’s what I’m doing with the pre-writing.  I’m giving myself a chance to create the back story on why the kind of girl he is fantasizing about would show up for the experience he is about to have.  Everyone wants a different why.  I’m very curious about why people think they should have sex.  It’s different from the why they have for love.  The why people have about sex tells me so much about their life.

Most people think they should have sex because they are in love.  It’s kind of a weird thing, to me.  Why do I think I should have sex?  Because it feels good.  Because I like carefully balancing how much of my life is devoted to things that feel good to me.  The specific kind of feel-good I get from sex with new people is apparently worth a lot of effort and angst to me.  I’m trying to get to the point where I can attenuate the effort and get rid of the angst.  I’m not for everyone.  The kind of people who are in the right place to do exactly what I want… that’s serendipity.  I need to be honest about the emotional cost.

I need to stop being messy with my emotions in my house.  Sarah has nightmares and I make them worse.  I’m not yelling or screaming.  But I am huffy.  I do visibly shake with anger.  To someone who grew up in a violent household I look like I am on the verge of hitting.  I need better control.  And that means I need to back off on hunting.  It’s taking a lot of my brain cycles and that makes me short tempered elsewhere.

I need to figure out how much energy I actually have left once I am meeting my obligations at home.  Right now I don’t feel like I understand that balance very well.  This is where I don’t have a map.  I guess I do though.  I painted it on my wall.  I’m going into the cave.  Sometimes.  Or I’m wandering off to have an island retreat.

Have I mentioned that due to plumbing mishaps I have a white wall in my house?  The possibilities are endless.  I still haven’t painted the garage door.  All of these things take energy.  Energy I am currently holding in reserve because later today I am going to go shut down the Port of Oakland with a few friends.  I’m bringing my kids.  And after the Port Shutdown I will be dropped off for a date.

There is only so much of me to go around.  I only have so much energy to give.  It’s really awesome; I have to be pragmatic.  What do I want to have in my life?  What are my actual, actionable priorities?  What am I doing with my time and energy and how is it balancing throughout my life?  I have to think about these things.

I am sad things went the way they did with muse, but I can’t say I’m surprised.  I shouldn’t have tried for a month.  I know better.  I know I don’t have that kind of energy for a relationship.  I should have left it at the first date.  If my one night stand hunting culminated in a night of bath house sex where I don’t have to talk to the person after that… that would have been great.  I was stupid.  I tried to get the short-term boyfriend experience.

Know yourself.  Know your limits.  Noah has different limits.  Hell, near as I can tell everyone has different limits than me.  That’s ok.  It’s tricky trying to figure out where I get to have  rock hard limits around what I can and can’t request from people.

I’m interested in one night stands.  If you aren’t, that’s fine.  We aren’t a match.  Move along.  Don’t get mad at me and I’ll try not to rant about you.  I’ll make that promise to all the future boys.  I’ll try not to rant.  Which is to say that I will rant but try to be balanced.  You did good things too.  We just aren’t a match.  No shame in that.

That’s why.  That’s why I’m hunting.  Because I am continuing the behavior I have done my entire life but not I am trying to do it without shame.  I want to find a way to balance this part of me that feels bad because other people do not value it with the knowledge that it does bring good to my life.  It gives me the energy to go conquer the world.

I’m probably not going to schedule a one night stand attempt in January.  I need a rest from that energy drain.  It’s time to re-evaluate the energy I’m giving to my sex life.  I promised Shanna that I would make her a play house in January.  I can’t be tired from staying up all night for sex and do that.  It’s going to be awesome.  Just wait.  But it will take creativity.  It has to fit into Wonderland.

How can I talk about parenting and being a slut in one post?  Because I’m both.  That has to be ok.  I’m not actually doing anything shameful.  I have an unusual hobby that most people don’t share.  Like people in this valley should fucking judge.  You are all a bunch of weirdos.  What the fuck is this geocaching shit?

I think that if you look at history you will find a lot more people who pursued sex voraciously than people who beat some video game.  Who is the freak?  Ahem.

The Embargo

Leave a reply

We’re told women want sex as much as men. As far as I can tell, it’s true. So why don’t we see more equality? When somebody is paying for sex, why is it always a man paying? When you go to a singles bar, why is it that more men are so often cruising fewer women instead of the
other way around? And why is asking and trying to get attention the default and expected behavior for men, and a stigmatized sign of being “too desperate” in women?

Why, in other words, are men pushing for sex and women acting as gatekeepers when women want sex as much as men do? Shouldn’t women be pushing and men resisting about as often?

I do push. The reactions suck. Here’s what happens to me, as a woman who pushes for sex. I go out on a series of first dates with guys who want me to be their dream come true. They see one side of me and decide that I have to change my whole life to accommodate their preferences. Guys are really nasty when you are not instantly available to them in any capacity they want. And that means being the perfect level of busy. Because if you have less or more going on than them that is supposed to automatically happen. Your schedule is supposed to give way to theirs.

It’s just assumed. I know chicks do this too. But when chicks expect more time than a guy wants to give she is labeled as “clingy” and too “dependent”. It’s a massive character flaw.

It’s true in some cases and not in others. But near as I can tell most men don’t want sex as much as we’re told men want it. More equality in what? I cannot count the number of married women I know who whine and bitch and moan about not getting enough sex. Once people are trapped in marriage it really is a toss-up who actually wants more sex. It’s immediate access to sex that is less guaranteed. A lot of this is that many women tend to be turned on by different things than men. Often things that take more time and emotional connection to establish. They may want sex, but not right now and not with you.

There is a physical component of need to sex and there is an emotional component. The general norms indicate that men and women have different levels of trust-need in order to have physical attraction. It may be a cultural construct, but we live where we live.

Why are women gatekeepers? Because if they have sex they are often shamed, humiliated, and later violently assaulted for being stupid enough to say yes. If a high school girl says “yes” in any context other than a committed long-term relationship she becomes a slut. Once a girl has the reputation of being a slut she is in active danger. Boys will follow her around and strongly imply, often backed with physical intimidation, that since she said once she is required to say yes again, to him. It is terrifying to open the gates of sex when you are a teenage girl. That road is littered with violence.

Shame

Here are some standard non-answers: “men are dogs” or “men are perverts” or “men have no shame.” Those are euphemisms we use for “men show that they want sex, right out in public.” If desire is equal and universal, why is it shameful to say so? If it’s not shameful to say so, why do we use shaming words for people who do?

Here are more standard non-answers: “women aren’t slaves to their base urges.” “Women are too pure for that.” These are actually the same non-answers, phrased passive-aggressively – wanting sex is shameful, and only men do that. That is, also false and also shaming.

Part of this is the idea that pleasure is sinful. We are a religious country whether we want to admit it or not. As a collective group the Judeo-Christian crowd has decided that if men have a little fun on the sly it can be ignored. If a woman does she should be shunned. This is hearkening back to the era where if a girl lost her virginity before marriage she no longer had market worth and she would be treated badly permanently. Even if she lost her virginity through rape. It really is a tough line that women have to walk. We are supposed to constantly appear sexually appealing, because after all if we aren’t sexually appealing we have no intrinsic value, but be careful about not spreading it around. If you spread a commodity amongst too many people it is no longer valuable.

Why Buy the Cow?

We mean that sex should happen in a tight, monogamous bond, preferably marriage. We also mean that women should enforce that — wait for the ring, wait for the commitment, make him buy gifts and act thoughtful and show how much he wants it. Women are thoughtful and give gifts too, of course. But if you look at what gifts cost and who is coercing who, it’s pretty clear that women can strong-arm men much more often than vice-versa.

In fact, sex is considered incredibly valuable for the woman acting as gatekeeper — so valuable that it’s often treated as a woman’s first and most important asset, and not just by men. Women remind each other that he won’t “buy the cow” if you just give sex away — make him earn it with a powerful commitment and many gifts, over and over again.

If sex is that valuable *only for women*, that’s a huge imbalance.

Why are men expected to spend more money? Uhm, maybe because they make more? Maybe because they will permanently, always, be privileged when it comes to being a provider? The purpose of giving gifts in the courting stage is to show that you will be a good provider. Given that many women still feel nervous about being able to provide for themselves financially, it’s a reasonable worry.

Picking the right mate is the difference between a life of luxury or a life of misery. Ask me how I know. What would my life have turned out like if I hadn’t been such a good whore I managed to catch a rich husband?

Working Girls

We don’t like to admit these things in conversation, but actions speak louder than words. We act like sex is a valuable commodity that must be paid for by men. The world’s oldest profession is also one of the most universal. Yes, men can be prostitutes too. But overwhelmingly their clients are other men, not women.

Feminists dispute some of these points – which ones depends on which feminist you talk to or read. But they dispute what *should* be the case more often than they dispute what *is* the case. And many modern feminists believe prostitution is just fine… That when women have
something of such value they should be free to sell it if they want to.

Mostly women don’t know that they have any commodity to sell other than their body. We are not brought up to cultivate our minds. We are not taught business skills. We are not taught how to be successful. We are taught to shut up and suck smoothly. The reason that a lot of women don’t “put out” early on in courting is because when they do they are abandoned. Many men believe that the kind of woman who will put out quickly is one you should despise. You never know until it is too late what kind of man you are sleeping with. It’s a dangerous risk to take.

Pater Noster

But isn’t it the Patriarchy or The Man holding women into these rigid roles, and forcing sex to be sold by women? In a word, no.

The Patriarchy is real, alive and well. But why would it enforce roles on women that force men to pay constantly for sex, whether from prostitutes or with constant and expensive gifts to a single wife? If The Man was in charge of this specific effect, wouldn’t he follow the lead of the Middle East and keep a harem or several wives? He’d pay, yes, and continue buying gifts, but the focus on monogamous bonds keeps him from playing one wife against another, inhibits his chances to find dalliances outside his home and generally holds him back if what he wants is constant and uninhibited sex. He has many better models of sex and marriage to choose from than the modern American one if he’s being properly self-serving. The Man may have chosen this from among his various available choices… But women *do* get to restrict his choices, or he’d have made a different one.

Vast cultural differences, that’s why. Although you are fooling yourself if you think that rich men don’t already have this. Not every guy. But enough that it is kind of silly to imply that we actually follow monogamy in this country. American women have learned to put a higher price on themselves. I’m all for it.

Follow the Money

Here’s the question to ask: who benefits? People are often selfless individually, but they’re generally ruthlessly mercenary in groups and over long times. A large group’s habits and customs mostly work to their collective advantage, even when individuals are selfless,
self-sabotaging or self-sacrificing.

Who benefits? Women wind up holding an extremely valuable commodity, and eventually being paid handsomely for it.

Traditionally speaking this was the only means of survival. To act like there is something wrong with it is short-sighted and self-absorbed. Things have changed substantially over the last few generations, but women still have to worry about pregnancy. Women will still bear the burden of work if a man happens to knock them up. You don’t know until it is too late how much responsibility a man will take for his actions. Yes, this is true of women as well, but it is pretty ridiculous to act like the responsibility for the outcome of sex falls primarily on men. No, it’s on women. And men are upset that women don’t sign on for a whole lot more of it? That shows that they aren’t bearing as much cost for the decision.

If a woman chooses to have sex she is going to have to deal with the consequences. Perhaps pregnancy and motherhood. Perhaps an abortion. These are both significant decisions that have lifelong consequences. Men prove early and often that they don’t have to be bound by the same rules. Yes, some men are responsible. What is a woman’s guarantee?

Devil’s Bargain

But don’t women lose a lot? Well, if they’re interested in sex, sure. They get less sex. They get less variety in sex. They get partners who are *desperate* for sex, which is not a recipe for *good* sex in the same way that a starving person isn’t going to pay much attention to the effort you lavished into getting the sauce right on the roast lamb.

But then, if sex is held as a commodity in public, desiring it has been defined as weakness. Admitting you *want* sex is already a betrayal. So you’re only losing what it’s now low-class to admit wanting. So everybody “wins”, right?

Casual/Casual +

1 Reply

I was curious what the fella’s on a certain community site would say about the topic of casual sex.  I’m mildly surprised that most people don’t consider something casual sex unless it is entirely anonymous and you never speak.  Really?  Ok, I guess I don’t want actual casual sex then.  Wow.  I like to find profiles on the web and exchange a few emails.  Then meet up with a thin pretense of something to do for about an hour.  Then we can go back to your place.  I may or may not ever feel the need to talk to you after that but I will have fond feelings for you.  Some of these turn into friendships, most don’t.  I don’t mind in the slightest.

Really?  That’s not casual?  Wow.  Once again, I need a new word.  Because even saying NSA (no strings attached) isn’t quite what I mean.  And it’s not really friends with benefits because I don’t think we need to be friends.  Fuckbuddy implies we are buddies.  We aren’t.  You are a stranger on the internet.  A perfectly nice one.  One I obviously find attractive (this is usually a combination of looks, intelligence, and ‘feels like tribe’) so what is that?

I like running into former lovers.  I like the smile I get.  I like the soft brush of the arm as they acknowledge that they know how to touch me.  If I don’t litter my lovers all over the valley, how can I have that experience?

Not so casual

Leave a reply

What is the difference between casual sex and NSA sex?  I’m getting the impression that I should stop advertising for casual sex.  I’m not very casual.  I’m very intense.  But I don’t need promises.  I don’t need someone to start planning around me.  I can’t meet anyone else’s on-going needs right now.  I’m not really meeting the needs of everyone in my life and I don’t need to feel like more of a failure.  I have nothing left to give.  I’m out trying to get my needs met and there is a fairly limited amount of reciprocation available for that.

I don’t want to shut my mouth and avoid frightening topics so I can fuck people who otherwise wouldn’t be interested in me.  No thanks.  That’s not ever going to be my role again.  I am not a generic hole.  I am a particular taste and not everyone likes it.  That’s ok.

It’s really weird to sit with my feelings around hunting.  I feel like I want this with a disproportionate intensity to what I should be feeling right now.  I’m acting like it is a failing on my part that there aren’t hoards of people interested in me.  Maybe that’s the wrong approach.  I don’t have time for hoards of people and telling them I’m not interested is hard too.  Better that only people who are serious candidates make it past the first screening.  So far that seems to be working out.  But it means being patient.

A lot of the problem is I’m sending out weird mixed signals.  I want aggression but not pain.  I want fairly quick transition into sex but I want someone who is intensely interested in sex with me not generic sex.  This is why I’m not hunting in any of my known pools.  I don’t think it works out to be so demanding with people I already know.  They have expectations and experiences of me that I don’t want to have to plan around.  I’m going to avoid my previous partners for a while because I’m skittish about the pain stuff.  I don’t know how to hunt for people who want to make me feel nice things instead of pain.

I have some first dates scheduled.  We’ll see how those go.  I have one person I’m already going to follow up on after Christmas because she is so darn interesting.  Then maybe it’s time to take a break for a while.  I’m not finding what I want and I’m about to have less time.  It’s time for a new phase.  This is taking too much time for what I am getting out of it.  The cost is too high and the payoff is too low.  Gosh it’s a good thing I never have to be celibate again.

And I have to say that my opinions on this topic are heavily colored by the fact that Noah did something last night he hasn’t done before.  It was really hot.

Time to move on

Leave a reply
Saturday night we held a surprise dinner party for a friend’s birthday.  She seemed pretty excited about being the center of attention finally.  I think everyone should get the limelight on their birthday.  It was one of the best parties I’ve ever hosted.  I think it was a raging success.  An awful lot of the reason for that is I didn’t feel any pressure to be “on”.  People weren’t there to see me.  Maybe the secret is to invite other peoples’ friends over.
It was neat partially because this was a bdsm crowd of type I don’t hang out with much.  This was a Master/slave sort of gathering.  And Daddy energy.  Lots of Daddy energy.  I got to talk about my opinions about those sorts of relationships.  I got to talk about my experiences with people I have seen around in the scene for over a decade but never before have they noticed me.  It was a weird kind of arriving moment.  It was interesting.  
I really enjoyed getting to explain some of my opinions.  I don’t get asked about these topics much any more.  I have a lot of opinions.  The M/s portion of my relationship with Tom was the middle two years out of four.  So we had a year to ramp up and a year to ramp down.  I have a lot of perspective on that situation at this point. 
And after they left Noah and I had crazy hot sex where he explained what he would like from our relationship in the future.  I’m considering his words very carefully.  It’s a lot more complicated for me to change the nature of my relationships now that I have young children and a marriage and a mortgage to consider.  I’m not just thinking about what I want and what will feel good.  I have to seriously stop and think about whether or not any given set of choices is sustainable for me.  Without sustainability there is no future for any set of behaviors.
Last night in the middle of that crazy hot sex we had to stop for a while because I was crying too hard.  I was crying because it has cost me a lot to maintain training that Tom gave me.  It is humiliating to have to explain to random pick up partners that they have to give me permission to orgasm.  Not only do they have to give me permission they have to kind of do it in a certain way.  Most people guess close enough, but some people say things that make it so that I can’t.  Or they think it is funny to tell me no.  I feel like I don’t get the final say on what happens to my body and that really bothers me.  I am tired of having no choice but to submit this ownership of my body to anyone who touches me.  I’m tired of being unable to have a private sexual experience inside my brain.  I’m tired of constantly having to offer up my desire to someone else.  Someone who doesn’t even understand what this gift costs me.
I am a slave without an Owner.  I’m kind of tired of it.  It is starting to feel demeaning.  It is starting to make me feel like this enormous pearl is being cast before swine.  They do not understand or appreciate and I feel cheapened by the experience.  I want to figure out how to not need permission any more.
I’m 30 years old.  I have not had control of my right to orgasm since I was 19.  Maybe it’s time.  I had a brief period where I started to figure out how to turn this off.  It lasted a couple of months.  Then Noah came back.  It’s one of his favorite party tricks.  It’s hard to tell him I don’t want to give this to him any more.  I am tired of having to feel subjugated to new partners.  It makes the barrier of sex very different.  It’s a lot of why I sleep with assholes.
Assholes know how to use this.  They don’t need me to stop and give an explanation of how I became so broken.  They just want to play with it as a toy.  Let’s press the button and see what happens!  I’m tired of having my right to pleasure be out of my control.  It feels like part of the larger patterns of me doing sex constantly for some perceived exterior motivation. 
I want to have some idea of what sex is like for other women. 
I told Noah last night that I can’t tell if part of me is breaking or mending.  I don’t know what it means that I feel so strongly about getting rid of this now.  I want my freedom, damn it.  I’m tired of having to explain to every vanilla person about my former Owner training.  I can never tell the story right in the moment.  It always feels rushed and I’m trying to change gears and be a different person and it doesn’t feel like a good conversation to have. 
How many other people have to stop and tell the story of their sex life going back to when they were 19 forever?  I wonder how much this feeds my inability to get over Tom.  I’m reminded of him every single time I have sex.  I know this was done for him.  I could never forget it.  This is such a huge part of my body and my life.  He caused this change in me.  What am I like without Tom’s training?  I don’t know.  I’ve never been able to find out.  It’s time.

The only thing that stays the same is that everything changes. Sex version

Leave a reply

Noah and I seem to be rediscovering one another.  My mild frustration with the hunting has resulted in our sex life dramatically changing.  In the first year of our marriage we averaged sex ten times a week.  Then I got pregnant.  I am one of those don’t even look at me let alone think about sex with me pregnant women.  I was really hoping to be one of the nymphomaniac kinds.  Oh well.  I’m never doing that misery again so it doesn’t matter any more.

The first year after having a kid we didn’t have a lot of sex.  I am definitely a wait six weeks for it to be comfortable kind of girl.  That’s some serious friction, yo.  Healing time was my friend.  With Shanna once a month after that for a few months was as much as we could figure out.  With Calli I think we were close to once a week pretty quickly.  Well, ok we were probably two or three times a month.  Not really once a week.

It changes in dramatic ways after a year.  And after Shanna at right around eighteen months I started feeling a strong sudden interest in doing bdsm again.  But I got pregnant immediately and didn’t follow through much.  Calli is fifteen months old.

For almost two months we’ve been having sex pretty close to daily.  In the past couple of weeks it has been twice a day as often as not.  I really like my husband.  Sex is a big deal to Noah.  I’m absolutely up front about the fact that at this point a lot of our sex is for him and I’m there being a team player.  I’m there because it builds him up to have sex.  When he is having a lot of sex he has the energy and patience to put up with my shit.  Ok, we can have a lot of sex.

But I’m in kind of a unique position.  Should I be having sex I’m enh about?  Given my history?  I could find a long list of feminazi’s who would tell me no.  I think a lot about the idea of consent.  What does it mean to consent?  It’s kind of a fuzzy thing sometimes.

What does it mean to want sex?  Do I always have to want the same kind of sex?  Do I always have to feel the same minimal level of desire before I get started?  That seems kind of silly.  I think part of the reason I married Noah is because he is so overwhelmingly enthusiastic about me talking about and having sex pretty much as often as possible.  No matter how conflicted I feel about it.

There is this little benefit that’s not something feminazi’s like to hear about.  When I’m not having sex all of the time I have lower self esteem.  I know that I am failing in the task to which I was brought up.  I was apprenticed in sex if anyone ever was.  I wanted this to be something I was good at and did a lot of. So I do a lot of it.

I’m trying to figure out what that means to me at this stage of my life.  I have this voracious need for sex. I literally get off on the fact that Noah and I treat it as part of my job that I am supposed to be available for sex.  (Uh, after that one time he listens to my actual “no’s” and I do give them.)  We like figuring out what we should be doing at other times of the day to ensure that I will be up for it later.  We treat having sex like it is a goal.  Something we want to do and be good at.

I feel weird about being this person and being a parent.  Like this should have been shut off.  Like all of a sudden it is kind of a problem that I am so obsessed with sex.  But I’m not sure why it is a problem.  I just feel like I am bad for liking it.  For wanting it.  For prioritizing it in ways that would be a problem for other people.  I don’t feel exploited.  I feel like I am being seen for who and what I am and appreciated for the fairly unusual set of skills I have.

I like that for the first time in my life I have a partner who wants to have sex as much or more than me.  I didn’t know that could happen.  I have usually ended up begging for sex after a while and feeling humiliated and rejected all the time.  I’m fucking thrilled that I don’t have to deal with Noah rejecting me for sex.  I think he’s up to about a dozen “no’s” in the seven years I’ve known him.  That’s an acceptable rate for me.  I’m really glad he wants me so much.

I’m glad and it’s intimidating.  It’s intimidating because I have a physiological response when he makes it clear he wants sex.  I feel compelled to participate.  I feel uncomfortable about the fact that I react even when I’m not “in the mood”.  It’s not that I’m going to get off.  I don’t do that how I used to.  It’s really sad.  I hope that comes back.  But saying no to sex is usually not something I have any interest in doing. Regardless of whether or not I have interest in sex.  They are different decisions for me.  The default answer to “Do you want sex?” is “YES!” even when my body is saying “meh”.  I want sex to be more interesting all the time.  I want to better figure out how to orgasm from different kinds of stimulation.  The Master/slave relationship I was in taught me a very specific flavor of orgasming on command and I haven’t played with that.  I would like for my sexual response to be less tied to pain.

Maybe I should figure out how to get my husband-with-hypnotism-training thinking about this.  I’m sure we can figure something out.  I married the best man in the whole fucking world.  He is so absolutely perfect for me.  I’m so glad I found him.

A story that isn’t going in the book. (TMI warning)

1 Reply

I had reason to think about something that happened a few years ago.  I placed a casual encounters ad on Craigslist.  I think I only got a couple of responses.  Only one was coherent and comprehensible as English.  Oh, and the one that was a guy from a local bdsm mailing list emailing me directly instead of responding to the ad saying, “I know this is you.  Don’t use so many identifying characteristics in your ad.”  We exchanged two or three short emails and then met at Starbucks near my house.  This was after Puppy dumped me and before Noah asked me to marry him.  The only time I have ever been really single and on my own in my life.  I didn’t have anyone to sleep with and I was horny.  I didn’t want to masturbate again.  It’s just not the same.

So I met this guy.  I have no idea what his name was.  He was a lot nerdier and more shy than I usually go for.  And he told me he was really into oral.  I kind of cringed, but hey I’ll try anything once.  It was incredible.  That was the best oral sex I have ever received in my life.  That man was a God.  I don’t think I have ever experienced so much sensation in my vulva before.  I dissociate pretty quickly most of the time when someone goes down on me.  I had a few experiences (I wrote about them!) that made me feel uncomfortable about people going directly at my crotch.  If someone gets genital very fast I get scared off.  I just close off my ability to feel what they are doing.  Needless to say, I just don’t bother having oral sex much.  It’s fussy and complicated.

Ok, back to this guy.  So we undressed very awkwardly and climbed into my bed.  I giggle a lot when I’m nervous.  I hear it’s charming.  We started experimenting with how to touch one another.  I’m usually very tentative when I first start touching someone.  He was really sensitive.  He didn’t want a lot of touch for himself.  He wanted to pay attention to me.  It’s hard to even explain how he did it.  He didn’t touch anything inside my labia for like twenty minutes, but he was paying a lot of attention to that part of my body.  The crease in my thigh was endlessly fascinating.  By the time he finally touched something more ahem direct.  I melted.  That was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had in my life.

I’ve never felt ok asking for that kind of thing since.  Or when I have tried it has resulted in a pretty rough rushed entry into harsh genital stimulation.  Then we fuck five minutes later.  It’s just not the same.

I have sex with strangers because sometimes you can shut out everything in the whole wide world and just accept the best part of this person into yourself.  The best thing they can give can be a wonderful thing.  You don’t have to worry about overall compatibility.  It’s not about truly connecting.  I’m not lying to myself.  But the novel experience of getting to try completely different speeds of sex is wonderful.

It’s hard to have that much variety with one person.  Noah and I both have a specific kind of sex that we strongly prefer.  We have trouble figuring out how to change speeds sometimes.  Ok, instead of deflecting I’ll just say it.  Today we were having a very different kind of sex from normal.  Then I started to feel like I was supposed to hurry up and get off and validate that this was a hot experience, right?  It’s kind of my party trick.  But I wasn’t even close.  And trying to make myself do that usually results in some longer lasting discomfort.  It’s really annoying.

Noah didn’t ask me to.  Tell me to.  Or imply that I should.  I think I should.  I think that is something I have to do.  I even know why.  It’s hard to change this setting in my head.  It’s hard to stop having performative sex.  Even when I am alone in a room with my partner I still have to know that the sex we are having would be fairly spectacular to watch.  I don’t do things just because they feel good.  I really don’t like this about myself.

The great thing about writing this out is now Noah can read it.  And he’ll be able to change gears properly.  That’s why I like him so much.  He’ll find a way now that I’ve told him how.  At least once.  Then we’ll go back to the sex we prefer.

epiphany

Leave a reply
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.

Stats are awesome.

Leave a reply

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.

The Daddies

2 Replies

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.