the solipsist in love

Conflating traumas

Seth and I hadn’t had a sleepover in weeks… probably not since well before my trip to Oregon, so definitely a month. He got the apartment to himself this past Wednesday and invited me over. I wasn’t prepared for what he had in store: handcuffs, paddles, floggers, stun guns, a butt plug (my first!), and more pain than I’ve experienced in months (also my first sub’s high since my last visit to the Power Exchange with that lovely, lovely girl back in August… sigh… I miss her). The second first of the night was him hitting me so hard, so relentlessly, that I finally began sobbing. At first, instinctively, I bit it back, tried to still my convulsing body, but he noticed immediately and went still and began kissing me softly on the neck and back and shoulders. It was such a strange sensation: being brought to uncontrollable tears simply with physical pain. There was no way to hold it back. I let myself sob quietly with my face buried in his bedspread. He asked me finally, “Are tears good or bad?” I made a face he couldn’t see, shrugged, and eventually responded, “I don’t know? Fine, I guess.” I wasn’t very verbal at that point.I couldn’t say what I was thinking: “It’s so weird. It just started coming, and then my whole body ached the way it always does when I cry, and all the emotional pain was there too, and I found myself doing what I do when I cry, which is dig for more, more pain, more things worth crying about: reasons, really. Reasons to be sad. Like I have to justify it, hang that pain on some external factor, make it real, make it substantial and solid. As if being hit isn’t real or solid enough? But no, it has to be something more profound, at the core of me.” See, it doesn’t even make sense now.

By that time he had already brought me well beyond my comfort level several times, but I am apparently the kind of sub who accepts as much pain as possible to please her partner… it’s a test of will and a test of my submission. Maybe this is typical or necessary. I don’t know. But I was thinking throughout this process that, well, if there really are people out there who experience typically painful sensations as physically pleasurable, I am sure as fuck not one of them. I am in it for the sub’s high, the chance to get out of my head, the totally  foreign experience of giving up control.

Anyhow, after I told him that tears were “fine,” he kissed me some more and then said quietly, “I’m glad. Because they really work for me.” This, I thought, was pretty twisted, though, you know, definitely not the first time I’ve heard that. My ex-husband, for one, felt the same way. Nothing could soften him — and then get him hard — like seeing me cry. I so rarely let him see me that vulnerable. And then there’s Luke (who, due to his egregious behavior on our first date, will henceforth be called, simply, Dumbass) who really gets off when I call him Daddy while he’s fucking me. So: being hit so hard that I cry, which hasn’t happened since my father used to spank me when I was five, and then calling someone Daddy while he’s fucking the daylights out of me. I really wonder how this is warping my already traumatized psyche and exacerbating my intimacy/father issues.

Since my night with Seth, I’ve been feeling really fragile. I had a first date with a new OkC guy last night, whom I casually refer to as Nice Guy, but whose official pseudonym here will be Michael (since he reminds me of a Michael I once knew). After dinner we went back to his place, which may have been a tease move on my part since I knew he wouldn’t get to see me naked, but we watched some TV and cuddled on the couch. It was so nice just to have this soft, warm, grateful body next to mine, happy to simply be touching, holding. We made out a little bit before I told him I was going to leave. He responded with the profoundly stupid “You’re no fun!” which I still haven’t forgiven him for, but given that Dumbass gets another chance, it would hardly be fair to kick this otherwise very sweet (if awkward) guy to the curb. I am supposed to see him again next weekend. I have some vague hope that he might provide the kind of gratitude that I sense might be missing for me in my current interactions: the gratitude for my presence, the desire to keep me there — all of me, I mean, my full presence, not just my body or my willingness to have sex. Maybe i’m dreaming, but I’m usually not too far off with these things. He’s really lonely and I think he values that human contact, the emotional intimacy, and is starved of it much more than either Seth or Dumbass. And I could use that kind of attention.

Tomorrow night I’m supposed to see Dumbass again, and I’ve already told him to expect me to sleep over that night (just to make sure he doesn’t do anything fucking idiotic like make breakfast plans with his dumbass friends again).

[EDIT: I just realized I didn’t explain how it came about that I am giving him another chance. Well, I gave him several days to explain himself. By Friday (we’d gone out on Saturday night), still nothing, so I told him we needed to finish our conversation discussing what I needed from him if he wanted to see me again. He said, OK, soon. The only reason I said anything to him instead of dumping his ass without explanation is that I thought it would be more mature to talk about it with him. Anyway, an hour after that little exchange, I IMed him again and told him to forget it, I didn’t want to talk about it, I just didn’t think it was going to work out: I also thought that he just wasn’t interested enough to make an effort. He argued with me a little and made the excuse that he had been totally preoccupied with his contract ending at work, blah blah. He also had a bad headache that night (ha) so I told him we could continue discussing later. “But don’t wait too long,” I told him. So on Sunday he IMed me and FINALLY fucking apologized for being such an asshole to me the previous Sunday morning. I made him grovel for a while before agreeing to give him another chance. So there’s the story. I’m still wary — after all, why the fuck did it take him a week to admit that he felt bad about it, if he felt as bad as he said he did? My guess is that he somehow didn’t realize what a fucking dumbshit thing it was to do until he, like, talked to a female friend about it and she smacked him upside the head. In any case, my faith in his judgment is severely compromised. Here’s a pattern of mine: a guy does a dumbshit thing and I freak out, and he apologizes, and I’m like, “What the hell were you thinking when you did that?” And they say, “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.” Well, I’m sorry, guys, but that’s not fucking good enough. I just have such a hard time believing that men can be just that completely oblivious. There must be ulterior motives! Unconscious urges, resentments, power plays, whatever. And I fucking expect you to be capable of digging them up and talking to me about them so we can make sure that shit doesn’t happen again. Is this unrealistic of me? Is it delusional? Should I just believe that guys really are that stupid, and let it go?]

Anyway, I’m a little nervous because I’m sure Dumbass will be looking forward to, you know, beating the crap out of me. I just hope I’m up for it by then. My period started yesterday and maybe that’s why I’m feeling so weepy and fragile today. I have fucked with my birth control pill cycle once again to accommodate my partners’ sexual requests. I really need to stop doing that. I think it’s affecting my sanity. It would be healthy to give myself a few days to unravel and let go of all the bullshit that’s been piling up. Right now I just want to be curled up with someone, limbs entwined, breathing slowly, warm, watching TV, not saying a word… and I’m 99% sure that is not going to happen tomorrow, unless I really snap before then and ask for it, and even then I think I will get a less-than-gentlemanly “no” for an answer.

I think it’s painfully (heh) clear that one, or a couple, of my issues is coming to the forefront in these varied interactions. Sure, I’ve got this consensual, acceptable way to give up a great deal of autonomy in a certain realm of my relationships with men. But it only highlights to me how much it bleeds out into all my other interactions with them, in ways that aren’t healthy at all. It’s still so difficult to expect a guy to respect me, and to draw the line when he doesn’t. It’s still my habit to do what I know they want me to do, without ever saying a word about what I’m giving up for them. This was one of Poly Dude’s big problems with me, and while I always knew it was an issue, I guess I never saw it so clearly until now. I mean, look at me: I’m doing it even for guys who I know I have no future with, who I couldn’t possibly have a future with. Who I wouldn’t even want to have a future with, if I were totally honest with myself. There is nothing to be gained by sacrificing my desires here, except this little bit of attention that I’m afraid I would lose. But who cares? It’s not like I can’t find it elsewhere. I mean, really. This seems to be the kind of arrangement that most guys would love to have: a hot girl has crazy sex with you on a regular basis and expects nothing more in return than honesty, a little chivalry, and a proper date, on which she will happily go dutch. It’s not like I would be hurting for candidates, amirite? But it doesn’t matter. The idea of bringing my needs and desires into the open is scary enough in itself to prevent me from doing it. It is probably one of my greatest fears.

What the hell is wrong with me — by which I mean, how do I fix this?