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.