The Bad Thing and Some Other Things

Jack cheated on me.

There are people out there who are going to say of course, that that's what happens--open relationships are doomed to jealousy and failure. And there are people out there who are going to be very confused as to how anyone can cheat in an open relationship. That's the point of open relationships, right? That no one can actually cheat because they're open.

Those people can seriously just stop reading this blog.

About six weeks ago, Jack went out to a party. Not even that kind of party, just a gathering at someone's house. I was invited, but I was tired from working all day and had to be up early for work the next day, so I went home. We argued over the phone, about how late he would be out, and he told me I was "being really immature." I hung up. I called back a little while later, and he refused to talk about it, and acted like everything was fine. I was really upset. I think I talked to him again at some point and apologized, but I honestly can't remember. Maybe I just left a message?

He didn't come home until really late--really early the next morning, actually. 5 or 6 or something equally ridiculous. Again, I don't exactly remember. we were both tired and out of it and something was...off. Something felt weird. And then Jack admitted that he'd made out with a girl at the party.

Whatever. He'd always asked before making out with anyone new, but a few kisses are just a few kisses, right? We talked about things, we were both annoyed and irritable, I went back to sleep. I got up and went to work the next day. No big thing, felt a little icky but I knew it would be fine.

Of course it turned out it wasn't fine at all. It turned out a lot more happened than kissing, though I won't go into details here, I actually had to sit down across from Jack and interrogate him for every detail. It was kind of awful. I haven't been completely okay since. So he did stuff I wasn't comfortable with, with a person I didn't know well, and then he lied to me about it and that, violating the rules of our open arrangement (we had always asked before doing stuff with new people) and, most importantly, lying about what happened to cover your ass, well, that's what we call cheating.

I am currently drinking many wine coolers. Things were actually getting to be close to back to normal, and then yesterday my friend who I was supposed to hang out with completely blew me off and today, through a series of sitcom-like mishaps, I discovered Jack still has this other girl's number in his phone, well...I feel like shit all over again.

I acknowledge that this was not even a little bit the other girl's fault, as she had no idea any of this was against the rules and really it was Jack's responsibility to tell her and so really it's all his fault but I'm still not in a huge rush to be her new bff. In fact, for the first week after The Event, I had a mild panic attack when her name came up in conversation. It doesn't help that she is one of those always very put-together girls, with her hair always done and her makeup always perfect and her perfect fucking pictures on facebook (which I no longer sign onto if I can possibly avoid it, for fear of running across a picture of her) and I'm sitting here paint-stained jeans and one of Jack's nasty t-shirts with unwashed hair and the ten extra pounds I've gained back in the six week since this happened. Who wouldn't choose her over me?

But mostly, at this point, I just feel exhausted and like it's all unfair. You know where Jack is right now? At a motherfucking party. And I'm at home, drinking ALL OF THE WINE COOLERS by myself, in my one pair of paint jeans that are the only jeans that fit watching old episodes of "Friday Night Lights" and writing in my motherfucking blog. I've mostly been too upset to go out or want to see anyone so my friendships are maybe falling apart and I'm bored out of my mind and I don't know why I'm the one who's suffering when I didn't do any goddamn thing wrong. And my back is killing me because I've done nothing but angrily crochet for the past two days.

So yeah. I haven't been going to parties or playing with other people or even been dealing that well with masturbation because half the time I feel like my body is so repulsive. And I thought I was over all of this but all of a sudden it just came back today.

So you see why I haven't felt much like blogging lately.

Links and Stuff--the Sexademic

I knew I'd be back sooner than I expected. I'm really just here to talk about one of my biggest pet peeves when talking to people about sex. I'm really, really tired of hearing about "vaginal orgasms."

See, the only thing I have ever heard about the mythical vaginal orgasm (that somehow supposedly more valuable orgasm that is achieved through straight up in-out-in-out penetration alone) is that people aren't having them. Seriously. I have heard this from friends, I have heard it from strangers, I have read it in countless anonymous confessions on the internet. It's making me exhausted.

Which is why I love these two posts by the Sexademic. I love most of her posts, actually, but I refer to those two in particular a lot in my conversations about sex. So go read them!

So yeah...this is my little blog homage to the Sexademic. I wish I were as smart and levelheaded as she. But before I go, I would just like to say: Ladies, if you don't come during penetration, but you come when you touch yourself on the clit, touch yourself on the clit during penetration. Or get whoever's doing the penetrating to touch you on the clit during penetration.

Thank you. That is all.

Bad Things

I'm sure I'll be back to posting again sooner than I think right now, but I figured I should post this rather than just disappear.

Some things have happened between me and Jack the past few days that have left me less than enthusiastic about...well...our relationship, BDSM play, sex with Jack, sex with anyone else. You know, pretty much everything I blog about here.

Consider this notice of a possible hiatus.

Victim

I was reading Amanda Hess' wonderful blog at TBD the other day, and she's been doing this feature where LGBT victims of hate crimes in the D.C. area tell the story of their assaults. And reading this one, well, I guess how I felt is best described by the word "triggered"--for whatever reason, all I could think about for the rest of the day was The Day I Got Jumped. I was trying to run errands in Manhattan, shopping for books for my one year old niece, and I kept expecting someone to just walk up to me and punch me. By the time I got home, I was freaking out a little.

I started wondering if things would have been different if I'd tried harder to get the girl who jumped me arrested. I started thinking about the first time something like this happened to me, thinking about my personal history of victimhood. Breaking down why I always feel so helpless when something like this happens.

It was sometime in the first few weeks of my sophomore year of high school--I would've been 14. My (horrible, abusive) then-boyfriend and I would go to the park after school and make out. That day, we were approached by four guys from the neighborhood, one who lived on my street hung back. They demanded my boyfriend's watch, a tacky knockoff his dad had bought him in New York. He refused. They asked if I had any money, and when I said no (because I didn't) they turned their attention back to him. He kept refusing to give them his watch--they took his glasses, then punched him in the jaw and took the watch off his wrist.

I didn't want to tell anyone, not even my parents. Technically, I was only a witness, as I hadn't been touched and they hadn't taken anything from me, but I was terrified and shaken up. We went back to the school, where it turned out something like six kids had been mugged by the same group. The police were called, we went and gave statements, they arrested the muggers.

I didn't go to school the next day, I was too shaken up. When I did go back, a girl who was friends with the muggers threatened me. People made fun of all of us for talking to the police, for making such a big deal out of basically having our lunch money stolen on the playground. When one of the muggers plead not guilty and his case went to trial, we all had to testify and the defense attorney tried to make me look stupid, tried to make me out to be a ditzy girl who couldn't keep her story straight. There was a story in the local paper where the reporter talked to the mugger's family, who called us racists and whiners, said it was ridiculous to make such a big deal out of nothing. They didn't talk to any of the victims (at least one of whom was the same race as the muggers).

Years later, when I got groped on the bus, I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to stand up and yell, punch the guy, make a scene--but I looked around the bus, and all I could think was "no one will think this is a big deal. They'll think I'm freaking out for no reason. They'll think I'm a racist." So I didn't tell anyone (except, later that night, Jack), especially my mother, who I knew would want to call the police.

When I got jumped six months after that, and my mother did call the police, all I could think was "Oh, no, not again." I was actually relieved when the officer couldn't find the girls or any witnesses, glad that I never had to deal with any of it again.

And while it seems like I can't shut up about my victimhood here online, I almost never talk about these things in real life, except maybe sometimes to Jack. I'm scared that if I mention them I'll be brushed off, because I'm making a big deal out of nothing. I'm whining. In a world where something like 1 in 4 women has been raped, who cares that some guy grabbed my leg and ass, tried to touch my genitals? It's not a big deal, right?

A friend of mine asked for help online figuring out how to deal with street harassment yesterday. She said it wasn't something she'd ever really encountered before and she didn't know what to do, and she was worried that she was making a big deal out of nothing. I keep wanting to say that it is a big deal, it's not nothing, and if we don't make a big deal out of things like this, they continue. But that makes me feel like a hypocrite.

Lucy is an Asshole

When I was in college, I participated in some major victim blaming.

There was a party, which I did not go to. A girl I was friends with, in that small-social-circle, person-I-tolerate, frenemies kind of way that happens in school, was in a room alone with her exboyfriend (who I also didn't like) at this party. The next day, people were saying he raped her.

Actually, people were saying she said he raped her. And because the girl in question was kind of a drama queen about other things, and because I was friends with her roommate, who didn't believe her, and because I'd been told over and over that sometimes women cry rape for attention--I didn't believe her.

I realize now that this was an asshole move, and I was an asshole for not believing her, and I'm still an asshole for making whatever awful thing happened to her about me and my reaction to it now.

Years later, when I was sexually assaulted (which, I realize, I talk about incessantly here, partly because I'm not over it so please cut me some slack) I found I couldn't tell anyone. Why would I want to tell anyone, when in the past I hadn't believed other victims' stories of assault? I'm still trying to sort this out in my head, but mostly I just feel really shitty for all the times I heard about someone being raped or assaulted and I dismissed it.

I'm pretty angry at myself, actually. I'm angry at any of us who've been assholes like this, who've decided that women who don't speak up about their assaults are cowards, but then attack the ones who do as inappropriate drama queens. We're damning ourselves here, folks--if you didn't report your assault, you must not have thought it was real enough to report, but if you talk about it openly, you must be lying to start drama and rumors. What the hell is anyone supposed to do with that?

I just...I'm getting so angry that it's making me inarticulate. I feel pretty disgusted with humanity on the whole.

Edit: Oh, hey! This post on Tiger Beatdown sums up pretty much exactly what I was trying to say, only in a much more eloquent and less choked-with-rage and awkwardly personal way. So you should read that.

What Upset Me About "Bones"

So I wrote a post about that episode of "Bones" with the pony play and the murder and stuff, and I mentioned at the end how completely enraged I was and how Jack kept saying he didn't understand why I took it so personally. I always take stuff like that personally, and I'm trying to figure out why.

I used to be really, really goth. I was a clove-smoking, Cure-listening, dressed-like-Stevie-Nicks goth girl...and then Columbine happened. And being a goth kid in high school in a post-Columbine environment was really scary sometimes. Because of the rumors, the media information that said the Columbine shooters were goths themselves, (rumors that have since been refuted) you got the feeling people viewed you with suspicion, that people were scared. And not in a superficial way, in a way that made me think of witch hunts and the House Unamerican Activities Committee.

I got yelled at by the principal for wearing my long black raincoat to school on a day when it was raining. Kids who didn't fit in, like the one cool punk guy, or me and my asshole then-boyfriend, got singled out for punishment for things that the "normal" kids got away with. Eventually, there would be mandatory five-day suspensions and the police showing up to search your house if you made an offhand comment at school that contained the word "kill." One dude got this treatment for saying "I'd kill for a lollipop right now."

I know now that, being a cis, white, mostly-het (perceived as het, anyway) chick, that my life has really been pretty full of privilege and free from oppression, but at the time, I felt pretty persecuted. 15 and 16 year old goth girls are not exactly known for a lack of dramatic reactions to things. I wrote research papers about bullying and school violence, about McCarthyism and in defense of media that's been blamed for various violent incidents. Eventually, I got the hell out of high school and went to a liberal college where no one even noticed when I wore a cape to class. It was a huge improvement.

But what I took away from that whole mess was that news stories and dumb movies and poorly-researched TV shows affect people's perception. It may be just a silly TV show, but if that's all someone sees of goth kids or kinky folks or sex workers or furries or whoever, then that will affect their perception. If your only frame of reference for bondage porn is how frequently it turns up as evidence on Law & Order: SVU, then you're probably not going to have a very high opinion of consumers of bondage porn.

It's one of the things that I was trying to get at when I was angsting about coming out a while back--if people only see portrayals of kinksters as freaks and murderers and rapists, or as pathetic targets of humor, as something damaged and twisted and abnormal, then that's what the perception of us will continue to be. How could I not take it personally when it seems to me that the writers who penned that speech at the end of that episode of "Bones" were saying to me "This is what we, the normal people, think of you and your friends and your relationships."

Street Harassment

So guys, let me tell you about street harassment. It's really, really shitty. It happens a lot to the women-folk (and to the LGBTQ folks, but I think maybe in a different way sometimes?), and it doesn't get talked about enough, and it very often gets dismissed as not a big deal. After all, they're just words, right? It's not like being attacked or anything.

Here's the thing, though--words can be used in awful, scary, hateful ways. And, I'm saying this as someone who has been attacked by a stranger on the street, it's pretty awful. Back when I was in high school, I was sometimes uncomfortable leaving the house because I knew some guy on the street would say something to me. The summer that I was 17, a guy looked at me and said "I'd like to get my cock up in that," while I was walking to the bus on my way to work.

But that's harmless, right? It's not like he actually tried to touch me, so I (a 17-year-old) had no reason to be scared of him (an adult, male stranger). He was just saying I was attractive--it's practically a compliment!

Today, Jack and I went for a walk. Actually, I went for a walk while he ran ahead because he's doing this thing where he's running. And while I was walking, I passed these guys in a green van. Not a mini-van, a big, industrial-looking, no-windows-in-the-back van. And they said something. I actually didn't hear what they said, because I was on the phone and not paying attention. A few minutes later, they drove past me pretty slowly, making kissy-noises out the window.

Now maybe it was because the street was deserted, or maybe it was because they were driving a van, but I got really creeped out. I was really relieved that I was on the phone and had an obvious reason to ignore them. I caught up with Jack, and we walked around a bit, and there was a lovely park and some roses...but when we were going to head back, Jack said he wanted to run back. I said (kind of forcefully) that I didn't want to walk back alone because of the van dudes. And, well, we had an argument. And Jack, who is a really awesome feminist dude who's usually really understanding about things, who was in fact the first person to say I was sexually assaulted when I got groped when I was reluctant to put that label on it, said that he didn't really understand street harassment, that it didn't seem like a real thing because it doesn't happen to him and he doesn't see it happen to other people.

The thing that's scary for me about street harassment is that you never know where it's going to stop. If a guy would say to me that he'd "like to get his cock up in that," it already seems to me that he's not seeing me as a person, that he's seeing my body as public property to comment on--so how can I know whether he's going to take that idea further? And some guys, unsurprisingly, will just not take no for an answer--"I was just trying to talk to you," they say, "can't you even say thank you?" And if a stranger would grope me on a bus, if a strange guy would follow me down the street late at night, is it really so surprising that some stranger on the street talking about fucking me would ping my defense system and read as "Danger!"?

Jack got angry with me for being creeped out. We talked about it, and I pointed out that his "street harassment doesn't happen to me so it's not a big deal or concern" view is pretty much the definition of male privilege, and he said he really needed to examine why my being street harassed made him angry with me and his other feelings about it.

What I took away from this conversation is that we're not talking about this enough. Clearly we need to talk about this more, need to make this more visible. If you think street harassment isn't a big deal, or that it's not happening, go read a few posts over at Holla Back NYC and then tell me it's not a real problem.

So...um...for some reason, I decided to watch the pony play episode of "Bones" the other day. It was on Netflix instant, I'd read a brief mention of it at Tiger Beatdown (which is an awesome, awesome, extra double plus awesome feminist blog that you should totally read) and I was bored and casting about for something to do.

For those unfamiliar with it, "Bones" is a police procedural type TV show involving...unsurprisingly...a lady who is a forensic anthropologist and studies bones. And she solves murders by examining the evidence found in/on said bones, with the help of David Boreanaz, whose character's defining characteristic seems to be that he's kind of a douche. I've tried watching this show a few times, because I love a good police procedural, and mostly have found it boring. But when I heard there was an episode about pony play, well, of course I had to watch it.

Pony play, for those unfamiliar, is a variety of animal-type role play. Since it's not one of my own, personal kinks, I'm vaguely terrified that if I try to explain it I'll horribly offend any pony players who happen to stumble across my humble blog. My main exposure to pony play has been in Anne Rice's erotica, so I'm inclined to take it with a pinch of salt. That, and I really like the snazzy boots.

That pony play was specifically the focus of this episode was kind of beside the point. The pony scenes were very...well...tame. Mostly conventionally attractive dudes (almost all the ponies seemed to be dudes) wearing a huge amount of insanely expensive specialized leather gear being led around by ladies in sexy riding outfits, prancing and making horsey noises. I was pretty disappointed that no one got smacked with a riding crop or pulled one of those little pony carts Anne Rice was always going on about.

But aaanyway, this was the worst example I've seen in a while of the "kinky people are freaks and murderers" trope that is constantly infuriating me in my consumption of mysteries and police procedurals. Brennan, our forensic anthropologist heroine, is basically the only cop-type who's even slightly non-judgmental towards our pony players, but she still comes out with gems like "Fetishism is a way of indulging in sexual activity, without actually engaging emotionally with the other person as a fully formed human being."* Which, um, even if you're using the hyper-judgey definition of fetishism that turns up in places like the DSM-IV-TR, is not necessarily a technically accurate definition. She then goes on to talk about "masturbation fetishes," to which I can only say LOL WUT?

So the show goes on with its unsurprising plotline of "one of these weirdos must be a murderer" and, surprise! One of them is, in fact, the murderer! Just to make it extra, extra hackneyed, it's the victim's play partner/toppy person. Because that's an original plot line.

It's seriously gotten to the point where I've become so desperate to see some sort of TV show where there's a murder and kinky people are involved and one of them isn't the murderer that I got really excited about that one episode of one of the innumerable "Law & Order" spinoffs where the domly dom dude turns out to just be a Lord Master Domly Asshole type who nonconsensually smacked the victim with a riding crop and not the guy who followed her out of the party to rape and murder her.

The last straw for me with this episode of "Bones," though, came at the very end. Douchey special agent David Boreanaz is sitting in a diner-y place having coffee with Brennan, when he unleashes this lovely speech:

Why? I’ll tell you why. Here we are. All of us are basically alone, separate creatures just circling each other. All searching for that slightest hint of a real connection. Some look in the wrong places, some, they just give up hope because in their mind they’re thinking ‘Oh, there’s nobody out there for me.’ But all of us, we keep trying over, and over again. Why? Because every once in a while, every once in a while, two people meet. And there’s that spark. And yes Bones, he’s handsome. And she’s beautiful. And maybe that’s all they see at first...But making love? Making. Love. That’s when two people become one...Yeah, Bones. A miracle. Those people- role-playing and their fetishes and their little sex games- It’s crappy sex. Well, at least compared to the real thing. *

This speech is mostly done as a voice over, played over shots of the other characters interacting with their partners. All the couples shown are 100% heterosexual, which is so full of issues and so angry-making on its own that I could write a whole separate post just on the fact that these are the couples being shown as "right" and "real" and how icky and homophobic that is.

But I seriously couldn't get past my blinding rage at this show that would not only characterize kinksters as freaks and murderers, but that would end with a speech dismissing all non-heteronormative, non-vanilla sex as "crappy" and not "the real thing." How dare you, faceless writers of a dumb TV show, tell me that my sex life is crappy!? How dare you dismiss the best relationship I've ever had as not being a real connection? The vast majority of the people I know who are into some form of kink are incredibly close, connected, and communicative with their partners. Negotiating issues that come up in kinky, BDSM-y relationships takes tons of effective communication and trust (which is not to say no vanilla people ever communicate or negotiate effectively, just that I think it's much less the norm to negotiate as much in non-kinky encounters and relationships.) I'm still ragey just writing about this, their explicit condemnation of my own relationship and my friends' relationships...which makes me think harder about their implied condemnation of non-hetero relationships...which makes me even more ragey! It's an unending cycle of rage.

Jack didn't get why I was so angry, why I took it all so personally. I had a hard time explaining, but I'll try to go into it in more detail about why it always feels so freaking personal when I watch or read stuff like this in another entry.

*Direct quotes are lifted from a transcript of the episode that I found here.

Another Note on Ettiquette...

I would have posted this as an addendum to yesterday's post, but I had to run out the door. A friend and I were talking about this the other night, and it's something that really annoys me, that I really just can't believe people do.

So generally, it's a rule that when you're at a play party, you don't interrupt a scene in progress. It's really, really rude and inconsiderate and, if you do it the really wrong way, it can be dangerous in an accidentally-getting-hit-by-stuff kind of way. The thing that people sometimes don't realize is that a scene is not necessarily over when the hitty part stops.

See, there's this thing called "aftercare," which most people need at the conclusion of a scene. Different people need different things, different versions of it, and it may look different from person to person, but you really shouldn't freakin' interrupt it!

I know I sometimes get dizzy and/or emotional after a particularly intense reaction. And when I do, I just want to sit and process and maybe have someone hug me and tell me I'm a good girl. Maybe drink some water or a Coke. What I really don't want to do is make smalltalk, especially with a stranger or someone I don't really know well.

So if you see someone being cuddled or stroked or wrapped in a blanket, or even if you see someone who was just being spanked or caned or otherwise played with sitting with a slightly dazed look on their face, for the love of God, WAIT a little while before you strike up a conversation with that person. Seriously. And if you do start chatting with someone, and they say they're a little out of it from a scene still, back the fuck off. Seriously.

And don't offer people foot massages immediately after a scene, either. That's freakin' creepy.

So writing about the creeper ex in my last post, I touched upon the fact that I'm scared he would find this blog and recognize the events I've written about...and then two seconds later, I brushed it off and said something about hoping he'd be scandalized. He probably would be scandalized--either that or dismissive, he'd read about my wonderful adventures and say "I knew she was a slut all along."

But what I didn't really go into is how afraid of him I still am.

It's definitely not as bad as it used to be, back in the days when I would actually jump when I saw a car that looked like the one his mom drove, but it's still there. He broke up with me nine years ago and I am still afraid of him.

For years I had nightmares. I dreamed we were at a party and got in a fight, I dreamed he was leading a cult and his followers kidnapped me. In college, I dreamed he appeared backstage during a show I was in, dragged me offstage and raped me in the basement of the theatre building. The nightmares only stopped within the past year or so.

I have a hard time talking about the whole situation. I tend to dismiss it. I tend to try to blame myself. A few months after the break up, he read my livejournal and was furious. He hadn't abused me, he claimed, I'd been a willing participant in everything. I'd wanted it all...and it's true, at the time I wanted nothing more than to prove my love, to please him. But that doesn't mean it wasn't abuse. It's hard to talk to my friends about it, because some of them were there. My college boyfriend just didn't understand at all what I meant by emotional abuse. "What exactly did he do to you?" he asked.

He manipulated me. The first few months were wonderful. I was perfect, an angel, his salvation. He was prone to extravagant romantic statements and it made me feel desired and loved and wanted. He had been so alone, and now he had found me and I was his first and only love and we would be together forever and it would be perfect.

The first clue should have been that I was terrified of him when he was angry--he would punch things, slam things around. When I did something "wrong," something like not being around to talk to him on the phone at exactly the right time every night, he would hurt himself, cut himself. There were certain things I couldn't say, things I couldn't do. Commenting on anyone else's appearance was forbidden, was hurtful and would make him jealous. He was only interested in me, so why should I think anyone else was attractive? Going anywhere without him would make him feel left out and upset. Saying things like "I can't imagine ever being with anyone else" implied that I wasn't 100% sure, and expressions of doubt made him feel like I didn't love him as much as he loved me. Didn't I want him to feel as loved and valued as I did?

I followed all his rules completely, but it was never enough. I stopped going anywhere with my friends, my friends stopped talking to me, but I still occasionally went places with my parents and that made me unavailable for phone calls. I started faking headaches and sickness when my parents wanted to do family things. I didn't look at other guys, but I still occasionally had dreams about them, and that made him upset. I stopped having sexual dreams about other guys. Don't ask me how that's even possible, but I did. If a dream crept under my defenses, I would turn it into a rape dream...which resulted in him telling me that if I was ever raped, he'd leave me because "I couldn't bear anyone else being inside you." He didn't even want anyone else to see my bare shoulders or arms or calves, so I wore long skirts and long sleeved shirts and shawls year round.

Even when I did all of these things completely and perfectly, he would find fault. I had hurt him in the past, and he couldn't trust that I wouldn't do it again. I begged for his forgiveness--literally begged--and apologized until the words "I'm sorry" didn't sound like words any more. I swore I'd be better, I'd do better, I'd be perfect. Things would be perfect. I wrote angsty poetry and short stories where my character was cursed or part demon and was redeemed by love. He said "You weren't cursed, you chose to hurt me."

But hey, he didn't hit me, right?

His brother did. His brother did not like me, and would do things like twist my arm behind my back until I had tears in my eyes. I would, in fact, provoke his brother to hurt me on purpose so that he would have to step in and save me, because that proved he loved me. I cried every day. It was a goal of mine at one point to go a week without crying, and it seemed like an impossible one. I often didn't know why I was crying--we were blissfully happy, right? Everything was going to be perfect someday, right?

So yeah...I'm still scared of him. I'm not sure why, as none of this would possibly happen again, but the thought of running into him somewhere ties my stomach up in knots. Every time I think I'm over it, something will happen to remind me of him and I'll freak out all over again. I still have a hard time saying his name.

I actually thought I was over it. Jack has been really wonderful and patient over the past two and a half years in helping me break out of the last few remaining behavior patterns I was stuck in because of this. But a few weeks ago, I read a lot of the archives over at Quizzical Pussy and her posts about her abusive ex scared me so badly I stayed up half the night. At one point, I actually was convinced she had dated the same guy as I had.

Clearly, I need to talk about this more. I need to talk about it until I'm not scared anymore, if that's even possible.

Only tangentially related to the main post: The evil ex definitely needs a pseudonym, but all the ones I keep coming up with make him sound too interesting. Need to think about that some more.

A Note on Etiquette...

There's one particular group I know that seriously emphasizes this particular aspect of scene etiquette, and I think it should definitely become a more widespread thing: Don't assume anything.

Basically, don't assume anyone's role or preference or relationship with anyone. Let me repeat that last part, for emphasis: Don't assume anyone's relationship with anyone.

So, for example, if you see a scene in progress and the top is say, using the rubber grip on her riding crop to rub between the bottom's legs, and the three people involved in said scene graciously allow you to join in, don't fucking assume you get to put your toys between the bottom's legs as well.

Maybe it's just because the people I generally play with are above average communicators, but it seems like a pretty common sense thing to ask before you touch someone's crotch with anything. I don't care if it's just your toy and not your hand, fucking ask. Ask the bottom, or, hell, ask the top who clearly has an established relationship here. But definitely, definitely, do not start touching the bottom's crotch with your toys without talking to anyone first, and doing it when the top is obviously distracted by something outside the scene makes you look like a creepy predator-type.

You know, just to pull an example out of the air. A completely fictional example.

Seriously, people, what the hell? Who does that?

Dear Prudence, Dan Savage, and...me.

I'm not an advice columnist. This is probably a good thing. When I was in high school and college, friends frequently asked me for relationship advice and I like to think I was okay at giving it, but now that I realize how fucked up my own relationships were then, I'm not actually that sure.

Regardless of my advice columnist status, and the fact that no one actually asked my opinion, I'm really, really weirded out and upset by today's Dear Prudence column about a teenage boy with a latex glove fetish. The letter is written by the kid's mom, and she asks "Should I try to stop him [from looking at glove porn, wearing gloves, etc.], or should I just chalk it up to a personality quirk and worry no longer?"

Unsurprisingly, Prudie starts tossing around words like "deviant" and talks to a shrink, who "says your son needs a complete psychological workup." Seriously? Because he likes gloves? I would say on a kinky scale of 1 to fucking scary, rubber and latex gloves are, like, a 0.5. And, of course, even kinks that fall at my personal fucking scary end of the scale are still okay.

Dan Savage, who is in my opinion a much sounder source for sex advice, posted his response, and it's (also unsurprisingly) not crazy and alarmist like Prudie's. I certainly don't agree with Dan on everything (certainly not with his stance on pit bulls), but I agree with him here.

I'd like to add that I'm pretty sure most 13-year-olds, regardless of whether or not they're kinky, feel worry about whether the people they're interested in dating will like them. So, in fact, do most people older than 13. I feel like sending your kid for a full psychological workup (though I have nothing against psychological professionals in general) is not going to accomplish much except reinforcing the message that there is something wrong with them.

I really wonder if this had been another issue, not a fetish but something else that made a kid concerned about their possibly limited dating pool, would the advice have been the same? If my mom had written this letter when I was 13 and said "My daughter is worried that her interest in vampire movies is 'too weird' and is scaring away potential boyfriends," (and a dude totally shot me down when I was 13 because of this) would a psychiatrist have been called in? Well, maybe. Because vampires are scary and evil and I was 13 around the time of the Vampire Clan murders, but that's beside the point. What if it were an interest in "Star Trek"? Or video games? I feel like those would have a very different answer. But because it's a fetish, it must be dangerous and scary and a sign of a bigger problem. That is such crap.

So you know what? I eventually found and started dating someone who liked me despite my inability to talk about anything other than vampire movies and The Rocky Horror Picture Show when I was 13. And all you people out there who are worried about finding someone--there are people out there who will like you and find you attractive and sexy and interesting despite (or better yet, because of) your interest in "Star Trek" or your obsession with Joan Crawford movies or even your weird freakin' fetishes, let alone your relatively harmless ones.

That one time when I got sexually assaulted.

I have alluded to this in other places, and I have sort of told my two best friends from high school and laughed it off ha ha ha. But the only person I have ever really told about this, with all the details and emotions and feelings is Jack.

And I know this blog has been a little low on sexy BDSM-y content lately (as if anyone I don't know personally is reading this anyway) and I promise to remedy that soon, but between the comment that Tails posted on my last entry and this article I happened upon today (and its companion piece), I decided I should really write about this.

It was October, and I was 23, a year out of college and working two jobs. I was living with my parents, and had only just passed my road test. I took the bus pretty much everywhere, including to and from my primary job at the mall every day. On this particular day, I had gotten out of work early and was headed home to get ready to go to my much more interesting second job.

I was sitting in my usual seat, three rows back on the "passenger" side, window seat. I was listening to my mp3 player and reading Son of a Witch by Gregory Maguire. I forget which stop it was, but an older man (in his 60s or so) got on and sat down next to me, in the aisle seat. His hand, which I remember had unusually long and well-manicured nails, hovered just on the edge of my field of vision.

I concentrated on my book, barely even noticing as the hand brushed against my thigh. It actually took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on...and by then his hand was creeping higher and higher up my leg. In my head, I was panicking. I was convinced that if I caused a scene no one would believe me. I pushed my book down against my thighs, trying to block him from moving his hand higher and to my right, towards my inner thigh.

I think I was shaking. I was trapped in my seat, a few stops away from my usual stop. I had to do something, so I decided that I would act just like a normal passenger. "Excuse me," I said, "this is my stop." He didn't move, so I stood up as the bus stopped, figuring I'd just push past him. As I stood up, he grabbed my ass, his hand moving, trying to get between my legs. "I SAID THIS IS MY STOP!" I half-shouted, and shoved him into the aisle with my shoulder and ran off the bus. People looked up. He just laughed at me.

I know I was shaking once I got off the bus. I half-ran through the park, terrified. I could already imagine what people would say if I told them. My mom would call the police, my friends would say what they would have done--"I would've screamed," "I would've punched him"--and I couldn't stand the thought of those things.

I think I took a shower when I got home, thinking that I should want to get clean. I changed my clothes and forced down some food, got my Halloween costume together to change into for the party I was going to later. I waited for my ride to my second job, and she picked me up and we went to work. I acted like nothing had happened, though I knew that if anyone touched me at work that night I would lose it. I chugged a five-hour energy shot, so I would be "on" for work and the party. Nothing unusual happened.

Weirdly, coincidentally, the party that night was where Jack and I first got together. I told him what had happened, and then I promptly forgot all about it for about six months. I actually can barely remember it now, despite other events that same day being crystal clear. Jack and I hooked up, started dating, and started exploring our kinky proclivities and I didn't really give it a second thought.

About six months later, I was jumped walking home from the bus by a teenage girl I'd never seen before. She hit me until my nose started bleeding, while a group of girls watched, then she ran off. She didn't try to take anything--not my purse or my mp3 player or my cell phone. Some guys pulled up and offered me a ride, but I refused, terrified. I walked home, crying and covered in blood. My mother wouldn't let me wash my face until the police came. I remember everything about that with complete clarity, including what I was wearing and what song was playing when it happened.

After that, Jack and I had to dial some things back for a while. No hitting my face, of course, but it didn't occur to me until later why I would get so freaked out when he laughed while we were playing. It was because he, that other man, laughed at me when I shoved him and ran off the bus. Once I figured that out I started getting more and more uncomfortable on crowded buses. I had to sit in an aisle seat, in the first row where I'd be visible. Now I have a hard time even getting on a city bus.

I didn't really talk about it. I actually found myself one day posting a comment on a friend's blog that said "I've never been sexually assaulted..." and then I suddenly remembered that I had. I would like to forget this. My brain is apparently trying to forget this. But I don't really want to be quiet about it. I got groped on a bus by a horrible man and, while it wasn't the worst thing to ever happen to me, it was really awful. I don't think I can explain how or why just being touched can leave you feeling sick and violated and awful, but it can and it does.

It wasn't trivial or stupid or nothing. It wasn't just something to brush off or forget. It's something I'm going to talk about and call by name: sexual assault. He assaulted me. And saying that isn't causing drama or making a big deal out of nothing or blowing it out of proportion, it's simply saying what happened and telling the truth.

Blaming myself

In the past few years, I think as the actual events get more distant, I've gotten really weird about the emotionally abusive relationship I was in when I was a teenager.

When I tell people about it, I think because emotional abuse is difficult to explain, I kind of blame myself a little. And that's starting to creep me out. I say things like "Well, he cut me off from my friends and told me how to dress and got angry when I went to the movies with my parents, but it was partially my own fault for not standing up to him."

You know what? I tried to stand up to him, so fuck that. But it is really difficult to explain how completely I was manipulated by guilt and fear. He never hit me. He just said things, like "If you really loved me..." and "Well, I did this for you, so why can't you do the same for me?" It doesn't sound like anything too terrible, but he could send me into a panic. I always had to prove myself. I always had to apologize and beg (literally beg) for forgiveness for every slight. Awful things like...commenting that an actor in a movie was attractive.

That was abuse. And it wasn't my fault. It wasn't because I was weak or inadequate. It wasn't my fault.

Please refer me back to this post the next time I'm in a conversation where I dismiss this as "not a big deal" or "partially my own fault."

Creepy Dudes (and the people who defend them)

So there's been a lot of semi-heated debate in a lot of the groups I'm in online lately about creeps. Particularly about creepy dudes, though of course ladies can be creepy, too. I've contributed, and listed off the attitudes and behaviors that I, personally, find creepy, as did lots of other people. I feel like no one actually said anything about looks, and yet there's this pervasive, infuriating idea that when a woman (and always, only, specifically a woman) says a guy is creepy, it's because she's decided he's "not hot enough" to be "worthy" of her.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is complete bullshit.

It is sexist, entitled, bullshit, which perpetuates the idea that men are allowed to treat women however the hell they want and women are supposed to be flattered by the attention. And I'm pissed off and sick of it.

The main interaction that I think of when I think of a creepy dude at a play party was a guy Jack and I once chatted with at one of our favorite monthly parties. He was an ordinary-looking guy, in semi-dressy clothes, around our age. It was his first party, and he told us how he wound up there and we told him how cool the group usually is...and then the conversation turned to our specific kinks. And I remember the way this guy looked at me as he said to Jack "What's the kinkiest thing you do to her? Does she let you do anal?" At that point, I made some sort of excuse and got the hell out of there.

What I felt at the time, and what I feel in other interacting-with-creepy-dudes situations, was that this guy wasn't really thinking of me as a person. It would have been far less weird if he'd actually engaged with both of us and talked about...well, whatever. If he'd said "Are you guys into anal? 'Cause that's hot!" it would've been much less creepy. But instead I felt, well, objectified. Like a thing rather than a person.

So basically, what I'm saying is that women are people. And people like to be talked with, and looked at, and generally interacted with as if they are people--with thoughts and feelings and things like that. Not like objects onto which someone else's fantasies are projected. And not just that, but it's totally okay and acceptable to NOT like it when someone treats you as less than human.

So no more of this "She's only saying he was creepy because she doesn't think he's hot" nonsense, okay guys? If Mr. Does-She-Let-You-Do-Anal had looked like Johnny Depp, it still would have been an intensely uncomfortable situation. And that's a general "guys," not a gender-specific "guys," since it seems like other women say this even more often than men do. Saying that is kind of creepy on its own.