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.

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.

A Whole Bunch of Stuff

I know, worst post title ever.

I haven't blogged in a while. A lot has been going on, I've been cranky, Jack has been around the house more which is less conducive to writing, and since he's been on a less regular schedule we've both been partying more. Basically, I am full of excuses.

While I was busy not blogging, a new Carnival of Kinky Feminists came out! And they included one of my posts again! And lots of other peoples' posts that are far more interesting than mine, so you should go and read them!

While I was reading the various posts in this second Carnival post, I came across one entitled "What We're Expected to Be" over at Beyond the Hills and found it really fascinating. Roles are so complicated, and they get more complicated (for me at least) all the time.

You see, Jack has a bit of a masochistic side--sometimes he likes some pain and attention. And I have no problem providing pain, but I tend to freak the fuck out if I perceive a power shift. Basically, if a scene is going on, I am submissive. I do not want to be in control, I don't want to have the power. Order me to hurt you, and I'm game, but don't put me in control, that makes me really uncomfortable. Once, while discussing this, Jack said "The role of submissive, of being owned by me, so comforting that you don't want anything to threaten that." And it's true.

A story: So Jack and I have this friend, let's call her Eve. Eve and I once went dildo shopping together, and later I fucked her with a strap-on. While said fucking was going on, Eve told me to spank her. "What?" I said, thinking I'd misheard her. "SPANK ME!" she repeated, slightly more emphatically. So I did, while fucking her from behind, grinning from ear-to-ear the entire time while Jack watched. It was fun!

Now, it's possible to see all of this as me switching. I fucked a girl, I spanked her, clearly the roles here are obvious. But in my mind, I spanked a girl because she told me to, and that makes all the difference. I like taking orders, I like doing what I'm told. I will totally hold someone down, or hit them or bite them, but I'm not topping them, I'm helping or following orders. I like helping, but I have no interest in topping.
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Jack and I have been working on reworking the nonmonagamous aspect of our relationship. The break down of our rules has been, for the past year and a half or so, that I get to have sex with women, either in threesomes or by myself. And Jack gets to beat people up. Which...um...kind of wasn't that fair to Jack, despite the impressive mental contortions I kept going through to explain why this arrangement was totally fair and fine and anyway it works for us so it's really not your business and why are you questioning me and grrrrr.

You may have detected the confrontational tone there. Obviously I was having some trouble with things. But we talked the other day, and re-drew some boundaries (Oral sex for everyone! YAY!) and established a compromise in which, well, we both get to have sex with other women, for certain definitions of sex, but we'll also be doing more D/s stuff together.

We used to do a lot more D/s and service-y type stuff before we moved in together. Have I mentioned that here before? It was fun and hot and made me feel close and connected to Jack even when we only got to see each other on week-ends. I had lists of things to do! I kept a journal! And a lot of my fantasies have been D/s oriented, even before I knew I was kinky. But when we moved in together and actually shared a living space, lists of household tasks that I'd thought were super hot before abruptly became anything but sexy.

It also didn't help that I, not knowing about FetLife had fallen into an unfortunate Maledom/femsub community online where 24/7 was kind of viewed as the only real, authentic way to do D/s. It was kind of like how things were with my college boyfriend, when I was convinced we needed to get engaged because that's what people did and that's the next step and so why haven't you proposed to me yet? I (in my naive, deluded state) thought 24/7 total power exchange was the direction in which our relationship must inevitably go!

Now I realize I don't have to get married if I don't want to, and that D/s and service can be a part of our relationship without my being confined to a cage or not allowed on the furniture. Not that there's anything wrong with relationships where someone is confined to a cage or has to sit on the floor, it's just not for me. Like how marriage and 2.5 kids and a house in the suburbs aren't for everyone.

Actually, that's why actually being on FetLife and being part of a live-and-in-person kink scene and having kinky friends is so great--because you get to know people who have all different type of relationships that work in all kinds of ways and it's easier to avoid falling into the trap of reading one group on the whole internet and thinking everybody does it this way, so I have to do it this way, too.
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More stuff about body image: I have gained back some weight. I realize this is not supposed to bother me, and I actually thought it didn't. I'm working on eating better, not out of a desire to lose weight but more because I've realized I'm a grown up and I need to stop eating like a teenager whose parents aren't home. Also, I got tired of my coworkers making fun of my Hot Pocket addiction.

Like I said, I thought it didn't bother me. Sure, I've gained ten pounds, but don't my tits look great? I was feeling pretty awesome...

...until I found myself in bed with a friend who is totally conventionally attractive (which is to say, attractive in a way agreed upon by most of society, not necessarily conventional-looking), and she kept telling me I was pretty. Every time she said it, I felt awful and embarrassed and like I might cry. I wanted to shout "Stop saying that!"

So yeah...so much for being totally over my body image issues. I need to work on this.

Reconciling the Guilt

Since moving to New York, I've discovered that I really enjoy scratch baking and cooking.

I like making delicious things from basic ingredients. I like knowing that I can make these things, that I can produce buttercream frosting as good as the buttercream frosting served at overpriced cupcake shops. I like how old fashioned it feels, how pretty desserts can be, how it feels like making order out of chaos. I like that it makes me feel close to my great-grandmother, whose kitchen skills were locally famous in her small hometown.

Sometimes, I worry about my kitchen proclivities. Are they regressive? Are they anti-feminist? Is my desire for yummy food made from scratch, food like my great-grandmother made, a sign that I secretly want to return to the times when a woman's place was in the kitchen? Is the pleasing, desirous feeling get while looking at the Joy of Baking somehow a sign of creeping, covert sexism? Because I swear to god I feel something like lust when I see that picture of the vanilla cupcakes on that site, with their perfect, perky paper wrappers and charming blue frosting. And feminist women aren't supposed to lust after the ability to make perfect cupcakes, are we?

And then I realize I'm being a jackass. My obsession with perfect, pretty baked goods or extra-delicious mac and cheese made from scratch is because...I like baking, I like cooking. I like making things. It only becomes bad if I decided that all women have to love making perfect baked goods. Actually, in my parents' house when I was growing up, my dad did most of the cooking and was really into making things from scratch with fresh ingredients, and my mom and I would bake bread with dark beer on her days off from her various interesting jobs. Also, um...I like food? I love eating, most of my best friends are really into food, and eating and sharing delicious things is one of my favorite social activities. And if you're a lady who doesn't love baking, that's awesome. It's totally your right and choice to bake or not.

It's all about choices. Feminism is about having choices. If I want to bake things, I get to bake things. Baking is not inherently sexist just because it's sometimes reminiscent of a time when women didn't have choices. If I don't want to bake, I can do any number of other things...like go bowling, something my other great-grandmother loved to do. When she wasn't busy riding motorcycles, that is. And if you're a woman, you should totally have a choice to bake or bowl or sew or ride motorcycles if you want to do any or all of these things.

So why is it so hard to apply these things to sex? Much like I know lots of dudes who like cooking or baking, I know plenty of guys who are submissive or masochists. Like cooking, BDSM only becomes a problem when someone decides all women everywhere are inherently submissive and should bow before all the inherently dominant men. It's also all about consent. If I'm not in the mood to cook, Jack can make dinner or we'll order take-out. If I'm not in the mood for a scene, or decide I don't want to play, I can safeword and say "Hey, not right now."

Sometimes I think that saying all BDSM everywhere is inherently misogynist is just as silly as saying that about all baking.

Failure to Communicate

This is my 50th post! Woohoo! 50th post!

Anyway, I'd been feeling really smug yesterday, thinking of writing an entry about how good Jack and I have been at negotiating in-scene. It can be tricky to do that without dropping roles, and I have a serious tendency to just drop things and go "NO! Nothing in my ass right now, thanks, I'm not really feeling that today!" or whatever. And since Jack and I are both actors, and the sort of self-congratulatory assholes that actors often are, it feels like a special accomplishment when we can cover stuff like that without breaking character, as it were.

We had a really intense thing going on the other night. He threw me around a lot, and I was really deliciously scared, and when he asked me what I was afraid of I had a moment where I realized that I could decide exactly how this could go based on what I said I was afraid of. I squeaked out "I'm afraid you'll kill me--please don't kill me, I'll do anything." and that set the scary tone for the rest of the scene. I communicated, essentially, "You can be really fucking scary right now and I will find that hot."

Another night, I was feeling really ultra-submissive. It wasn't even something I completely realized I was doing at the time, but when I was calling Jack "sir," which is usually what I call him during that kind of scene, it didn't feel right at all, it didn't really express the ridiculous depths of my eagerness-to-please at that moment...so I shifted to calling him "Master," not something I do very often--not actually trying to communicate anything, but just because it felt right and seemed like the proper form of address at the time. Jack, knowing that I don't usually throw around the m-word, was then able to figure out where I was mentally. And hotness ensued.

Then, last night, when we were both sniping at each other and kind of cranky and out-of-sorts and play-fighting a lot, he waved his fist at me. I said "Fine, whatever, just don't hit me in the face." He punched me in the shoulder a few times...then slapped me in the face. I thought I'd clearly communicated that I didn't especially want to be hit in the face right then, he thought I just didn't want to be punched in the face. He apologized.

Sometimes, when everything is going well, you can communicate subtly. Sometimes, when you're cranky and annoyed even seemingly explicit communication isn't clear enough. Also, there are all sorts of other situations and scenarios where either of these things might work or not work. I need to learn to not be smug and self-congratulatory. Maybe this blog needs a "Lucy is an asshole" tag.


(Note: I think this entry maybe is the first where I've written this much about major scenes Jack and I have done that include possibly scary stuff. I feel a little weird about posting it, especially so soon after that entry about guilt and pop culture images of violence against women. It's kind of like "Oh, hai, here I am acting out those scenarios I wrote about in that other entry." I feel a little creepy. I might post more on this later?)

On Re-Watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer

So guys, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I've been re-watching the TV show from the beginning, because it's on Netflix instant and I'm bored and I really liked this show when it was initially on TV. And, well, since I can apparently only blog about things that are not at all new or relevant, I'm blogging about it.

The thing is, I watched this show pretty much religiously for the first two years of high school. And now, re-watching the early episodes, I have to say that a lot of the stuff with Angel and the boys-will-turn-evil-if-you-fuck-them thing is annoyingly heavy-handed, and Buffy's super powers are annoying in their lack of real world practicality and things are simplified and sometimes almost preachy.

But here's the thing...watching the early episodes of this remind me so clearly of what it was like being in an abusive relationship. Not so much the actual relationship part, as, well, to paraphrase what my lovely ex said, my ex wasn't possessed by a demon or put under a spell, he was just a dude who treated me like shit. No mystical, magical excuse needed. The stuff Buffy deals with after killing Angel, though, is like the writers looked into my head and wrote down exactly what it was like to get over my ex. Buffy's nightmares, the fear that Angel will come back mixed with wanting him to come back is like seeing myself on screen. I remember feeling that! Lonely and scared at the same time! My ex may not have actually been an evil demon-type vampire, but the nightmares I had about him for years afterwords turned him into one sometimes.

What's even weirder is that these episodes were on before this happened to me. I was, in fact, either not-yet-dating that guy or still with him when this stuff was on TV. How on earth was I so completely oblivious? At the time, I saw all these things and they just didn't connect at all. Now, I see these interactions, these moments where I can't trust Angel even when he really does get his soul back and it's deeply scary and awful. How could I not recognize then that the same thing was happening to me?

Also, I find it interesting that I can't deal at all with Angel anymore. The first time around, I watched this and I had no difficulty suspending my disbelief that Angel lost his soul, got his soul back, and so on and so forth. Now I see David Boreanaz on screen (I swear I don't actually have anything against David Boreanaz as a person or an actor, he just gets cast in some roles I find unfortunate) and my abuser-radar is pinged and I'm afraid of him. Like, I have an actual, visceral reaction to seeing him and it's all I can do not to yell "Don't trust him!" at the screen. I don't trust him, and I feel like he's making excuses with the whole soul/soulless thing, and it creeps me the fuck out.

I guess I'm still angry with myself sometimes. Actually, I'm angry with myself a lot of the time. I should be smarter than to get hurt, I should be cooler than to let things bother me. And I don't know why it should seem so bizarre that the 25-year-old me can see things the 15-year-old me couldn't while watching re-runs of a TV show about vampires. But it kind of does.

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.

The Last Time I Had Sex

I've written here before about my creepy abusive ex from high school, and I've written about being groped by a stranger on the bus. And since April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, I've been reading lots of other people's assault stories. For some reason, what reading these stories reminded me of was not my own assault story, but...well...the last time I had sex with my creepy abusive ex-boyfriend.

It was consensual. It was, in fact, probably what I wanted almost more than anything else in the world at that time, because I was convinced that if we had sex again he would want me back. But I'm getting ahead of myself...let me start over.

He broke up with me. He broke up with me in April for unclear reasons (I was convinced it was my fault, because everything had always been my fault) after at least a month where he was increasingly distant and strange. Later, I would remember the IM conversations with my "best friend," a girl we knew only online, that he had finished by saying "I love you," and it would all add up, but for the time being I was devastated and confused and spent pretty much all my time either begging him to take me back or deciding when, exactly, I was going to kill myself.

The day it happened was the day of his graduation. After the ceremony, I went out to dinner with his family and back to his house. We were kissing, making out in his bed, and I think he asked me what I wanted. I told him I wanted to have sex. We left his room and went into a closed-off room that no one used for anything except storage. He kept asking, over and over, "Are you sure you want to do this?" It seemed like things were going so well, he had been so attentive, so affectionate, so nice to me, that I was thinking I had passed the "temporary break-up test" (because up until this point, everything had always been a test) and that we were going to get back together. I was very, very sure I wanted it.

I laid down on the floor and he got on top of me. It was brief, in my memory it seems like it only lasted a minute or two but I'm not completely sure. I remember being confused about where the condom had come from, as he'd said a while before that he was out of them and that's why we weren't having sex any more. And then, after he came, he got up and went back to his room. I followed, and sat on the bed. I don't know what I was expecting--that he would say we were officially getting back together? That he would come sit on the bed and cuddle with me? Instead, he picked up a cheap plastic bracelet off his dresser and tossed it to me. Then he went to sit down on the floor and play video games with his brother. He pretty much ignored me for the rest of the night, until I went home.

I didn't have penis-in-vagina sex again for six and a half years, and for that time this was an event of huge, terrifying significance in my life. It was "The Last Time I Had Sex."

It would hit me a few months later, the awful symbolism of the bracelet and the way he ignored me. I ended up tearfully telling my next boyfriend the story, concluding it by saying "he thought I was just a worthless whore."

The creepy ex didn't speak to me for about two months after graduation, after the last time we had sex, and over the course of those two months I woke up. It was that sudden. I got up one day, and I wasn't in love with him anymore. I wasn't devastated. I was, well, me again. And I slowly reconstructed my life, figured out who I was. He and I were in contact for a few months after, on and off, with me telling him to leave me alone and him convincing me we could be friends. Eventually I stopped replying to his e-mails.

I'm still scared of him sometimes. Part of me is scared he'll find this blog post and read it and recognize it (there are enough details here I feel like he would) and then he'd have found me again.

Part of me hopes that if he did, he'd be scandalized by what I'm up to now, since he would constantly say that he "hated sluts" and that open relationships were wrong and cheating.

But today, thinking about this, I'm really unnerved by how many times he asked if I really wanted to have sex with him that day. I'm convinced he knew it was a bad idea, he knew I'd look back and regret it, and he was really just obtaining clear consent over and over to cover his ass. I'm so creeped out by that thought.

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."