The Reins of Intimacy
“Would you mind holding his reins for just a moment?”
An innocent enough request for a stable or paddock. But we were not in a stable or a paddock. It was after midnight, we were in an expansive basement warren of connecting rooms, and the 'him' referred to by the mature, very well dressed woman at my side was a graying, genteel looking man wearing a leather harness, synthetic replica hooves, tail, bridle and not a whole lot more. He nickered gently as I took the reins and murmured that he was being such a good boy.
Earlier that evening on my way in to the BDSM club I'd passed a naked man standing in what amounted to an oversized iron bird cage. Later he would kneel in front of me and beg to be struck with the leather crop I'd just purchased from the table of hand crafted implements. I obliged him rather more gently than he would likely have gladly endured, while in the mid-distance a woman squealed with delighted pain as a single-tail whip met her back.
Flash forward a few years. It's a sunny day in a perfectly respectable office and I can't stop giggling because my therapist has just used the words 'sexual pleasure' in a sentence. We're discussing issues of intimacy, and suddenly I don't know what to do with myself.
He puts it down to the fact that although I write erotica, I'm not used to speaking about intimate acts in person. I don't dissuade him from that idea because it's not until later that I realize how patently untrue that is. I have been in attendance at, partaken in and spoken of the most intimate acts with others, sometimes as casually as if I were discussing bus schedules.
For reasons unfathomable, in the therapy room all my years of experience, all my exposure to the outermost edges of sexual behavior, everything I have seen and done and described in detail is gone in a flash and I am left trying to contain a giggling fit which reignites every time he makes even the blandest reference to the simplest kinds of physical intimacy. One would be forgiven for thinking I'd never heard of sex before.
So why this laughter? Perhaps it is because the day is sunny and too bright and warm for the notion of such things. Or perhaps it is simply hearing the words out of a mild mannered therapist, the incongruous nature of the topic of conversation. Or maybe it's something more than the weather or the time of day, or our respective job titles.
Maybe it's because therapy is an emotionally intimate space where I have revealed more of myself than before, and maybe it's because mentions of sexual matters don't seem to belong there. Maybe it's because I'm afraid of what that might mean to discuss such things. Maybe I'm reluctant to sully the purity of the therapeutic space with those words. Sex is where everything goes wrong, after all.
But there are still more maybes. Maybe it's because he broached the subject first this session. Maybe it's because the words swept out of left field and surprised me with their brazen presence. Maybe it's because for a split second I feel slightly less in control. We have spoken about physical intimacy before at my leading and I was as solemn as a monk at mass. But there's a gulf between initiating a conversation and suddenly finding oneself swept up in it days later.
Maybe that's it. Or maybe there's still a bigger, more fundamental maybe. Maybe it's that the me of then and the me of now are not the same me. The me of the moment is whatever the me needs to be. There have been so many mes in the past, and now there is a therapy me. The therapy me is so out of touch with that iteration of past me that in the session when my therapist mentioned I may not be used to speaking about sex, I completely forgot a series of protracted, intense experiences of sexual communication.
Therapy has created, in essence, an entirely new me. A me who isn't necessarily coherent or even present outside therapy. I don't mean in a schizophrenic, dissociative multiple personality sense, I mean in a more subtle but still pretty disturbing way.
Looking back at my life, I can suddenly see how many mes there have been, and whence they have originated. My best friend in high school liked to go out to clubs. Within months I was manufacturing fake ID's and spending every weekend underage and in bars. When I went to university and met a cute stoner boy, I developed a strong affinity for marijuana as well and spent the better part of two years more or less constantly high. I wish I could say this is something I've grown out of, but it's not. When I met my current partner, a mechanically minded man with a passion for video games and staying in, me changed again. I now have a more recent model of his favorite car than he owns, a high end computer, and a game library of over 400 games of which I play about three.
When I connect with someone, I seem to become them in some sense, quite often doing whatever it is they like to do to an even greater degree than they do, sort of like the song 'anything you can do, I can do better', except it's more 'anything you are, I can be better'.
My therapist has often suggested that I let people get to know me. I've resisted this with a wide range of excellent rationales, from the fact that people suck, to the fact that people really suck. It occurs to me now that my reluctance might actually be the fact that I wouldn't have the foggiest idea who they'd be getting to know.
Who am me?*
(*Question plagiarized from Colbert, naturally.)
An innocent enough request for a stable or paddock. But we were not in a stable or a paddock. It was after midnight, we were in an expansive basement warren of connecting rooms, and the 'him' referred to by the mature, very well dressed woman at my side was a graying, genteel looking man wearing a leather harness, synthetic replica hooves, tail, bridle and not a whole lot more. He nickered gently as I took the reins and murmured that he was being such a good boy.
Earlier that evening on my way in to the BDSM club I'd passed a naked man standing in what amounted to an oversized iron bird cage. Later he would kneel in front of me and beg to be struck with the leather crop I'd just purchased from the table of hand crafted implements. I obliged him rather more gently than he would likely have gladly endured, while in the mid-distance a woman squealed with delighted pain as a single-tail whip met her back.
Flash forward a few years. It's a sunny day in a perfectly respectable office and I can't stop giggling because my therapist has just used the words 'sexual pleasure' in a sentence. We're discussing issues of intimacy, and suddenly I don't know what to do with myself.
He puts it down to the fact that although I write erotica, I'm not used to speaking about intimate acts in person. I don't dissuade him from that idea because it's not until later that I realize how patently untrue that is. I have been in attendance at, partaken in and spoken of the most intimate acts with others, sometimes as casually as if I were discussing bus schedules.
For reasons unfathomable, in the therapy room all my years of experience, all my exposure to the outermost edges of sexual behavior, everything I have seen and done and described in detail is gone in a flash and I am left trying to contain a giggling fit which reignites every time he makes even the blandest reference to the simplest kinds of physical intimacy. One would be forgiven for thinking I'd never heard of sex before.
So why this laughter? Perhaps it is because the day is sunny and too bright and warm for the notion of such things. Or perhaps it is simply hearing the words out of a mild mannered therapist, the incongruous nature of the topic of conversation. Or maybe it's something more than the weather or the time of day, or our respective job titles.
Maybe it's because therapy is an emotionally intimate space where I have revealed more of myself than before, and maybe it's because mentions of sexual matters don't seem to belong there. Maybe it's because I'm afraid of what that might mean to discuss such things. Maybe I'm reluctant to sully the purity of the therapeutic space with those words. Sex is where everything goes wrong, after all.
But there are still more maybes. Maybe it's because he broached the subject first this session. Maybe it's because the words swept out of left field and surprised me with their brazen presence. Maybe it's because for a split second I feel slightly less in control. We have spoken about physical intimacy before at my leading and I was as solemn as a monk at mass. But there's a gulf between initiating a conversation and suddenly finding oneself swept up in it days later.
Maybe that's it. Or maybe there's still a bigger, more fundamental maybe. Maybe it's that the me of then and the me of now are not the same me. The me of the moment is whatever the me needs to be. There have been so many mes in the past, and now there is a therapy me. The therapy me is so out of touch with that iteration of past me that in the session when my therapist mentioned I may not be used to speaking about sex, I completely forgot a series of protracted, intense experiences of sexual communication.
Therapy has created, in essence, an entirely new me. A me who isn't necessarily coherent or even present outside therapy. I don't mean in a schizophrenic, dissociative multiple personality sense, I mean in a more subtle but still pretty disturbing way.
Looking back at my life, I can suddenly see how many mes there have been, and whence they have originated. My best friend in high school liked to go out to clubs. Within months I was manufacturing fake ID's and spending every weekend underage and in bars. When I went to university and met a cute stoner boy, I developed a strong affinity for marijuana as well and spent the better part of two years more or less constantly high. I wish I could say this is something I've grown out of, but it's not. When I met my current partner, a mechanically minded man with a passion for video games and staying in, me changed again. I now have a more recent model of his favorite car than he owns, a high end computer, and a game library of over 400 games of which I play about three.
When I connect with someone, I seem to become them in some sense, quite often doing whatever it is they like to do to an even greater degree than they do, sort of like the song 'anything you can do, I can do better', except it's more 'anything you are, I can be better'.
My therapist has often suggested that I let people get to know me. I've resisted this with a wide range of excellent rationales, from the fact that people suck, to the fact that people really suck. It occurs to me now that my reluctance might actually be the fact that I wouldn't have the foggiest idea who they'd be getting to know.
Who am me?*
(*Question plagiarized from Colbert, naturally.)