My Whole Sex Life

This morning I had a flash of inspiration, when I realized that something I’ve worked on for years in my sex life would really benefit me in general. I guess sex and life really are intimately related. Basically, I’ve been meditating on being present, being here now.

Even during sex, being present can be difficult. I struggle with letting go of the past. Occasionally flashbacks hijack my experience. I try to acknowledge the feelings and remind myself that I am no longer trapped in that situation. I don’t have to respond as I would have in the distant past, or yesterday. This is so huge – I can affirm that as a constantly evolving person, what really matters is not then, but right now.

The future is even harder to come to terms with than the past, though. If I’m thinking of initiating sex, I worry about all of the things I ought to be doing instead. My everyday worries rob me of the joys to be had right now. Even when making love, thinking too much about what comes next can put a damper on my pleasure. I find that I only truly lose myself in sex when I am wholly in the moment, not limited by who I was or who I think I ought to be.

I’ve worked on being present during sex for years. I think it’s why I’ve been able to enjoy myself so much. So why haven’t I seen that the same concept could be applied to every other aspect of my life? I find myself constantly focused on next steps rather than where I’m at. That can be helpful, but not if I can’t let myself be happy now. Not if it is a distancing technique.

The main thing for me today is that I feel bad over things that are in the past, from childhood abuse to the fight that Harold and I had a few nights ago. Everything is basically resolved, but I’m holding on to the emotions. The events are sticky. I need to remember that I am not a child, not a partner with hurt feelings. Those things are part of my past – they contribute to the person I am – but I am constantly expanding. Everything I experience makes me bigger and gives me more resources with which to act in the world.

Related to this idea is the concept of forgiveness, something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I finally understand that forgiving someone is something you do for yourself, not them. Forgiving a person means you can let go of the sticky parts – whatever that person did to you can’t hurt you any more. Forgiveness means you can be present in the now.

It’s woo-woo, but I’m finding it helpful. Remembered hurts and the fear of future pain can sometimes distract me from everything else, which is sad when I’m surrounded by beauty and joy. The next time I’m feeling stuck and struggly, during sex or otherwise, I am going to breath deeply and remind myself to be here now.

I lie in bed at night and think about power. What is power? Where does power come from? Why can I be powerful in some ways, but not in others? How does power manifest in sexual relationships? And mostly, what can I do to feel more empowered in my life? It’s a lot to ponder. I have to examine my painful past – childhood abuse – and take apart things so deep that they feel unchangeable. I must challenge my assumptions about how the world works. And ultimately, I need to decide who I am going to be.

Early in life I learned that it wasn’t very safe to show up. I spent my time trying to please everyone. The grownups had the power. I had no right to choose. I had a very real sense of danger about making a wrong move because the consequences would be painful. This was normal, but also kept secret from the outside world. I became expert at presenting a good face. As a result, I felt powerful in the outside world, but inconsequential internally. I developed patterns of behavior designed to try to control situations in order to mitigate the danger of making a wrong decision.

I’ve come to believe that power is the ability to make choices, preferably by following your heart. It took me years to be able to make any kind of choice. I was always afraid of making the wrong choice. Now I’m likely to make a choice too quickly, if anything. And it’s true that I feel powerless if I feel there are no choices. There is a kind of power that comes from deep within. I sense it like an illumination at my core. When I contemplate options from there, I just feel the right path. That surety of belief, and the ability to act on it, is power.

Of course there is the power over others type of power as well. I grew up with it. It involves getting people to give up their power for you, or simply forcing it. I don’t think that personal power can ever be truly taken away, but it can be easy to believe that you don’t have a choice. Because this model of power was impressed on me early on, I’ve done all that I can to avoid it, while still playing by those rules. I keep waiting for people to let me be powerful, rather than feeling my own power.

As a parent, I’ve been acutely aware of power. I have felt true to my own power. I am the mom. I am in charge. But that doesn’t mean that I enforce my will on everyone. I try to teach my children about their own power. I explain things. I give them choices. I help them figure out how to make good decision. I am a resource. I guide. I foster independence while honoring their spirits and providing a safe shelter.

As a CEO, I am struggling to figure out how to protect my vision without crippling the company. I’m good at making things happen, but scared that my dreams might be taken away as they were when I was a child. I’m functioning somewhere in between power from within and power over. I’m waiting for everyone else to grant me power rather than just assuming I have it. I’m not very skillful with power in areas that really matter to me. Thankfully, I work with people who understand.

As a lover, power is complicated. I’ve done so much work around my sexuality, that sex feels pretty safe. I generally know the power dynamics going into a sexual situation. I used to be more comfortable being submissive sexually because someone else would make all of the choices. All I had to worry about was my own reactions. It was a relief to be in a situation where I didn’t have to fear making a wrong choice. It was easy to know how to please my partner. Over the past five years, I’ve become more of a top. I like to control the situation. I trust myself more to be able to read my partner’s energy and make good decisions. More and more, I am looking to make love as equals. Playing with power can be fun, but I now want to strip away the psychological distractions and focus all of our energy on being together.

I’ve noticed that some people feel less powerful as life goes on. Possibilities seem wide open when you are young, but all of the choices you make over the course of your life seem to limit the available options. The economy sliding down must be amplifying this effect for a great many people now. I’ve seen this kind of paralysis creep into sex, as well as general life choices. Maybe the narrowing is deceptive, though – if power comes from within, then you own it completely and no outside force can affect it. Maybe giving up is the true loss of power.

I am a very powerful person. I’m good at seeing all of the options, even the hidden ones. I know myself pretty well. Right now pain and anger often cloud my ability to follow my heart, but it’s a passing thing. I can choose to let it flow through me. My power comes from within.

Remember the first time you fell in love? I had a long distance love, where we crafted beautiful love letters to each other and rarely saw each other. We were kids exploring our blossoming hormonal states, but we were smart kids and we used words. He’s still a good friend.

Remember your first real stab at a relationship? He pursued me the summer before I started high school, the age my daughter is now. We dated for about two years – very serious. I look back with a certain soft nostalgia – he was so sweet to me, made me believe for first time in my life that I was beautiful – but I can also see the seeds of all of the problems that I’ve spent the last 20 years working through.

All of this is up because I found Mr. First Boyfriend on Facebook yesterday. He looks great. He’s lost weight since high school and now I’m guessing his body can back up his attitude. I haven’t seen or heard from him in about 20 years. It’s weird to know someone so well and not know them at all. I’m not sure what to say.

I want to thank him. He was patient and kind to me. He helped me through flash backs of sex abuse. He was my companion and my knight against a cruel world. I came to learn myself through us learning each other. I loved his sense of style as well as his sense of humor. He was not the first person I ever had sex with, but he was the person I explored sex with. We spent hours together that literally saved my life. And most important, he introduced me to the world of roleplay gaming – D & D and Cthulhu.

I want to apologize to him. I was badly scarred from sex abuse and very scared of being in a relationship. I ran away the first time he kissed me. I have always been polyamorous by nature. As a teenager, I did not have a model for how to proceed. While I never meant to hurt anyone, I think that I probably did not handle my multiple relationships with any skill. I always came back to him, but I think he would have preferred monogamy. I hope that he forgives my lack of skill, understanding that I was young and had a lot to work through.

Which makes it ironic that I also want to shake him hard. It took forever to work out my body issues after he repeatedly told me that my thighs were too big. And I want to go back in time and teach my younger self about consent because no one should EVER respond to, “I want to stop.” with, “Wait, I’m almost done.” It took me years and years to be able to say no and expect to be taken seriously. Not all of that is his fault, but it still makes me cringe when I think of it.

At least we had a lot of sex. I was his first. And still he waited 9 months for me to be ready. I recorded each instance of our sex in my journal, covering pages. I kept the wrapper for our first condom. Actually, somewhere I have a whole file of mementos of our relationship – love notes, prom pictures, and the first song he ever wrote – it’s for me! I’m sappy that way. And I like to think of how adventurous we were sexually. From terrible strawberry warming gel to fucking while he had a fever to me bent over behind the door while my mom made dinner in the next room.

We’ve both gone off in our own directions, but in a different world we might be sharing our lives. There was once a lot of hurt between us, but now I mostly feel happy for him and his successes. I wonder what he makes of me. He helped me so much during a challenging time. I like to think that I gave him things that he needed too. Actually, every person I’ve been intimate with has changed me irrevocably, left their touch on my soul. Isn’t that the power and prerogative of love?

Today marks 18 months of blogging since my first post on June 1st, 2010. This is also my 300th post!

When I first agreed to blog my sex life, I didn’t have any idea what I was getting into, I just did it, without thinking about how it would impact my life. It took me a while to find my voice. I still like to experiment with different formats and approaches. While sex has always been a big part of my life, it’s been interesting to frame my life in terms of sex. It’s made me broaden my definition of sex.

I find I’m sometimes tempted to do something sexually just because it would make a good blog post, but that doesn’t make a huge difference because I’m also just adventurous. Many times my sex dates include testing out products for review. My partners know that anything is fair game for the blog. But my life is by no means all sex. I am the mother of 5 children, and you wouldn’t believe (or maybe you would) how many posts I write with Blues Clues or Barney in the background.

It’s been a great trip – and I plan to keep going! I want to share with you some of my favorite experiences so far…

I am most proud of my gender series. I learned so much interviewing Colleen, David, Jim, Kyle, and Aleksa. I’m still learning about gender all of the time, especially my own. I wrote about my experience packing a cock in My Inner Boy. I’ve worked harder on this series than anything else I’ve done for the blog and it’s been totally worth it in terms of what I got out of it – especially the friends I made.

Making erotic videos is something that I’d like to get better at. (I have plans!) Of the ones we’ve already made, a few stand out for me. The Rainy Afternoon video is precious to me because of the energy between Harold and me. We had a lot of technical difficulties, so the result is very “art house,” but I was pleased with it; a genuine connection is harder to capture than anything. I also have to mention the More Love video that we made for all the poly people on Valentine’s Day (and for a fan who wanted to see some plushy sex). Harold and I should both be embarrassed by our acting, but it was sooooo fun to make. I like being so totally silly. I was disappointed that it didn’t provoke more of a reaction.

We got a huge reaction over our Figging Lab Experiment and the Figging Lab Results. Our labs are written rather tongue-in-check, but people took them pretty seriously. I am disappointed that I made up such a beautiful data sheet, but that no one to date has returned a completed experiment to me. That’s too bad! Another post discusses the mathematics of Viagra. Did you know that Viagra leads to math?

Some of my posts have been deeply emotional and reveal much of my inner workings. You can see my journey over time working through sex abuse issues and wanting to be topped in The Opposite of Love, Sex in the Shadow, Okay on the Outside, Walking through the Darkness, Fear and Arousal, Magic Words, and Deep Dark Fantasies.

My trip to Hawaii was big for me. I got to spend time with my girlfriend, Erika, and I met a bunch of really fabulous people. All of the foliage in Hawaii looks erotic.

Another pivotal moment for me was the first close up picture of my cunt I’d ever seen. I wrote about it in Ready for my Close Up, talking about all of my conflicting feelings.

It’s interesting to read Is Thin the Only Sexy? written almost a year ago. I talk about my body image after seeing nude pictures of myself and realizing that I was fat. I decided that fat is still sexy. It totally is. But I also realize that I’ve lost 35 pounds since then. I feel much more comfortable in my body now, but I still look at pictures of myself and feel unhappy.

Some of my favorite posts have to do with being part of a family. My children drew pictures for Secret Life of a Mommy. In Love Song for my Metamour I got to express all of the wonderful things I feel about sharing my life with Melanie. A Poly Jolly Christmas talks about how blessed I feel to have my large poly family together over the holidays.

Finally, I do a lot of reviews, but a few things have really changed my life. One of them is the book, I’ll Show You Mine, which features gorgeous photographs of vulvas. Another is Buck Angel’s Sexing the Transman, a documentary/porn flick that taught me a ton about transmen. Also, working with the photographer, David Steinberg, over two photo sessions was deeply moving.

As you can see, blogging has had a huge impact on my life. These posts represent my highs and lows, ins and outs of the last 18 months. I want to thank all of our readers for your thoughtful comments and constant support. Your participation means so much to me!

I’m in agony. Well, no, not really – but I am pretty uncomfortable. There’s a burning sensation around my urethra, just below my clitoris and above my vaginal opening. I’ve been experiencing this discomfort for about 5 or 6 weeks. I’ve gone through two courses of antibiotic, which of course means that I’ve had to battle vaginal yeast infections. I went to pee in a cup a couple of days ago because I still felt the burning, but this time, there were no white blood cells, no infection.

I did some internet research on urethral pain with no Urinary Tract Infection (UTI). I found a lot of women with this problem with varying diagnoses. They talk about how difficult it is to have sex when everything in the vaginal area feels bad. They discuss all of the tests they’ve had and things they’ve tried, but it makes it sound like they will be in pain forever. I started to panic. I can’t feel like this for the rest of my life!

The physical sensations are bad enough. I have managed to keep having sex, but it isn’t as nice as it usually is. How could it be? And often, I just don’t feel sexy. The worst part, however, is emotional. This particular feeling at my urethra triggers flashbacks of childhood abuse. It makes me feel really yucky. I absolutely cannot cope with these feelings every day for the rest of my life. I’m doing pretty well a day at a time, but I will lose it if we can’t resolve the pain. How do women cope with this?

I went to see my doctor. She rocks. We talked for a while about different things that could cause this pain. Sexual transmitted diseases are a possibility. My last tests were fairly recent and everything was clean. I haven’t had any new partners. It does remind me that it might be good to check in with my partners and their partners about current safer sex practices. We haven’t had that conversation in a while and it can’t hurt. My doctor mentioned that I could have a micro-tear or something that I keep reopening with sex. That would suck. It’s possible that something I’m doing during sex is causing repeated injury. I hate this thought. I love my sex life. And I’m pretty careful – I use good lube, I pee after sex, and I use good hygiene. I find myself offering up little prayers like, “Please don’t let it be fisting.”

My doctor did a visual, vaginal, and pelvic examination. My kidneys seem fine. Everything checked out, except that my urethra burns. Ultimately, we decided to wait and see if the urine culture revealed an infection after all. She gave me a prescription for a medication that numbs the urethra. I can only use it for a few days at a time. It turns my urine a bright neon orange, makes it unwise to wear my contact lenses, and upsets my stomach, but I think it’s worth it. Love is not supposed to burn.

I’m trying to keep my freak-out under control. My doctor is working with me to discover the cause of the pain so we can treat it. It’s possible that things will resolve themselves. I’m going to keep trying to have the best sex life I can manage, including not having sex when it feels bad. I’ll keep getting through a day at a time until I feel better. There will be a time when I am not constantly aware of my privates in a negative way. My urethra just has to get better!

There are fantasies that I keep very close – deep dark things that turn me on like crazy, but I’m ashamed to share. I’m scared that if I open up to my lovers I will be rejected. Maybe I’m too dirty, too perverted. These fantasies lurk on the edges of my consciousness. I’m too ashamed of my desires to pull them into the light and look at them.

Also, I’m afraid of delving too deeply into these fantasies. What if I lose control? What if I’m completely swept away by lust? I fear betraying myself and the people I love. Well, and, I’m afraid that if I do look too closely, these fantasies will lose their power to turn me on beyond reason.

So I just get flashes and feelings: his hand on my throat – me on my knees – humiliation – his breath against my ear as he tells me how special I am – enduring pain to prove my devotion – being on display – rope – his hands knotted in my hair – my eyes downcast…

These are difficult fantasies for a grrrl who considers herself a feminist and a Top. Can I respect myself and expect respect from others if I admit that I crave being possessed, objectified, and cherished? Is it bad that I want to give myself to my partner in this way?

I don’t give myself easily. I fight back. But I want to touch that core shame that I carry around. I can heal the destructive aspects of shame through sex. I want my partners to know me, totally – even the prickly or uncomfortable parts. Even the parts too dirty to see the light of day. I don’t feel like I can be truly loved until they do.

I think Harold and I are finally reaching an understanding around my fantasies. We met for lunch. In the middle of the crowded restaurant, we talked about what a scene might look like. I began to fill with heat. My panties got wet. My heart pounded in my chest. We gazed intently into each other’s eyes as he gripped my wrist in his hand. For a few moments he held me entirely. I was his. We both knew it and it turned us on. With the promise of more to come, we are both highly aroused.

I feel reassured. Maybe I can have what I want. Perhaps my fantasies are not too extreme. I just need to keep trying to articulate what it is I want. I’m so open about most of my sexuality. I can teach, I can ask for all kinds of things in the bedroom, I can share intimate details about my sex life on the internet – but wanting to submit makes me feel hurt and hostile. I know that I fetishize humiliation and shame because of the abuse I went through as a child. I wish that Harold would just take me and I wouldn’t have to try to explain. That he would just get it. I’ve been trying to help him get it.

But I also want control. I want our love making to be right, whatever we do. Ultimately, I want sex to be a conversation. I want to talk about everything. I want each of us to be communicating. For my part, I’m working on letting go of the shame that gets in the way, and keeping the shame that feels hot and sexy. It’s confusing, but I’m getting it. I’m owning my deep dark fantasies a little at a time.

I want to be taken. I want to give myself.

And I do have that dynamic in all of my lovemaking – we exchange energy like that. I give myself, open up to my partner. I am received and cherished. My partner does the same and we are made intimate with each other. We are full of love. This is amazing and beautiful and I can’t live without it. But I have this deep longing for something more.

I want a kind of power exchange. I’ve talked about it before, but I find it so hard to articulate. I’m sure it’s based on early childhood experiences, the things that imprinted on me with my earliest sexual experiences. The fact that those experiences were games played by my abuser while he was instigating a years-long system of abuse makes it complicated. I don’t in any way want to be abused or feel abused or role-play abuse. I want to be the powerful person I am now, using the hot erotic charge of those things that turned me on as a child.

Of course, there is shame involved. I was often shamed as a child for showing too much interest in sex or having too strong a desire to please. Part of what I’m looking for now is approval. I want to make my partner happy with me. I want to be a good girl. Unfortunately, the shame gets in my way when I try to communicate what I want. It’s hard to speak up. What if I’m showing too much interest? I am not hampered by this worry usually, only here.

I have a huge fear of rejection around these desires, also stemming from my childhood, where I was sometimes punished and rejected for causing lust in my abuser. It means that I have a deep belief that if I try to ask for what I want sexually, my partner will not want me any more. Maybe even that I will be shunned or denigrated. As soon as I sense any kind of hesitation on the part of my partner, I go to a place where I am being rejected. I immediately blame myself for being too much. I get angry at myself. But I don’t want to be angry at myself, so I get angry at my partners. Surely it is their fault.

It’s not my partners’ fault, although they certainly bring their own stuff to this dynamic. I’m just hurt and pissed that I can’t get what I want – or that I think I can’t. Truthfully, I get a lot of what I want. I’ve come to realize that it isn’t really about now. I could probably use sex now to heal some of this stuff from the past. Why not use the things that are sexually charged to get off and create positive change? It works both ways.

What is it that I want? I still can’t say for sure, although I keep trying. This space is more of a feeling than an action that I can point at and say, “Here, do this.” Above all, I must be accepted for who I am in this space. I want to be cherished, protected, and cared for. I want someone else to be in charge, give me clear instructions. I might need some guidance, but I don’t want a lot of pain. I want to be possessed, owned, but not in a way that scares me. And I am scared.

I’ve fought hard to be free of the shadows of abuse in my life. I will not go back to the darkness. Yet I have this deep longing that presents itself in my sexual life. To deny it is to deny a whole part of myself, to keep that part of me a broken child. It’s a tightrope walk to make this work. It doesn’t come easily for me to submit like this. It’s not easy for my partners to take on this role in the bedroom. But, damn it! This stuff is my stuff. It turns me on. There’s nothing wrong with that.

I’ve been submissive before, but never like this. I’ve always been play-acting. Submission for fun and games – I’ve liked it a lot. This space that I’m wanting is the real thing. Actual submission. I’m having to overcome my fears and shame to get to a place where I reveal my most hidden and private self, drenched in desire and full of need. I want to give myself. I want to be taken.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend who has known me since I was 12 years old. That’s a long time – 26 years. It’s nice to have a friend who just knows me, who knows the immutable aspects of my personality. He’s got my back. Well, today we were laughing about something and he said, “I love to make you laugh.” It so closely echoes something what Harold and Joel say that it got me thinking.

I’ve been thinking about joy. It’s so easy to keep emotions close, to be scared of getting hurt or judged. There is something liberating in laughing out loud. Letting your joy shine out, living large, gives others permission to do the same. Joy is infectious. I’m starting to see that when I just relax and laugh I’m giving a gift to people around me.

I’m even thinking that the same is true for love. It seems more dangerous than simple laughter, this opening up of spirit, but the concept is the same. I give my heart frequently and fully. I think it’s my personality. Sometimes I get hurt. Mostly, I fill up with love and spill over, all over everyone I care about. And my lovers meet me in an amazing fusion of joy, lust, and compassion. I am rich in love because I give it away.

So what about orgasms? For years, I didn’t make a big deal about coming. I orgasm easily, so I did manage to come, but I didn’t insist and often avoided coming. I didn’t want to interfere with the energy, I didn’t want to be a bother, and I didn’t want to lose control. Things are different now. I feel a mutual joy in being together with my partner. I both love and let myself feel loved. I give myself up to pleasure, knowing that my orgasm brings my partner as much joy as my laughter. Orgasms are also permission. I don’t know how often my partners begin to come right after I start. Talk about boosting the energy!

I’m wondering how many other places in my life would benefit from me letting my emotions flow naturally. It’s easy with things like joy, but what about so-called negative emotions – sadness, anger, jealousy? Are there ways to share those emotions that would actually help people. I think so, but I’m still figuring it out. I know that talking about my feelings about being sexually abused have sometimes helped others. Anger can be directed at creating change. Jealousy can help me cherish what I have. Sorrow can be a place to connect with others so they don’t feel alone.

It’s interesting to grow into the big personality that I am. Strange to realize that being myself fully can have a positive impact on those around me. It’s important. So that’s my challenge to you – laugh. Laugh out loud, without thinking, without worry. Light up the room with your joy and watch everyone laugh with you. Just laugh.

 I love you and I love your body. I feel honored and happy that you choose to share it with me sometimes.”

We were talking on the phone, having stolen away a few minutes to share with each other how the day was going. When he said these words to me I was only half listening, but something about them spoke to some hidden part of me. As though he had uttered magic words, I have walked through the rest of my day feeling a slow metamorphosis change me from the inside out.

There are things that I believe utterly and hold sacred. That each person owns themselves is one of those truths. Yet, it’s hard to overcome the programming of sexual abuse. Sure, it’s great to own one’s self and body, but if no one else believes it and violates your right to choose, it is very difficult to feel empowered. If he had said anything about me owning myself I would have mentally gone, yeah, yeah, yeah, and moved on. But no, he expressed gratitude that I have chosen to be with him. His appreciation goes straight to my heart. I weep that I am so respected and valued.

The next thing I noticed was that he had no expectations. There was no implication that I was now required to meet any kind of need for him simply because I have given myself to him in the past. His love is not dependent on me meeting his needs. There are no assumptions that I will choose to share with him again. He is simply grateful for each and every time we make love or talk on the phone or make dinner together. I am my own person and he is happy to have me when I choose to give myself.

This brings up the issue of consent for me. I’m not very good about giving clear consent and I think it’s hugely important. In his way, he has always made sure that I was giving full and clear consent to our sexual encounters. I have blossomed in this environment, but it has also confused me. Having given myself initially, I felt that he could do what he wanted with me. When he refused, it felt like rejection. All of a sudden today, I feel like I understand. Even though we are in a serious relationship, we gift ourselves to each other anew, every time we make love. We don’t necessarily have to negotiate, but we do offer consent. This concept makes sex so much more powerful and emotionally driven. We make love because we have something to share. We each bring something to the other and we choose to be there.

When I contemplate his statement some more I am struck by how lucky I am to have him in my life. Like all of us, he struggles to balance too many things. Sometimes I am resentful at how little of his time I have, but when I think of it in terms of what he said to me today, I have to believe that every moment he spends with me is out of choice. He is with me because he loves me and wants to give himself to me. Strangely, this makes me feel better about the times that he is not with me – both because I can choose to devote myself to something else (not being tied to him) and because I feel more confident about him coming back to me. It makes being polyamorous easier. It means that all of us in the system give ourselves where we will, out of love and desire.

I feel so special. I want to hold on to this feeling – like maybe I’m 50 feet tall. I have known intellectually that I owned myself, but I haven’t been able to break away from the culture I grew up in. Whether these were the magic words that transformed me, or the key in the lock that turned the truth golden, I feel freed from a trap I didn’t know I was in.

Darling, I am grateful for your words. I am happy to share my body with you when I choose. I feel so blessed to have you give yourself in return.

I’m feeling dangerous. All of my lust for power is welling up when I think of sex. My careful sex-positive ethics go out the window. I want to hurt people. I want to push them into doing things they didn’t think they’d want to do. I want to seduce them and take them to a place where they are drowning in erotic possibilities. I want to make them beg for humiliation. I want to corrupt their desire. I want control.

It’s a lipstick kind of mind-set. Power requires it’s own uniform. Mine includes strappy high heels, stockings with cuban heels and a seam up the back, a little black skirt, garters, lacy panties, push-up bra, clingy low-cut top, and maybe a hat with a veil. Lots of make-up. Alcohol goes nicely as well – perhaps a glass of red wine or a shot of whiskey. I tend to want to smoke when I feel like this, even though I quit 15 years ago. I very occasionally smoke a clove cigarette or a cigar. It’s all about being a femme fatale.

So far in this fantasy, I have an intention and a costume. Now I need victims. Sometimes I think about heading to the nearest bar and picking someone up. If I feel particularly bad I might seduce the entire bar, taking one person at a time out the back door. Sometimes I punish myself for these thoughts by thinking that I would be very risky in my behavior – go home with sleezy men, not use protection. If I feel better about myself, I pick people up at some sex-positive event.

The key factor here is that I get people so under my spell, so turned on, that they can’t think clearly any more. Then I can lead them into doing the very things that they profess to abhor. Like a housewife who has only ever fucked her husband suddenly demanding to be fucked by the football team, many of whom are friends with her teenage son. Or a man who loathes gay men begging me to fuck him in the ass. I want to use my power to make people question their sexuality. I want them to know shame.

I know that this fantasy of mine goes back as far as my childhood sexual abuse. I wanted to do to them what was done to me. And for years I did. Through high school and my early twenties, I was unable to fully break away from the power dynamic, one way or another. I played sex games even with the people I cared about. It took me years to realize that I could have the same dynamic without the pain and guilt. I still get terribly turned on by power, I just try to do it ethically now. Consent is very important.

Which means that I have to try to contain myself until my date with Harold tomorrow. We’ve already negotiated a lot of this power dynamic stuff. I can hurt him in a variety of ways and it will turn him on. I also know that if I get out of hand, he’ll let me know. I want to hurt and dominate him in just the right ways. Yes, it’s a little disappointing not to be bad,  just to take what I want, but I think that it’s worth it to feel safer and more ethical. I like that we can harvest the lust from my fantasies and use it.

In the meantime, I have a date with Joel where I might work out some of my desires. And maybe I’ll write some erotica, try to get this lust for power out of my system.