Sexuality, Money & Being Spanked As A Child
Wednesday night I was deep in a trace-like state I was filled with memories and emotions from when I was very small.
."When my daddy spanked me I had two choices - to believe he did it because he didn't love me, or to believe he did it because he did love me. To believe he didn't love me was too painful. So I had to believe that hurting me was part of loving me," I said.
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"You didn't deserve it," Paladin said. "Can you see that?"
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"He must have believed I did, since he did it and he loves me."
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"He was wrong."
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I was silent for a while, lost in the emotions filling me.
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"He is innocent too. He just did what he had too based on what he was taught and shown as a child. He didn't know what else to do," Paladin said.
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"I know," I said. "But how can I stop believing that to be hurt is to be loved?"
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"Can you acknowledge that he really hurt you?"
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"Yes," I said. "Because he loved me."
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"Hmm."
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We were both quiet for a little while and then Paladin said, "What if the part of you that is usually helpless, the part of you that is raped by the other part, what if she were to be aggressive instead."
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I burst out into fresh tears not having any idea why I was crying. "I can't do that," I sobbed. "I just can't."
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He waited for my tears to run their way to their natural conclusion. I blew my nose on a tissue, balled up the tissue and tossed it over the edge of the bed for later collection.
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"What if she started liking it, the way you did in that dream you had last night."
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"Oh, she could do that." I felt a sudden anger rising in me. "But it makes him very angry." The anger stole my breath away as I imagined her just taking it, liking it, and being perfectly okay. What is this anger? Where does it come from? Part of me wondered. I let the anger consume me as much as I could and I said, "Cry bitch!"
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I was startled by my own outburst.
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"That makes sense," Paladin said quietly, almost under his breath.
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"I feel really embarrassed now," I said. Something I would not have had to point out if we had been speaking in person instead of over the phone. I was looking down and my cheeks felt hot.
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Paladin chuckled. "It's okay. It is not surprising. It must come partly from a need to feel powerful."
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"But that doesn't make sense, because the other part of me comes from a need to be powerless."
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"Exactly," Paladin said.
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"But why do I crave both simultaneously?"
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"Can you think of a time when being powerless has hurt you?"
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"Of course," I snorted. "Ironically, the first thing that comes to mind is having to walk. Being stuck with people walking with my feet hurting and no way to turn back, or if we already are on the way back, no way to speed it up. Nothing to do but endure the pain and feel like nobody cares about me, because if they did, they would prevent this pain."
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"I'm sorry," Paladin said. After a moment or two he said, "Can you think of a time when being powerful has hurt you?"
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"Everyday!" I exclaimed. "I force myself to be productive all the time. Even when it hurts me."
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"Well there you go. Now you can clearly see why you crave both power and powerlessness."
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We ventured down several conversational tangents and then I said, "But none of this addresses the difficulty that I started with, the one that led me to this processing - which is good, but it doesn't resolve my confusion about Hibiscus and sexuality."
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"Right," Paladin said.
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I took a deep breath. "I was aroused the first time he massaged me. The lighting was dim, and we were on my bed together and it felt so good. I kept fantasizing about him massaging my butt. That's really all there was to the fantasy, but it was a very strong desire." I stopped to sip my water and then continued, "Since then I've had this process about sexuality... This powerful process that combined with reading Anastasia. For the first time in my life I felt like I never needed to have sex again. I felt that way for a full three days. But starting yesterday that started to shift. And I've been in resistance to believing that it had shifted until tonight. I find myself feeling very sexual and wanting sexual interaction."
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"That's okay," Paladin said. "I've gone in and out of that feeling before - feeling like I didn't need to ever have sex again. It comes and it goes."
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"It's comforting to hear you say that," I said. "This was a first for me. And I wanted to hang onto it. It felt peaceful, but now I have this desire again, and, and..." I stuttered for a moment. "I just don't know what to do with it. I... I... I..." I took a deep breath and tried to center myself. "It comes back to not trusting myself," I said.
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"Oh?"
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"Yeah," I said, sadness in my voice. "I don't trust myself when I'm aroused. I lose my wits and do things I wish I hadn't later."
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"When you 'lose your wits' what is it that you're actually losing? What part of you?"
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"The part of me that cares about... Well, pretty much everything. But particularly, the part of me that discerns how clean someone is. I'm not exactly sure what I mean by clean." I paused. "There is clean in terms of hygiene, but I also feel like everyone overweight is unclean because I'm thinking of their toxic-smelling sweat, their internal inflammation, their imbalanced flora, and their lack of self-care."
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"That makes sense," Paladin said.
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"No it doesn't, not completely anyway. Because I don't have perfect flora and neither do you. But I'm highly attracted to your body. I feel like you're clean." I paused and felt the ache in my heart, that feeling of missing him keenly.
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"But I think it is like me and sponges at people's houses," I went on. "It's like I 'warm up' to the sponge over time. I feel more and more okay with using it as I get an idea for what it is used for regularly. And like the floor cleanliness. When I arrived I vacuuming everything very thoroughly, but since then the floor has been more dirty than when I arrived at times and it didn't bother me. It was my hair and my dirt, so it didn't feel as yucky to me."
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"Right," Paladin said.
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"So I think I could potentially warm up to someone - someone like Hibiscus - over time. Like last night, he was curled around me and rubbing my back in such a way that I could touch his leg at the same time. I was just resting my hands on his knees. There were clothes between my hands and his skin. But it was something. It was a start."
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"Okay. So what is it that you're feeling so conflicted about? Why not just take it slowly, as you said?"
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"Well, I'm afraid I'm getting close to crossing a line. I'm afraid I'll get to some point where I get too aroused and keep wanting more. The novelty wears off you know. It moves from massaging my butt to something more and something more. The rise I get out of it - that pleasant tingling between my legs - it only continues as long as things keep moving farther and farther, right up until I orgasm."
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"Ah."
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"And I can see him fingering me, and me being okay with that. But where might that lead?"
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I chased my thoughts in circles for a while longer and then decided I was tired and wanted to sleep. We said our goodnights and I curled up under my favorite sheets with my favorite pillows and pillow-cases and I went to sleep.
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The following night I went to the local game shop with Hibiscus and we played Evolution, which is a board game neither of us had played before. It was a well-designed game, but the person who taught it to us didn't do the best job of explaining, so I only grasped all of the critical rules about half way through playing, which of course, led to losing quite badly. I didn't mind much, but didn't feel like staying for another game afterward.
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We went back to Hibiscus's place and talked into the early morning hours again. Several times I did feel inclined to move his hand from my stomach to between my legs. Several times I turned the discussion to sexual topics.
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And yet, and yet, and yet.
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Why do I want this? I kept asking myself that night, and also the following morning. I found myself fantasizing about him taking me by surprise, something that was a vivid stretch of imagination considering Hibiscus's personality.
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I hadn't started out my fantasy that way. I'd actually started by imagining myself picking and eating raspberries. I wanted to experiment with innocent fantasies. I imagined having sex with a tree, caressing leaves, and eating goat milk with strawberries. I imagined a goat that produced pure cream and having that cream with berries. I imagined taking a bath in goat milk.
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These things did seem mildly arousing as I touched myself, but after a while I wanted to orgasm. The fantasy changed. I imagined Hibiscus coming in and seeing me bent over the bed and deciding to take me in my ass. I seemed to have developed an anal fixation, which I reflected must come from how it seems inherently violating.
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I imagined Hibiscus throwing down a couple hundred dollar bills beside me and telling me that I was his whore. I orgasmed.
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Instead of feeling the sadness, shame or exhaustion that I often felt after masturbating, I felt curious. This had never happened before in any of my fantasies. I guess I've moved from processing my baggage about sex to processing my baggage about money to now combining the two into one process, I thought.
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What is so appealing about being a whore? I asked myself.
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Security. Being valued for something that is done to me, not needing to do anything myself. Relaxing and letting it take over me. Feeling safe in the understanding of what is happening.
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I wasn't sure I understood my own responses.
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If sexuality is something I consider inherently part of myself, I postulated, then being loved for my sexuality is being loved for being me. And if being paid money is being loved, then being paid for my sexuality is being loved for being me. That made sense to me, and yet it couldn't be all of it. Nothing ever seemed to be all of it.
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"You're a mess," Paladin had said to me repeatedly in the first year of our relationship.
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Agreed, I thought, agreed. I'm a mess. I think I like being a mess.