Faithfully

This was originally a post on my Facebook page.

**This is actually the second time I’m writing this post. The first one is lost in the ether somewhere because I tried to add art after writing it. AAARGH!**

I have learned to be very, very careful about what I share online. If someone knew what to look for, they’d find that I’ve been a traveller on the net for about 20 years, give or take one. Therefore, if I’m writing this on Facebook, of all places, then I really, really had to write. There is another place I can write, but I do so under a pseudonym that only a few know as me. This time, *I* need to write this post. Me.

I’ve been sitting at my dining room table working like hell to get WickedWomanMag.com up by *mumble*mumble* while listening to iTunes. It’s just me, my really f’ed up wrist, my laptop, the occasional head butt from a puppy to say, “Don’t forget about me!” and my work. I was concentrating like a laser when I had to stop.

There are some songs that we not only hear, but feel in our bones. It doesn’t matter whether it is a sad song or joyous. Whenever we hear it, there is a swell of emotion that we really can’t explain to anyone. For me, one of those songs is Journey’s Faithfully.

The sentiments expressed, the experiences, the longing are all well known to me. I loved two men at the same time when in college. One of them was a “music man”–a roadie for a couple of bands—so he wasn’t around as much as I would have liked. I remember a couple of times when I went to spy on his apartment building which was easy enough since it was across the street from our favorite bar. Now I think my little reconnaissance missions were hilarious, especially when I had my best friend at the time help me with them. Then, all I had was the longing.

As an aside: What I would give to have a photo taken reminiscent of the John and Yoko bed photo! Visually, we were gorgeous together. He had a thick mane of very wavy, deep, bright red hair and pale skin. My skin, obviously much darker, had the right highlights to make, particularly, a black & white photo stunning. I have thought of that shot many times, especially after I ran into a salesmen at a music store that could have easily been his son. He wasn’t.

The red head and I had several little “talks” about the formality of our relationship. Neither of us were monogamous. How could I be with another guy a little over an hour away? The thing about the red head was that I could really be who I was. All those intimate urges were on overdrive, yes, but it was much more. He was a gregarious Irishman and I was just happily me when he was around. Man, did it hurt when he had to go to work, though. I *hated* seeing him drive off. He was my “music man.” Faithfully.

Another aside: I think I felt most alive when I got to watch a basketball arena turn into a concert hall. It is complexly amazing. I remember watching my red head, (although I don’t think he was mine quite yet), running cable and climbing scaffolding to hang lights. When he was finally some version of “mine,” I got quite “excited” every time I saw him working with cables, especially light boards. Remembering the metamorphosis from arena to music hall now really makes me long for that experience once again. I’ll put it on my Bucket List. Before Mom died, I was going back to our alma mater for grad school. I’d planned to ask if I could take over as the advisor to the student organization that handled concerts, among other things. I am a Roach Patrol alum, after all, so I know a little about what needs to happen.

The other man I loved was, and may well end up being, the love of my life. I hope he doesn’t, because I can easily do better. Having a chronic, debilitating condition plays havoc with the love life. Good Lord, I could go with either sex and I’m still by myself! Actually, I don’t really mind it right now. I’m too busy and I have a lot that I have to do because I’m the only one who can. WickedWomanMag.com has got to go live in the very near future. Indeed, me sitting here typing this a second time has totally screwed the pooch with my night, but it had to be done.

It took me a whole year and a little more to finally get the love of my life to take me seriously. I wanted him. Period. Dot com; dot org; dot edu. I may have been a few years younger than most kids in college, but I felt the electricity the very first time we actually met. That S.O.B. played with me like a cat with a mouse, too. It is fairly humorous now, but it was anything but then. Looking back, he was so bad, but in a way that wasn’t evil. That would come later. I still ended up crying my eyes out over him both before and after we got together, but those instances were forgivable. As I said, he wasn’t truly evil or cruel then.

I transferred to a larger university my sophomore year. Going back to visit friends where I first entered college was tricky. I wanted to spend time with them but I also wanted to get time with my love. He was seeing the woman he eventually married along with a few others on campus—or so it was believed. He didn’t always know when I was going to be in town and I didn’t always know that he had time or would make time for me. Actually, while exploring the possibilities, he did make time to see me.

Once we got “together” and he came to visit, I was a floating ball of happy goo from the moment I saw his car pull into the drive until he left. He was my heart. He HAD my heart. But, again, we weren’t exclusive. It wasn’t impossible, but it sure would have been impractical, especially with the girl he was seeing there on campus with him. I hated that, but I also knew I would not thrive in such a small school.

All in all, we were together, if somewhat ambiguously, for 17 years. One of the darkest times was when he asked me to come visit him at home several years after we’d both graduated. When someone brings you across several states to meet his parents, the natural thought is that things are about to get serious—finally! I think that trip was a test that I failed. I think I know why, but it is really immaterial. He told me of his engagement to his college girlfriend, then about to become a doctor, just as I was leaving his home (bastard) to visit a cousin nearby. For better or worse, he told me, “I almost chose you.” I don’t remember what happened next other than more tears than I’d shed in my life until that point. It’s all a blur.

It is hard to say which I remember most, the longing for him when he wasn’t physically or emotionally available or the joy, for the most part, when he was. I’ve written so much about him over the years that a publisher inquired about a book some years ago. I couldn’t write it then. Now I can and will, although I’ll have to change the names to protect the whining, bitching and moaning incredibly guilty. Once I get WWM up and running smoothly, including hiring a managing editor at some point, I can breathe a bit.

I mentioned that he hadn’t turned evil prior to his marriage. He was quiet, had mad skills as a DJ, super smart and probably in or near the genius IQ range, sweet, gentle when needed, but he did have a very evil side that I’d known was there for a long time. I knew nearly from the beginning that he was the kind of young man who could either choose to be a good and decent person or be a cruel, evil and non-consensually sadistic person. At some point during his marriage he chose the latter. I would give a lot to go back and stop him from choosing the wrong side, but I can’t. These days, if there COULD be a sinister motive for someone’s actions, that is his default assumption. I’m sorry, but I believe that’s quite twisted.

What happened to my caring, generally upbeat, beautiful young man? I dearly want to know what made him turn into someone who could be so utterly hateful, cruel and sadistic, particularly to me—someone who’d been totally loyal to him and, with one exception, shown him nothing but love. Hell, even when I was hurt and angry with him I still tried to be decent about things. I wish I could say the same about him. I can’t. He has become a textbook narcissist and it just makes me sad. What he did to me as the narcissist he’s become is very private. I’m struggling with how to write about it in the book because I’ve never experienced cruelty on that level.

This decades old rock ballad called Faithfully has a kind of magic for me. Most of the time, if I truly listen to it, I start crying. I’ve barely held back the tears tonight, but I wanted to get this post done. I know this song. I’ve felt this song. I’ve been this song. Indeed, I’ve been this song twice in my life in two different ways. The fact that I’m sharing this on FACEBOOK is fairly well amazing to me. However, as I stated when I began, I needed to write this and not my alter ego. I did this for me because this is what is in my heart. For reasons that probably won’t become clear to me for a while, I needed to remember. Faithfully.

Whew! I didn’t know all that was in there. Now I need a cigarette. It’s too bad I quit smoking. 😦

God, HELP!!

I’ve read nearly all of my first journal begun one week after I’d contacted Glenn a full decade ago this past March 22. I began it as a woman absolutely giddy with happiness at being able to talk to the man she loved more than herself seven or nine years after he hung up on her when she came out to him in the wrong way, granted, but not deserving of a discussion at least, to; a woman barely hanging on to life, being purposely reckless in the hope Fate would relieve her of the agony of not knowing why he turned on her all of a sudden in mid-conversation, blamed her for even thinking that he’d had any interest, telling her he didn’t care whether she rejected or embraced her love for him because he wasn’t “going there,” saying that she had been “dyking around for a decade,” that she didn’t “want this dick and to run as fast and as far as she can.” Destroyed. Absolutely destroyed. I’d trusted him more than any PERSON on the planet, loved him more than ANY PERSON on the planet and had ultimately given more of myself to him than I had ANY PERSON on the planet. Destroyed. Absolutely destroyed. Even now, after reading 10 years later, hanging on to this reality by my fingernails to keep from sinking into The Pit once more even though someone(s) destroyed the woman who was then. I can’t have relationships no matter the gender of the other person because I can’t trust enough or give enough of myself. I was punished for loving women even though I loved him, assuming the words came from him. I’m not at all sure they did. The circumstances suggest the horror could easily have been from the hagbeast monster or his gay male business partner. If the latter, it was at his request. If the former, he probably didn’t know. We went from flirting to destruction after he went away from the screen for a few minutes. That sceptic cunt could have snuck in easily. Especially since whoever was on the other end of the IM wouldn’t speak to me via voice.

I’ve been struggling with anorexia for about a week now. I’d just worked up to eating a whole sandwich, but was drinking more liquids. Now, not only don’t I care, I don’t want to eat. I mean, I ACTIVELY don’t want to eat. I’m trying to get through this because of the girls. I can’t abandon them. The thing is, I don’t think I can do this by myself and I honestly don’t know who to call who won’t make me feel worse than I already do.

I had a terrible shock. I found a portion of a journal entry meant to be found after I’d properly suicided. It contained two phone numbers. One was Glenn’s cell and the other was for a former mutual friend. I called the one for Glenn, never anticipating that it would work. It did. I was so unnerved I couldn’t talk to him. So, in the course of three days I’ve reached him twice after well over 100 letters sent to the usual usernames owners of private mail servers set up. Over 100 letters he said he never received even though some were sent via the “Contact Us” form for his record company. Granted, for a year or more I haven’t used it because I didn’t get a confirmation of receipt from the server and assumed I’d been blocked. But I have also gotten really good at setting up disposable accounts, hoping that something would get through in some fashion.

I never want to leave my bed, but the girls need to eat and go potty. I feel as I did when I had agoraphobia. Anything and nearly everyone is dangerous outside of this room. There are so many ways to kill a person while leaving them with a beating heart. There are so many ways to die and still breathe. I have to focus on the girls. If not, I will die one way or the other. I can go inside myself and never come out. I am so close to that now that I have to work to just stay present.

How could Glenn/hagbeast/gay oh business partner do this to someone whose worst “crime” was loving someone and then determining that she loved those of her own gender more at one point? Had Glenn talked to me, I would have given in. Not to the phone sex, but to allowing him access to body, soul and heart. I would give up women for him. I would have then and I would now if he was willing to do the obvious and make us “us”–hagbeast included, if I just had to, as long as he committed.

This is not the first time I’ve tried to write this book. The first time was way before I was ready. The publisher read the mess I submitted and gently told me to get some therapy and try again later. I told her I couldn’t write it then because all I do is cry while I’m typing. I don’t think she believed me until she saw the mess of the first few chapters. I’d forgotten about that until reading the journals, too. Five or six therapists later and I’m still crying as I type.

What the fuck is going on? Someone please, tell me. First, as I’m about to give up and give in to giving up on relationships, I hear and see my mother frantically trying to tell me NOT to forget about or give up on Glenn. She didn’t even like him! So, I ignore her until I realize I can’t blindside him and his kids. I NEVER intended to talk to him before mailing him a set of questions after getting well into writing a manuscript, but I wanted him to know what was coming. After ten years and a few phone messages as late as last year, he answers the phone. On a Sunday. Today, I call a 10-yr-old cell number I didn’t even know I had and he answers. I cannot hope where he is concerned. That’s especially true now that I’ve read how he or someone tried to blame me for essentially making any perceived interest up. I’ve got notes from conversations. I didn’t make anything up. And, if I made everything up, then how could he have been playing a joke? I did remember that that was part of the conversation I’d initially forgotten due to stress. It was remembered much later. It is a habit my brain learned as a child: bury the most destructive, painful memories deep inside where they can’t be found. That kept me sane and I do not exaggerate.

What does one do when one truly wants to die but can’t? Endure. What does one do when one can no longer endure? I’m frantically trying to determine who can raise my girls if it comes to that. I just can’t bear the thought of their pain after losing my mother so recently. I am in hell.

eXonerated

I’m sitting in my minivan in the Macy’s garage half crying with tears and half with dry sobs. When I’m not crying, all I want to do so scream, “GOD WHY?!!?!?!?!?!” that fucking sceptic cunt of a hag already had him! She didn’t have to destroy my life! I’d respected her space and played according to the rules of the road. Instead, that fuck pretended to be Glenn and he never knew a thing about it . . . until today.

I have a conscience. Because I do, I thought it only fair and right to tell him that I would be writing a book about our relationship. So, I called him expecting to get his answering machine. I got him. Glenn. After ten, horrible, long years. He said he didn’t remember the events leading up to the “it was a joke” comment, nor did he remember ever saying that. My thought at the time was, “So was he always a sociopath and I missed it? Or, did I spend 17 years with someone who didn’t give a damn?” I didn’t know what to think and had to digest 10 fuckhard years into a short narrative. I did it. I don’t know how. I just know that I said goodbye first because I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. It was as if time stopped. The only thing that startled me to action was the girls.

I took them out and tried to remain calm. I was not, am not and will not be “calm” for a very long time. I put them in the x-pen and sat on the bench next to them as I typed something. Oh, I was telling him that I’d send him blog entries since the gist of everything is in the blog. The thing is, I couldn’t breathe. I knew something was very, very wrong. If he’d mindfucked me, he’d gleefully remember.

I can’t write exactly what happened next, but I found the very first journal entries about him after I’d contacted in 2003. There was a lot more information than I expected. It became very clear that Glenn was NOT at the keyboard. In all probability, he never saw the video I made. It was that hagbeast, Dr. Robin Watt. She took my life and she will answer for it. By all that is holy on Earth, in heaven and beyond, Dr. Robin Watt, aka Mrs. Robin Watt Thornton, the original mean, rabid hagbeast monster, will pay.

Damn, Mom said that the sceptic cunt probably did this. I asked her why. Mom said that she was afraid of me. See, I never would have thought of that as a reason and assumed it was just him having been corrupted by proximity to her. She had nothing to fear. I knew that. Glenn wasn’t going to leave her for me. She was his golden girl. But she was scared and tore my life apart. I couldn’t put my personal life together no matter what I did. It’s understandable given how betrayed I thought I’d been. I found even more reason for my feeling of betrayal reading my journal entries. She really did take my life. And I tried and tried, but couldn’t get that one back and had so much scar tissue I’d never be able to love or trust on a very deep level again. So, she took my future too. I don’t have to think. I feel a cold, dead hatred for her and utter shock.

The eternal quandary

I qualify everything I’m about to type with the fact that I am sick. Therefore, if a sentence doesn’t make sense or there’s an obviously misspelled word, please forgive me. I’ll probably catch it later, but it has flown through the holes in my brain for the moment.

What to do? What to do? I am so confused. I think I’m in a phase where I actually have an attraction to men. I don’t mean a specific man, but men in general. That scares the daylights out of me! I have no idea what to do. I am not straight. I haven’t been straight since I was about four years old. I admit that most of my intimate emotional and physical relationships have been with males, but that general attraction pretty much stopped in my late 20s. It was then that I came out as bisexual, but I wasn’t a “true” bisexual. I didn’t like men and women equally. I definitely preferred women even though I was involved with a man at the time who was the lover of the woman who became my first female lover. If there was a box I could check that said “It’s complicated,” that would be the one I’d mark.

I think there are two factors at work. The first is that Prof. B brought up the issue of me sleeping with men and having to become monogamous AND completely lesbian. I can understand both desires. If there were a woman who connected with me intellectually, emotionally, socially and sexually, and I with her, and; who didn’t think that developmentally disabled children were things, not people and certainly not “its,” I would be happily monogamous in a lesbian relationship for as long as we both shall live, as it were. I so want that! It physically hurts at times that I don’t have a mate. The yearning is so strong that it threatens to tear me in two. I’ve been alone most of my life. Yet, I am not someone who is emotionally equipped to be alone. I need that person I can trust to have my back. I need that person I can turn to when there is no one else who will listen, even if that person doesn’t have answers for me. I need someone who values me as a person and as a bright, loving person who has a great deal to give to someone else and to the world. I need to know that I really do matter to another person. If I could build that person, she would be a woman with a penis. Really! Thank the good Lord that penises can be ordered online!

The second factor is that I’ve been spending time at the gym, although I haven’t been in over a week because my body feels like crap due to a fibro flare I thought I could exercise through, but couldn’t. While I haven’t really spoken to a lot of men, I do have an opportunity to see more of them up close and personal. They don’t stink the way they used to. Did my sense of smell change? I also saw a couple who fit my two, very different, physical profiles of attractive men. The first profile is what gay boyz call a “bear.” That means big, probably bearded, strong, very masculine. The second is one I didn’t realize I had until men kept physically reminding me of the-ex-who-shall-not-be-named (TEWSNBN, maybe I’ll pronounce that “twos’ nibin”). That type would be a bit on the short side, no taller than about 5’9″; canine teeth that are noticeably sharper, and; arms that are slightly long for his height. As TEWSNBN once said, he looks a bit simian. At the time, I tried to deny it, but he was right. Like it or not, black men with that look immediately grab my attention.

There are a couple of each kind at the gym. I’ve said a few words to one of each type. Nothing I actually thought about, but things that came out of my mouth organically. For instance, there was this machine where I couldn’t lock in the weight and I asked this big, handsome bear of a man if he could help. He was a doll, as “bears” frequently are. He not only showed me how to do it, but explained a couple of the other machines too. The more “simian” guy just happened to catch my eye in the mirror as I saw him leg press an incredible amount of weight and I said, “Wow!” as my eyes grew big. He smiled back and I asked him how long it took him to be able to do that. He said that he’d been at it for years. I couldn’t help but notice how cute he was. Eh, I’m human.

I know that sexuality can go back and forth like a pendulum with some people, me included (I suppose). It’s as though there’s this smorgasbord out there and I want to taste it all. In many respects, I’ve had the sexual adventures of two or three people’s lifetimes. I just haven’t found the right person for me and s/he has yet to find me either. I’m not the kind of person who likes sitting around and waiting for things to happen to her. I like going out there and making things happen for myself. However, I think this is the most difficult task I’ve ever faced. I don’t know how to find the right person or how to be found by the right person. I feel as though I’m alone in a fatally opaque bubble where I shall remain until my dying day. I, like the rest of humanity, do not want to die alone. I have too much love to give and I know that I’ve got one hell of a hot-danged love affair in me full of intense passion, great sex, opening of windows to allow fresh air in and peace. I need to share it with someone who will appreciate it. I think my problem now is accepting that it is possible that person could be male. I’d have to do a huge mental make-over, but if that’s what it takes, then that’s what it takes.

It has occurred to me that maybe my mate could be a male amputee. We could understand each other on a level no one else can. The idea only came to me a few hours ago as I was watching Thursday’s network evening news about vets coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan missing limbs. That led me to think about the photos I should have already taken and have been stressing about because I have zero energy, but they must be done because I’m utterly broke. I don’t do “poor” well because, frankly, I’ve only been poor once in my life and I could have hauled my butt back home, which is what I subsequently did. At any rate, it is my hope that my very tastefully suggestive photos reach a good man among some of the . . . shall we say . . . less than desirables. I know that I have to treat each with respect and I will. However, that doesn’t mean some won’t earn a greater respect than others. There are days and nights when it sucks to be me. I am, however, trying to make the best of it.

Lonely on the Great Lakes

She did it

Because I’m a decent person, I sent Glenn a letter and a copy of my last post here since it has his name in it for the first time. I also summarized everything I’ve felt and written in the last months about him, including my contempt and the fact that he could have had what he wanted–a promise not to sleep with women–had he chosen to commit. The thing is, he is the only person who could have done so. I would have told anyone else, and did tell anyone else, that I’d give up men before I gave up sleeping with women. All he had to do is say that the craziness of long absences where he seemed to think I should have been sitting around waiting for him were ridiculous and finding a way to be together if only a few times a year as we’d done before would continue OR, better yet, stop lying to everyone, especially himself, about what I meant to him. He had a hard time giving me up. I know it. He knows it. He just couldn’t give up the money, the arm-candy, the able-bodied mate. It is that mate who I now believe was at the keyboard when the words “It was a joke” came across my screen and sent me to the nadir of hell. I remember running to the phone to dial his number to tell him his wife was online telling me that she was him and that it was all a joke. They killed the person he knew as me. What’s left is someone else. It sucks that this other person I became still has the unrelenting pain hiding behind a door clad in black that would be capable of forcing me to destroy myself if I allowed it. I won’t allow it. I won’t allow THEM. Not again. Never again.

So I sent him this letter that tells him of the recent post and summarize the last several posts and letters I’ve written because I had to assume he didn’t get them for a variety of reasons. I send it, take the girls out, try to figure out how in the hell I’m going to keep Prof. B. because I do think she’s going to be an integral part of my future one way or another, and it hits me: That thing he married–the mean girl with the sceptic cunt–did this. I want her to suffer like she has never suffered before. I want HIM to suffer as well because he allowed this in exchange for keeping the money, arm-candy and able-bodied mate. He knew what would happen more or less. Still, he has allowed this to go on for 10 very long, painful years without any apology or acknowledgement of what they did. Everything finally made perfect sense. I’d dismissed this possibility whenever I thought about the possibility that it was that thing he married typing in her husband’s name.

Look we were all adults now. She knew about me before I reached the age of majority. Maybe she felt threatened. I wish I could say there was a reason for her to feel that way, but I can’t. At least I can’t with even 80% certainty. She bought herself a husband. That’s not to say he didn’t love her because I am very sure he did and does. I am equally sure that he loves his family. Even so, I know him. There are a lot of days he has regrets. What I regret is that he has no fucking balls. He allowed this to happen. My suicide was totally and completely foreseeable. They turned me inside out and shredded me. It has taken me a decade to be able to truly love anyone else again and I’m still not sure I can give my whole heart. I am very sure I can’t give my entire heart and self to a man. Yet, there is a part of me that still loves him. I don’t know who is sicker, Glenn or me. I’m very sure that the thing he married is sicker than either of us. The very last thing in the world she should be doing is taking patients’ lives in her hands. She chose a specialty that doesn’t require much contact with patients while they are conscious. That is so like her. I knew she would emasculate him and she did. I was collateral damage. And Glenn let it happen. That’s all that counts. Bâtard!!

I feel sick.

This is all Glenn’s fault!!

The scars of your love remind me of us
They keep me thinking that we almost had it all
The scars of your love, they leave me breathless
I can’t help feeling
We could have had it all

That’s me speaking to Glenn. OK, forget about the rest of Rolling In The Deep for the moment and just focus on those words taken somewhat out of context–but just a little. That was definitely Glenn and me. If nothing else I ever write or have written thus far is worth believing, believe me when I write this: The memories of him do leave me absolutely breathless. For the longest time, I thought that he would be the only person I’d ever feel that way about. I was with someone else for three years during the first years of his marriage. After all, he’d chosen and there was nothing I could do about it as much as it damn near killed me to continue to draw each breath afterwards. That man, I’ll call him “Gregory,” was my first Master and I loved him in ways Glenn didn’t need and kept closed to me. The difference is that I knew that I’d never spend the rest of my life with Gregory. So, although I had feelings that were nearly equal to those I had for Glenn, they fell short. Still, Gregory was probably the person in the number two spot on my list of “Loves of My Life.”

Now, there’s someone else I’ll call “Professor B.” I am head over heels in love with her mind and her heart. I don’t give a damn about her body, but her body is a real factor. It’s a miracle that we found each other to begin with. It’s an even greater miracle that she, a woman who takes love and all forms of sex far more seriously than I do, is willing to wait for me to figure out: 1) If I can promise to never sleep with another person, especially another man, and; 2) Out and out told me to go to a woman with whom I was very much in love once, and talk to her about why and how lesbians of their age tend to turn off their sexuality or take sex very seriously. That takes guts! I should say that she, feels about me the way I feel about her. There is so much to say that I should start from the beginning.

First, know that I’m typing this through curtains of intermittent tears. I’ve been confused about relationships before. This is not new. What is new is that I’ve been caught in this fucking lesbian disdain for women who sleep with men! It’s not like I sleep with men in general. I don’t. There is only one that I know of at this moment I would even consider sleeping with and he’d have to work like a motherfucker to get me to let him back into my pants and actively into my heart. We all know who that man is so I won’t bother with naming him . . . again. I can wrap my mind around making that commitment if it weren’t for Prof. B’s disabilities. Neither of us is sure she can have sex now. I am going to GUESS that if her doctors say that she can, they will also say that she will have to take it easy. That is going to be a problem.

You see, for me at least, there are different kinds of sex. Each kind has its own rewards. I have made love so achingly slow and carefully that, for me, orgasm was not going to happen and I was perfectly fine with that. The only thing I cared about was that my partner reach a pinnacle he’d never forget–or, that she would never forget. I have had sex to satisfy a craving and that meant absolutely nothing afterwards. I have been fucked royally to the point I can’t forget it if for no other reason than its raw physicality and I don’t want to. Furthermore, I want to have that experience several dozen more times in my life. Fucking can happen with a stranger or it can happen with someone you’d die for. I’m coming to realize in this moment that I would probably die for Glenn, even now. Then, there is this great woman I’m falling for and who is falling for me that I’m going to have to promise to give away part of who I am if I expect to keep her. I am so absolutely torn I’m almost incapable of forming a coherent sentence.

There are some people who’d say that I was very lucky to have loved two very different men and one woman, going on two. This is true. However, it should be noted that I am not with them now, except for the one that is current. Of the three people, only two were viable in the sense that a very long-term relationship was possible. Gregory was, I do believe, a love/sex addict. In the end, we wore each other out emotionally. Anytime ALL of a Master’s slaves get together and say that he’s in trouble, he’s in trouble. He wasn’t happy with any of us afterwards, but that’s neither here nor there. I know that I stayed with him and tried to help him, terrified half the time that I would lose him. He kept the woman I loved dearly (I’ll call her “Khat”) and, although he consistently failed to acknowledge it, was really his primary partner. There is so much pain there still that I’m going to move off of him as a subject. Suffice it to say that Glenn and Khat were the only viable relationships. Although memories of Glenn turn up in odd places, he is effectively gone from my life and has been for many years. The same is true of Khat.

The title of this post was half in jest. The other, non-humorous part, is true. I don’t think I’d use the word “fault,” but he showed me how all forms of sex, but especially the combination of fucking and making love, can have a power that is absolutely indescribably, utterly, wonderful. I want that again and Prof. B cannot give it to me. I’m not sure it’s even in her to give it to me regardless of her disability. She’s more of the slow, aching kind of sex. That is going to leave me very frustrated and ultimately unhappy. I know that I absolutely must have the raw, physical kind of sex from time to time to keep me happy. She’s said that if I or anyone she’s with has an itch that just has to be scratched, she didn’t want to know about it. I can deal with that. However, when I pushed the issue tonight, she told me that she wants total monogamy even if I end up moving out of the state. I don’t think I can promise that to anyone. That’s not to say that I’d fall in love with someone else because I am damn hard to satisfy intellectually and keen intellect is a deal breaker. Therefore, I’d say that falling in love with someone else is remote. That notwithstanding, wanting to jump someone else’s bones, or vice versa, is inevitable in that circumstance. For that matter, it’s inevitable in the circumstance I’m trying so hard to get my mind around.

It has occurred to me that maybe I’m just not ready to give Glenn up. That is to say, to put him in the proper perspective of someone I loved more than I loved life itself and would have laid my life down for if need be. Notice how that’s all in the past tense. I think there’s some small part of me that knows he did what he did to me for a real reason and has a damn good idea of what that reason is. Yes, what he did was unforgivable. However, I just know/knew him too well to accept that he’d be vindictively cruel to someone who’d been his lover for 17 years. Add to that the knowledge that he knew I’d tried quite hard to kill myself due to his words and actions and I still can’t see it. I know that he’s a coward in some respects and to be pitied in others. He’s both in this one, for sure. I deserved better and I deserve better. I deserve, if anything from him, that he be a grown ass MAN and not some cowering manchild afraid of wifey and me! I don’t know if or when he will do it. I do know that I can’t put my life on hold waiting. Nevertheless, can I promise someone else that I will forsake all others, blah, blah, blah when I’m pretty sure that she cannot give me what I need sexually? We won’t even talk about our different needs where people are concerned! And, she says there’s a large class difference that I don’t see. I just see two people with different, though not incompatible, life experiences. I don’t care that she’s the first in her family to go to college or be ABD. Why should I? Yeah, there would be some things that she couldn’t relate to in my long-ago past, but I don’t even relate to them now!

Prof. B and I talked off and on all day today from the time I woke up this afternoon until I went to bed very early. I was busy going about my errands and so forth, but she was on the other end of the line. It’s a good thing she’s on leave or I can imagine a whole lot of things wouldn’t have gotten done on her end. It took a very long time for me to know through experience that I belonged with women. Glenn had gone and Gregory and I were temporarily off for the zillionth time. I was actually with someone else who I inadvertently pissed off that weekend, but he should have said something. *sigh* My point is that I’d known since I was four years old that I liked females be they girls, young women or women. That didn’t necessarily mean that I didn’t like men. Glenn was my first whole-hearted love and that’s something he can’t take from me, nor can anyone else. He married his first whole-hearted love. I should be happy for him and, on some level I am. That doesn’t mean that I don’t know I had a right to expect more from him, especially since we both knew that he wasn’t wild about the idea of giving me up completely. Had he been honest with himself, with me, with his wife, we’d have had different lives. Mine, for sure, would have been better. Then again, he would have done what Prof. B is doing: He could not deal with me being with another woman and loving it.

Whatever I do, I can’t win unless I choose. I can’t choose. Not now.

Getting real about BDSM and me

I don’t feel like going into my history with BDSM. It’s too long and too long ago to write about when I’m tired, sick and the tiniest bit wobbly from a smidge of bourbon in my hot toddy. Suffice it to say that I was a submissive to a few and a bottom to a few more. I loved it. The only reason I’m out of the scene now is that I had medical problems that sidelined my entire life beginning in the early 2000s. I don’t even want to think about how long it’s been since I’ve had sex with anyone. I don’t mean sex during a scene or within the context of BDSM. I mean that I haven’t had sex at all for years. I’ve learned to bury that part of myself, so I don’t miss it . . . most of the time.

Tonight I felt a yearning I haven’t had for years. I want to be owned. Actually, I wish that I’d been owned a year or so ago so that the relationship would be on solid ground by now and I could have a safe place with a safe person to let my guard down. Needless to say, that isn’t the reality of my current life. The reality is that I’m a submissive/bottom without a Master/Mistresss or Top. I’m not sure anyone who hasn’t been in the scene at one time or another can grasp it, however, I feel as though half of me isn’t here. It’s supposed to be here, but it isn’t.

Looking for a Dominant/Top online is one of the trickiest, most dangerous things I can think of doing now. I don’t mean tricky and dangerous only for me, but for anyone. That being said, I found my first Master online many years ago. That relationship ended after three years and I found a couple more as well as my first Mistress afterwards. However, this was well before the entire world knew and used the Internet. There weren’t too many degrees of separation between regular users of the chat program IRC, the mechanism I used to gain access to the online kink community, or; those who posted on Usenet, a group of bulletin boards with different topics. Now, there are so many wannabes who have no fucking clue about what it takes to be either a sub or a Dom. They read things that are meant to be fiction and would be horrendous practice in real life and think that’s what BDSM is all about. It isn’t. Not by a long-shot. I should say that I have yet to read the Grey trilogy, but have plans to do just that. I’m curious about how realistic the characters and scenarios are.

I am a great believer in “Safe, Sane and Consensual” play as opposed to RACK (Rick-Aware Consensual Kink). The two are not necessarily in opposition at all. However, from my experience, those who follow RACK tend to be more hard-core and not respectful of people with limits reasonable to them. In writing this post, I happened across an essay that explains the two themes quite well. In essence, the author boiled the them down to the notion that SSC people bury their heads in the sand about any risks they may encounter in their play. In contrast, people who practice RACK go out and do the research to discover the risks and what to do should they encounter them even if that means asking someone who is more familiar with a particular way of playing than they are.

I do not believe in the dichotomy. At least, I don’t believe in that dichotomy. It has been my experience that a good Top or Dom will in fact research a type of play along with their partner so that both can find out if they are comfortable trying something new. Remember: A good Dom always has his/her sub’s well-being at heart. If they don’t, they don’t need to play with ANYONE. If the Dom is part of a community, then peer pressure can be a wonderful thing to keep potentially errant Doms/Tops on the straight and narrow. For that matter, community can keep unsafe subs/bottoms out of the scene as well. It’s a whole lot easier to teach a sub/bottom about what is expected than it is to teach a Dom/Top even though they are the ones who need to know most. I realize that will be an unpopular statement, but that’s been my experience. Some Tops just do not, and will not, listen to either their bottom or other Tops who may pull their coat and try to teach them the right way of doing things. I believe that their egos get in the way. Some, although I don’t know what percentage, are probably just narcissists who are emotionally abusive and call it BDSM.

Losing my mother and having to deal with her very complex and totally FUBAR’d estate has been a lonely experience. That’s partially my doing because I feel I have to keep myself together. That means there are times I have to withdraw to keep from falling apart. I realized Friday night that I need someone to lovingly take care of me. I need the safety, compassion and strength of a good Dom so that I can let go in a safe environment with someone who knows me well. That’s one of the things fiction, at least that found on bookshelves, doesn’t teach. A Dom/sub team is the most intimate kind of relationship two people can have. A Dom knows his/her sub inside and out; what makes the sub tick; where his/her vulnerable spots are; what buttons to push when, if ever; how to calm the sub and provide an anchor when things get really tough and the sub is in danger of falling over a figurative cliff. I need and want that kind of intimacy now. However, I should have been moving in that direction with someone a year or more ago if they are to help me now. I’m wishing for something that should have happened already. Talk about impossible!

There are some Doms who specialize in taking subs who are broken and damaged in some way and helping them help themselves. When/if their time comes to an end, both are better for having been together. Both can be proud of the progress the sub has made because s/he couldn’t have made it without the Dom’s influence. That’s the kind of Dom I need right now. I need someone who specializes in the damaged and broken. The thing is, I’m not so damaged and broken that I can’t fend for myself. In fact, I’m likely to resist submission. It’s not that my conscious mind doesn’t want it. My subconscious mind may not allow me to do it. I can see that happening very easily. That would be the part of me that has to learn how to trust again. That’s one of the primary reasons I got into BDSM in the first place. It was the only kind of relationship I felt would force me to trust another human being. Well, at present, there aren’t too many humans I trust. In fact, I can’t think of anyone I trust completely. There used to be people, but they are no longer in my life. I’ve also had the whole Glenn mess. That, alone, is reason to never trust someone with my heart and emotions. The irony is that, but for our first sexual encounter, I probably wouldn’t have discovered I was turned on by BDSM.

I must admit that I’ve been thinking about Glenn because of Notre Dame’s Manti Te’o scandal. It’s too close to the crap I went through with Glenn. At least Glenn and I had 17 years of some form of real world togetherness before the break, me calling him and him tricking me into believing we could rekindle our relationship. I wish with all my heart that the news media would leave this kid alone. What they are doing is, perhaps, driving a young man to do something for which everyone will be sorry–too late. Think about Te’o as a person first and a news story last.

Anyway, although Glenn shattered me into so many pieces years ago, I have managed to mostly put myself back together. I finally have no interest in him except that I hope this Notre Dame thing reminds him of what he did and he’ll have the decency to hang his head in shame. Am I together? This is the first time I’ve ever asked this question of myself. I’m functionally. I can feel joy even though I’m covering up a mess of sadness. I can still write, but I have yet to write something that is instrumental to my future plans. I am honestly not sure that I’m bad enough to seek a Dom who specializes in putting the broken bits back together. Then again, I can see myself as the primary partner of such a Dom and helping him/her in helping others. For some reason I don’t understand, I would feel more comfortable doing that with a male partner than another woman. I have absolutely NO reason why.

I’ll end this post by saying that I need to really think about what I want. I believe I want a Dom. In researching this piece, I learned that the group that originally took me into the fold still exists, but my ISP doesn’t have Usenet access. I may end up paying for the service. But do I really need anything else to take me off task? My life has become one of questioning what I want against what I need. I both want and need someone who can chip away at the walls to get to my core being because I don’t think I can do it myself. That person needs to be around while I heal. From what I’ve been told, I may never heal, but I will learn to live with the pain. I just don’t know if that’s true–the part about learning to live with it. I live with it now by barely acknowledging it’s there. What happens when it is exposed to the light? I need someone to catch me when I tumble, because I most definitely will tumble. For now, all I can do is write, keep both my eyes and my mind open and hope like hell that someone crosses my path. I’m not sure I need a specialist, but I do know that I need someone who has truly lived in the scene for a long time and has the other, emotional characteristics I need. A dilettante, Dom-wannabe can’t deal and I deserve better. *sigh*

For a great FAQ about BDSM please see this site.

Sick+Tired=Sick AND Tired

So many thoughts permeate my brain even though I’ve got a riproaring headache of a kind I seldom get. I really shouldn’t feel the headache given that I’ve taken my nightly pain meds. And yet I do.

I’ve been sick for just about three weeks now. I was diagnosed with borderline severe asthma about 18 months ago and bronchitis is hitting me with an unforgiving hammer. Thankfully, the asthma doesn’t seem to be related to my four-legged family. Even if it were, I’d just have to cope because they really are my family. We humans cannot be separated from our other human family members no matter how much we may wish we could. Why on earth should I feel any differently about the four-legged family? This bunch has helped me survive a hell of a lot more than my human relatives. The unconditional love I receive and try to return is simply amazing. I am alive because I could not bear the thought of my girls wondering what happened to me and asking themselves why I’m not coming back. I must live because I promised them a home for life. I have every intention of keeping that promise.

The six month “anniversary” of my mother’s death will be upon me in ten days. There is an enormous part of me that is walled off because I just can’t deal with the grief right now. I’ve only broken down once since Mom’s memorial service last March. Once! I know what kind of pain lies behind that wall and beyond my reach. It is a devastation that needs to pour on to this dry earth that is my consciousness. I know that I am not able to will it so. Nevertheless, please, for God’s sake, pour onto me like the Nile pours its nutrient-rich soil onto the surrounding delta, allowing plants to grow and feed a nation. The most important relationship I will ever have is over because the other half of the pair has died. There is no second chance to get it right in this lifetime. Perhaps, if I am lucky, I will do so in the next. My mother died not knowing whether I loved her. I understand why she would question my love because she really did do something nearly unforgivable. I never got a chance to tell her that I really and truly do forgive her. How do I make this right? I can’t.

I have found that I am becoming an adult at the ripe age of five decades. (I put it that way because I just can’t believe the actual number.) My mother infantilized me by never taking me seriously as an adult. I couldn’t possibly be right about anything in her mind. Unfortunately, I was right way too often for either of our tastes. I don’t know how to describe the financial mess she left. I am only scratching the surface. There’s a whole file cabinet filled with things I haven’t had the emotional energy to peruse. She needed a guardian badly. I tried to take some of the weight off but she lied to me about financial matters on a regular basis. It’s my fault. I just couldn’t stand seeing this woman who’d shrunk about five inches due to osteoporosis fold in on herself and plead, in the most desperate and quiet voice, not to wrest control from her. At that moment, she was the one infantilized. I hope and pray that I didn’t make her that way. I’m not sure I could forgive myself.

Still, my mother regularly threatened to throw me out of her house when I insisted on thinking and acting in a manner that suited me, an adult woman, and not a five-year-old child. I constantly had to watch what I said around her because, in her mind, anything short of kissing her ass was a lack of respect. So, because there was no way I could support myself on a disability check alone, I did what I had to do: anything short of ass-kissing, although it came within millimeters. She could be mean and spiteful. Indeed, truly hateful. She tried to tell me that my father tried to molest me when I know for an absolute fact that he would never, and did never, lay an inappropriate hand on me. No, that task fell to her second husband and she let it happen. That’s the thing that was unforgivable. She knew and she allowed it to go on due to her own pathology.

I feel guilty because there were times when I had to verbally smack my mother down. About every six months or so, she’d work my last nerve and I’d retreat to my bedroom–the only room with a lock on the door. She’d often follow me and call me names you’d call a whore in the street when she rolled a date. I don’t miss those arguments at all. In fact, I don’t miss the near-ass kissing either. It feels so good to be an adult for the first time in my life. I’m pretty sure that my maturation stopped around 35 years old. I feel like a 35-year-old most of the time. At other times, I feel like I’m a 30-year-old. I have more empathy now with transgender people. They look in the mirror every day and are astonished at the face looking back. This shell of a body that doesn’t work properly can’t be me. I am so completely disconnected from my physical self that I am a stranger. There’s a song I heard on, of all places, the daytime drama General Hospital. It’s called Stranger In My Skin and is sung by Christine Dente. I was lucky to find it on iTunes. It’s quite haunting, as though Evenescence had a hand in it.

Finally, I come to another sad end. For the first time since I was 16 years old, I don’t want Glenn. It is at once freeing and isolating. Loving him was so much a part of who I am. When he made the choice to marry someone else, then keep seeing me (with my blessing, I might add), and then doing something so vicious, cruel and inhumane to me I can’t even write it, he changed both of our lives forever. In reality, he changed our lives when he chose to marry Dr. H. Bitch instead of me even though I didn’t realize then what a profound affect it had on us both. He’s trapped, whether he wants to be or not, and; he and his wife inflicted a wound that has festered for approximately seven years. It was intended to be one of their mindfucks. Instead, it was no less than a mindRAPE! It was toxic, but it, too, became a part of me.

Removing Glenn from my emotional being leaves me with a hole I have no idea how to fill. As an adult, I can go out to bars (something I’m not really into) and enjoy the drag king/queen shows, meet people and socialize. I can even bring someone home now should I choose to do so. I’ve tried Match.com only to end up with some guy in Nigeria who claimed after a week that he was in love with me and could I please send him money so he and his son could eat because, see, he was over there in Africa building a road and, like, he’d stay up late to chat with me while his son slept in the other room and, so, somehow, he wasn’t getting paid enough by his employer and he was afraid because, like, he didn’t know how to feed himself and his son. Yeah, right! Keep movin’ buddy-boy! I just can’t wait to see my next phone bill because he sent a ton of international texts. OY!

The fact of the matter is this: Right now, at 5:35a Eastern, my body is in pain; I’m emotionally and physically exhausted; I am empty of any illusions about Glenn (really Faux Glenn) and why he and his wife did such a horrible thing that nearly cost me my life in the nuclear emotional fallout that followed; I both miss my mother and feel guilty because, for the first time in about 30 years, there is peace in this dwelling I’ve hated for so long.

I want to ask something I don’t think I’ve ever asked on this blog. I am in dire need of good energy. I don’t care if it’s in the form of a prayer or if you visualize fireworks. I really, really need positive energy to flow my way so that I can absorb it and be replenished.

I can’t write anymore. I am so very tired. I am going to sleep and hope like hell my body and mind begin to heal. Thank you for reading this rather long and rambling post. G’morning!

A Secret Uncovered

I’ve actually been too depressed to post. My plan had been to come back and tell the tale of how convoluted my feelings are because I turned Glenn loose and told him that, if he wanted me, he knew where to find me, but that I couldn’t carry this weight alone anymore. I am going to be in his neck of the woods the first weekend in October for a series of dog shows. That’s how we were able to continue after he married his presumptive current wife. Between visiting friends and dog shows, I was up and down the Boston to D.C. corridor. We’d arrange to meet whenever I was within a couple hundred miles.

Then tonight, out of the blue, something hit me square in the face. Although I thought I’d figured out most of what happened between us, there was still the lingering question of why. I had the basics right, but it goes even further. Glenn and his wife are evading taxes by claiming his business, which I’m very sure she funded, as a money-losing endeavor. She’s a doctor in a specialty that carries very high malpractice premiums. What better way to get at least some of that money back? I’m just pissed I didn’t see it sooner.

I am presenting a redacted version of the letter I wrote and e-mailed to Glenn. I am only redacting those parts that could reveal my identity, including some information about my father. In Daddy’s case, I’m not sure all of the people who could conceivably go to prison are dead yet. Actually, I’m hoping they aren’t. Whatever the case, I have to redact some of his information too. In addition, I’m taking a page from Daddy’s book. Namely, always have some leverage because it can keep you alive. I’m in no way spouting hyperbole. After Glenn gets my letter, I have no doubt that he will attempt, yet again, to threaten me. The first time was simply his imagination working overtime. This time, he’s got a reason.

My father would be very disappointed in me for taking this long to see what was right there in front of my face. You’re laundering that HUMAN bitch’s salary. Yep, that’s right. I have more respect for my four-legged bitches that I do for your necessary wife. In fact, the two of you need each other. You need her to fund [name of Glenn’s indy label] and she needs you to provide a faux tax shelter. I’ve always known that she was funding you, that’s not news. But being my father’s daughter, although I look like Mommy, I should have seen this in glaring neon yellow. Let me school you, HUMAN bitches, about who my father was.

Both had your minds on other things when the [metro area in which I live] mob wars broke out. You were on the east coast probably taking your PSATs and may not have even thought about [college where I did my freshman year and from which Glenn and his *spit* wife graduated] then. Suffice it to say, the government was deeply interested. Daddy was, by profession, an accountant. He graduated from a college that’s now part of [local university that is very highly ranked among universities and colleges] with a degree in Accounting. Mom never told me who paid for Daddy’s education, but I have my own ideas about that. None of us ever discussed what Daddy did once he became legit. He even had a way to do that, bless his heart. Yep, I am Daddy’s little love all the way. That’s why I’m bordering on being both pleased with my discovery AND pissed off that I missed it for so long.

When we were in kindergarten and 1st grade, this nation’s ghettos burned. But before that, in the early to just-barely-late 60s, segregation wasn’t a bad thing in many ways. Daddy started working for the Jewish mob as a teenager in the very early 40s. He was an only son, but I think he may not have contested the draft. There was a lot of money to be made if you had the right connections and he did. His first job was running numbers. The Jewish mob here had the numbers racket more or less sewn up. I won’t say what Daddy had to do to move through the ranks after he came back because there aren’t statutes of limitation on what are probably technically still open crimes. I don’t want Feds knocking on my door expecting the full run down. For one thing, I’m not certain I know the entire thing. In fact, I doubt that I do. Second, even though Daddy’s dead, there are others who aren’t. I told you that I see most things as grey. Now you may understand why.

I’m skipping a decade or so to get to the good part. So, as I said, Daddy worked for the Jewish mob run by [name of now-dead racketeer who ran the Jewish mob here]. I’m not sure the spelling is right, but it will do. You know how any fool over 30 who’s managed to sling drugs to little kids calls himself an “OG”? Ha! They don’t even know what an OG is! Daddy was what one would call an OG and, buried in some very dusty file that hasn’t been seen in 30 years, there’s probably the documentation to prove it. He had to do a stint in federal prison at some point, however, that mysteriously went away. I do know how, but, my lips are so glued shut. *gringiggle* (I’m sorry. I’m just way too tickled to FINALLY have everything make sense.) It’s only natural that, given his vocation at that time, that he’d spend a stint inside. In truth, I’m just glad that he made it out alive. He, on the other hand, was quite ashamed of the things he’d done. He would hate that I know about some of them. And since I could usually tell what was going to get Daddy maudlin, I kept my mouth shut for the ten years or so I had him after throwing off [my] mother’s deep and abiding pain from being married to him for almost twenty years. Actually, I think they may have been married almost exactly 20 years, but were separated when I was conceived. At any rate, she made sure that I was terrified of him. He didn’t help matters either, but he made all of that up to me and more. I have never had a better friend than my father. And, to be honest, I’m very proud of him. He was brilliant. Back to [now dead Jewish mob boss].

The club scene in [my metro area] was red hot. Daddy, as I said, had received the best education possible by graduating from what is now [local university mentioned above]. He had two specialties, only one of which is germane to this letter. He moved money around so that NO ONE except him knew where it was exactly, including and especially, the Feds. Aside from being an accountant, Daddy managed a club called [name of famed jazz/soul club]. [Geographically identifying information redacted along with some names]. Daddy did occasionally come around IF my mother allowed it. There was a barmaid I so wanted Daddy to marry even as a little girl, but she died of breast or ovarian cancer many years before Daddy and I got back in touch. I cried about Janice when I heard of her death. She was a sweetheart and smart. His common law wife was as dumb as a doorknob, but she [redacted a common statement in black communities concerning fair-skinned blacks] as the saying goes. In his mind, that made up for it. If you remember, Mommy was about [HUMAN bitch’s first name] color when it was said and done, but started out about a shade or two lighter-skinned and, without a doubt, no one’s dummy. Daddy was a “little” colorist because he hated being what is to me a dark milk chocolate. Since he grew up in a very segregated Alabama and was illegitimate to boot, I understand.

Aaah, this is something you’d like, Glenn, but you might just kick yourself for being short-sighted and, I don’t know, thinking that I wasn’t good enough to be on your arm because of my pronounced limp even though I could do things in bed because of that shorter leg that it’s more difficult for someone with two full-length legs to do. But, there were things that I can’t, and couldn’t, do too. It was and remains a trade-off. Whatever. Back to the story.

You see, because Daddy managed [name of club], he knew EVERYBODY in the world of black music. If they have not been damaged by a leaking roof, I have autographed pictures of The Temptations, The Four Tops (I think), Dionne Warwick and Nancy Wilson. I’ve already shared the story on one of my blogs about Daddy sending Carmen McRae, the jazz vocalist, to me as a present because I loved her music as a wee one. He did, though. Unfortunately, I wasn’t at home. However, it’s the only time Mommy has ever praised his parenting skills. She knew about Ms. McRae because she’s the one who answered the door. When I think of all the trim Daddy probably got, it puts you to shame, dear heart. I don’t mean that in a nasty way, honestly. I am simply using you as a point of reference. Daddy was smooooth in ways that only nature provides. Women just instinctively loved him. My mother had loved him since she was 13 years old. She married him when she was 21. Hmm, now you see where I get my penchant for long-term relationships. Had you stayed with me, Daddy would have helped you get started and taught you what you needed to know. I’d already told him about you. He was suspicious that you were going to break my heart. How right he was! You’d better be glad that Daddy died when I was 25, or that other specialty that I purposely didn’t mention is one with which you would have come up close and personal. The best thing is that neither of us would have seen it coming and Daddy would have been in the clear. Actually, he probably wouldn’t have done anything too lasting because that would have risked his relationship with me. However, if he’d been alive when you pretended to want to get back together until you or your surrogate told me online (which is why I know it wasn’t something you necessarily wanted) that it was all a joke, leading to my suicide attempt that came within a hair’s breadth of working, solving the murder of Jimmy Hoffa would have been easier than finding all of your body.

Right now, I don’t know who I’m more pissed off with: you, that HUMAN bitch you married or myself. This is so fucking obvious! You two are wedded forever because of mutual need. [Glenn’s indy label] needs to lose money, at least on paper, so that Dr. H. Bitch can offset her insurance premiums which are through the roof due to her specialty. I was the sacrificial lamb in all of this. I may be thoroughly and completely pissed off with both of you, but I’m not making any rash decisions except one which is literally a matter of survival. Within 24 hours, there will be too many people who know about what you’re doing to harm a hair on my head unless you REALLY want to go to prison, and I don’t mean for simply evading taxes. If anything at all happens to me from now until I am placed naturally in the grave, YOU will *BOTH* be under scrutiny that you can’t withstand. I’m so blessed to have a very prominent family on my mother’s side and a certain respect for the real OGs left in the world, of which there are few, on my father’s side. From what I’ve been told in the last two years, I’ve got protection I don’t even know about. Nevertheless, I do know where to start looking if need be.

Just to make it plain:

1) There will be no physical or emotional harm to me
2) There will be no physical or emotional harm to anyone close to me, including and *especially* my girls
3) I will tip the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation off if ANYTHING looks just a wee bit off
4) In case I should die or “disappear” before I get to the IRS and/or FBI, even if it looks like a suicide, God. Help. You.
5) Thank goodness for people on both sides of the legal fence

Can I get an amen?

What you have both done to me is beyond cruel, as my shrink put it today. And you, Mr. High-and-Mighty, telling me when I offered a kind gesture that you couldn’t be bought. Honey, everyone has their price and your wife seems to have known what yours was. Ya shoulda stayed with me, kiddo! For damn sure, you should have never, ever been cruel, or beyond cruel, to me. I’d done nothing to deserve it. And, I was *sick* you bastard! It just never crossed your mind that something else was going on because your view of humanity is so goddamned warped that I *had* to have another agenda. I pity you.

Forgiveness

I was originally going to title this post “The Exhaustion That Will Not End,” but the exhaustion is a symptom of, possibly, other things. It would all come back to Glenn one way or another, so I’ve decided to simply write about him. I am having a difficult time remembering what I’ve said about him in posts here and what I”ve written to him. Therefore, I’m going to assume that I’m repeating here what I’ve written in letters. If I repeat myself, I do apologize.

I wrote to Glenn, the love of my life I met in undergrad, and told him that I forgave him for something absolutely horrible he did to me about ten years ago. What he did had a profound effect on me and, had it come from someone else, I would never forgive. It took me many years to understand the reason for his betrayal, but I think I finally have with age and experience. The reason was two-fold. It was revenge for basically coming out to him in a less than stellar manner after he’d left me high and dry for two years, then called me so he could have phone sex. Needless to say, I was a little bit annoyed that he’d done that. Hence, the “Sorry, I’m not sleeping with men at the moment,” comment. He said a shocked “What?!” I repeated what I said and he hung up on me. Then, some years later, after being emotionally devoured by a cousin I couldn’t fight back because of our uncle and patriarch’s wishes, I tracked Glenn down at a club and, after several conversations leading me to believe he was still interested, he said that he was joking and that he didn’t want me because things changed. Mind you, he didn’t say this until I pressed him for a date when we’d get together since he’s 500 miles away, or was then. Now it’s more like 400+. This is the man I’d hoped to spend my life with, but he decided to marry someone else. Still, we couldn’t stay away from each other. So, for two or three years, we continued to see each other. If he’d married a woman I gave a damn about, even a stranger, I probably would have at least attempted to end things. He had to marry the woman he did and I could not have cared less about her feelings.

I believe second reason for the above-described betrayal was that he hoped I’d stay away on my own because he still had/has feelings for me. It is this reason and this reason alone that I didn’t get it. I didn’t think he had any feelings left for me at all. How could he and knowingly do what he did? Then, I began to think about men and what men will do when they are desperate and have too much pride for their own good. I didn’t want to believe that he still had feelings for me. That sentiment was born from the same one that wouldn’t allow me to believe he had ever had feelings for me. In the end, it had more to do with my lack of belief in myself than anything he hadn’t said, although he really should have said something. He broke me. No, I truly mean that he literally broke me. He pushed me up and over a cliff called “Suicide.” I almost made it.

My mother died probably not knowing that I’d forgiven her for something she’d done that wrecked both our lives. I can’t go through telling the story again, but suffice it to say that I could not go through life not forgiving Glenn for something that was nearly as bad. Like I still loved my mother, I still love Glenn, though differently than my mother of course. Furthermore, I want him back. I got so damned tired of hating him for what he did and being afraid he’d do it again that I couldn’t do it anymore. I finally threw up my hands and pulled out the tissues and wrote to him. I began the process on July 10 with one letter. It took me two days, but I finished the second one tonight. But for the fact that I had to go through his online store to tell him that it may have gotten lost between my computer and his, I’m not sure he would even have known I’d sent private e-mail. For all I know, he’s got me filtered out. In one sense, I can’t blame him. I’ve made several attempts to reach him over the years with no response, which doesn’t mean he’s not reading, but doesn’t mean he is. If he’s behaving like he did when we were in college, he had to wait to see how serious I was before he’d make a move. I wouldn’t move past the initial couple of letters because I thought it was pointless. That ended on July 10. I’m very serious. I haven’t let another man into my heart since he went off to marry the woman I’ll assume he’s still married to. He can have her. I just don’t want to be without him at all.

This is going to be a long, drawn-out fight unless he actually grows the balls to tell me that he’s uninterested. Even then, he’ll have to tell me to my face and not on the phone. Skype is a wonderful tool, isn’t it? So are the airplane and the highway. I’ll be in his area in October. If need be, he can tell me then. My guess is that I’m going to have to keep things going until he gets a big ass clue that I’m not going away quietly into that good night again. As I think I said here before, if two people have to work so fucking hard to stay away from each other, then there’s a reason. As my mother once told me, I’m a threat to his marriage. I prefer to think that I’d be an addition as opposed to a threat. The only reason I give a damn is that I know he has at least one daughter. I don’t want her caught in the games grown-ups play. I wish I hadn’t let him go so easily when he told me he was going to marry that woman. I just didn’t have the experience to fight back. All I could do was cry and I cried for days and weeks. He didn’t enjoy my pain. It hurt him, too. However, the marriage was logical. That’s the other thing I’ve had to accept.

Knowing how to fight for him meant that I had to remember things about him that I knew probably wouldn’t have changed and believing in myself. I don’t doubt one bit that I’m going to have to move once/if we reconcile. He can’t explain long absences the way he could before. With Mom dying, there’s no more reason to stay here except one and I can fly in to see her or have her fly in to see me. I’m referring to my last living great-aunt. She’s like a mother or grandmother to me. She has more than enough people to take care of her, but I adore her. I’ll also have to leave the only blood cousins in my age group. That, too, will be difficult. Basically, I don’t want to move. It’s just that I see it coming.

I’m also going to have to figure out, with his help, how do deal with my sexuality. It doesn’t lend itself readily to monogamy. In the past, I’ve used polyamory as a way to detach myself. It’s what I learned to do from those who’d practiced polyamory as the central figure in past relationships. That isn’t the way it should be. I think some part of me knew that there was only room for one love of my life and, therefore, thought it better to keep my distance on some level.

In addition to being “fluid” in my affairs of the crotch or heart, I still consider myself as a practitioner of BDSM. In short, I consider myself a leatherdyke. Or, perhaps, a leatherbyke. Whatever, BDSM is in my soul and he isn’t into it. What’s so funny is that he’s the one who got me started without knowing it. If need be, I can give it up.

The question I’ve had while making all of these compromises is: What is Glenn willing to give up to be with me? Only time will tell, assuming I can break through to him at all. I may have to resort to changing e-mail addresses periodically and actually chasing him around the Internet until he stands up and says, “Go away!” If he does that, then, aside from a few questions I want satisfied, I’ll leave him be. I’m betting he won’t, but I don’t know for sure.

I vaguely remember telling him that while I forgive him, there’s still a large part of me that doesn’t trust him not to repeat the same evil deed. It’s true. That’s something I’m only going to be able to work on once we’re in conversation again. I can’t do it alone. There’s a difference between forgiving and forgetting. I don’t know that I’ll ever forget. I do want to get to a point where I can put my distrust in the past and not have it staring at me in the present. People make mistakes. At last glance, he was a person. He is a person I want back in my life.