Not done yet- Wanting it all

I made this collage a long time ago when I was thinking of my mother. Apologies to the various artists whose work I borrowed to create it. There is a girl and a sentry in the picture and on the eve of the anniversary of my mother's death it still evokes how I feel about her. I needed that sentry in the picture to bear making it. I needed sentries in my childhood to survive it. My mother was larger than life. She was terrifying and beautiful and very crazy (I've heard dozens of proffered forensic diagnoses) All I know for sure is that she was crazy and very smart, driven by hatred and her own twisted version of love and that she was my mother.

I believed her always. It's easier now that she's dead to see what was truth and what was her fiction, what was the family mythology. It's easier now to begin to understand that everything I was molded to be, everything that I was told that I was, was a carefully crafted and reinforced construct. Somehow I was still true somewhere in all of that crazy making, hidden away, waiting to make my escape.

What does this have to do with masturbation and desire? Everything. When the person who gave birth to you, who burned as bright and as powerful as the sun defines you from birth as dirty and wrong and twisted and incapable of love or being loved- it  fucks with your ability to understand your own desire and desirability- it skews your sense of self so badly it takes a lifetime to undo it. That process of healing and reclamation is a little like slapping make up over a birth mark at first. You apply it hoping to make the birthmark disappear and it does outwardly but you always know it's there, always see it in the mirror even when it's hidden. Over time the birthmark fades and on occasion burns back to life and fades away again.

When you are both sexually abused and then punished sadistically and sexually for the same abuse there is no hope really of ever pleasing, even when you are doing everything you are told and smiling if you can, before the shock settles in. I notice as I write that I am using the word you instead of I. It's a way of putting some distance between this material and myself, between myself and my mother, between all of this ugly and the light I want to rest in now.

Pleasing was hopeless but I never stopped trying.As an adult, nothing broke my heart more than not  being able to please my partner sexually. If an orgasm were not the net result of sex for my partner I disappeared into a thick well of shame and inconsolable sorrow. I got really good at making sure that never happened, but sometimes, it does. Sometimes I am not successful in calling forth every orgasm I see just beyond my fingers, mouth, pussy and my mad bedroom skills. The word overachiever comes to mind and I'm not talking about this to brag on being great in bed (though I am), I am showing how desperately I applied myself to learning pleasure, to learning how and when to touch, how to listen, how to pay acute attention to my partner's desires and implement them with the attention and will of someone trying to save the world.

I wonder where my own desire belongs in this pathology of my own sexuality which is a twisty ball of barbed wire and misfiring synapses that I could spend a lifetime trying to unravel it and never get that work done. I've accepted the ways in which I'm kinked and dark and full of strange hungers. I've been lucky enough to find a partner for whom my kinks work. No matter what rough patch we might hit, sexual chemistry is never a problem for us. But my desire outside the two of us is different. That desire is still in my back pocket. My desire for myself, for what gets me off by myself is still stuck somewhere long ago. Held in a child's too small hands. That was big stuff for a little kid to  navigate and survive. And I am so grateful that I finally found a place where good sex exists. Hot and sweaty, long and full of good hard fucking, tender sweet spots of a kind of touch I never knew existed that always makes me cry and plenty of laughter. Lots of joy. This is something I never expected and will never take for granted.

But my own desire for me, my own hungers that are specific to masturbation and self touching, self fucking, are still mysterious and terrifying. Now that I am wide awake and aware. Now that masturbation is a conscious form of meditation I can't escape the dark lands where my desire is mucked and tainted and stuck in the way back times. My fantasies are so complicated and perverse and so entwined with incest it's a wonder I managed to ever come that way at all. On my own, with my brain firing up images and movies, where I sometimes am all the characters at once but always land someplace where I have no power, no voice, no hope and this is where I get off, without fail, every time.

I can only imagine how uncomfortable this is to read. Mothers, incest and dark fantasies. Masturbation and moldy desire that has the stink of rot to it. I had no idea when I started this project what it would actually be like. How much of my trauma would out. How entwined my self touching and my abuse were and still are. I am such a prolific smut writer I wonder how come I can't just re-script this stuff. Why can't I write my brain patter differently. I have so much easy access to hot material, why isn't that enough? Not to mention all the delicious smut in the world, and porn and images- there is so much content why can't I use that instead?

I won't masturbate tonight or tomorrow. I will light a candle tomorrow for my mother, lay out the rosary that represents her experience of the divine as a child, set out the Buddha that represents her experience of the divine as an adult. I have a statue of the Mother Mary that will go on the alter and a small strip of photo booth pictures of one very good day with her and her daughters and her grandchildren all squished in the booth and smiling genuine smiles. I will do my ritual where I allow myself to love her and hate her all at once. I will hold both the dark things that she did to me and other memories at the same time- the sand dollars we collected at Ocean Beach, the sound of her voice when she sang along to Tony Bennett and Sarah Vaughn. I will remember how funny she was even though her humor was always sharp and thorny. I will remember how she told me I could fly and then cut my wings over and over again.

The next day or so will be a time to both grieve that she's gone and celebrate it. Because her being gone means that she can't hurt me anymore. Her being dead means that I can love her safely, from a great distance. Her being gone means I can try and find my own truth about me and keep on mitigating all of the things she told me that I believed. That I was no good, a waste of space, dirty, and wrong. That I was crazy. That I was a slut and a whore. That I was a liar and never loved her. Of course I always loved her but I often wondered if she was right and I didn't understand love. Her love (and now that she's dead I think she did love me, sometimes, in her own warped way) didn't ever make sense to me. I spent my life trying to earn it and never got it, but now that she's gone I can feel it sometimes. Now that she's gone I get to make it so if I want.

***

I had an orgasm two nights ago. I was alone in the shared living room space I live in and it was very late. I had to keep stopping every time the bedroom door opened. I felt a bit like a criminal in the dark, waiting for the house to get quiet and trying again. I did come eventually, an hour into it, including interruptions. I did come. I remember the intricate fantasy that got me there but I can't share it. Not now. Maybe not ever. It was ugly and did the trick. But I'm still not done yet. It's June and Masturbation Month is over and I'm not done yet. I'm finding shifts and big truths and learning things that I hid from myself all of these years. I'm going to keep on going. And after I'm done with the yearly mourning ritual I will try again.

See I want it all. I want everything I'm entitled to by virtue of being human, being female, being fractured and being whole all at once. I want to know my desire inside and out like I know yours. I want to be able to hold it in my hands up to the light without flinching. I want to step all the way in, all the way in, to my own wanting, my own yearning, my own open throated hunger and stand there without shame. I want my mirrors to stop shattering. I am ready to face the truth and claim it all for me because I want it all, every bit of wet heated through hunger that belongs to me and always did. I am taking it all back for me, ugly and beautiful.
I am absolutely determined.

I'm grateful for the conversations I've been able to have about this strange work, with you who are engaged in it, or just reading it, or not reading it but supporting it anyway. I'm grateful to have company in this. Glad for your voice, for the resonance I find and for the compassion.
May the coming day be good to you.

Days 30 and 31- Disclaiming Desire- belated

Disclaim-

v. dis·claimed, dis·claim·ing, dis·claims

v.tr.

1. To deny or renounce any claim to or connection with; disown.

2. To deny the validity of; repudiate.

3. Law To renounce one's right or claim to.

v.intr. Law

To renounce a right or claim.

One of the women in my long term project writing group * was encouraging all of us to stop using disclaimers when we submit our writing. There was a good discussion that left me with tremendous discomfort. I have been thinking about the importance of my disclaimers and what they do for me. In my writing they allow me to say that I don't know what's happening here with these words. I don't know where I stand and what they mean. That it feels shaky and terrible. That there's no there, there. It allows me to step away from what I don't think is good enough. That is the crux of it for me, I don't think it's good enough and disclaiming it is what makes me feel safer.

My daughter and I talked about it and how women disclaim all the time, that we are expected to. It seems like it's a good way to keep everyone comfortable. I looked up the word and thought about the definition; let it marinate. Speculating on this need I have to insert a disclaimer in my writing- not always- not when I know the writing is good- which sometimes I do. I have short stories that I know are good. Starchy Critics in fancy suits could tell me they are terrible all day long and it wouldn't change my mind. It's evident. I know where I stand. They are good. And then there is this other shaky ground. Different kinds of writing, non fiction writing. My novel,which is a whole other land to walk in. I have no map to follow there, no direction or understanding if it's good, if it counts, if it's real. Just like this masturbation practice; I have no firm, known, place to stand. No certainty. No knowledge that it's good or alright or acceptable. Just like this body. Just like this first person true writing. I want to disclaim it all.

"To deny or renounce any claim to or connection with; disown"

That has been my MO for much of my life. I separate myself from this body that I live in as though I were a tennant renting space in a run down studio in the wrong part of town. I come home and turn on the television and eat something tinny and sour and go to sleep. I leave as soon as I wake up. I walk away as best I can. I disown it. I deny it. I know it's not good so I avoid it. I know this body is used up, was used up before I ever got to have consensual sex as an adult. I had my first STD and pelvic (stirrups and all)  when I was in the first grade. I got passed around like a party favor before I had enough words to parse meaning from my experience. All I knew for sure was just how bad I was, how bad this body was. How dirty and wrong. I learned to hate being a girl. Dread being a girl. I learned how to be a boy to escape it. I learned that I was a slut before I had breasts. I learned how to take anything they wanted to shove into me, including handfuls of shame, stuffed like gritty mud down my throat. I learned to have a smooth and even expression. I learned how to disappear. I learned how to be good at being a bad girl. I learned how to be a thing that would die. I learned how to disclaim, and deny everything about me, always. That was my only chance. Anything else was too dangerous for them and for me.

"To deny the validity of; to repudiate"

to deny the validity of :
my life, my body, my experience. To deny the persistent earnest thrust of my own desire. To deny my right to feel desire, to settle into it and see what it wants, where are the edges of it and what do they feel like? Are they smooth and soft? Sharp and ragged? They are. The edges are all of these things and there are breaks in them where there is open space, for the mysterious desires I haven't discovered yet. What would it look like to make my own desire true? Valid? What would my life look like if I carried it in my open hands as if I had a right to be a woman who walks with desire? A woman who walks as though sex and self sex were her right. What would my life look like if I allowed my desire to roam freely, unleashed- if I let my want loose on the world? Why does that feel so dangerous? Because it is. Because if we, who have been used up before we are old enough to choose actually live our lives as if they belong to us, inhabit our bodies without denying their existence, if we claim that for our own then we can't be broken. That's dangerous for everyone isn't it?

So many question marks. I want to disclaim this writing right this very second. For reasons I could list out quickly and succinctly. But I won't. Not right now. I'm trying non-disclaimer on like a new pair of jeans, still too stiff, not broken in yet, not really mine. I'm tasting this discomfort. It tastes like an unripe pear that leaves my tongue tasting dry and a little fuzzy. It doesn't swallow well. But I'll just keep going anyway. Because that is how I save myself every day. I just keep going.

***

I've been able to masturbate just once in the last few days. I could not come. But here's the thing I am liking. It felt good to touch myself. I felt pleasure in the exploration, in the touching, stroking, the sound of the water falling, the buzz of the vibrator in between my legs that I kept clamped together because I was standing up. Because I only had a little time. Because I wasn't alone. Because I needed to take care of my family. Because people were in line for the shower. And it was okay. I didn't feel like I the self touching without the punchline was an inconsequential act or a waste of time. It was good. I am liking that shift.

Today I am all giant ache. I am frustrated and wanting. My desire is loud and brassy and will not be denied. It is thrumming between my legs and cunt and clit are awake and demanding and I can't shake my awareness of them. Every time I move I am aware of the need, the want, the twitching of nerve endings waiting to be tapped, lit up and set free. I have texted my partner who lives miles and miles away, all day, the ways that I want her. The things I want to do to her; the things I want her to do to me. I am hungry. I can own that. I lay claim to that wanting. I take if for me right now.

There is some hope if I can stay awake a little longer that I'll  be able to masturbate tonight. I predict it will be short and sweaty and sharp and that I'll want more. But who knows? I only know I'll do my best to stay there all the way in that desire. I'll stay in these uncomfortable new jeans with the taste of unripe pear in my mouth. I'll not disclaim it. I'll not repudiate it. I'll do it for myself. I'll do it for you.

Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your witness and your own touching and writing and for your own claiming. I hope this coming day is full of surprise.


* Dive Deep- Writing Ourselves Whole with Jen Cross