Welcome to the family, kid.

The primary purpose of this pilgrimage home was to begin difficult conversations.  To say out loud those hard things about facing death and loss and age and infirmity…

I did not anticipate even harder things… can there be anything more difficult???

…oh fuck yes.

It seems that the great grandson, my great nephew, who had been sort of hanging around the house a lot lately was there because his dad, my nephew, the son of my long deceased only sibling, had been kicked out of his house… for doing something sexual with is 2 year old half sister.  Exactly what that sexual thing was never said, either because my father cannot bring himself to say the words or perhaps he was not told any specifics.

The boy, and he is a boy, only fourteen, the product of a failed marriage, the odd kid out, shuffled back and forth between families where he never quite fits in… he denies everything, but of course he would… hell, if I was in his shoes, I would too.  He has everything to lose.  And to give the boy credit, he is a sweet person, kind, generous… he loves his great grandmother and grandfather unconditionally because they are the only ones that give that to him. 

My father wants to believe him, more than anything in the world my father, 84 years old and sweetly innocent of so much of the evil of the world, wants nothing more than this to be a terrible misunderstanding… just a horrible mistake.

The kid’s dad and his stepmom have led a kind of chaotic existence, hovering on the edge of homelessness… my nephew was at best treated like a built in babysitter for the little baby half sister that came along when he was twelve, while the adults played computer games and got stoned.  And everyone loved that little girl like she was the queen of world… the cuter she was, the less anyone noticed the boy.

I don’t know if he did what they said… I don’t know if I care.  As far as I am concerned, in this nasty equation… everybody is a victim.  Parents of the little girl are outraged and seem very willing to throw him out… so here he is. 

And here is my father, with all his wounded innocence, coming to me to somehow ask me what he should do.  And I had to open his eyes… shit happens… shit happens in this family… I sat him down and told him the painful truth that people choose to not say out loud.  I was sexually abused… by my older brother… in his house, under his nose.  Both my brother and I were victimized by the husband of his sister.  My mother, his wife, was sexually abused by her older brother and her cousins when she was little… I told him that not only to horrible things happen… they happen in your house from time to time… that his family IS perfect… all except for that incest thing.

A painful ugly fact that I had to come to terms with decades ago… a painful ugly fact that I had hoped had finally wound down, that with my generation the pattern had somehow been broken…

I was wrong.

I wonder if I ought to take that little boy out for a walk and tell him these things… that he is not the only one… not the first or the second or even the third on to be harmed by this sickness.  To try to open up his too young eyes and heart to the hurt it brings to the ones you love when you indulge this thing… this perverted kind of love, abuse, poison, pain, vampirism… whatever the fuck it is.

Welcome to the family, kid.

But another part of this family… is that even if you are broken, you are one of us… we will not turn our back on you.  My father is shocked and sickened that this boy’s father seems perfectly willing to do exactly that…

I told my Dad, that no matter what happens that kid needs to know that somebody still loves him.  That even as we face the consequences and hold him accountable that we are not going to quit on him.  I told him that… that no matter what, he will always be one of us.  I also raised an eyebrow and told him in no uncertain terms that means that if we think it is the best course of action we will not hesitate to kick him in the ass.  Master said right after me… “right up between your shoulder blades”.  The kid grinned and said thank you.

I don’t know how this story is going to end.

So there we are.  Flakey father and step mom are infuriated.  Kid is still denying.  Grandpa and grandma wanting nothing more that for what he says to be the truth.  Kid was scheduled to go visit his maternal side of the family… far, far away.  Do not know if he will ever be welcomed back by his father.  Do not know if the police or welfare or whatever is going to get involved.  Do know that my parents would take him in if they could… but they are at the end of their life… and to parent one more time is asking a lot… perhaps too much.

Do know that Master says in no uncertain terms that we cannot be the ones that fix this mess… we are only going to be here for a couple more days and we live too far away. 

I also know that all this has stirred up feelings I thought long since dealt with, old monsters slain and buried deep.  It does not take much for me to feel that sick lump in my guts and for my eyes to feel hot and wet with unshed tears.

What makes me what I am...

I want to say this first… I AM NOT WRITING THIS TO FOSTER SYMPATHY. I have come to terms with my childhood decades ago. What happened… happened. It should not have happened. Any abuse of a child is pure evil… BUT I HAVE WALKED OUT OF THAT VALLEY OF EVIL AND I KNOW I AM NOT EVIL. Don’t waste any of your energy or time on regret, or hate, or sympathy… I know I don’t.

Perhaps that is why I usually do not often speak of my childhood to others, the tendency of people to focus on my trauma rather than my recovery.

But anyway…

In a group someone posed the question of how/when did you find your perversion/kink?

And my mind began to spin… and spin… and spin… Images of being so small… just a little tiny girl and holding such terrible knowledge and secrets carefully hidden in my heart. I think that is the most corrosive thing about being a victim… being taught to keep secrets… secrets that fester inside you…

There was not a time I can remember when I was not sexual. Not a time when I was not very aware of my body’s potential for pleasure. And not a time when that knowledge did not terrify me, deliciously diabolically terrify me. Because, there was not a time when that sexuality was not steeped in terror and violence.

I remember being very, very small, wearing a little ruffled dress and seeing a man, just a man, a stranger on the street, and wondering if he did it too? If he fucked too; and I felt that shuddering delicious rush of dread. I must have been three or four. And fucking was nonconsensual… forced… dangerous… violent… the concept of consent was beyond me. (interestingly… my abuse never involved penetration… but I knew… oh yes, I knew…)

And not only was sexuality fraught with violence… violence was fraught with sexuality. Just being frightened was erotic… panic could make me come. And I was orgasmic… fantasizing, terrible complex fantasies about chains, whips, rape, humiliation, dehumanization long before I even had words for the acts. I was given a Barbie doll… poor, poor thing… I fashioned chains for her, forced her to do so many terrible things. I caged her; beat her, fed her horrible things; shit, dirt, poison. I forced endless, sundry, foreign objects into every imaginary orifice. I dismembered her. I fed her to the dog.

Long after I was no longer under the influence my abusers, I carried that within me, a dreadful fascination with violence. Every sexual fantasy involved abduction, rape, and abuse. I fantasized about things that I did not even have names for.

I remember that once I read an article in a Time Magazine about a crime. I think I might have been ten. In the article it was stated that the woman was raped multiple times. I was very puzzled. I had somehow thought that rape meant the act of tearing off someone’s clothing. I had this odd vision of the men tearing off her clothing and then her getting dressed again and then tearing the clothes off again. I remember asking my mother about this. She explained to me that rape meant forced sexual intercourse. The concept sort of rocked me. I knew about sexual intercourse. I knew about fucking. I just did not know you could do it consensually. You mean people fucked willingly???? That totally did not seem possible.

And I knew I had to keep all this secret… deepest darkest secret. No one could ever know. Even after I admitted my abuse, even after I went through years of therapy, I still did not tell anyone about the truth of my existence, that I had carried that love of violence inside me. The fear that if I let that monster out I could easily do terrible evil things. That each time I laid down and let someone fuck me, I was not there with them, I was deep inside my head, lost in my guilty world of horror. And afterward I would turn away from them, feeling dirty and evil.

I think I was maybe twenty something when I decided these fantasies were bad for me, unhealthy, and that I must stop. I decided that I was perpetuating my victimization. I decided I was not a monster, and that I was not going to think like one. It wasn’t easy to stop thinking about violence. But I did it. And I also stopped thinking about sex. I rejected violence and sex at the same time. I just turned it all off. I was in control of myself. And I was so angry. I stopped going to therapy, deciding that I was cured. I mean I was in control, finally.

My first husband could not deal with the frigidity and the anger, strayed and found greener pastures.

My second husband had a sense about him… he never asked… he always told. He was critical and demanding. Sex with him had no sense of me “letting”… he took. He was gentle, generous, attentive, creative… but underneath was this sense of being taken. It was fucking awesome. It woke up a lot of my old monsters, but I was getting old enough to know that I was not really a suppressed serial killer. I knew now that I really wasn’t going to somehow lose control and go on some kind of rampage. And fucking him was mind blowing. I loosened up a little, let the fantasies roll, took some time to try and figure out who I was in these fantasies… Was I the victim or the perpetrator in these complex stories? It was never really clear.

The marriage was chaotic, he was controlling in all aspects of our relationship. I was a strong outspoken feminist. We fought, separated, reunited, divorced and reconciled. I was strong. He was stronger. He seemed to thrive on my resistance but eventually I just stopped fighting. Menopause nearly killed it because I lost the need and literally the ability to have sex. But momentum and perhaps a certain lack of motivation kept us together. I gave up fighting, but I just was passive and avoidant. We coasted along for I don’t know how many years like that.

But finally menopause got over… and suddenly my libido snapped back on again, with a vengeance. I got a laptop computer for a birthday present and I started to write down my fantasies. My dark, dirty, forbidden fantasies… and I started jumping the old man’s bones at every opportunity. A friend mentioned an online erotica site where people can post their stories. I started reading other people’s stuff. And I had another AHAH moment. Holy fuck… There are other people who thought like me. And then I read stories about people who did these things (well, a lot of these things) that I have been thinking about WILLINGLY????

OH MY FUCKING GOD!!! I found out about BDSM… about consent… about SSC BDSM… and then I read more… and found out about Masters and something clicked… hell, I had been in a power exchange relationship for years. Yes, it wasn’t by the book. But with my husband it had always been his way, his way or fight and I was tired of fighting.

I started to talk with him about this, talking with him about wanting to be controlled, owned, bound and hurt. He looked at me like I was crazy. Protesting that I could never do it and I would wail, “I want to try. I need this.”

And I began a cleverly designed campaign. If you build it, they will come. I began “playing” submissive, imagining that he had “ordered” me to do this. Working my ass off as a service slave, telling him that I was his… that there was nothing that I would not do for him. For the longest time he refused to believe it was true, to play along. But slowly… oh so slowly… he found that he had a taste for having a girl at his feet, the sound of a scream and a body undulating in pain. Slowly he began trusting that I will not hate him if he hurts me.

It has had its ups and downs. Sometimes I despaired that it would ever really happen at all and we would take a break. But we would step back and try again. And in less than two years I am happy to say I have a Master. Not the Master of my dreams and fantasies, because he is who he is. And I have realized that it is my task to accept my role, to meet his expectations and stop worrying so much about my own.

Our M/s relationship does not look at all like anyone else's. It never will. But for the first time in my life I feel like I am in love. And he loves it when I say promptly, at a sharp nudge or a look, “Yes, Master, is there anything I can do for you?” He will kick my chair for no reason beyond wanting to hear those words.


Once someone asked me if I wished it had not happened and I stepped back and looked at my whole life. I am strong. I am smart. I am beautiful... perhaps more so because of the pain I have had to overcome. I know I would not wish it on anyone else, but like a shattered crystal vase lovingly reassembled with patience and glue, I cannot help but decide that I am all the more beautiful for the way the light catches in the cracks and stronger for the glue that holds me together.