With bitterness in my heart…

Today is Easter Sunday, a day of celebration for the Christian folk.  But I feel no celebration.  I did as I have for years, got up this morning and said "Welcome back boss.  Sorry it's the same fucked up mess you left."

That was this morning, but it is now evening and I can find little in my heart but bitterness, the sour sick taste of utter betrayal by three people a man should be able to trust: a mother, a wife, and a daughter.  At this moment all I can feel for any of them is nausea.  To think of them makes me want to puke.

They share two things in common.  Me, of course, that goes without saying.  They share me, and they share a common lie, a cruel lie of omission, a lie that negates, inverts, and makes a total mockery of any and every thing I ever offered or endured on their behalf. 

My mother.  An authority whore who gave me to her cult as a living sacrifice as penance for the sins she said I already knew.  What sins Mom?  I didn't have a clue, not then.  But now I do.  From all evidence on the table your sins were pretty fucking sick, it's looking more and more like you were in "the lifestyle" way back in the day, back in that decade when a sub was an underwater warship and slaves were the order of the day.  Yea, right.  Made it to the level of the down and outers and the up and comers in the Hollywood scene of the late forties, early fifties did you.  Was she good, the lesbian slut who was your door in?  I've seen her, I think.  Just a foggy vision, but still, a vision courtesy of a total sweetheart of a woman, a Russian model who accidentally hit a register that unlocked one of those memories you can't really recall when it was made, a memory that might not be your own.  One of those visions that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up and sends the adrenaline running like a river. Just like the time when I was like fourteen and you gave me the sleeping pill, and as you handed it to me I saw your countenance become Ra, the vulture faced god of the Egyptian people, their god of the dead.  Thanks, I did take note of the warning, I just didn't know what to do about it.  What did I do to you, besides have the bad luck to be your firstborn? 

Did you do to my father what my wife did to me?  Nah, Dad took a worse hit than I did.  He was a simpler man, a more innocent man than I, and yours would have been a blacker level of contamination than anything I've bumped into since.  Nah, you hit Dad a lot harder than Barb hit me.  It killed him in the end.  You thought I didn't know?  Oh yea, I kind of figured it out.  What was so terrible that his brother drove from Idaho to Southern California to spend three days walking and talking and then drive home?  Takes something pretty heavy to cause that.  Like finding out for sure where you'd been, what you'd done before you met him?  Like being twelve years into a marriage you believed was sealed for eternity before the truth came out?  Yea, that would do it.   Rest in peace Dad, you're not bound to a promise that was founded on a lie.

Barb didn't really lie, I really believe she didn't know.  Not until a decade of love and support had built her up enough she could begin dealing with her alter ego Miranda, the hate based buried personality that split off when she was gang raped at ten and her world did nothing for her.  Barb didn't lie, but Miranda damn sure did.  I look back now, and it is so easy to see when Barb and I made love, and when it was Miranda fucking me.  I think back on the things said by mutual friends from when we first met, and yea, that makes sense too.  Barb wouldn't have done those things, but Miranda when Barb was out of the game?  Yup.  Perfect fit.  It so totally explains the dichotomy in her, the contemplative woman of deep spirituality and the pain slut revenge queen waiting the chance to throw her deeds in the faces of the world that betrayed her into an existence she hated.  And me, caught in the middle, loving the one and suffering assault after assault from the other, assaults drawn from the most absolutely perverted forms of sadomasochism she could find as she tried to recruit me to her cause of destroying Barb so she could take over the day time hours.  Miranda would have recognized the taint left from my first encounter, of course she would, what Mom left loaded on my personality trying to make me a slave to her cult was directly from the same range of perversions.  I'm sorry Barb, I am so sorry.  I didn't catch on quick enough.

And the one I don't want to talk about, but I must.  The one who's betrayal was the most total of all.  All you had to do was tell me the truth once, just once, and it would have been different.  The other pieces would have clicked, at least in part.  I would have had enough facts to act from, to defend us all.  But you didn't.  Instead you took the road of ego and contempt, the road of arrogance and disdain.  You let Miranda mother you instead of trusting me enough to tell me the truth just once.  You slutted yourself out by the time you were ten, gone lesbian by fifteen, I have it confirmed you were in the bdsm community by the time you were twenty five, probably before.  And you just like Miranda turned your perversions on Barb, working her, tormenting her with what she almost knew while the slut whore bitch con artist you took for a Dom looked on and gave directions in how to get more money out of her so you could indulge her favorite pastime: tormenting the wait staff of any restaurant unlucky enough to have you two walk in their door.

You know, the day you came home from the hospital I was a happy man, so happy, a totally proud poppa.  I went to work carrying cigars.  And I saw my friend walk in with his face pale and streaked from tears.  I asked him why, and he told me he had a new baby at  home as well: heavy downs syndrome, many birth defects, little chance for a normal life.  I threw my cigars away, and went in the warehouse to weep.  But now?  Now I think maybe I shouldn't have wept, maybe he got the better end of the comparison.

I have a most definite grudge to settle with "the lifestyle" and their habit of lying by omission to those in the position of being hurt the most by the ignorance.  To know is bad, but at least knowing you can defend yourself, or walk away.  To not know is even worse.  It's a grudge, it may become a vendetta, I don't know.  I'd like to kill off say three thousand of them, go Roman scale revenge, and I could.  But... that would be Zoe Ann's and Miranda's and Amanda's ultimate victory.  They would have made me as low as they, and that's not going to happen.  I'll suicide out before that happens.

There, I've said it.  Yea, there's some heavy bitterness in my heart right now.  Terrible heavy.  Now... what to do about it?

Poly...

A Latin word meaning “many.”  In English it most commonly serves as a prefix: polyester, polyvinyl, polyamorous.  For the last couple of months it’s been a common visitor on the stage of my thoughts.  It should be no surprise I’m not thinking about various forms of manmade materials to craft clothing or a waterbed mattress, but I have been thinking a fair amount about the word polyamorous, setting a framework around the concept of “many loves” as the young folk mean the word.

As a consequence of this latest recon run into the world of the young folk I’ve bumped into several things that just flat never got mentioned when I was their age.  I’ve written a fair amount about one of them, the perceptions of self and society I’ve been navigating as a result of a head on collision with a major villain in my life, a story I’ve yet to tell in full.  But in the same time frame as a consequence of keeping company with the same set of people I’ve equally been exposed to their evolving replacement for conventional marriages, the concept of polyamory, and that’s had a fair amount of time on the stage as well.

Just to set a frame of reference: I’m solidly hetero monogamous, for me home has always been in the heart of one woman.  Perhaps I’m a simple man but I need no more than that.  But at the same time I’ve never hesitated to open that home if there was need, over the years it happened several times, sometimes someone from my side of the world, sometimes from the wife’s side.  So it’s fair to say I have lived in a relationship capable of hosting  love for more than one.  Then as now it isn’t an uncommon thing for me to hold an extended family in my heart, carry a concern for the happiness and welfare of folks I’ve never claimed on a tax form. 

But those were offerings of platonic love, the mechanisms of sex and sexuality not really players in the context.  There were moments of intimacy in the physical as transient support, but those were moments rather than long term arrangements matched against the live load of life which is what the kids are working on.  From what little I’ve been exposed to it would appear they’re starting over from a level even more simple than the tribe, it would seem they’ve gone all the way back to the primordial troop as is seen in the other great apes and rethinking the whole idea.  Fair enough, given the current deplorable state of marriage I won’t say it isn’t a needed thing.

There’s no doubt balancing more than two people into working relationship to replace monogamy is daunting task.  Starting from the background of witnessing the failures of  monogamy one of the largest challenges the kids are dealing with is actually defining the loadings on a relationship in order to attempt to apportion those loadings across a  polyamorous family.  Another and perhaps more personally difficult task thrust upon them by the failures of monogamy they’ve witnessed is separating the various facets and phases of  sexuality from the other life elements that in the end become the alloyed structure of a working family.

That’s where I play in the game, trying to help the kids I know with a bit of the long frame perspective one acquires after decades of living monogamous.  Washing the dishes is washing the dishes, cooking the dinner that got them dirty the same way.  Chores are chores.  Equally it falls out that one will from time to time be providing comfort and sanctuary for another, unlike monogamy in a poly family which one gives and who receives is a far more open question to be answered, the dynamics of dependence and denial wide open. 

No one enters a marriage really knowing what they're getting into, not if it is two people or ten, everyone comes in still carrying elements yet to achieve full maturity.  In monogamy it is easily seen that she will nurture him into his full maturity even as he is doing the same for her, but in a poly relationship again the various facets of that oh so critical work will be divided out among several people and need be coordinated in some manner that provides continuity to the effort. 

Poly is a great deal more complicated a state of affairs far beyond sleeping arrangements and household chores.  The poly kids have yet to realize the final stages of parenting are actually provided by ones' mate, when one takes not one but several mates the step-parent syndromes of blended families just follows from the family of childhood into the family of incipient adulthood. But if that's how they were raised perhaps that's the only way they can be comfortable completing the final stages of growth, so I'm not going to say much against it, just be alert for the pitfalls they might not understand. 

And of course when you add sex into the mix it just goes nucking futs since sex and sexuality will be influenced by any or all of those other facets of life as they come to maturity, the poly kids are at extreme risk to maintaining the familiar and comfortable (but ultimately counterproductive to the relationship) ways of their immaturity by dividing up some specific facet of that immaturity between several sex partners where the partners in essence defend the emo status quo to defend some private delight based thereon.  Unlike monogamy it isn't nearly so likely for one to understand of the other how their sexual responses reflect the state of their other responses into a lover's bed. Tough stuff to manage, the all to often hidden ways and means and motives of sex in a poly relationship.

The kids have their work cut out for them to make it all work.  But maybe that's what they want, something with enough challenge that if they can make it work they'll have something to point to with a bit of genuine pride well earned.  As I said, they are young of years even if old in too many matters related to enduring the pain of failed families.  So many of the things they really need to consider with a level head are found in the middle of personal minefields, frankly I’m impressed at the progress they’ve made.  I'm cheering for them, and doing what I can, what they'll allow.

Of course I'm also concerned for them, as always the predators are circling their efforts, and a great many of the predators aren't honest enough to operate fang and claw but rather are hunting with innuendo and misdirection targeting what the predators know full well are the points where the kids are most vulnerable.  Evil, like rust, never really sleeps.

A short short painting in prose...

It was a cotton candy kind of afternoon that followed them home, fluffy white clouds in a perfect blue sky, blue grass under bare feet, blue grass music in the park air, kites and balloons, giggles and grins.  If it hadn't been for the huge bouquet of balloons conspiring with an area rug that simply refused to lay flat the evening might not have turned out as delightful as the afternoon had been. But conspire they did, unlikely as it might seem. Coming in the door the balloons met the ceiling fan, and before all was said and done she'd tripped on the contrary rug, falling face first down  the back of the sofa with an audible "ooof!"

Before she'd caught her breath from laughing at herself his hands were on her, flipping her skirt up over her waist to leave a pair of shining white panties contrasted against the tan of his hands holding her hips.  He bent down, put a kiss on the small of her back, let it linger to savor the little shiver rippling away from the caress of his breath.  "Tell me no now or just wiggle your bottom," he said softly, his fingers flexing oh so slightly as her back began to arch.   The sofa only slid eight or ten inches across the polished hardwood floor before everything relaxed enough the old sofa could go back to simply squeaking in counterpoint, and no one really paid any attention at all to the balloons cuddling in all four corners of the room teasing the poor ceiling fan, who of course was still stuck in the very middle of the middle unable to do more than turn slow lazy circles trying to ignore what couldn't be touched.

Snippets and ReRuns…

A few juicy thoughts harvested from my comments into various forums on the web…

Is the current upswing, the current fad involving bdsm relationships actually a backlash, a resistance movement against another and equally irrational social convention I'll name The Cult of the Female Orgasm ?  If that is the case then the surrender of personal freedom, the humiliations and outright pain the women endure become an act of contrition in advance of conviction for knowing they can't meet an utterly impossible social demand. 

The cult of the female orgasm is actually another male imposed irrationality created in response to the success of the feminist movements.  Look at the media, it is simply saturated with the idea that so long as the woman is getting hers, so long as four nights a week she is foaming and writhing and sleeping endorphin stoned from a dozen grand mall orgasms the rest of the man's world will be just peachy keen.  The boss won't be an a-hole, the bank will always loan money, his team will always win etc etc ad nauseum.  Of course this is just as irrational as assuming if the woman suffers her life away in sexual frustration the same results will be seen.  She knows neither of those two extremes will produce such results, and is apologizing in advance of his disappointed understanding.

If it is accepted that genetics does play a role in mortal personality traits then the celibacy of the Roman Catholic church suddenly becomes an absolute black hole sucking down into oblivion the genetic patterns that encourage the very things Jesus worked to teach.  A man becomes a priest, a women becomes a nun.  Both were motivated to those callings because of a deep personal belief in being kind, giving aid and comfort and understanding to their fellow humans.  But regardless of their personal efforts towards those most noble of goals the celibacy of the organization they joined removes from the human race what might have been their genetic contribution towards a race, a species, where those genetic tendencies towards gentle people easily fit to civilized behavior were the majority, not the minority.  Step back a bit and look down the line of history, and ask yourself how much better the world might be now, today, if all of the children never born because of the ultimate hypocrisy of the Catholic church's stand on birth control had been allowed to enter mortality.  A fucking condom is nothing nada zip in terms of birth control compared to celibacy enforced as the price of loving God enough to spend your lifetime serving him.

It is not fair to promote career ambition onto women as something both desirable and socially denied due to gender without giving equal space to a warning as to the essentially predatory nature of ambition.  Ambition will always result in sacrifices, always, it is not a woman thing or a man thing it is the basic nature of the beast.  Every life choice open to ambition's influence will be used to facilitate the ambition's first goal of dominating every facet of the hosts life.  Spouse, children, friends, family, all will fall second to the ambition if the ambition gets its' way.  Ask the old men, the successful old men, about the cost of ambition.  If you look closely you might even see a tear or two.  It is an unjust thing to ask the women to support the wealth of society by bearing the burden of ambition, she already bears the burden of childbirth that nature will not allow to be shared even with her sisters, much less any man.  From a command perspective it is foolish to squander the strength of a woman on a job a man can do... no need to use a shotgun on a housefly.

Concerning rage... and BDSM

This post is somewhat of an extension of the post "Tactical: Vigilante and Succubus" where I spoke to the idea of memories manipulated to bias the emotional environment of a moment to favor evil's needs and intentions.  Such manipulations are a powerful weapon in the enemy's arsenal of things that create misery.  But powerful as that is there are other things equally if not more powerful, and rage is another of evil's favorites because rage is not well or widely understood.

Rage is not anger.  I want to say that square out right up front.  While the two states may present a common pattern to the outside they are actually quite different on the inside.  Anger is a rational response to an affront, an insult, a threat to something recent and current.  Anger is a thing of the current moment while rage is the sum of old angers never resolved that have condensed and crystallized under the compression of justice miscarried into a single discrete pattern of self sustaining thought bridging between the conscious and the sub-conscious mind. 

Give that a moments thought, consider the implications of one discrete pattern of thought bridging across what nature intends to be quite separate realms of existence.  Yes, to set it into analogy it does resemble a short circuit, and not even a short to ground where the mechanism stops functioning but rather a short between circuits where power flows out of sequence, and out of control.  In other words, a dangerous state of affairs for the individual and all those around that individual.

I must be honest here, if I'm not I'm defeated.  In the post "Call me Dinosaur" I referenced a question that has plagued me the majority of my life, the question of why do the perverts seem to seek me out way, way more often than can be explained to any visible reason or motive.  In that post I said I had my answer.  Well, I did, at least to the surface level of events to be seen in the common reality, the second reality.  But the fullness of that answer must equally include things from the inner reality, the first reality of man where the true power source for actions and intentions originate.

There is a rage in me, there is.  It has been a bit of an epiphany for me as I've come to understand the nature of my own rage to realize I've never, ever met anyone involved in the bdsm lifestyle who did not also carry a rage imbedded like a spike into the fabric of their life.  The reasons for the rage, the depth and intensity of the rage of course varies widely person to person, me no exception.  But the mechanism of rage is consistent, and it is that mechanism that they recognize in each other, recognize in me.  The one point where I'm different than they is that the original injuries that condensed into my rage were derived directly from unwilling exposure to the brutalities of bdsm as a child.  Because of the nature of its' beginnings my rage runs a true 180 degrees opposite on any and every axis of thought, but it is still the same mechanism, and in me it is quite powerful enough to set me vigilante, set me lethal.  Answer complete.

As Paul Harvey would say, that's the rest of the story.  Now the question becomes how to take a rage, an anger crystallized into a rigid structure removed from the present, and break that crystal down into a powder fine enough to be flushed out of a life… and do so without all the things that were built on top of that crystal from falling into the hole that will be left when the crystal is gone.  I'm going to pursue that thought relentlessly until I'm confident of the correct answer.  I'm hunting that answer for myself, and for all the others who suffer in one way or another to the same injury.  In such an answer as that is my hope to ultimately defeat and remove from the collective memory of mankind the evil of bdsm that worked such injury on my life.