Music can be torturously cathartic.  I love and hate nights like these where each song on my playlist death drops me into memory.  It doesn’t happen all the time, but occasionally a portal opens.

I tend to dwell in memory, it’s actually not an obsession with the past.  I’m just fucking happy to have it.  When I was 10 I developed dissociative amnesia, I “forgot” nearly everything that happened prior to then.  At age 17 I started getting memory back, through a lot of intensive work.  These days it’s relatively fluid, at least for me, and when I get back childhood memory I can no longer tell if it’s new or something I have remembered before.

Yet, their still a rarity to visit.  All the associations I built to people, places and things throghout my teenage years, and into the present day largely occurred without any recognition of my childhood.  I’m the girl who can’t remember the Velveteen Rabbit.  Well I do, I remember finding a stuffed bunny from the story, and a copy of the book in the basement.  Occasionally when I focus real hard I can capture a glimpse of what it felt like to hear the story as a child.  Though mostly what I have is data, shit people told me about my interactions with the story.

Crazy eh?

I meant it when I said basket case *grin*  The thing about being a trauma survivor is that chronic trauma was simply my reality, there is nothing to feel sorry for.  It simply was what I knew, for me it was a norm, and I can’t qualify it with any sort of regret.  Nor can anyone else, I wouldn’t be who I am now without it.  To feel pity or any sense of social apology for events in my life is to in actuality wish me out of existence.

Though it is by no means the norm for getting into BDSM, exhibitionism, etc, it has to do a lot with my reasoning.

My relationship with pain is different, my sense of social norms, I am more comfortable outside the box than in because that’s where I grew up.  It is also an amazing thing to turn similar dynamics and events into a healthy thing.  Concepts which once ripped apart my existence becoming a healthy part of the fabric holding it together.

Also I’m proud to say that my life has overall been a huge success.  Even by normal standards for “tweeners” I am really making it.  I have a history of really healthy relationships, hardly a bad ending in my life, a professional career, and one as an artist.  I’m so damn comfortable with myself that I exercise my sense of humor by taking obscene photos of myself.

I’m still horribly neurotic, much of the world still doesn’t make sense to me, and it never will.  I interact on different terms, that often fail.  Yet, no doubt that I have accomplished a lot in life, and despite it all have kept going.

Why am I writing this?  Where is the kinky shit one might wonder.  This is the source of it, at least for me.  I insist in this, on being seen and remaining complete.  There is a phenomenology to this.  In the end it makes the more provokative and sexy side of it all that more appealing.

I know that men and women in the end want the same thing.  Sexual satisfaction and intimacy, these are basic human needs.  In fact they really are a point of life as a whole, with that damn baby making thing they make happen on occasion.

There are also biological indicators that males are more aroused physically and women in large part by functionality.  There is an evolutionary mechanism to this.  Males in almost all species look and have a need to affirm that they have a viable partner, this is a very immediate thing.  Females need to attract a viable partner, and are concerned with traits that will allow the male not only to produce healthy children but to assist in their care (though this is not all species).

The evolutionary mechanism is geared towards procreation.  Which makes humans a little fucked these days.  I know for myself I have no interest in having children, most likely ever.

However, regardless of the evolutionary and purposeful mechanism sex and intimacy remain basic human needs.  Men approach initially from a very physical standpoint, and women from an emotional one.  Both are evaluative processes towards the same ends.  I know for myself I like guys to be attractive, but it’s one of the last things I tend to notice.  I first notice the things they do.  I know every man I’ve ever been involved with has valued the things I do, but they have often seen my looks first.

There is a whole other essay here about what happens when there is high intelligence and high physical attraction, and how fucking eccentric we in this category are, but that can wait.

What seems to be the continuing argument between men and women is, “I am more than a fuck hole,” and “I am more than your emotional doormat.” Relationships take form by attempting to negotiate these two things, and recognize that the initial point of interest is not important, and we can really all just be happy.  However, the negotiation always continues as the culture (probably another evolutionary safeguard) protects the roles of men and women.

Men get Playboy, and women get Fabio and Michael Bolton.

Monogamy is a funny thing.  It in the immediate solves all of these problems.  An existing culturally normative structure that attempts to appease both.  “Pay attention to her, and she’ll pay attention to you *wink*”.  It gets messy from there though.  Because we as creatures just ain’t monogamous.  Especially these days because the thing monogamy is most useful for is raising kids, and more and more of us aren’t so into that.

I know I often feel like I am sitting on a double edge.  Not only do I have a pre-existing structure to follow with partners that will help sort out the biological argument, I have the social learning of a cultural norm which I am attempting to discard.  Also, I don’t exist in a vacuum on that, every single partner goes through this as well.

However, me being counter culture, a crazy artist into erotica and all the norms of my partners are often different.  Though equally grounded in culture, and in so many ways equally limiting.

As a real life example of how this is most definitely the case, my very recently balanced out BDSM partnership dealt with a lot of this.  I had mainly made use of the scene in free form aspect of monogamous relationships, and my partner in it is part of the more formalized polyamorous scene where roles are very strict.  Yet, we both have similar skill sets.  We both have similar wants and desires, and both have some issues with where we came from.  It took us a long time for us to find a place in the middle.

For both of us there was a cultural norm that made much of this easier.  In an irrational way I am very jealous of him because he can still practice his norm.  By default I can no longer practice mine.  Really though I am thankful that were both not trying to overcome monogamy pangs.

Funny though, that really everyone’s got monogamy pangs, it is so trained into our culture.  All males partners (as thank god I’m at least only dealing with one gender right now), have had huge fears about having any sort of emotional involvement with me.  This is partly due to their phenomenology and what led them to the point in their lives that attracted me to them in the first place, that they were not seeking to be monogamous.

There has been a huge fear that has surfaced that I am going to want to be with them all the time, that I will have jealousy with their other partners, and a sense of possessiveness.  Hard part is, this isn’t completely a lie.  I do at first get very attached emotionally, and everything blurs, and gets really messy.  A lot of time is spent initially.  However, usually within a month I am happily chasing after new ventures.  Also since June, I’ve always been at least courting someone else.

There is at times jealousy as I learn my place in people’s lives, and a possessiveness yes, as I claim a place.  Occasionally these issues may reappear.  However, once relationships are stable feelings and jealousy and possessiveness usually just become an excuse to find a better way to spend my time.  Perhaps, for both of us there is a fear that the other is not going to come back.  Actually, I know this is a two way street.  I’m a mean girl and put all partners for a purposeful hazing process on this point, I talk about other people I’m seeing and interested in.  The coolest moment is when they reciprocate, and when we realize that we still like each other.

It really becomes a matter of faith, not in a social construct like monogamy, but rather in one another.  You can be you, and I can be me, and we can also be together.  Not only once, but for as long as it’s working.  That it is in the end just that.  Some of my coolest days are when I have dealings with more than one person I’m involved with in a short time span.  It’s epic, and really each of them in the end feeds my care for the other.  One will do something completely random, which suddenly sheds light on something relating to someone else.  It’s really cool.

It’s just a matter of getting there.