This is part of an ongoing series where I process things from therapy. Not necessarily linear, not necessarily sequential, but some kind of order seemed necessary. Although I’ve never seen SATC, these are to be read in the tone of Carrie Bradshaw (but maybe? slightly? less insufferable?)
While resisting the urge to ascribe too much meaning to falling down while running to catch the bus, I immediately thought about how old I felt in my panic. This question was first posed to me by my boyfriend, on a drive upstate while I was recounting the last panic attack I had. A few weeks later, I recounted that question, and the panic attack during my first therapy session (dating and therapy-both a constant recounting of moments). My new therapist responded by saying it was a beautiful question to be asked. I didn’t answer it when my boyfriend asked, and I didn’t answer it when my therapist asked. I didn’t have words for it then, and I don’t currently except to say it (I?) feels bright and scared and small. How old did I feel while shoving napkins into the fresh hole in my jeans to stop the blood from causing too big of a stain?
I live with a low-grade fear that I am a “little” in a kink context. I confessed this to my boyfriend a few nights ago, and they said “that scans”. Since then I’ve noticed what feels good-affirmation when I complete a very small and simple task. Certain words- “baby,” “princess,” “good girl.” I love the gentle scolding I receive regarding my (lack of) sleep schedule. I love being told I am a thing someone feels pride in. I like assigning the role of Concerned to someone, it makes me feel safe. I like the idea of someone who is in control or at least someone who creates accountability. I like the idea of punishment, too. How old will I feel on my knees in front of a belt, I wonder? I like to think about wearing a skirt too short and sitting on my boyfriend’s lap. I think about their hand on the inside of my thigh, slowly moving up and down. I think about how I feel in my want for their hand to move farther up. Bright, scared, small. I think about their hand on my neck, light and warm and what I can do to make the pressure increase. I think it’s less that I’m a little and more that wanting something, wanting to belong to someone, makes me feel like a child. Bright, scared, and small.
I think it’s a matter of aesthetics. It’s the rise of a very specific and highly visible form of age play that achieved popularity on Tumblr, which hosted a countless number of blogs that were full of photos of thin white women nestled inside a mountain of stuffed animals (the word “stuffies” makes me want to jump out of my skin), women in Dollskill tank tops that read “daddies princess” with pacifiers in their mouths. Its probably the thought of little meet ups at Disneyland or coloring parties. White men with unkempt beards and titles like “Daddy Bear” reading fairy tale stories. Begging for “cummies.” There’s just a visceral NO that lives inside my body when I think about how many octaves my voice would have to climb in order to achieve the proper height for baby talk.
Without ascribing too much meaning to falling down while running to catch the bus, I immediately wanted to be hugged. I forced myself to not cry but noticed how panicked I felt. How sharp my breath was, how shaky my hands were. I was SO upset I ruined my favorite pair of Levi’s (vintage Orange Tab)-even though the new hole on the knee, outlined in blood, had been authentically achieved. I wanted someone to tell me “It’s okay! That was scary! We will fix it! It’s not your fault!” I wanted someone. I had made it to work, performed first aid, and turned it into a joke for Twitter. This wasn’t the first time I had fallen while running with a sandwich, and it’s likely it will not be the last! When it was time for my lunch break I felt panicked still, so I hobbled down the street and bought a box of Amy’s frozen mac and cheese, my comfort meal. I thought about how old I felt as I stood in front of the microwave. In therapy, the thing we’ve been working on is addressing the feeling that’s underneath. The example we are using is what I feel when I start to cry. I describe it as the panic because when I start to cry I make myself stop. This is explained to me by my therapist as a functional response-my system is shocked by anxiety and it knows to regulate itself means to stop the expression. This is explained to me as an adaptive response developed in children who are raised in chaotic or out of control environments, by chaotic or out of control people. She tells me I have to slow down. I have to think about the little girl who grew to understand that the only thing she could control was herself, and minimizing her sadness (or expressions of) seemed to reduce the chaos. I have to find her and take care of her but in order to do that I have to resist shutting the feeling down, which means I have to name the feeling. She asks what’s just below the panic and I can’t answer. After a week I say its bright, scared, and small.
I revisited an interview with Avital Ronell and Research and Destroy NYC that deals with forgiveness. There’s an adage used in the interview, “forgive and forget,” that summarizes a lot of the central questions that are asked-who can forgive, who can be forgiven, whether forgiveness can be had or granted at all, and if it’s necessary for anyone or anything to be forgiven. If forgiveness is granted under the condition of forgetting-is it forgiveness or is it the annihilation of accountability? There’s mention of trauma and memory, “if forgiveness depends on remembering everything, then is it even appropriate to place trauma and forgiveness together? Can you make them talk to each other? Can you forgive something that you weren’t present for?” All of this is of course tied up in religion and history, power dynamics, and our need for absolution. There are of course, no answers to these questions. it’s a spiral staircase that leads me into thoughts about permission. There’s and adage that comes to mind as I climb through the Avital interview, “ask and you shall receive” that summarizes a lot of my questions about permission. Who do I ask and how did they come into a position to give? Is the receiving conditional and can the permission to, be rescinded? Is permission necessary? In therapy we discuss the permission to be there, giving my body permission to feel. Who is able to give me permission to heal, I wonder? My therapist asks if it’s something I think I can give myself, and I don’t answer. I think about the places I seek to be given permission in an external sense. Permission to touch or engage with my partner. Permission for access and to participate in community. Permission to cry, or really permission to seek comfort. In both instances, with forgiveness and with permission, its internal or at least the majority of the work to receive either is mostly internal. One must prepare to be granted forgiveness, its conditions are predicated on understanding and acknowledging harm, one must know that forgiveness is necessary in order to move beyond. One must know what one wants in order to ask for permission. In both instances the person on the receiving end must be prepared to pass through. In both instances, one is required to seek. Both require agency.
I have been on the periphery of kink for some time. It’s always been there, the low-down dirty tickle I feel when I see someone take off a belt. The way I felt watching the scene in Aladdin-Jasmine, in her captured state, her hands bound together by a pair of black cuffs connected to a long chain that Jafar uses to pull her close to him. The panic in her eyes when she hears him use his last wish to make her fall desperately in love with him. The blanket of fear she pulls over herself when she realizes she’s helpless*. The way I felt watching Legend, another movie about a captured princess forced to submit to the devil incarnate. The rush of recognition and joy I felt the first time I was asked if it felt good to be fucked hard. Even after I found language for all of this, after I found a community of perverts who surpassed me in my ability to imagine dominance submission, I ended up dating, one after another, people who wouldn’t hurt me. At least not in the ways I was desperate to consent to. I relegated these desires to a less urgent place and spent a lot of time just thinking about being degraded while having very vanilla sex.
(*Nevermind that later in the scene Jasmine sees Aladdin and recognizes that she has power in her position and she uses Jafar’s obsession with her to manipulate him and create an opportunity for her rescue. I have a lot of kinky feelings that come when she pretends the wish was granted, picks up the crown Jafar offered her, and says she never realized how incredibly handsome (and tall) Jafar is. He responds, “Now pussy cat, tell me more…” and I am a puddle on the floor. The ways that sexual power is exchanged in such a short scene and the nuance involved could and might be explored later, in an essay where we figure out that maybe I’m a top?)
In an essay titled Top or Bottom: How We Desire, Kay Gabriel says “Being (or avowing oneself to be) a bottom allows one to assume an apparent passivity with respect to one’s desires, at least according to the ideologeme whereby bottoming means ‘taking’ and topping means ‘giving.’” I am struck with the ways that bottoming (in the context of being a little) really drive home my aversion to ascribing agency to my sexual desires. Just like I am struck that I cannot for the life of me answer how old I feel when I am in the midst of panic. Naturally I am folding the need to re-parent with my sexual need to be dominated in a specific context, but not because kink is often a transformative and healing space, because these are two areas I refuse to let myself seek what I need. In that refusal I am arguing that littles are not active participants in their orientation, which is not the case.
Later in this essay, George Dust says, “Ultimately, I think queers who complain about a top shortage are usually people who’ve written themselves into social roles that exclude the kind of sex they want and who refuse their agency in doing so. Or they’re trying to wheel and deal about it, to have their desires met without making changes in their own lives or accepting the compromise of social position that would come from immersion in a world where people actually fuck.” While I am not complaining about a top shortage, I am complaining about identifying as something that requires me to make known my desire, to accept that the permission I seek isn’t a Daddy’s, it’s my own. It’s not so much that I’m a little (or a bottom), it’s that I’m stuck. I’m stuck looking, waiting, asking for permission, because I am stuck at the point of recognizing that I need to exhibit agency in my life. It’s not lost on me that in kink and in therapy I am working through two things that require me to name a feeling and assign an age, and in both of these places I am exhibiting resistance. Its not that I hate littles, its more likely that I am one. Its not that I can’t begin the process of re-parenting, it’s that its exceedingly difficult to acknowledge the scared and hurt parts of me need attention and I have to be the one to offer it. I’m not sure if I can forgive my parents on behalf of the hurt and scared little girl that lives inside me, but I can take responsibility for her now. I can’t look to someone else for permission to give shape to my desire, I can’t make a parent out of a partner. I have to arrive ready, and with a clear understanding of who I am and what I want and once its granted, I have to be ready to move beyond.
