I think the problem begins with love.
I'm one of those people who can have sex without involving any more of my emotions than I really want to. I've had a lot of really amazing sex with friends, people who I wasn't involved with and who I had enormous respect for, who I simply didn't fall for. I know people claim love makes sex better, but in my case it's not love, it's familiarity.
It's knowing where and then to bite, to nibble, to lick. It's having an intimate working knowledge of another's body and setting myself to find out more, plumb more depths, find out what things the other person never even wondered if they might like.
But the problem with the "sex is sex and love is love and they can exist independently" attitude is that not everyone shares this attitude. I'm merrily tripping along one day, being my own ethical slut, and then someone falls down hard in front of me.
So I stop.
Used to be, when this happened, I figured the only gentlemanly thing to do would be to fall in love, as well. So I would make myself into a mirror, and practice until I got the "in love" thing down pat. And, yeah, there were genuine feelings involved, but I was never, ever the person who fell in love first. (Okay, it happened twice. one was a relationship that lasted just under a year with a really wonderful guy I just wasn't in the same place with. The other one was unrequited to the max.)
My complaint used to be, "I really want to date women, but I keep tripping over all these guys!" It was really frustrating. Then I decided that in order to date women, I was really going to have to quit dating men, because I was always going to find many more available men than women. Plus, I'd been through some rough stuff that had turned several sexual activities that were previously simply a bit boring (nice, but not my favorite stuff in the whole world) into sex that was marked with a big red pen "STUFF I NEVER EVER WANT TO DO AGAIN." (Besides, at this point, I can't imagine doing anything that comes with such a high chance of pregnancy/disease transmission. Ick.)
And I think I finally figured out where a lot of my angst comes from. See, I'm more than happy to play with boys--as long as it stays on the level of play. But once deeper feelings than simple friendship-type love and respect come into it, my subconscious freaks out. My attraction goes right out the window and I'm left with a deeply foreboding feeling and a sexual relationship that I'm no longer sure I want.
It's a defense mechanism, a good one. My subconscious knows better than I do that my first desire, the desire that's been with me since my first conscious memory, is to spend my life around women. Intimate connections with women take longer to build but are, generally, so much more rewarding than the easy intimacy I find with men. It's more work, but gods, it's so worth it.
I swear, I'm going to make up a little cards and write on them Kris' Rules. They would go something like this:
I think that would about cover it.
- When I say I am a lesbian, I mean it. Please don't fall in love with me if you happen to be male.
- Sex does not equal love.
- Don't play headgames with me. I'm smart enough to see them and I don't appreciate it.
- Drama sucks.
- I have a large daily solitary time requirement. Don't take it personally.
About the name Idat:A few years ago, I needed a new online name. Something short, unusual, with no inherent gender marking.
So I took a name that I'd been using for myself privately for a while: Idat.
Am I not beautiful in this tree? Questions had a particularly poignant quality in Yri because they used a familiar form and hinted at the quick and ephemeral quality of asking anything. Idat was the Dissembler and her answers were always difficult. I think I shall be a woman always, she said now. You can have something on which to model yourself.
Idat, in the novel I Never Promised you a Rose Garden, was a voice in a schizophrenic girl's head. She was, through much of the book, genderless, sliding from form to form like sand or water. She never had any easy answers in conversation, and spoke in riddles and metaphors.
When I chose to use the name, it was a time in my life when I felt very unsafe, unprotected. I felt like I needed serious camouflage, like I needed to turn into something unexpected in order to elude what what hunting me. (That was why I was changing my online name, after all.)
And I had always felt that too much honesty with the world is setting yourself up for trouble. Look at all the people who are killed for their honesty. I never thought it was beautiful, just brutal and stupid.
And yet, I have a longing for truth, for honesty, all the good that can come when the real is spoken in a place of safety.
I wasn't ready for that, then. Hiding was my only assurance that I wasn't going to be strangled in my sleep.
And now, the name's grown on me. It's still simple, easy to recognizably pronounce, ungendered, and as far as I know there aren't any other Idats running around on the net at this point.
and still, sometimes, I recognize the need for protective camouflage.
I have tomorrow marked off in my calendar.It says, in big letters, DAY ALL TO MYSELF.
An entire day when I won't be answering email, the phone, or my pager. i'm going to get a full tank of gas and go someplace. Maybe over to Bainbridge Island, or out to Redmond.
It's supposed to be really nice out. I definitely want to get out and do something.
This is why i love living here--the mid-50's days in February. Mmmm, yes.
