exozero

[exozero]

I've been dating since the breakup, more than a month now, and after a lovely night always end up thanking them for the company before sending them home. At first I thought I was hung up, which, emotionally, I'm sure there are patterns (now absent) I'm still reeling from, but while I'm not 100% recovered from the split, particularly from her self-destruction, those awful nights, I don't find myself pining.

Comfort is lovely, and I need it. Sometimes I go home with a girl to find the same predictable roles being asked of me, ones I enjoy, but am too fatigued, now, to properly relish, properly revel in the exercising of. Power isn't something I have interest in right now. Even when it was it was about the giving, or denial (same thing) of pleasure, and more complex dynamics, hierarchies, were a sort of higher level, extensions of those base (&base) tenets.

Now... I don't know. Women I once would have torn my hair out about, ached over in secret from just a glance, found ways to flirt and laugh with – they keep fucking approaching me, every single time I go out. I smell horrible, I dress worse, last night I realized the last water I'd had was in a bar & two days prior. I was followed to a cafe to the park from the thrift store yesterday by a woman in her 30s, dirty blonde with a scratchy voice and thick, strong thighs which glowed golden under a carpet of light freckles. I've always had a sharp radar for the tastes of others, but not anymore, or at least not always, now. We had a laugh and a chat and I wondered if she might want me the same way I wanted to be wanted, but after she pulled her phone out, hinting, hunting, and I said she should follow me, her little glance upwards, a quick intake and nod, a small pleasure at receiving an order from me forced me to sigh. I didn't mean to, and she surely didn't understand anything but the disappointment, on some level, but she is used to being wanted, so carried on, and texted me, and I her, but thankfully we stopped, letting it peter out.

I invited her anyways to what I said I would, happy to have a new friend, but that's not what she wants from me. Can't blame her for that, but it's something I've been coming up against increasingly often, especially now that I'm single. Though my desire is the same, to be friends, theirs is not. They want one thing from me, a tired story for all new york, as I resemble a phase, or a hope, or some nonsense I can't be bothered to suss out every fucking time. My only luck may be that the more het a cis woman is, the less interested in me she seems to become.

It's surreal to be eating pussy, truly to be happy doing just that in that moment, and to be interrupted by someone who wants to just get fucked. The whole thing is comical. I tell them that that's what I want, that that's all I want that night, and not one of them believes me. Not that I don't emphasize, I wouldn't accept a woman's offer to solely come over to go down on me if we hadn't already spent nights together, but I just can't be any clearer. I'm on hiatus! Not spanking, slapping, choking, or really fucking at all. At most, and what I ache for, is someone who knows how to call me cute, how to leave me be, how to be persistent, and how to assume about me.

I'm sure I'll return to dominance sooner than later, but there's this gap to be bridged by someone who is willing to play her own role until that's sorted out. Last time I was heartbroken the first person I met happened to be a woman who craved the taste of me, and loved the kinds of attention I'd lavish on her body. We were incredibly drunk when we met, and incredibly open as a result. There was something to my anguish that led her to clasp me to her chest often, lovingly, the gesture held past the "normal span" a hug might, oftentimes developing slowly, through murmurs and kisses and caresses, into a teary lovemaking. I doubt either of us would have any sexual interest in one another ever again, but for those few days, in our mutual states, the freudian dissolved into the human, and the human the universal. We didn't call each other by any names or titles, and the murmurs were unintelligible, just sounds made by lips hesitantly approaching their target... It was comfort, and when I'd cum my head did not arc back but twist aside, her ankles always, somehow always, no matter the position, pressing into my backside, massaging me deeper, pulling me deeper, hands wrapped round me, caressing, cooing.

It reminded me of something.

All the years I'd spent, gently or not, fulfilling those pleasures for others. The reason I still sometimes get messages, years later, soaked in their since-frustrations. It's not that I didn't find pleasure, life, joy in them, but that I was looking after them, the onus on me. With her the onus, finally, was on another. And it's not quite so simple as power. I'd been powerless before her, and we switched hour to hour. Here our psychology blended such that she simply... knew. I was seen through in a way that the rest hadn't. It wasn't love – I'd seen through too many myself to still think that kind of knowledge is worthy of being called Love – but it was the power of a glance, of eye contact held without bravado, even if I'd held her down and bit and bruised her, the unsurprised glint in her eyes would never change. Finally I understood why those women whom I adored staring at could so rarely meet my eyes for more than a moment without a silent request for... something. My hips met hers desperately, brutally, and even as she writhed and moaned and came around me that glint never left her eyes, and as I pushed, panting as I reached my finale, I quailed under her gaze.

[exozero]

An incredible comfort has been given to me. My shoulder was injured, and I can't climb anymore. I can't reach upwards or lift much with it now, and it was about a month of tenderness, where I went bouldering and was simply careful, that I risked it each day. One day, just raising my arm high enough 4 hours into a session, I was electrified, put my arm down slowly, and left the gym. That was about a week ago, and I've had it in a sling since.

Many people have come out of the woodwork to tell me to have it checked by a doctor, friends who knew how completely destroyed I was by my breakup but said almost nothing to me, now sending me long messages, spamming me to take care of myself. It's odd.

She had an emergency delay her moving out by a few more days, so we chat, laugh, usually sleep separately, cry together (sometimes, when it gets dark), and try and keep apart most of the day, not have too good a time. Sleeping together has been nice, like if open-casket mourning meant you could curl up beside and apologize the ways you know she wouldn't want to hear. I wait hours until she's deep enough, still enough to move. Sometimes I think she's out, but–

We cry a lot less now. Dry all day today. We talked and I think she understands. She might never forgive me, or trust me, not even when I was forced to push her away, even if she gets now why I was right. She doesn't get that she has the luxury of removing the blinders after the fact to find a larger hope around her. I still wore them when I made the decision, and gambled my soul with my teeth grit because I hated how little she'd drawn, how few steps she'd taken towards her future. To her I'll always be... greedy? Not quite enough? She's right, of course, but she'll never acknowledge that all she had to do was whimper. She had the same information I did, I just didn't have it in me to hide from her. She knew it all from the start – and I didn't know people could lie like she lied, about the most obvious horrors and thoughts and scars, so that to push back is to threaten a tenuous balance she'll never permit an acknowledgment of without a month of locked doors and shower-sobs, new cuts and averted eyes.

There are things I'm better at, now. Lying, for one. I had learned silence as a kid, that to open your mouth when you're feeling something means to lose control of the source of the feeling. But lying is new to me. It became about survival, mostly hers, but I needed time to breathe. Eventually I realized she wanted those lies but would stop me, beg me to be open and honest and then punish herself for it later behind a locked bathroom door. All she did was beg me to lie to her better.

I wish I'd been sick of her, and had had better lies to tell. Mine were sad, meaningful but small, scared little things. How do you tell the truth knowing it means she'll hurt herself? Better for me to hate myself. "My turn to play martyr." So stupid. There were better people out there for us both, we met them, spent time with them, and pushed them away through her fear of being without me and my fear of not ever becoming the type of person someone like her, like so many of the incredible people I've met, could love. I regretted an entire decade of my formative years spent in that silence. What's a year, two, three years more?

I'm also better at letting things go. I put her to bed after her scary night and woke up to hopeful hips inching back. After I moved my hips away the third time she stopped trying. Nothing changed, except this morning she did not make me coffee, thank god, but also fixed the blanket over me before going to work. Care without pressure. Finally. It's an ancient irony, knowing the greatest version of the person you love is only possible by ensuring nothing but distance grows between you, the fodder of your shared life fertilizer for the creature you would have loved to love someday.

Despite all that, the knowledge we might have grown now beautifully had I chosen for us another route–? What is there to regret? Lessons learned the hard way. She'll never know about my scars. Her razor is large and she doesn't care for her wounds, she barely would let me dab aquaphor on her each night.

Mine are hidden. Not cries for help but small, thin, long, and soon to be moisturized bouts for centrality, to know I am focused within a moment in time to execute something so delicate so perfectly. And now she goes, and I consider continuing. For what? For fleeting peace? I never got that anyways. I was rarely overcome when I would take up the knife. Is that control? I know less and less.

I've been seeing some brilliant women, strong, funny, and I wonder what they think when they see my body. They're older, usually, by career or age or both, and I've noticed the same pattern looping. They see me reading in a public place, and approach me immediately and buy me a drink. They approach, always, with subtle signifiers of dominance, confidence, but false-backed, like the Moscow Gentleman's closet. Less whimsical. Maybe looking this close to tears for this long has its advantages. Their dominance could be something I could appreciate, these days. A caring, firm hand, one wrapped around me, the other on the back of my head. Oh well.

My most common dream is just eating pussy. Nothing much else happens.

Back in this reality the women, after a few drinks, begin to hang on me, gauging distance when they think I'm not looking, hands on hips in dresses and eyelashes peered through. It's fun, if not tiring at times. We bump into an old friend of mine without fail (it's getting spooky), and I seem known. I tell them the truth: I haven't seen that person in half a decade, since I confessed to almost killing myself at their house party. They find it charming. I wonder why anyone talks at all.

I let them take me home, these truly splendid people, after a night or three, and have disappointed each in the same way. Without fail they all thought that when I expressed my fervent desire for them to simply lay back, I was being... usefully deceptive. Then they realize I was serious, that that's all I wanted. After ten minutes, an hour if I'm lucky, they laugh and pull me up their bodies again and ask me what I want– what I want– what I want. I can't help but be honest, tell them they interrupted me. They laugh and do what they do, push me over and try to take care of me. It's not that I'm not having fun, or that I'm trying to eat pussy to cure my depression, though that has worked in the past, but that what they want from me is a firm hand around their throat. They want me to fuck them and forget about what they want, which I get and I do, of course, also love. They want to feel they own me in pleasure the same way I insisted on owning them. Obviously enjoyable. Just not where my head is at. I tell them and they

I've done all this before, years ago, and gone through with their desires in that way. It's an surreal feeling to be an ambivalent kink dispenser, open-palm slapping someone while wondering if the deli across the street will be closed after this session. Odder still to feel yourself get hard, get horny, to see her pathetic whines for attention become groans of delight as you let loose, saying the words you knew she'd only dreampt, the taunts and compliments all mixed together to make the girl who doesn't care about me suddenly flip a switch. That's the oddest time, then. The next few weeks, months of texts. Compliments and sexting. All great fun. Rewards for the best sex of her whatever, but I could barely feel my cock even as she came around me. Few years later an inquiring text, the relationship didn't work out. I guess we've all been there.

The issue is I'm never sick of anyone. I'm refreshed and energized by their intricacies. I love learning patterns, how they move, why they laugh, what makes them squirm and blush, or lose control. It's okay they don't, and it's hard not to see it from their end, how many shitty men have fumbled over their bodies, the performances they've learned to give. It's hard to ask a stranger to be special. Not quite fair of me.

The crickets I'm the tree outside my windkw remind me of Connecticut, my mindless childhood spent with colonial homes and oaken window frames. It smells of a dead weight I'll never shake, sweet and sickly. When I scraped my knee I'd suck the cut, but my blood doesn't taste so good anymore. I've turned. Soured.

Oh well.

I'm tired, and the woods are lovely, dark and deep. I'm tired, and the snowflakes weigh my lashes, tempting me to sleep.

[exozero]

I need a void to scream into.

I think this account has aged enough to be remade. Reminds me of middle and high school, posting woes here again. Particularly these woes. Hard to feel self-aware without feeling foolish, but I suppose suicidality tends to push through the muck. Wish I had those old accounts, filled with old words which are just the same. Loneliness is the same sensation no matter the cause, an achey, embarrassing flush, a tingle in the toes, each action akin to trudging up a desert dune. Rarely are breakups easy, but at least at the time they were always the only correct choice. The agony of loss is one thing, but mixed with the knowledge of your own uncertainty – the fact you Think it was the right call, but couldn't be certain, won't ever be – that is what fear is made of. The quiet horror I can never say aloud, certainly not to her. To pass that along would be criminal. Enough pain has been dealt and she deserves silence and distance. So until she leaves I am trapped comforting the one I can never tell inspired me to finally slice at myself. I am the creature of guilt, cringing at the imposition of my existence. No such feeling when the shower washes the blood away, nor as the cuts become scars, as they are now. My body she'll never see again, not even as a farewell, though she asks, because she'll see the scars growing in just the same spots as hers and know what she cannot. Each day she remains I give her what she needs, all I can, until my showers come and I shudder thinking of the days ahead. I am the creature of guilt, born to scum and fear. For her deep brilliance she misses that she is lucky, that her pathology was learned in ritual and prayer and borders and their violation. There is a book she has memorized which tells her why she was hurt, and if she chooses to flip the moral value of each story she can rebel by studying the same book. I am the creature of guilt, incarnate unholy searing Wrongness. She learned the trade but she is not the trade. When others fret they work in units of me.

But there are upsides to being this Thing, and even the devil gets a lunch break, I'd hope. Once, when I'd felt more than I'd ever before felt and no one seemed particularly curious as to why I howled I, no older than 7, tore every piece of my room's Sesame Street wallpaper off the wall that I could reach, screaming at the felt faces I adored torn in two. Uncontrollable fear had become indiscriminate fury had become unstoppable guilt. I wanted to keep the scraps on my bed for some reason, but their tattered faces ended up on the floor, out of sight, haunting me. The transformation was complete when, the next day, the walls were plastered over with blue skies and dreamy clouds. Relaxing images for troubled youth. I saw the blue skies and only ever thought of Ernie's eye and red nose in my hand, screams I'd forgotten I was in charge of dispensing finally falling away to stuttered apologies repeated over the piece of a corpse of a friend, on and on until the day and its pains blurred together and down and away and I awoke on my side, drooling, feeling fine, maybe groggy, the sight of my friends in tatters at my feet only causing a twinge. I was hungry. I went downstairs without looking at the wall.

But then I ate, ate and felt full and fine. Warm and empty. Then down the stairs came the wallpaper, loosely stacked, the eyes of each victim still trusting, as mine once were -- and only then did I remember what I was -- so I apologized again, and again, and would have gone on but was interrupted by their courier, who dropped them in the trash.

I was told then, quite conversationally, as if discussing weather, that it was alright, my crime, and that new wallpaper would be installed. They thought I was apologizing to them – for the inconvenience.

Alright? Fixable? I couldn't comprehend it. I'd shattered something foundational. What price could be high enough? But they were understanding of my actions of the night prior, and it was so far out of character for me. Having learned from their parent's caveman ways, and realizing they didn't have the ideological strength to continue beating me, superficial acceptance is their attempt at a brave choice. I missed the beatings. They made things clear. You did wrong, such and such followed. So if you are accused of wrong, the incentive is to speak up.

Of course Connection, radical and loving and true, is better than them all, and surely most children would prefer even disinterested, guilt-avoidant lip service to parenting than soap mouth. I prefer knowing where I stand. If I'd been spanked I might have spoken up. First they'd have been made to understand, by tears and a child's pure remorse, that I mourned my victims. Then, resentfully, having reached some sort of emotional catharsis on one count, I'd have felt indignant, entitled to indicate how unfair it was to have been hurt twice over in such an area in such a short time, prompting them to ask what I meant, that they hadn't spanked me in weeks, and so the truth would emerge.

In this way the next ten years of silence could have been neatly sidestepped, an unfortunate week not allowed to magnify, to reveal to me the truth which is true every moment it is trusted: I am the creature of guilt.