For one thing, I have not yet sorted what I want to be from what I want to have. Everything is all mixed up, and in the meantime I look in the mirror and feel as though my skin is quicksilver and my eyes are changing color.

Let me break one factor of this change down. Hopefully with some delicacy. I want to talk about money.

Even though I should know it by now, it consistently shocks me how expensive it is to be kinky. Money is one way in which much of the public scene is privileged; there is literally a bar to entry open to a selected few. (Not to mention all the other ways in which much of the scene caters to a particular privilege: age, time, location, race, gender, orientation, able-bodied, to name a few. With a nexus of overlying, unspoken requirements, it’s no wonder the public scene is comparatively tiny.)

Now, I’ve come to realize that the Australian relationship with money as I currently see it is a little different than I’m used to. Namely, they spend more on their pleasures. It’s not just that Sydney is an expensive city, especially with food prices skyrocketed. NYC is also an expensive city; I’m used to this.

Rather, it seems a regular occurrence for the people I hang out with to drop $100 on alcohol in a single night. A weeknight. On a weekend? An American girl I met the other day told me, in hushed tones, that an Australian guy she knows spent $600 last Saturday, between clubs, cabs, and drinks. We stared at each other with our mouths open. $600 is my rent for a month.

So it doesn’t seem like a good enough reason, in this culture, for me to say that something is simply too expensive.

I have spent a lot of money on the weapons and gear of my sexuality of choice. I have spent a lot of money on events like Floating World and Black Rose. Thousands of dollars. Thousands of dollars that I, and others in my economic situation, cannot technically count as disposable income. And as half of a couple who travel together and split our expenses, for every dollar I spend, Maymay spends one too.

If we shall speak very technically, it is not too expensive for me to spend $40 to go to a play party. I do have $40 in my bank account, and it could potentially go toward such a thing. So let me be a little more honest.

Unfortunately for the good people I’ve met here in the scene, some of whom host simply gorgeous parties, I have a hard time getting myself out and putting down cash at the door. This, I should clarify, is not through the fault of their parties. This is because, as I mentioned, the things I want from the scene have changed:

Where I used to consider the possibility of pick-up play, I now play only with established partners and long-term friends.

Where I used to feed from the energy in kinky spaces, I now feel awkward and exposed.

Where I used to be willing to manage the social minefield of not knowing anyone on the room, I now feel more comfortable around at least a few people I’m close to.

And where I used to be able to make friends with people solely upon the common ground of shared sexualities, I now find myself unable to do so. This has unfortunately knocked munches off my list, as well as parties.

So the events are not at fault. But the events are no longer right for me. And the Sydney scene appears to be structured in such a way that these kinds of events are the first point of entry.

So when I say that something is too expensive, I am being a little unfair. What I should say is that I’m not, at this point in my life, willing to pay an entry fee in order to be exposed to a number of kinky people with whom I have a slight chance of becoming friends. Because that’s what these parties have become for me; the vapor of a possibility that one of the other attendees might be someone I want to make friends with.

In the end, having complementary sexualities has almost no value for me in forging new friendships. It comes below a laundry list of other factors that must first align: our humor, our interests, our intellectual inquiries, our attitudes toward society and life and ourselves.

Complementary sexualities become a real factor in maintaining a relationship once sex itself becomes a factor of that relationship. To say that I am more likely to find friends among the kinky is similar to saying that if I were hetero, I would be more likely to find friends among men. Largely illogical, consistently untrue.

I have been reassessing the return on my investments, so to speak. Unfortunately, if I go to a play party that does not yield me any kind of good feeling, friendship, or conversation, I don’t just shrug it off. I get upset at myself, a little depressed. And where I get a little upset, Maymay becomes angrily vicious and bitter. It is not uncommon for us to leave play parties that are unsuccessful (by our standards), go home, fight, and end up miserable and crying. So in many ways, an entry fee is not just an entry fee; it’s a gamble.

And as what I’m looking for diverges further and further from what play parties are designed to deliver, the gamble becomes increasingly bad.

It is time now to revisit. It is, in fact, insistently necessary.

Many of the comments I recieved during the initial shock commented on my strength, or my rationality, or the capability demonstrated by my reaction. I remain grateful for the support and kindness, although at the time a part of me thought this was all a bit odd. I just did what I had to do, I thought. I did what I needed to do to survive and still be able to look myself in the face at the end of the day.

I commented recently on Under The Boot that although I have more issues than I can shake a stick at, most of them don’t make it to this forum. Most of them sit in a wasteland of stubbed text documents in a folder on my desktop, abandoned. What I didn’t mention in the comment is that even these stubs are an achievement for me. I keep them around long after they become just bits of digital clutter.

My family member and I eventually decided to leave our argument alone, brush it under the rug and go on with our lives, so to speak. Here’s what you have to understand for the rest of this to make sense: this is exactly the way I’ve dealt with every pyschological issue since I was ten years old. It has taken me years, tears, and a lot of wincing at my own stupidity to get me to acknowledge and address issues head on, to write down my musings, to practice self-awareness. Even now I’m not very good at it. I often approach problems sideways, wending my way like a crab.

I moved to Australia, I essentially erased my life and started over, and I thought that would be the end of it. I thought to myself, Damn it, I have dealt with this. Enough is enough. This pain is firmly locked away in a dark part of my mind, if not exorcised completely.

Of course I was lying to myself. Of course that was complete bullshit. Of course it still hurts. Probing the wound is as easy as reading my archives.

I still, occasionally, cry until I’m exhausted enough to sleep. I still find my self-confidence weakened. And I still sometimes want to scream whenever my family member comes to the phone, flush with that initial childish anger: 

I turned 25 last month. I’m just a kid. I’m not supposed to hurt this much. 

It didn’t have to be this way. 

Why did you do this to me?

And because I am brilliantly twisted enough to make even this into a completely personal guilt trip (instead of a partially personal one), I can’t help but think that if I were really as strong as I appear to be, things would be better by now.

This blog has slowed to a trickle, and if the truth be told, it’s not just because I uprooted my life and lost my Internet access. It is also because this forum has undeniably changed, and it’s becoming clearer to me as time passes that the changes are not for the better.

One of the reasons I like blogging is that I like to go back and read what I’ve written. I like to mine my old words for new ideas. I have not read back in several months, because when I try to I cannot get my family member’s face out of my head: their thoughts when they read my words, their concern and outrage. The red carpet of our living room that I stared at while they yelled at me over Thanksgiving weekend. I begin to think that I should just change the blog’s background to a picture of that damned carpet, and give up any hope of ever separating msyelf from that pain again.

What this means is that every time I open a new post and begin to write, the words feel ungainly and weighted. Everything is filtered through the lense of potential pain. The headline flashes: Who Might Be Reading This Time?

I wrote that I would continue to speak out because I recognize that speaking out helps people. I still believe that. I refused to move this blog, find a new place, go to ground and drop from the radar. I figured that doing so would be useless, the damage done.

But I didn’t manage to throw off the hurt and worry and blithely continue. Not just here, but in my entire life, things changed. My fantasies changed. My kinks shifted. Even the way I kiss my boy changed, for a little while. I tried to keep writing, keep teaching, keep fucking and playing, while it became increasingly clear that every time I wrote, taught, fucked, played, I was committing a political act.

I wanted desperately to retreat, to be safe again, to just sweep it all under the rug and get on with things, maybe in a different way, maybe the same. But I didn’t, because politically and personally I don’t believe I should have to retreat and disappear to make things better.

It is cloyingly noble, and it makes me a bit embarrassed. Especially with this next part thrown in.

I have to admit something, and doing so is painful in itself. I was not prepared for how exhausting it is when the only thing that keeps me writing is the uncanny idea that if I don’t keep writing, the sexual terrorists will win. 

The initial explosion didn’t kill me, but the little everyday grinding reminders might yet finish me off.

Perhaps this entire thought process bespeaks of lack of “closure”, but I’m not so sure. I have been told many times over the years that I need to “have it out” with my family member. Have it out over what, I ask, and why? I remain convinced that it is not in my or my family’s interest to force a fight to death or disownment. I think that if I’m going to move forward, I’m going to have to do it on my own.

In the meantime, I don’t know what to do about this blog. Maintaining it is both satisfying and upsetting. I have to work hard to get the joy out, like the whole thing is a vat of olives pressed one too many times. 

Much of this sounds melodramatic and adolescent. I’ve tried to avoid that. It’s hard not to sound adolescent when all you want to do is whine that life is shit and it isn’t fucking fair. But it seems necessary to acknowledge this thing that is still happening to me, six months later. 

The truth is, I feel damaged. I am terrified that the damage may be irreparable.

At the time I was devastated, yet confident. Now I’m just tired. I’m fed up with politics and censorship and bad writing and family drama. I’ve had enough, and I’m pissed that this pain keeps hanging around and making me cry on warm nights.

I leafed through the pages of the book on the subway, headed home with Maymay on New Year’s Eve. On the lower right-hand corner of one page, written in blue ink above a snapshot of a couple clapping, were the words I miss when you were just proud of me.

I started sobbing right there on the subway. I had to laugh at myself, I felt so foolish.

I spent eight days visiting family members during the Christmas holidays. I had enormous trouble organizing my thoughts while I was there. Much of my time with my family was nourishing, and content. I enjoyed Christmas. I ate cinnamon rolls and watched my cat pounce on wrapping paper, high on catnip.

I spent some time alone with the family member I shared that painful conversation with back at Thanksgiving. Seeing them was both relieving and difficult.

We did not have the beautiful, moving conversation one might have thought we’d have. I was not expecting us to. There’s a part of me that is amazed we talked at all. We sat in a crowded lunchroom over chili and hot chocolate, and built a small, sparse bridge of words.

“I’ve put passwords on my blog,” I offered, uncomfortably.

“That’s good, I suppose,” they answered. “I know you’ve been writing, but I haven’t read it.”

I wasn’t sure what to think of that. I turned a spoonful of chili over, contemplating. Eventually I answered. “You don’t have to read what I write, you know.”

“I know that,” they said. “But I’m always going to want to read what you write. You’re a part of me, what you do is going to last.” They paused a moment. “Your dust is going to be my dust too.”

I smiled at that.

“It was very painful for me, saying those things to you,” they said.

I teared up a little. “I know it was. I wrote about that.”

“This isn’t a good place to talk about it,” they said.

“I know,” I answered.

Later we drove home together. I watched the trees meld together in blurred shapes as we passed.

I drew a helpless gesture in the air with my hands. “I don’t know if you want to talk about . . . all this, if you want to learn about it or have me explain things to you.”

“I don’t think . . . I’m never going to think that violence is okay,” they answered. “I told you what I think, and I know you’ll do what you want.” They paused, staring at the road ahead. “I’m trying to let you go,” they said.

I thought about that for a little while.

Finally they spoke again. “Is there anything you really want to say?”

I turned the question over in my head. Was there anything I really wanted to say to them? About violence, or kink, or being an adult? About decision making, about work and energy and dedication? About criticism, constructive or otherwise? About Maymay, about how much I love him and how good he is for me?

I’m trying to let you go.

“I really think you could have handled the situation better,” I said at last.

“Maybe,” they answered.

We drove on, for a little while, in silence. Eventually I fell asleep with my cheek on the window.

Is that it?

I don’t know.

I think I’ll always disappoint my family in ways, and there will always be things we just don’t talk about. I think I will always live, as I have always lived, with this undercurrent of criticism and distance, and love.

I think I’ll relish the day I can see in the distance, the day I make decisions without my family.

I think that right now, just in this moment, that’s okay. I think that it will still hurt. I will cry on subway cars sometimes, and then occasionally, and then, hopefully, not at all.

Like I have been every other time my life was broken, in the end I will be okay.

Have I brought this painful span of words and weeks to an end?

Perhaps I have. I don’t know.

I do know that for the first time in weeks, I want to write again.

How can my life be simultaneously so fucking easy and so fucking hard?

I have a family I love, who loves me. I am overwhelmingly grateful. And yet, thinking of my travel plans for the holiday makes me feel ill.

My discussion with my family member broached a topic that I have not yet touched upon. A large, I might even say central topic. A topic with soft skin and red hair.

Yes, of course. Mixed up in this whole damn mess is the boy I love.

There was a question broached, some months ago, about whether May would accompany me to my family’s for a portion of this holiday season. I broached this question, I believe, in early September. I understand now why I never got a straight answer.

I was told at the time to make my own decision. This infuriated me; I felt it entirely unfair to be asked to make decisions about other people’s homes and lives, in a potentially explosive situation, with absolutely no input from the people involved.

Last Sunday, in the afternoon before May and I talked, I called my family member’s home. After some brief, friendly conversation I asked the question.

“Should he come up with me? It’s okay if he shouldn’t,” I added quickly. “I just want to know what you think, and if he shouldn’t then I’ll just go home to New York a little earlier, so I can spend the holidays with both of you.”

I felt as though my heart was choking me, asking this question. I thought of the email, that stupid joke that made me laugh. I thought Maybe it’s really all right.

“I know you said it’s my decision, but I really think it’s unfair to ask me to make that decision. I would appreciate some guidance.” I closed my eyes.

They paused on the other end of the line. “I guess you should go back to New York, then.”

“Okay,” I said. “I will. Thank you. That helps. That’s all I wanted to know.”

When I hung up the phone I pressed my hand to my forehead for a second. Silly girl, you knew better. Nothing has actually changed.

It didn’t actually hit me until I was sitting on the subway platform. Suddenly I curled up in a ball and started crying, leaning over the hard bench. May made a distressed noise and rubbed my back.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. He walked to the booth a few feet down the platform, bought something, and came back. It was a fashion magazine; one of my silly guilty pleasures. He smiled as he handed it to me.

“Here,” he said. “A distraction.”

I smiled, then laughed slowly. I thanked him, kissed him.

You stupid shit, I thought to myself as I flipped through the pages. It was far too soon to ask that question.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password: