=Survivor=

You’ll have to forgive me

I’m not in my right mind

anymore. By now

I’ve had a lot taken out of me.

It was inevitable, I guess,

considering how it started.

All those years of lying

have left me hoarse

like Babe Ruth

with cancer

a whole stadium hushed

to hear death

whispering.

I’ll show you the scars

if you like

where they cut the song

right out of me

and if you don’t like.

Go now, its best if you do,

there’s nothing here to love,

just a lot of holes

where someone has been before.

What’s a survivor, anyway,

but a map of mistakes,

of paths best avoided?

Am I here to teach you something

do you think,

to inspire you

to comfort you

or am I just a sideshow freak?

I didn’t come through the fire

for you,

for anyone,

not even for myself.

Truth is, when it burns,

you just go to the place

where it stops burning the most.

That’s all.

That place is here.

I’m talking now because it still hurts

and won’t stop

and though its quieter

and sounds almost reasonable

please understand

that I’m not talking to communicate anything

that what you’re hearing is nothing

but the fading of a scream.

=Dreams don't just come true=

There's probably no tragedy greater in life than in thinking it's too late until it really is too late & consequently never becoming and doing what you were meant to be and do.

But then it can seem "too late" even relatively early on in your life.

It can seem too late right out of the gate.

What if, before you quite know what's happening, you already have a family—a wife, a child, a career—and only after several years do you come to realize, singing along with the Talking Heads song you play over and over and over, "This is not my beautiful home. This is not my beautiful wife."?

What then?

How do you disentangle yourself from all that? Haven't you already irrevocably set your course? Haven't you made your bed & now aren't you required to sleep in it? Is there really an honorable way to bail out of a life taking you where you don't want to go without causing everyone else on the plane to go down in a fiery crash?

 "It's never too late to be who you were always meant to be." A line commonly misattributed to George Eliot, but true nevertheless whether she said it or not. Whether anyone ever originally said it or it just kept getting repeated.

You can only be who you are at this present moment no matter how many moments you've already lived or how many moments are left to you in the future. Now is all you have. You can wake up this morning, right this very moment, and be who you were always meant to be and you won't be any less who you are in this moment than if you lived this way for the last fifty years. The past doesn't count. You are who you are now.

So,  if only theoretically speaking, it really is never too late.

But it's hard. Sacrifices have to be made. People will very likely be hurt. How selfish are you prepared to be? Is it really being selfish if by being anyone other than your true self you aren't yourself at all?

Are you really good to anyone as a fake? A fake husband? A fake boyfriend? A fake lover? A fake father? A fake son? 

A fake?

Don't other people, especially those who claim to love you, have a responsibility to love who you really are?

If they don't, did they ever really love you to begin with? Wasn't their love conditional on an illusion, on a need, on a fantasy of their own? Is conditional love really love? Isn't conditional love selfish? Aren't they being selfish to expect you to fulfill their needs? 

Isn't everyone, ultimately, selfish?

Isn't that a precondition to having a self?

If you aren't for yourself who will be?

If you aren't selfish, how can you be for anyone's else's self?

Let's stop being so abstract.

How do you find the strength, the courage, and, yes, the ruthlessness to stop the locomotive force of your life once it's set in motion down a one-way track and send it off in another direction—a radically different direction?

I wish I knew. I wish I'd had the strength, the courage, and, yes, even the ruthlessness necessary to make the changes that I made. Instead, I changed the course of my life through a series of largely unplanned breakdowns, negations, and accidents.

I changed almost by a kind of default—a default on my former identity.

My life was simply wrong, all wrong. My marriage—a mistake to begin with, entered into out of a desperate need to please, a false sense of heroics, an infantile need to escape from a bad childhood and flee into a sense of mature, if false, security—was failing, falling apart at the seams, unsatisfactory in every way, on both sides, mine and hers. I wasn't the biological parent of the child I called my "daughter" though I convinced myself it made no difference, that I couldn't love her any more if she were, though I'd never wanted children, didn't believe bringing children into the world was a good idea or that I could ever be a good parent or that our marriage could withstand the pressure a child would bring. I was caught in a job that I never really wanted but couldn't leave because of financial constraints that I would never have put myself into if I weren't married to someone who wanted a kind of material and social life that ultimately I didn't only not want, but instead despised for it's convention and conformity.

Listen, the fault was ultimately mine. Mine for being too weak to say "No." And sticking to my guns. Mine for not knowing who I was, what I wanted, and having the courage of my convictions. Mine for being an adult in age but an abused child psychologically, dominated in a society that doesn't accept that men can be dominated by women or that men may not really be men at all despite all outward appearances to the contrary. 

Following an instinct, searching for some fleeting glimpse of myself in the world "out there" that the internet suddenly made available, I discovered transgender stories & pictures which described and illustrated a reality I had only up to now fantasized about—a world I thought I alone lived in, dreamed of, wished for. I discovered transgender chat rooms & a population of others similar to me. I drifted into a shared fantasy world that seemed not only more desirable but more real than the supposedly real world that took it's place when I logged off my computer. Still, I didn't understand the implications of what was happening, of the double-life I was living and what it meant. I didn't realize that I wasn't just fantasizing about being a woman, that instead it was a kind of destiny. That by investing so much energy in a fantasy world I was, as if by magick, making it an eventual reality by degrees so fractional I didn't see it coming.

For some time already, my mental health had been under assault. Anxiety attacks so crippling I could barely make the 15-minute walk from the bus station to my office without shaking, sweating, & feeling like I was going to collapse at any moment. Once in my office, I'd shut the door, lie on the floor with my eyes closed, and wait for the nauseating vertigo to subside. Sometimes it didn't. Back home I'd sit on the couch with my heart stuttering and racing for no apparent reason. I was taking 3mg of Xanax a day. Anti-depressants. Anti-palpitation drugs. I was having suicidal thoughts. Everything seemed unreal, like I was watching the world around me through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars, hearing it as if I were underwater. Once I pulled off into a parking lot to calm down after realizing with a shock that I had been about to  impulsively jerk my car sideways into a tree. I starved myself. I hit myself repeatedly in the face under the guise of "exercising." At work, I told them I was taking boxing lessons to explain my blackened eyes, my swollen lip.

Looking back on it all now, with a shudder, I realize that I was heading for either a major illness, a complete psychological breakdown, or suicide, either planned or "accidental."

Instead, there was an ill-advised, largely unconsummated & mostly emotional pseudo-affair which I readily, voluntarily, unnecessarily and probably foolishly confessed,  hoping it would finally convey my extreme distress, my desperate need to change things at least a little, but instead led to what seemed a sensible trial separation to sort things out, or so I thought of it, until locks were changed and divorce papers were quickly served up the minute I was out of the house, a legally strategic, completely untrue charge of abandonment, a bankruptcy, a punishing 18-month ordeal through family court during which I fought for the right to see my daughter who I loved more than any other single thing in my life but by the time it was over and I'd "won" the psychological damage done could never be undone and eventually ended up in a permanent (?) estrangement; there were ill-advised, self-destructive relationships, dangerous situations that amounted to unacknowledged suicide attempts,  and all the while a grim, joyless soldiering on at a job I hated more than ever since it no longer even supported the lifestyle I hadn't wanted in the first place but had to provide for two households…until, finally, mercifully, at just the right time and through no fault of my own, the economy collapsed and "my position was eliminated."

"Your position has been eliminated," I was informed. 
Truer words in so many senses had never been spoken.

What I'm trying to say is that it's easy to say "live the life you were meant to live before it's too late" but in actuality it isn't easy at all. In fact, it can almost kill you. Sometimes you can only do it, at least I could only do it, when the old life was killing me just as surely and even faster.

Today, I'm  happily married, a housewife, for want of a better term, living a second-life so radically different from the first as to constitute two different lives altogether. But it's cost me. Cost me everything I had before. Cost me friends, family, career…none of which, in the end, ever suited me, based as they all were on a person I was never intended to be. But a steep price to pay nonetheless. 

I take consolation in knowing that everyone survived the crash. Everyone from my past has made new lives of their own, too. New lives that don't include me, that don't need me, that don't want me. I feel amazed at times at how little I mattered to any of them. But I also feel relieved that I don't have to feel guilty either. If anyone wanted to reconnect, they could. I certainly wouldn't turn them away. If they could accept who I am, who I always was, who they never knew. But for them, I suppose, it would be like encountering a stranger. I can't blame them for not taking the trouble. 

Why should they? 
What do you owe a stranger, after all?

Most people, I suspect, go through life carrying along another life unlived. And the closer they get to the end of the only life they have to live, the more they come to regret and mourn that still-born twin. You have to be like a doctor, I guess, who, when encountering conjoined twins finds him or herself forced to decide which one is more viable. Unfortunately, I made the wrong choice and picked the life least viable to survive in the long run. 

Actually, I made, perhaps, an even greater mistake.

Typical of me, I didn't decide at all. 

Instead, I let both twins live. One sleeping inside the other until her desire to live become greater than that of her brother. I chose the wrong life at the start. And I paid the price of having to watch as that life painfully died. 

Maybe it would have died anyway and if I hadn't let the other twin live there would have been no life to replace it when the time came. I'd like to think that is what happened, that my weakness and indecisiveness was a kind of accidental wisdom.  

Or an unintended insurance policy.

I've lived two lives. 

I really can't take any credit for it.

I was not courageous. 

I was just lucky.

Live the life you were meant to live? 

Sure, it's good, if somewhat flippant advice. Something you'd read on a slip of paper inside a fortune cookie.

But I wouldn't blame anyone for not taking it. I wouldn't blame anyone in the least for becoming a bitter old man instead. It's easier; it's safer. You get to become old, anyway. 

To be who you were meant to be can require the equivalent of jumping off a cliff, walking into a blazing furnace, diving into the water and taking a deep breath only after you're under the surface. 

In other words, it can go against your every instinct for survival. It can cost you your life and everything in it you hold dear.

Are you ready to do that? 

To gamble it all away?

If you think too much about it, weigh all the alternatives, you probably won't ever do it.

In other words, just do it. 

Because if you make it to the other side:

=Sunday in the Village=

A seagull, having stolen a consecrated wafer directly from the chalice of a nearby church, flew to the beach and dove beak-downward into the sea and never resurfaced. The officiating priest declared this to be a miracle, men reportedly grew breasts, and the tree in the courtyard exploded into a thousand apostolic flames. That night, woken by the sound of all the graves in the village cemetery opening, a little boy in pajamas walked sleepily into his parent’s bedroom and asked, “Mommy, why is the big angel in the backyard carrying the flag of Switzerland?” Poor kid. He didn’t see his father hiding behind the door with the wig in his hand, not even when it was too late.

=Sissie Day Camp!=

(I'm guessing the two girls on the end are natural born females. Which is interesting. Because I actually find the two sissie girls in the middle a lot more sexy! More importantly, so does my Daddy!)

Daddy: I would love to send you off to sissy camp like these happy girls. That's not entirely true; I'd miss you too much.   Maybe I would send you to a Sissy Summer Day Camp.  That way you could get girly and giggly during the day, surely suck each others' titties and clitties, and you'd be home at night to please Daddy.  

Me: Oh yes, sissie day camp is a great idea! It sounds like so much fun. I can just imagine all the fun sissy activities & crafts, splashing around in the pool, sissy sing-a-longs, and, of course, what would camp be without the naughty horny camp counselors? (Maybe that’s what those two girls on the end are?)

Maybe i can even bring a couple of sissie girlfriends home for a sleepover. We can munch popcorn & do each other’s hair & nails & listen to music & talk about cute boys & other sissie stuff & generally romp around in our little babydoll nighties. And when we don't stop giggling & playing with each other after lights out, even after several stern warnings, you'll just have to punish each of us with a firm spanking...

…of course one thing leading to another, you'll come to understand that it’s not our fault we’re so restless. We’re just sissies after all! What we need to settle down is for Daddy to let us suck his cock, which, I'm sure, being the good, conscientious Daddy that you are, you won't deny us the opportunity to do. You’ll let us each take a turn and we’ll all try to outdo each other for Daddy’s load. Of course, whoever gets the “prize” will have to share because that’s what good sissies do, giving each other cummy kisses.  

At last, we'll be ready to scooch down cozily under the covers & fall sleep in each others arms. Each of us with a satisfying tummy full of Daddy’s warm cream.

Yum!

=A Childhood Memory=

“I’ve got no more,” she says, and turns her cup upside down to show me. She’s sitting up in bed, reading, where she once had sex with my father. Her eyes catch her reflection in the mirror on the dresser across the room. “Not a drop left. See?”

“But, Mom, I’m thirsty.”

“Go ask your father.”

He’s sitting there in his easy chair, looking wise and benevolent, but straight through me, at the TV.  He seems to know why I’m here already, doesn’t say a word, just mutely turns his cup upside down without taking his eyes from the television, a really elegant gesture.

I’m so distraught, so distraught I’m no longer even thirsty. But what can I do?

I run away from home, but after a while I realize the obvious: there’s nowhere to go. So I return home. I see our house in the distance, over the hill. No one has come after me. They knew I’d have to come back.  Where else could I possibly go? I feel like I’ve dropped a burden I didn’t even know I was carrying, lighter somehow, like I could walk without bending the grass, freer, like it never really mattered.

=Girl with a hard-on=

Marco Vassi wrote "there is nothing more erotic than a woman with a hard-on." When I read this line back in college, it nearly knocked me out of my library chair the way Paul was knocked off his donkey on the way to Damascus. Unfortunately, unlike Paul, the conversion wasn't immediate. It would still take me years of false starts, wrong turns, and dead-ends to realize exactly why Vassi's words resonated so strongly with me, although in my fantasies, which seemed to me must, by definition, remain only fantasies, I already knew.

Of course, in hindsight, it's perfectly clear.

I wanted to be the woman with a hard-on that Vassi wrote about. Although I wasn't ready at the time, in some small corner of my mind, his words stuck. Over the years, I recalled them many times. They meant: it was possible. I could be a girl someone would find sexy. Now, looking at the girl pictured above, it seems to me that there can be no doubt Vassi was correct. There isn't anything sexier than a woman with a hard-on!

The combination of prettiness, softness, & vulnerability with the unmistakeable visual evidence of sexual arousal—no wonder  so many men like transgender girls.

Last night, Daddy, who sent me this picture, had me say the very words that caption this cutie. "Daddy, will you rub my clit until I come?"

"Yes baby," he said

With the hormones I'm taking, it takes a bit of rubbing in the special place & in the special way that only Daddy seems to know to get me in a state even close to the girl above. Even then, I can hardly make such a display of myself. I'm just not that big or hard anymore. But I can manage enough of a sissy swelling to leave no mistake about my urgent state of arousal.

Daddy knows just the pressure.
Just the place.
Just the pace.

And for a few glorious moments, I feel as if I've become at long last the embodiment of Marco Vassi's prophetic words.

=The Perversities=

(for Cyndy)

“What will follow is the psychopathology of sex, relationships so lunar and abstract that people will become mere extensions of the geometries of situations. This will allow the exploration, without any taint of guilt, of every aspect of psychopathology.” 

--JG Ballard

1.

…so, yes, there are people who would love to have us together. still, i want to be the one to ruin you. nobody can handle that the way i can

hmmm...i was thinking maybe you could cut & bleach my hair & have me pierced...

these other people are just a community that will accept you and treat you as my little…

 i think most of the really freaky, sexy destructive things will be between you and me.

i've come to learn there is no shortage of sexy freaks in this area.

2.

i do have a thing for your blood. i can see craving it so much, i might bleed you every day. i'll slap your face until your pretty lip bleeds, then passionately kiss you, tasting your blood on my pink tongue. speaking of tongues, i've been thinking of having yours pierced.

i luv the idea that other people would accept us for what we are!!

i always laugh when i think of my diapered little sissykins at "work". how cute! i'm sure they take you *so* seriously, you precious pretty baby.

3.

theyd see the outward signs of what you were doing to me & theyd wonder and whisper...but only we'd know for sure....and finally only you'd know

…bite my lips until the flesh breaks, oozing blood as you kiss me, sucking my bloody tongue into your mouth and biting that too, holding me tight so i cant pull away...

...only you would know...

4.

i have a lot i'd love to share with you, if you get the notion to talk or write a bit. some of what i want to tell you is just stuff i want to complain about, but there's also hot real and fantasy stuff. i didn't sleep last night. i'm sooo tired. unfortunately i can't sleep because my shoulder hurts like crazy.

you could smack me until my mouth bleeds, or just bite

5.

they'll see the results of my influence on you- your loss of control, your diminishing use of anything but…

--honestly, you wouldn't be able to maintain your fake "normal" exterior for long.

i'm in L.A. right now.

6.

i think its so cool you told someone else about us. i like, tho, that you'd keep some things just between us :) & some things i wouldnt even completely know for sure. i luv that

baby-talk to communicate, your total dependence, all that. but they won't know the secret things i do to you to make you my helpless little…

maybe kayte….

......thats totally hot,

7.

ugh! i'm supposed to film that movie beginning tuesday, but i can't even lift my arm. very weird! i think i'll go to the hospital in a little bit.

i'd luv her to see me lying in your arms sucking your pretty tittie...

8.

......well im at work right now  (can you imagine?) so its hard to call back, but i'd luv to: i think i need to be much more "relaxed" when i call you until youve completely broken down my resistance & fear...then i'd happily call you all the time from anywhere :)

oh, my trip to brazil...very freaky.

.....you cut the veins above my ankles & let the blood drip over my trembling toes as your pretty hands tighten around my throat...

9.

well, i understand you being a litle scaredy-cat about calling back, but i know in time you'll need to call me *all* the time. adoration, dependence and sweet addiction will overcome you before long.

&, no, i dont struggle at all, too weak, too submissive, & wanting to be the picture-perfect victim for you...

10.

could tickle your little peepee with the stud, & my speech would be all messed up, & o the little click-click as the stud hit my teeth...

and then there's the night i spent with this ultra-freaky chick named kayte on thursday before coming here. kayte would love us together. i know that 100%. i tell her about you and she gets totally hot hearing about what we're into. she also has a ton of freaky friends.

& oh its so sexy to think you'd be "abusing" me behind the scenes...destroying me...and making me weaker and weaker...and totally dependent on you...

making me your helpless hopeless addict: ruin me!!! make me soooooo sick......

i'd really want you to have my tongue pierced...& my slavemouth

11.

ive been having the most intense fantasies of that: of you drinking my blood every day. sometimes i picture you biting me, and other times cutting me, letting the blood trickle over my skin before licking it and then sucking the wound.

 i'd just lie there with my arms thrown over my head as you positioned me however you wanted & drink from me, bleed me...

…but begin to suspect and whisper about changes in you and how i might be making those changes come about.

12.

oh wow, i just took two codeine tablets about 30 minutes ago and i'm feeling kinda creamy. ha ha, now would be the perfect time for us to talk.

i wish i was splashing around in the babypool where you are. are you in the mood to starve me or fatten me up? would my belly be shrunken or protruding over my diaper & little swimsuit bottoms? :)

...sitting on the floor in my diaper making a messy while you talked to your friends...

13.

i can barely keep my eyes open and i feel kinda "floaty" and dum.

14.

i luv getting thinner & weaker cause of your sexy neglect. oh ...how perfect to feed me xanax so i get too sleepy to fuss over food! how wonderfully sexily dysfunctional!!!

oh well, do call. or if you want i can call. i think i have unlimited weekend minutes. that was a problem before i got this cell phone. for some reason when i changed my home phone company i didnt get long-distance.

...is flying to california in my traveling sissy outfit: overalls rolled up at the ankles, cute pink sleeveless t, & flipflops...

15.

god  i'm just in a completely blah, blah, blah mode right now. i feel really sexy and stupid at the moment. haha. my fingers arent too coordinated right now so i'd better send this. i love you,

o i'd be easy to hook, & very easy to corrupt, & i'd give up very sweetly, i think :) i luv to think of you orgasming at the signs of my dependence...i'd like you to orgasm again & again over my pale addicted-to-you body...

16.

 when i say i have plans for you, i'm serious. hope to hear from you. ciao,

...my ribs and hipbones showing clearly, & my pale arms and legs getting almost twiglike...

your baby literally starving to death in your arms...

17.

 i like the way you cant enunciate at first because your pretty tongue is swollen. then the lisp with the little clicking of the stud against your teeth. oooo! orgasmically hot!!!

18.

hi cutie,

so yes, i told kayte some of what we talk about and she got really hot. she'd be totally into watching, or more. she's freaky like that. i didn't tell her everything because i like to keep some secrets between you and me.

it turns me on for some reason when people don't know for sure,

19.

i sit in the airport someplace, looking lost, sipping a diet pepsi, so you can have a look at me & if you like me, you approach, drive me to the motel ive reserved...

...and for the next week or 2 you begin my 'breakdown' as your fake-asian-diapered-sissyslave, taking away my resistance, keeping me drunk, drugged, bound, starved, diapered...

 20.

so my shoulder still hurts, but i've gotten some good painkillers that make me feel really dreamy. i emailed the director and told him i couldn't go tomorrow. i'm half-disappointed, because i wanted to be in a movie and maybe make a lot of money from it, but who cares. i'll figure something else out. besides, the script sucked. it seemed like it was written by an eighth grader.

i want to lick it off your pale skin. nearly all my cruel images of you involve blood dripping from you, especially from your toes.

21.

i want to be your pale, bleached, blooded, fake-asian, sissy-slave...

oooo!

22.

so i'm just lying around today, my little arm in a sling, popping vicodin and codeine. yay! :) if you're around, let me know, my diapered, bleach-blonde fake little asian girl. i may not be totally coherent, but i think i can be sexy/fun. kisses,

23.

& you kiss my mouth, frothed with spittle & blood & lipstick, my lips blue, my breath gone...

& my hands lie open & limp at my side...

24.

i'm yours...

25.

maybe i should have a little wine with my vicodin...i like thinking of filling your baba with red wine, seeing you suck it until you're stupid.

i always make little plans to have you out here, then gradually get you hooked on pills. you're so fun/sexy to corrupt. i could orgasm just thinking of you beginning to show little signs of dependence.

mmmmm, that makes me want to suck your sexy toesies.

26.

so that by the time i fly back here im already changed, bleached and pierced, diapered continuously, already yours, & i fly back & forth for a few more sessions until i'm 'done' &

27.

your deepening dependence to me and addiction to my freaky desires makes me so hot!! i have my cell phone with me, if you want to call, i'm out by the pool.  if not, write more and i'll check back here in a little while. you're so much sexier when you crave my attention. love,

28.

i love the thought of you in your cute little bikini weakly splashing around at my feet while i lay in a long chair languidly reading a fashion magazine and drinking red wine.

...uhhhhh...you have me panting, waiting on your emails already :) i'd luv to do things for you & earn your sexy cruelty in return.

…as much as it turns me on to see your body overfed, i think i'd want you your tummy to be shrunken and your delicate ribs starting to get conspicuous.

29.

my shoulder has long since bothered me, but i kinda like the affect of the wine and codeine. sorry, baby,  if i'm too lazy to order out for some food or *gasp* cook it myself, i've taken to just giving you a xanax when you get fussy with hunger.

& you take me closer & closer to the edge each time & one time i'll go over & i never know when...

i'd luv to feel your beautiful hand around my skinny pale throat & feel myself totally at your mercy. i would luv to feel your teeth marks all over my white flesh...

30.

you're the best kind of slave. i can make you do things for me, or i can be sweetly cruel and do all kinds of sexy, destructive things to you. such a hot little plaything you are. hope you're not saddled with too much responsibility at work today...i have a feeling you won't be able to handle it. smoochies,

31.

ive barely eaten for a week or so, following a special diet youve put me on to "get me ready," sending you photos of me by internet...

my life is completely yours...

32.

...i'm spaced-out a bit on xanax...

33.

i definitely not proud of this, but i can't help but be turned on by the thought of making you my pretty little addict. you wouldn't even realize fully what i was doing to you until it was too late and you were completely hooked. i have twisted little fantasies like that.

...its silly, huh, me acting all 'growed up?' i know it could be pretty simple to become totally dependent on you. i think that was more or less about to happen when we talked last time. god, i was really far gone that day!!

34.

that's sooooo weird that you said this...i was thinking exactly the same thing…

35.

what a yummy image of you lounging by the pool reading fashion magazines & sipping wine while i splash around!

… i like biting you and all this talk of cruelty made me want to taste your blood, cut you or bite you hard. i just love the thought of your blood on my lips.

36.

now you've planted the thought of my soft hands tightening around your slender throat. too hot!! i love that you gasp, but you're too weak and submissive to struggle, your lips blue beneath the sensuous red lipstick.

37.

i wish i could feed you with my blood!!!

38.

& i luv you totally!

39.

xxxxx

40.

...thats what im dreaming of now...


(This piece is based on a long-running series of internet chats that I had with a dominant t-girl named Cyndy. We never met—primarily because I was too frightened that she might be unstable—an ironic &  arguably unfair assessment inasmuch as I was an enthusiastic & active participant in these dark fantasies—albeit as the victim—& I don't consider myself any more unstable than the next person. There was also an entire country between us making a real life meeting problematic. Yet even when I was in California for several weeks in the early 2000s & staying only 50 or so miles away from where Cyndy was living I still chickened out of her proposed meeting. One of the few things I regret not doing in life.)

 Cyndy, wherever you are now xoxo. Without you, I'd never be where I am now, which is to say, I'd never have become myself or found happiness & love. You'll always have a place in my heart. 

=Excerpt from "The Secret Diary of a Future Sex Crime Victim"=

It’s no surprise that “Mike” says that he’s not married, but I don’t believe that for a second. No one who answers my ad is ever married. It’s become a kind of joke to me when they make a point of saying they aren’t married.

“Mike” says he’s not married like they all say they’re not married. Like he’s trying to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. Like he’s doing a card trick. Like the quicker he says he’s not married the less like a lie it will sound. The more I’ll be convinced. The less I’ll see the tell-tale evidence of a trick in progress.

He says it like someone who says “Hey what’s that over there!” and points at something over your left shoulder, while he reaches into your pocket with his other hand.

I’m not fooled, but I pretend to look anyway. I already know there’s nothing over there. It’s just a social courtesy to pretend I’ve fallen for his lie. Even these sordid situations have their little social protocols. Besides, there aren’t any pockets in a babydoll nightie.

In spite of what I pretend, I know he’s married. I’d bet a thousand bucks on it. He has that hunted, looking-over-his-shoulder-in-case-the-wife-creeps-quietly-into-the-room look all married guys have, even when, like “Mike,” they’ve driven sixty miles from their home for a blowjob.

That’s right. “Mike” is willing to travel 120 miles roundtrip to stick his cock down my throat and ejaculate.

What does that tell you something about how horny he must be? What does that tell you about how desperate he is to escape his humdrum life?

Whoever Mike’s wife is, she’s failing miserably to make him happy. She isn’t doing much to satisfy him. Sorry, I’m not on her side.

I couldn’t care less if Mike is married or not.

In fact, I rather that he—and all the “Mikes”—were married. It would prove he’s not completely dysfunctional, not a complete troglodyte. That he doesn’t spend all his down-time sitting in a darkened room jerking off to death-porn on the computer. That he can have normal relationships.

Even if it’s not foolproof proof, if a guy is married he’s probably not as likely to be a serial killer, somewhat less likely to have AIDS or some other awful disease, someone less likely to have dangerous, anti-social proclivities than someone who’s  unmarried.

There have been plenty of married serial killers living secret lives. I’m well aware of that. I’ve read the books.

There are plenty of married guys with AIDS, more than enough who indulge in recreational sadism with prostitutes, who dabble in a little serial killing on the side.

Statistically speaking, though, a married guy is safer than your average lone wolf. He’s less likely to be the kind of guy you see on TV led away in handcuffs from some suburban abattoir. 

Of whom the neighbors say, and we’ve all heard this so many times we can recite it in chorus, “He seemed a nice enough guy. Quiet. Kept to himself.”

Mike says he’s not married, but he does cop to having an ex-wife. I figure this is a half-truth at one remove. I figure this is so that he has an excuse to bitch and moan about the woman in his life, who’s really still his wife, which he does, regularly.

I’ve been calling him “Mike” because he tells me that his name is Mike but I’ll bet it isn’t. I don’t know why he should lie about his name. But guys seeking sex through Craigslist ads are an odd lot. They’re very liberal in their definitions of the truth.

There must be a million Mikes in Brooklyn. It’s not like I’m going to be able to track him down by his real first name. I mean, not unless it’s something like Ubaldo.

Not that I have any interest in tracking Mike or any of them down.

I don’t. I assure you.

I don’t want to see them any more than they want to see me once they exit through my door.

When it comes to the men who visit me, I consider the door to my apartment the portal to a different dimension. They stop existing on the other side of it. I try to convey that to them. It seems to calm them.  But, still,  they don't entirely believe me. Why should they?

It does occur to me, how could it not? Maybe Mike doesn’t use his real name because he’s planning to kill me. He doesn’t want me using his name when talking about our sessions with a friend. Or writing it down in a diary, like I’m doing here. That this is always a possibility, that he doesn’t use his real name because he’s planning to kill me, you’d think I’d care about a thing like that.

And I do. Somewhat. At least in theory.

But not enough not to stop doing what I’m doing.

I’d probably start to care a lot more when he put his hands around my throat and started squeezing and didn’t stop, not even when I indicate by my increasingly frantic reactions, that he should.

Or when he grabbed the bread knife from the drawer and pinned me down face-first into the mattress and started stabbing. One stab in one lung, one stab in the other. Then lower down, piercing a kidney, the small intestine, flipping me over, the blade going into my belly, my chest, slashing across my throat. Oh please, not my face!

I’d bet I’d start caring a whole lot about it then. I bet I’d  even start fighting frantically against it with all my diminishing might.My will to live bleeding away into the mattress beneath me. If for no other reason than that’s how our bodies are wired. We’re conditioned to fight for our lives.

Most of us, anyway.

I don’t know for sure how I’d react. We’ll see, I guess, if the time ever comes.

Am I hoping it’s coming, is that what this is all about?

I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.

Surely there are easier ways to kill yourself than this.

Sissy Survival 101: What to do when you encounter a snake.

Drop everything. Throw your hands high over your head & emit an ear-splitting scream. Turn & begin running, blindly, in an uncoordinated, pell-mell fashion, arms & legs akimbo, palms fluttering. Widen eyes to the point of comically bulging. Give every indication of total, uncontrolled hysteria. Continue running & screaming. Trip, fall, rise. Repeat as necessary.

=Why I Live Alone=

Oh no, it’s happened yet again, I’m in love. For some reason, though, I can’t tell this time around: am I the woman or the man? Then I realize: I’m both! No, it occurs to me, that’s the mistake I always make. It’s even more complicated than that. Happening to look up because of some subtle atmospheric alteration, I see it’s all a puppet show—the woman, the man, and someone else, the puppeteer, I presume (the real me?) is up there pulling the strings. From that moment on, I decide I’ll live as a recluse. I go to the bank, withdraw every last dime, and run away from town to a place where no one knows me. Maybe I go to Tuscany, if that’s even possible; anyway, it must be a place where I can rent a room in a stone house built in medieval times. In the afternoons, I sit at the window and look out into the courtyard. There are always children at play in the sun. It saddens me to see them exchanging small acts of kindness.

=Anything with a head can be beheaded. —The King of Hearts=

=Complex Electra=

A little something different this morning. My wife and her lover decide to turn me into a girl. Just like that. I don’t even object! How can I—? It’s hard that his name turns out to be “Bert,” that takes some getting used to, I never saw that coming. He hits me hard in the mouth, I fall to the floor, he rapes me. Just so there are no misunderstandings. It’s all pretty easy from that point on, as my wife likes to explain.

On their honeymoon, I clear out a little corner for myself in the basement. That’s where I sleep now, by the furnace, like a cat.

Flash forward…the hormone therapy, the breast augmentation, the castration, you adjust to these things, for the sake of love. 

“We’ll throw you out in the cold, in the snow, on a crutch,” my ex-wife says to me. “You’ll be forced to seek charity from the Church, with all the other homeless crones.”

It’s not as bad as it sounds.

They advertise, they find me a gay lover. He reminds me, inevitably, of my father. His name is “Pat.” I sigh, I nod to indicate that I understand. I bend over, kneel down, etc. Nothing ever works out quite the way you picture it.

I have a hysterical pregnancy on the exact same day that all the banks collapse. “It’s a miracle!” the doctors warn.

Great news! Transpeople can now get blown apart serving a country that won't let them take a piss in the bathroom of their choice! Just like black soldiers did serving in WWII & Vietnam. 

 I know exactly how she feels. That helpless feeling is such an aphrodisiac! I don't need to be handcuffed to get this feeling. Usually just the disparity in size & temperament between me & the sort of guys I'm attracted to are enough to make it clear that they can do anything they want with me & I'd be unable to put up anything save token resistance. But bondage definitely enhances & intensifies that already heady sense of helplessness. When Daddy snaps those cuffs around my wrists, it's like a switch: I get instantly turned on. I'm all hot & melty-inside.  I seem to become softer & more pliant.  More open to anything. I don't care about consequences anymore. And I know it turns Daddy on, too, to see me bound & helpless, to know that, if only theoretically, he can do absolutely anything he wants to me. Naturally, knowing that he senses this turns me on even more. My vulnerability, always implied, is now visually, explicitly apparent. I've become objectified. I've become a potential victim.

I've read many theories about why people get off on bondage & they're probably all true to one degree or another. In the end, though, theory doesn't matter; theory dissolves in the heat of the moment. For me the feeling of submission is so powerfully, hypnotically erotic that I've always had to be particularly careful who I chose to play with ahead of time so as not to get in over my head with a real psychopath. Because once play actually started, it would be too late for me to swim back to the shores of so-called "reason." The truth is that part of me is pulled in the direction of the ultimate surrender & semi-voluntary death that lies at the heart of the victim's role in any BDSM scenario, especially if it could somehow be made relatively pain-free and maintained sensual to the end. There are surely worse ways to die—at least in the imagination.