Is God behind all your sex play fantasies?

Note to the reader: Since none of us really know whether or not God(s) exists, let all who participate here simply suspend disbelief – if you have it – and settle in to the theory.

 
I recently got into an interesting conversation about God and sexual fetishes with someone who is planning to be a part of the What’s Your Story? series.

For those of you who don’t know the story behind What’s Your Story?, I’m working to put together a written interview series for the blog, consisting of different people sharing different pieces of themselves, their story.

So far it has been shaping up wonderfully! Many kick-ass, dynamic people have contacted me to participate, and I am excited to work up questions and get some great conversations started. Let me know if you are interested as well: dmagnano at gmail dot com.

So back to the devout fetishist, going by code name Matt Schlapp, whom we’ll refer to as just Schlapp here. Schlapp has doubts about religion. I do too. Many of my doubts about religion surround hard-hitting questions about things like the story of the loaves and fishes, but Schlapp’s doubts are different. Schlapp’s doubts arise from his disbelief that before he came to love chastity cages and riding crops, he was seriously considering a life as a clergyman. He feels he is too naughty to have ever been a good match for any churchy opportunities. Listening to his incredulous feelings about his past, while flashes of Catholic archbishop orgy headlines hit me, my wheels start turning.

I offer, “Aren’t you created in God’s image?”

“I think so; that’s what it says.”

“Okay then. Isn’t there also the whole thing about how we are just God experiencing God through our very consciousness?”

“Yes.”

“Then, can you even be a naughty fetishist without God being the OG (Original Gangster) of fetishes first?”

We both started to consider this.

***

Let me illustrate: if my ultimate fetish fantasy is to have a male escort, wearing a rubber unicorn suit, tie me to a hitching post and lightly abrade and mentholate my nipples, is that really me as an independent person losing my mind in ecstasy, or is that my Creator experiencing the joy of their own desire for that, and I am merely the conduit?

Neither of us knows the answer, but I love the question: Do we feel, think, want, create, desire anything for which God hasn’t already first created the potential?

That’s the little teaser I am leaving you with for now. May it whet your appetite for the series. Peace, babes.

2013 – I asked the face painter at the Strawberry Festival to give me a unicorn where my unibrow would normally be.

I shaved my head not long after this photo was taken. I had colored it for a dude who didn’t care for my grays, but a few weeks later he broke up with me on the phone while driving to play golf. I had already grown tired of having to deal with my hair. I was always trying for the lustrous long manes I saw in the salon and on the shampoo commercials, but my reality was much frizzier and lame to deal with every day. And I had never really forgiven myself for dyeing it in the first place, so I was excited to ditch the whole mop. I had a woman at the Supercuts in town shave it for me on Halloween over three years ago.

I always figured I’d grow it out again when I got tired of not having hair. Hasn’t happened yet. Every time I shave, I still get the feeling I’m leaving behind more than just a bajillion little shards of hair. Without my hair, I have fewer places to hide, and that has been a big gift for me.

Since that time, I’ve gotten into some interesting conversations over my hairless choices. And if I had a dollar for each time I’ve been asked if I have cancer, I’d have about 30 bucks by now.

The cancer questions are well-meaning and respectful. These are questions borne out of basic kindness, and I can feel the desire to connect each time I’ve been asked. Still, it’s really trippy. If I did indeed have a disease which resulted in hair loss, I don’t know that I would feel comfortable or prepared to discuss that on the fly, with a complete stranger, in the middle of the grocery store/craft store/park, etc.

***

I had long hair as a girl when my mother died of breast cancer. I clutched a half-used roll of Tums everywhere I went because I was a nervous wreck, with a constant lump in my throat, and an overwhelming fear of yakking all over someone in public. No one asked me anything.

My hair was much shorter sixteen years ago when my husband had pancreatic cancer, and a few months to live. I did all the shopping as John’s disease progressed and his energy waned. No one ever approached me to inquire about my well-being during those times. Several trips to the store preambled with my sobbing the whole way there, but no one knew that as I shopped a short time after.

Granted, those weren’t my illnesses and therefore didn’t leave tell-tale signs on my body. Still, they were dark times of devastation and struggle, and no one knew because I looked average and healthy.

So, when do we know? When do we really see someone’s struggles? Or joys, for that matter? Do we have a real purpose in approaching only those who may look vulnerable or unwell? I wish I knew.

When I was three, my brother got me to jump into my aunt and uncle’s pool by telling me I knew how to swim. I have only a flash of a memory of falling through the water and then wanting to breathe but only seeing little bubbles rising above my head in the dark water. An older cousin pulled me out before the adults around the pool really knew what had happened. Afterward, I remember standing in my underwear in front of my mother. She dried me off as I cried.

Sal also taught me how to ride a bike. We lived with my maternal grandparents by then and they had a tangle of old bicycles on the side of the garage. All the kids and grandkids that came before us seemed to have left one behind there. I picked a bike that looked small enough for me to ride, and we walked over to the church parking lot. It was a girl’s bike with a cracked vinyl glittery banana seat. Each handlebar still had a few silver tassels outcropped on each end. The church lot was two houses over on the corner and usually empty during the week. We found it that way when we got there. Paved smooth in black asphalt, it had plenty of room and a ramp that came off of the back door of the building and fed into the lot.
Sal explained how you have to peddle right away or you will fall over. That didn’t seem so hard.  He looped around the lot while I stopped and started, trying to balance my momentum.  Eventually I was able to follow him for short spurts before keening to one side and tipping myself over.

At dinner, I was eager to tell my grandparents about my big news: I was officially a bike rider. “Let’s wait until after dinner and you can tell your mom too,” my grandmother suggested. I rushed through my food, but each mouthful seemed to be replaced by another. Finally I had eaten enough that I could be excused from the table. I went straight to my mother’s room.

Our grandparents owned a very big house. My brother and I shared a bedroom upstairs, my mom stayed downstairs in a room off of the back of the kitchen. A room originally meant for house staff quarters. It was big enough for her hospital bed and all the supplies the night nurse needed. My mother had come to look so different. An array of colorful little knit caps replaced her thick, dark hair. My grandfather would joke with her that they kept her brains warm. Her skin was different too, a sallow undertone muted her natural olive coloring. Two half moons of dark skin sat permanently under each of her eyes.

I was triumphant when I got to my mother’s side. “I learned how to ride a bike today—Sal taught me,” I announced, and climbed up on the foot of the bed to wait for my grandmother. “That’s great!” I liked when she looked at me, as she did now with a tender smile on her face. My grandmother came in then with a plate for my mother. She fed it to her in a patient succession of small forkfuls and listened as I recounted the afternoon. I told them how I learned to stay up while I peddled and how Sal was going to teach me to go faster and how to stop.

The next day Sal and I headed back to the church to pick up where we left off. That’s when he told me that bikes don’t have brakes. Tipping over or crashing into something, he said, were the only ways to stop a speeding bike. He also told me that the first day I hadn’t been going fast enough to need to know such things, but now I would have to learn to be on the lookout for a fitting crash spot when I wanted to get off my bike. I scanned the lot as I started riding. The perimeter fence was completely lined with rose bushes. I could either hit the side of the building or aim for the fence and let the roses break my fall.

My first crash-stop went pretty well. I had been riding around for quite a while and was ready to see if I could do it. My brother promised to watch, so I gave it a go. I hit the bushes pretty much straight on and most of the front of the bike caught the limbs and thorns. I got just a couple little cuts on my shins. It really wasn’t so bad.

I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to perfect my technique. I had it down to where I could almost always hit the bushes without hitting the fence and that would bounce me back a little, and that, for the most part, kept me from snagging into the thorns.

We spotted my grandfather turning down the street, coming home from work. I waved to him and he pulled over outside the lot and got out of the car. “I know how to go fast and stop now,” I called out from where I was riding. “That’s good! Show me!” he answered as he waved.

I started with a few figure eights and then went up and down the ramp a couple of times.  As I glided back down into the lot I started to look for a grand finale crash-spot. I liked the corner across from the broad side of the building. I headed for it and tried to keep my front tire as straight as possible. I made contact at more of an angle than I realized and scraped my arm through some thorns before coming to a complete stop.

I was getting up to inspect my elbow when my grandfather was at my side, picking up my bike and asking me if I was ok. He looked alarmed. I told him I needed to keep practicing my stops, so I didn’t get so many thorns. This confused him, so I explained what Sal had taught me.  When I turned around to find Sal, he was gone.
My grandfather brought me home, and left me in the kitchen where my grandmother sat me down at the kitchen table and cleaned my scrapes. I watched him take Sal by the elbow and walk him outside. I could hear his sharp tone, scolding my brother about how he should never have lied to me and allowed me to hurt myself.

***

Someone taught me how to measure out liquid morphine with a syringe and squirt it into a plastic cup with Rose’s lime juice. This would make it easier for my mother to drink down. I liked the way the plunger forced the medicine out into the thick neon juice and filled it with little bubbles that would slowly rise and break on the surface. I felt very grown up and responsible when I did this for my mom. She would would shoot down the mixture and wait for relief.
That night my mother’s two youngest brothers were coming over for dinner. They brought their girlfriends, and the kitchen filled with the sounds of cooking, conversation, and laughter. It was interesting to watch the adults. I left the table as my grandmother was serving dessert and headed towards my mother’s room. As I got near I heard her softly say to herself, “They’re having a party out there while I’m in here dying.”

***

Sal apologized, but I knew he wasn’t trying to hurt me. He wasn’t allowed to ride bikes with me for a while.I missed him.The next day my grandfather walked me down to the church and showed me how to stop my bike by pressing backwards on the pedals.

for Stacey

Find a Man

find a man who buys you Manhattans
and a platter of calamari
on the beach in November

find a man who’s got great hands
a man who’s gentle in good ways
and rough in good ways
and makes a craft out of discovering which way you like it

find a fallible man
they’re the only honest ones
imperfect in all the best ways

find a man who kisses your hands
and your lips
and your forehead
and thinks you’ve got a really great pussy

find a man who will laugh with you
and cry with you
and always ask you to stay after an argument

find a man who treasures your cracks and soft spots
who sees all the light those places let in
a man who wants to know what you really think
and always sees your highest self

find a man who loves his mama
and whose mama makes you feel like 
maybe you found your own
a man who leads you to your tribe

find a man, not a boy
definitely a friend
a partner

Enter a caption

For Eleanor

Do you think mothers are like moons?
Gently shining over the mercurial, roiling seas that are children

Do you think they balance and pace us?
Then send us away and wait for us to break upon the shores of our return

I could be wrong.
I’m not speaking from experience
My moon has been gone for years

In courageous moments, and I am not often courageous,
I would have traded places with her if I could
I know it doesn’t work that way
I also know the world could use more people with her kindness

My mother would have had a birthday today.
She probably would have been feeling like old age was setting in
But she isn’t old, I just wish she was

Sometimes I feel gentle tugs
Small pulls towards my heart
Perhaps my moon still shines

Mom and me before my baptismal fall from grace, 1975

On the last Monday of each month, I bake. I get up early and I try to make as many recipes as I can by noon. Mondays, when I remember to put the butter out to soften, and the eggs out to warm on the counter the night before, are good days. If I forget to do this, I have to nuzzle chilled eggs into my sports bra and shred hard butter with a cheese grater so I can use it, and I lose time.

I like to start with the recipes that need the most time to cool. This is usually the cakes. One of my favorite cakes to make is a buttermilk berry cake. I have made it enough times now to have the measurements memorized. The first time I ever made it, I didn’t use berries. I dotted the batter with big black cherries, careful to evenly disperse them so that each slice had fruit. The top of the cake is sprinkled with raw sugar right before it goes into the oven. If it’s a sunny morning, the little pebbles of sugar glisten as they catch the light from the window above the sink. After the cakes go in, I usually take out the mixer my dad gave me and get started on the cookies.

***

The house I grew up in had a big cherry tree in the backyard. In the summers, my dad would send my brother and me up into the high limbs with buckets to pick the fruit that hadn’t been bird-pecked. We would sit in the branches eating, spitting the pits down to the soft ground below. I would pinch the cherries at the top of the stem to gently separate them from the branch, and then carefully place them into the bucket. My father and I would use them to make pies.. My dad would mix the dough for the crust and roll it out, while I pitted the cherries.  My thumbs bled the dark juice as I gouged the side of each fruit to move if off of the pit.

My father depended on me to help in the kitchen. After my mother died, I don’t think my dad knew exactly what he should be doing. Instead, he seemed to go through the motions, and the rest of us waited for direction. We worked side-by-side in the kitchen. Always a cook, and meticulously detail-oriented, my dad took instructing me very seriously, and I was equally devout in learning how to do things the way he wanted them done. There was an exact order and method to wash all of the vegetables, peel potatoes, and put our salads together. By the time I was seven, I knew them all. I was always looking for ways I could be of extra help. I never forgot to listen for the timers or keep vigil over the oil so it wouldn’t overheat when he left the room.

Drop cookies are my favorite. I can just spoon out dough and plop it onto my cookie sheet. Cutout cookies intimidate me. So do elaborately frosted cookies. Drop cookies are different. Straightforward and sturdy, they can stand up to the fumblings of an amateur baker without crumbling or falling apart. They are also easy to embellish. Sometimes I do fruit and nut combinations, other times, chocolates or spices.

A fascination with cream puffs overcame my dad when I was about nine and we made them once a week for many months. I thought they were delicious, but they scared me. If the dough wasn’t hot enough, or you didn’t incorporate the eggs, one at a time—just enough, but not too much—all was lost. Most of the time I just watched my dad, but sometimes he would have me do the puffs. I would forget to breathe, and the top of my arm would burn from working in the eggs with the wooden spoon. When the dough would shine and slump away from the sides of the pot, I knew my dad would be satisfied. The puffs would bake to a golden color. We would slice them in half and fill their airey centers with whipped cream or pudding.

***

Once I have the cookies out on the rack to cool, I start packing up the cakes and breads. I add what I have baked to the items my cousins have baked as well. Our little book club came up with the idea of doing this baking once a month.

I make sure everything is in something that is disposable. If it isn’t, I usually transfer it to a large styrofoam container, like restaurants give you for leftovers. I stack these containers into tall paper bags so they will be easy for me to carry. I like when I have everything tucked into two bags.

No later than 1:15, I take everything to the local soup kitchen. I walk it up to the back door for drop off.  There’s always someone different when I go, perhaps circulating groups of volunteers.

The kitchen was founded by a Jesuit priest and named for Saint Francis of Assisi. I read an online blurb where this priest talked about how the broken and starved can be healed by being brought in from the cold and fed. I believe him.

Years ago I visited a psychic. She seated me in her reading room and then went to the kitchen to get us both tea. When she returned, she told me that my children had come to her while she was brewing away in there.

She had a vision of a girl and a boy. The girl was older. She said the little girl was a character who had on little red shoes. She was very proud of them and making quite an effort to show them off. This tickled my psychic.

I was in my thirties at the time. I felt restless and insecure. I hated my job, still wanted to be valued for my physical appearance, and I thought maybe  I couldn’t fully claim my life for myself until I had a man.

The stars already knew my fate. Supposedly I was destined to marry between thirty five and thirty seven. I would wed a guy taller than me and older than me. We laughed a lot together and lived by water. He had some grey in his hair and adored me. We stayed together the rest of our lives. We had a daughter by the time I was thirty nine. Our son was to follow a couple of years after that.

Then, once the kids were in school, I would get involved in the PTA and cake decorating.

I am forty now. None of that happened, and I am pleased as punch. Truly.

A couple of weeks ago I found these little cruisers in a box out in the garage. One of the few memories I have as a small child is of wearing these shoes.

I did some traveling around the neighborhood in these, the soles are rigid and scuffed. I also did some peeing. It’s a rather humbling story about what can happen to a little girl when wearing overalls and waiting too long to head to the loo and tackle those shoulder clasps.

It’s been years since I have thought about these shoes. Discovering them again recently, I looked with fresh eyes. I remembered my visit to that psychic. And I came to two conclusions:

1. I am my own little red-shoe-clad girl. I like that.

2. Life is short; don’t waste time on the clasps. Shrug off those shoulder straps and get on with it!

Ever since I was old enough to properly clutch a pack of Rolaids, I’ve been a nervous wreck. My fears have run the gamut. From some mild OCD about numbers, to full fright about being in the back of retail establishments, I’ve worked up a sweat about a lot of different shit.

I learned a lot during those times of my life. Biggest lesson of all? Don’t fail your fears, and your fears won’t fail you.

If you aren’t ready to handle the consequences that come with actively debunking your shit, if you aren’t prepared to stand tall and bitch-slap your paper tigers right in the face, you need to abide by their demands. Strictly, consistently, no mistakes. Stay home. Flip the light switch three times every time you walk by the fridge. Whisper, “I love God” whenever you feel evil. Don’t drink soda with a six on the can lot number. Do whatever it is you have to do. If you don’t, your anxieties, phobias, and compulsions will track you down. They will find you and exact a high price for your lack of dedication. They will fuck you up hardcore.

I started carrying the Rolaids everywhere when I was seven. I was terrified of getting sick. I didn’t want to puke and I didn’t want anyone else to puke. When I had them with me, I never threw up one time. Never saw anyone throw up either. Boom. Perfect. But after a few years, I got brash, overly confident, started running around without my Rolaids.  I thought I could get by without them, that I was just being a silly kid. That winter my brother and I both got the stomach flu.

I got it a day or two before him. By the time he yakked all over the kitchen table at dinnertime, I had been feeling better. That’s how the job of cleaning up Sal’s puke got delegated to me. I got the mop out, I got the bucket filled, I got to work on the big puddle of what looked like Tuna a la King. I never noticed the puke-chunk off to the side of that puddle, but it took me down. The heel of my shoe caught on it and I started to slide, losing one leg out from underneath me. I couldn’t grab onto anything fast enough to save myself and ended up doing the splits right into yak lake. I was wearing my sweet-ass cherry red school pants too. Tragedy. Should have had my Rolaids with me. I made it through though. Even the pants were recovered in the end. As awful as the experience was, I learned I could slip in my brother’s vomit and live. Important lesson.

In my twenties I decided I would travel alone. I was going to start small, a train trip. Figured it had to be a lot like driving, and I didn’t mind driving. I hopped on a train in California that made it to Nevada before the brakes failed. We got held up with repairs and three days later the porta-potty style toilets were starting to look full, I was still picking human hairs off my Amtrak issued blankets, and we still hadn’t made it to Chicago.

My uncle had given me a travel gift before I left. I didn’t open it until well in to the trip. I was savoring the anticipation. I thought it was sweet that he had given me something for my brave voyage. The box was a small and completely wrapped up in layers of duct tape. Nor surprising given his sophomoric sense of humor, but it was just months after 9/11 and no one had an issue with me bringing this suspicious looking package onto a train. When I did finally open it, inside one of the packed coach cars, I found a small can of Diamond brand roasted and salted almonds, a romance novel, and a neon pink dildo – batteries included. No amount of quick repacking of the box contents, or enthusiastic offers to share the almonds with those nearby, could spare me. People were taken aback. I was mortified. There aren’t a lot of places to hide an awful romance novel on a crowded train, but I made sure I kept it tucked away the rest of the trip.

The last meal served on that train was one that might have been fed to hostages. We were all assigned group numbers. Once your group was called, you were packed into the dining car and seated at the small tables bolted to the floor. Lukewarm plates of Dinty Moore beef stew were slid in front of each person, accompanied by a flimsy plastic spork.

By the time I got to Chicago, my connecting train to Boston was long gone. Amtrak put us all up in a hotel in the city for the night. Two men followed me from the lobby to my hotel room.  They wanted to know if I wanted to go down the street with them and have a drink. They knew a place. I declined and tried to settle into my room. There were broken tiles in the shower and a cracked mirror over the sink. The sliding glass door had a broken lock. I thought about the men that had a little trouble taking no for an answer earlier in the hallway. That night I slept for what felt like about four minutes, in the fetal position, clutching my purse under the lamplight from the nightstand and the glow of the television.

The next day I was so grateful to be given the last seat on a flight to Boston, I almost completely forgot that the train trip was partially borne out of a fear of flying. The plane didn’t crash. Claustrophobia didn’t stop my heart. I arrived safely and had a great visit. I also flew home.

Now we have Ms. Faal. She’s afraid to leave her house. For any reason. The article doesn’t really tell us why she did it anyway, but she did. And of course she promptly fell right down a goddamn manhole. We could speculate that it’s someone else’s fault for not properly capping the hole, she shouldn’t have been fucking around with pallets on the street, or that there was an equal chance that it could have happened to anyone else, but that’s bullshit. She broke the rules. She left the house. She paid.

If I could talk to Ms. Faal, or Faaaaaaaaaaaaal! as I like to refer to her, this is what I would tell her:

That’s the very kind of fuckery you’ve got to expect when you throw obsessive irrational levels of caution to the wind and tell the gods and goddesses of your fears to kiss your ass. Be ready. It’s not comfortable, it’s not always safe, at times it can lack dignity and involve flourescent colored dildos and falling into manholes, but you survived. You made it through. You can come out the other side of this stronger. You can take this in stride and pull yourself up by the bootstraps, be a more fearless, vibrant, take-no-shit version of yourself. You’ve got your potency and power back! Good for you!

You’ve got to hang on to as much of that as you can. Cling. Be vigilant. Make protecting it the new object of your obsessive compulsive desires. You will need all that power and courage to muster for the next time. There’s always a next time.