supplicium post mortem

We should’ve got up late. It’s a holiday, and although I had things to do, they weren’t until later. I should have woken up with him wrapped around me, his hand doing something to my nightclothes so he could feel my bottom. He would whisper into my half-asleep ear about Marky, how naughty he’d been, how TL ought to see him in the afternoon and do a proper uniform inspection. He’d whisper to me about Casey, too. RP and TL had decided that she had got out of hand. She hadn’t been misbehaving, though, I’d protest groggily. No, he’d agree, and that was a symptom of the problem. Things had been too hectic, and clearly she was in need of some quality time with Mr. Prior. Movies? I’d ask. Across his knee, more like, he’d say. I’d cuddle back to him, feeling him pressing against me. We’d carry on along these lines until the wolfhound came to the side of the bed and licked us, whining that we must get up. He should have taken the dogs out in the sub-zero morning. I would have made the coffee. He insisted it tasted better when I made it.

Perhaps we would have pottered around doing chores until my physical therapy appointment. It should have been a day when both Casey and Mark got seen. Mark would have reported to TL’s study, or the house-room. Casey would have been summoned upstairs to RP’s crimson study—the one I keep thinking I ought to use more as a writing space, but can’t. I should have told him about the dream I had the other night, in which I was some rebellious prep-school boy cornered by an exacting master, my nemesis. He was going to give me six, and they were going to hurt, a lot. He told me to bend over, and he produced a fearsome (and improbable) cane, rigid and ridged, rather like Abel’s walking stick. I/my boy avatar was scared. The master held the cane against my bottom and waited. I mentally prepared, told myself to breathe, not to clench, to stay down, that I could take it. Still, he waited. I trembled. The door to the study was open, and passers-by peered inside. Yes, the master said to the peeping boys, this is what happens when you break the rules. He lifted the cane; I inhaled; the alarm rang.

Today was the kind of day that could remedy interrupted dreams, though I wouldn’t fancy a RL encounter with that sort of stick.

In the real day, I dragged myself from bed when the wolfhound insisted. After throwing the ball around the sub-zero park, I dragged the dogs home and embarked on morning chores. I organized the chaos of unrecorded to-dos. I tackled some email. I went to physical therapy. I walked around the city by myself imagining tweets I would write if I had a smart phone, and things I would do if it were the day it ought to be. I went to Muji and found a pair of pyjamas that fit perfectly. They are what M would call whack-me pyjamas. I thought about how much he would like seeing Casey in them, and how cute she would be in them.

And I thought about how he was the one who really got ripped off, not me. I have more life to live, I have great friends, I am healthy, the rest of my family are all alive, I can pay the bills, I have great dogs and a nice place to live, a garden in summer, neighbors who look after me, the best church in the world, and the love of God whether I deserve it or not. He didn’t get to live more than 45 years. He didn’t get to see his son grow taller than him. He didn’t get to have children with me. He didn’t get to read the things I’ve written these last three years. He didn’t get to read the things I’d written when he was alive but hadn’t shown him yet. He didn’t get to see me Sunday night, at the story slam competition where I read After the Party, a little fantasy featuring someone like him; he didn’t get to see me wearing the tartan skirt I’d just bought; he didn’t get to see me win the competition. He didn’t get to grow old. He didn’t get to see his projects blossom. He didn’t get to be with me when I really knew how to love him.

It feels perverted—and by this I mean fundamentally unsound—to put on outfits that look cute when there’s no one around to appreciate them. The Russian lady who inflicts bikini wax (plus) on me insists that you do things only for yourself, my dear, not for anyone else, only for yourself. While there’s something comfortingly self-sufficient and feminist and self-actualized about that, the sentiment rings hollow somehow. Connecting with others, depending on others is part of being human. I tend to agree with R.R. Reno that the opposite of piety isn’t unbelief but sovereign desire. So perhaps I can be forgiven feeling unsound wearing cute outfits that he can’t see anymore.

And of course beneath my noli me tangere exterior, I secretly long for attention. I’m not exactly the kind of girl to ask for it, but I get jealous of other girls who garner attention. Having been round the houses with this once before—coming out of my twenties—I’d say my reticence is not coyness, but a kind of armor. I know I can’t have the sort of attention I really want, so rather than seek out something I think will frustrate and hurt me, I work on ideas like humility, on not looking to other people for validation, on being grateful for what I have, on getting used to the idea that this will probably be it, and that it’s enough to get through the day, and I’m not in a war-torn nation, not oppressed, not cancer-ridden, not a million bad things, so I need to stop feeling sorry for myself and try to be of use to other people.

In the day that should have been RP would have had a chat with Casey about this attitude. He would have reminded her of her Four Things. He would have paid her several sorts of attention. In the evening M and I would’ve watched House on tv. Would he have liked Lie to Me, or would he have found Tim Ross a plonker? It would have been–should have been–the kind of day where you don’t mind that it’s winter, that the night comes soon and lasts long.

First, please know that I love my family very much and would be lost without them. They are good to me and stand by me and are nice to me and believe in me and would stick up for me any moment.

But here’s the thing: no matter how much you love them, at a certain point it’s healthy and right that you grow up and start your own life. You don’t leave them behind, but to some extent you escape that first family. I had done this. It took a long time for M to get me to see that we had a new family now. The parts of the old that weren’t so great—these we didn’t have to have. We could make our own traditions. Yes, we’d still put my childhood ornaments on the Christmas tree, but now on Christmas eve, he’d make mince pies and we’d listen to his Britpop Christmas CD. And yes, my parents will always be my parents and I love them, but in a way, I didn’t have to be that child anymore. RP was looking after Casey, so the old life was past, and the new, better, realer life was here. And I could love my sister and mother and all the rest, but with his help, I could take them with the right amount of salt, and when it was time to leave, we went home to our house that we had our way, to our dogs, to our bed, and to all the secret love we had together. At our wedding, we’d given ourselves to each other in Christ, and now this was my strongest bond. This was the new family, the new life. I wasn’t living in my childhood house any more.

Today I had Christmas brunch at my apartment for my mother, my sister, and my sister’s childhood friend. My mom had unexpectedly been staying with me since Thursday due to a minor medical emergency. Her difficult dogs had been in my way, frazzling my nerves, keeping me awake, and increasing my workload. I am coming down with a cold due to lack of sleep. We all had a fine time, I guess, but by evening, I really wanted everyone to go home. I had had visitors for 3 weeks and needed to spend some quality time with my dogs and do the zillion things I had to do to get ready for my UK trip tomorrow.

Except no one was going home. My sister and her friend were lying on my bed watching agitating videos on their phones. My mom was feeling weak and had gone upstairs to nap. It had become clear that she and her dogs were staying another night. I took my dogs around the block.

On a quiet, dark side-street, I leaned over someone’s wall, buried my head in my arms, and started to cry. I felt trapped by this family—a family I love but want to escape. I wanted my own family, with M, the one I thought I had, and I wanted the kids we were trying to have, the twins. I wanted it to be Christmas in the new life, with him and our children, and our dogs, and Casey and Mark and all the others. I wanted us to be able to come home from being with my mother and sister, but instead, my house was invaded by this old family. And no matter how much I love them, it just feels wrong in a way for them to be so much in my house and life—the house and life I should have with M.  My mom and sister think it would be fine, in the absence of a husband, to have a turkey-baster baby and bring it up all together in kibbutz. I feel physically nauseated by this idea. It is simply incestuous. But lacking a family of my own, now, I can’t seem to get them out of my hair.

It would be one thing to be a life-long single woman. But to have got used to the new family, and now be back with the old… I know it’s colossally ungrateful to say this, but it feels like getting rescued from the orphanage and then having to go back.  But I’m emotional, and I don’t really feel well.

There’s a blizzard headed into town when my flight to Englandland is due to leave tomorrow. My house sitting and dog sitting arrangements have grown inordinately complicated and unsatisfactory. My mom isn’t well and who knows when she’ll be better, or how much help she’ll need, especially with her horrible dogs. I am thinking this trip was a terrible idea. I should stay home, quit trying to make it happen, just take care of my mom and my dogs, and get some work done over the school break. It was selfish and stupid to try to make it happen. And kids in orphanages don’t get to go to parties.

I know I’m not being very rational. Things usually look better in the morning. I’m not a cynic about Christmas. I love Christ. And I’m so grateful for everything I have, and all the friends and family who love me. Still, I can’t say I’ve enjoyed today, except the part about turning out the light at the end.

It was Lessons & Carols at church, I’d been chosen to read one of the lessons, and I was trying to decide what to wear. My church wardrobe is limited—I wear a lot of black, though in the last year not exclusively. I’d chosen a black skirt, but before I knew what was happening, Casey was pulling her jumper, school blouse, and tie out of the closet and was putting them in the bicycle pannier with TL’s skirt and shoes. I wondered jocularly whether Casey was going to do the reading.

Casey said she should do the reading because she’d been promised a Lessons & Carols reading since that time before. She was referring to the time fifteen Decembers ago when we went with M, Marky, & RP to visit M’s Public School. The students were on vacation, so we got to tour all his old haunts,  including the chapel. RP said Casey was doing one of the readings for College’s ¹ Lessons & Carols, and he made her practice it right there in the chapel. Ever since then, she’s been expecting to go.

When we left the house, Casey’s smile seized my face, the shy but irrepressible little smile she has, because she had dug out her clothes and was taking over my reading. We rode to church and changed into this hybrid outfit, Casey from the waist up, TL waist down. Then the parish-house whirlwind took over, and I forgot about Casey. At least, I didn’t feel her anymore; I was too focused on where I had to go and what I had to do.

As I went about my preparations, I started getting compliments on my outfit. The Rector said good morning and then stopped as if something about me had distracted him. He said he liked my tie, and then he paused, searching for words. “You look like… a young Etonian,” he finally said. Her school tie, shirt, and jumper look nothing like an Eton uniform of any era, so why did he say that? It felt at that moment as if he had glimpsed something unexpected, yet entirely familiar, but couldn’t find a way to describe it adequately.

An unprecedented number of people commented on our wardrobe. They liked the tie. They liked the look. My mother’s friend said I looked “like a little schoolboy.” I looked “about twelve.”

I am over 40. My hair is shoulder-length and not at all boyish. I was wearing a 3/4 length black skirt and TL’s dress shoes. But these were the kinds of comments I got all morning.

My only conclusion—Casey is visible, and she’s recognized, if not by name. Apparently, it’s obvious.

Perhaps in contemplation of my New Year’s Anglo-Irish jaunt (weather permitting), last night I dreamed again of parties.

In this dream, I was visiting some friends, Mr & Mrs Lovely, before a party they were to give. Mr. and Mrs. Lovely were sitting on chairs, but another American visitor and I were lounging around on the floor. We were all joking and bantering. Mr. Lovely, American-friend, and I were sort of wrestling. Cheeky remarks and gibes were coming out of my mouth. He wrestled with us playfully, but he didn’t push it when he felt my uncertainty. American-friend wrestled differently, like she meant it, like she wanted to lose to him, like she intended to get herself smacked.

Soon the hangout dissolved, American-friend went upstairs, and it was time to get ready for the big party. But Mrs. Lovley was berating Mr. Lovely, telling him to figure out a way to get me to play. She felt it was his duty as a man to get creative and help me out, “so that she can get past this one place and start to live the rest of her life.” Mrs. Lovely had the idea that I was frozen about crossing this threshold, and that simply being able to play around at a party would draw me firmly into real living. She felt somehow that if I remained an observer at this party, I’d be missing a chance to stop being an observer of my own life. He, paterfamilias, needed to take initiative.

I’d earwigged their conversation and was burning with embarrassment. The thing was, I explained, I was deeply ambivalent about playing. Mr. Lovely was paying attention to me now, and the vague quietness I’d observed when visiting in the summer was now a kind of pregnant sensitivity. We faffed around in this uncertain tension until I asked if I shouldn’t simply list all my fears. Mr. Lovely said, “I think I’d concentrate on the possibilities.” So I picked the thing top-of-mind: Just who would be seeing little Casey?

To ask this question was already to have come a long way off the sidelines. To voice this question revealed that I was capable of imagining Casey being present. I was in fact already imagining falling into her, and into her clothes, and secretly inside I already was starting to feel like Casey. The question revealed, also, everything about how I play: in role. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say: wearing a costume so that other people can see what this inner me is all about.

I couldn’t endure the idea of playing as X (my real name) because X is a grown-up, pulled-together, balanced person. She isn’t especially fragile (though she isn’t the iron clad maiden she was in my 20s), and even though she manages a certain amount of frank vulnerability, it’s all on the verbal/literary level; it isn’t immediate or physical. There’s an adult distance about it all. To play, though, means to allow forward a part of myself that is not very X. This part I call Casey, and over the years with M, Casey developed beyond a label and into a full-blown person. ¹ To play as Casey, who is an extraordinarily vulnerable little girl, more so than when M was alive, is to make visible the psychological reality of playing itself.

So Mr. Lovely and I were pondering this question: who would be seeing little Casey, and why? I explained again, as if it needed explaining, that she was scared, bereaved, lonely; she would not be very robust. Yet, someone dealing with her couldn’t allow her fear and bereavement to dominate. The point, as Mrs. Lovely had put it, was to nudge her over a frontier. I don’t think she   would cross it willingly, but if she turned up to a scene, that would be consent enough. At the same time, if someone steamrollered her, or gave the impression that he didn’t understand her, or didn’t base his command on that understanding, then she would merely comply in a mechanistic way. It would be robotic, and not only fail to accomplish any threshold crossing, but it would scare her away worse than now.

Understandably, Mr. Lovely found this all a bit overwhelming. Mrs. Lovely and I went shopping for the party, and on the way back she almost ran over a bunch of schoolkids. I yelled and grabbed her arm; she swerved to avoid them, just. She was angry at me. I apologized for yelling and for touching her. She said that she was never going to hit them. I very much doubted it.

Back at the house, I hoped to find Mr. Lovely to talk. I was beginning to imagine a scenario—the very fact that I could imagine something seemed to be a hopeful sign. What if, I wondered, Casey had brought home a bad school report? It would be terrifically shaming for her, since she’s such a good student. She would have bollixed up the first term at her new school out of an inability to join in. The same reticence that kept me on the sidelines at parties would have caused every kind of problem at this school she was attending. She’d avoided homework and then avoided the consequences, she’d offended teachers with her silence, which seemed to them churlish and sullen. They certainly didn’t understand her, and this had made her worse. It was a train wreck.

A discerning interlocutor would be able to see what her teachers couldn’t see. He would realize that she didn’t need yelling at, that she was already ashamed beyond endurance, and that it was her sadness and this boil of emotions that needed addressing, not her homework per se. At the same time, she had not behaved as she ought. She had declined genuine offers of help. She had indulged in procrastination and avoidance. Most importantly, she had allowed herself to carry on until she reached the state which now tormented her. How could she treat herself like that?

It couldn’t be a guardian with a real relationship, because that would be fake. Casey has no relationships with anyone but TL. But what if it were the man of the house where she was staying over the holidays? He, perhaps, knew some of the staff at her school, perhaps her form teacher. In any case, he had her report in hand whether or not he’d any right to it, and as a grown up, as the best available representative of loco parentis she had just then—in that fleeting, un-ideal moment—he intended to have a word with her, even though he had no previous relationship with her, even though he would have no serious relationship with her beyond that holiday. He didn’t appear bothered by the unofficial, presumptuous character of the interview. He was paterfamilias, she was a child under his roof in need of guidance, he intended to provide it. End of story.

The dream ended before anything could happen, before I could even speak to Mr. Lovely again. We were in a building high up in the Gotham skyline, almost as high as the Empire State Building (where M and I met). A storm came upon our skylighted room, blowing rain in the cracks. I woke up.

I overthink. I overimagine. I rehearse excessively in my mind. But it was always this way. M and I wrote over three hundred long emails each before meeting. We, especially I, explored tgi and ourselves from every possible theoretical angle. I can’t endure reading the correspondence, in part because it’s too grievous, but also because it’s so very tedious with all of its intellectualizing. I hope I’m not intellectualizing that much now. But, as I live alone with my dogs and my computer, words, dreams, and thoughts remain my chief vein of experience. And I suppose this kind of rehearsal is preferable to an impetuous, confused, disaster of a real-life play encounter.

Of course, party play isn’t the same as deep play, and role play as other people know it is, I suspect, a distinctly different activity to playing Casey. I don’t know, yet, if there is anyone amongst my acquaintances capable of playing with Casey. Besides, being on the sidelines of parties isn’t a bad thing. At least it’s being at the parties.

And—just as I was bringing this to a close—let’s not leave before putting under the microscope the glories of my reserve. If I stepped off the sidelines, it would mean sacrificing this quality of mine—that I don’t play, that I am charming and nice and only a visitor from afar, that I am not a pawn in gossip, not an adherent to one side or another in whatever drama is unfolding, that I possess a lofty wisdom born of distance and of not having a horse in the race. Why should I want to give any of that up? Then I would be just like everyone else. I would be part of everyone else. Feuds and tensions would involve me. What I did and said would start mattering to people personally; I would start offending people on more than an intellectual level.

And—this is the heart of it, isn’t it?—I would grow attached. My massive, neglected needs would come out of the deep freeze, and then where would we be? I will tell you: in torment. I would have allowed myself to need these people to the core (with Casey even!), and then I would be all alone again at home in Gotham.

Also, I know my heart. It is essentially monogamous. Certainly it has room for friends, deep true friends, but that is distinct from its central longing. Which is a way of saying that even if I did live in the land of parties and could join in on equal status as everyone else, I would still be…well, wounded after an honest encounter via Casey. Wounded in the sense of having undergone a surgical procedure.

People talk of sub-drop, but this is more serious. Sub-drop as a term implies a neuro-chemical depression after extreme stimulation. Like a hangover or a post-cocaine crash. You did something very intense on a physical and emotional level, so you felt “high”, you “flew” as some people like to phrase it, and now, as a prelude to normality, you have come down from that high, a disagreeable descent.

I’m not looking for a high. I’m looking for a Real. I’m looking for a breath of real, intense air on this planet where I have not been able to respire. You flew, you dropped—a normal course of things. You finally breathed, now you must again hold your breath—not.

If I was still 26, if I had never lived a real life, this would not be so difficult.  But I have. I know what I’m toying with. I know what kind of heart I have. I know how it feels to live, how it feels to be a phantom, and how it feels to long for a life I can’t have. Of these three, it’s the last I dread most.

If you find posts about teddy bears twee, maybe skip this one. Or you could go read Mija’s story about her bear, which is a better story and more exciting.

This weekend I found myself at a small toy store with my mom. She wanted to get a new bear for my sister [B, age 33] because mom’s new poodle had savaged and destroyed B’s bear that she’s had since she was 2 and in the hospital with a broken leg. We found two bears we liked, and my mom was trying to decide between them when Casey appeared. She told my mom that a) the two bears didn’t want to be separated; b) she needed a jealous present if B was getting a bear; c) she especially needed a bear because of her bad dream this week; d) she had her pocket money with her and could buy it herself.

Because I have such a terrific mom, she got the second bear for us! And she doesn’t even know Casey by name.

When we got home, the new bear told Casey his name might be RP. She was excited and surprised! RP, you mean like RP? But what does it stand for? she asked. He was like: Er, Real Pal? Casey and I weren’t sure about this. It’s possible the new bear was trying to make her feel better after her dream, and wanted to be what she needed. Personally, I doubt that is his name; I doubt he’s even too sure of his name, or else he’s embarrassed about it and doesn’t think it’s good enough so is trying to reinvent himself for Casey.

Anyway, we slept well with him even though he was pretty scared and unsure that first night. On the one hand, he was elated to be got from the store, since he had heard from the jumble of plush friends under the counter that it was possible never to be got from the store. So that was a dream come true. Even better, he was got with the other bear who he knew. They rode home in the back seat together. But then Casey’s bear went up on our bed, and the other bear went on B’s bed.

At bedtime, Casey’s bear was really nervous. He’d never been anyone’s bear before, and although he’d heard about it, he wasn’t at all sure how to do it. Plus, even though he was super-grateful to have his dream come true and be got from the store and become someone’s bear all in one day, he was strangely lonely for his friends at the store and their friend-pile under the counter, and even though he knew he shouldn’t feel this way, he wanted to be back at the store, which was the only home he could remember.

Even though he didn’t say any of this, Casey sensed it and hugged him and told him he was going to be a great bear, and in fact already was, and that she’d never had a bear Up Here in the yellow house, and that she was in fact hugely in need of one, especially because of her bad dream about her lost grown-up. At one point the bear asked if he could go talk to the other bear for a minute, but Casey was falling asleep and mumbled, In the morning. The bear was sad and wanted to cry, but maybe partly because it had been such a big day and he was tired. So he decided to be brave, and soon he was asleep.

In the morning, Casey took him into B’s room and left him there to talk with the other bear. They were so happy to be reunited! And Casey’s bear felt at this point like the older, experienced bear (even though B’s bear was a little bigger) because B’s bear was very very scared and lonely, having spent the whole night on B’s bed waiting in vain to find out whose bear he was. (B wasn’t there that night.) Everything Casey’s bear had felt, B’s bear felt even more! So, Casey’s bear set to making him feel better and told him this was a good house and also what you had to do when you became someone’s bear.

The next night Casey’s bear felt more confident, though still not perfectly confident, and they had another good night’s sleep even with her sore arm and worrying about having to wake up early. But then this morning he got unsure again because Casey had to explain that he was going to stay up-here in the yellow house while she went back to town, because he was her up-here bear. He really wanted to be her always-and-everywhere bear, but he was trying to be brave.

Wadsie

The trouble is, Casey couldn’t bring him back home because Wadsie, who is so very insecure, would feel so bad he might die, and then she would  not only have lost her grown-up, but also her oldest bear that she’s had her whole life.

Wadsie was insecure even before RP went away, and one time M said to me that Wadsie had told him a secret: Wadsie thought that if  only he had been a better bear when Casey was small, she wouldn’t be so sad now. And since RP died, Casey has been inconsolable at best, and most of the time not even here, and Wadsie’s truckle-bed gets closed a lot, and he is getting flatter and his stuffing older every minute, and he is 41 years old in people years, though he’s not completely sure because that is a lot of counting.

Moose

And it was bad enough that time Casey and I went on a retreat in Vermont and Casey got Moose, but Wadsie and Moose worked it out so Moose would live in the study and help us with our writing, and Wadsie would stay Casey’s bear. So, given all this, Casey cannot bring home the new bear (whatever his name turns out to be). But, she explained to the new bear that a) she would be back next weekend and b) she needs him to watch the room while she’s gone and make sure no bad stuff gets into it and c) she needs him to welcome her back every time she comes up to the yellow house so she can have a real bear up-here.

Wadsie in his truckle bed

Casey told the new bear that she probably wouldn’t need comforting after whacking—which is a big duty of bears generally—because she didn’t have a grown-up anymore. But she also said you never know; maybe if they were both very lucky and God loved her as much as she heard about him loving people, then maybe she’d get another real-deal grown-up, and her up-here bear could meet him and would get a chance one day to comfort her that way too.

The end.

I’m going to try to write this without turning into a sobbing mess, and also without turning into a crazy person who gets locked away in a mental hospital.

This afternoon I had a nap. I dreamed it was raining, like it’s been here the last two days. I felt that I needed a wee, and this segued into the idea that Mr. Prior was going to see Casey, and gosh she hoped he would let her go have a wee and not have to wait. They were outside, sort of in the neighborhood here, and we heard RP moving some furniture around in the old study, to arrange things for the scene. And it was so comforting to hear that and to be with someone who did that. Casey wandered under some newish, young wisteria leaves, and the leaves brushed lightly against her face and head, just shielding her from the rain.

And then Mr. Prior was there, finding her. “A lot has changed, hasn’t it?” he said. “Like a big, gray hat.”

And then, in a flash of recognition—that he was there, but not there, not for long—she threw her arms around him. He had on his white shirt and black trousers, and it’s possible in the dream that he was taller than she was, like RP “really” always was. And she said something to him that I can’t remember, about him being there, really being there, physically in the flesh, because she could feel him and he was so warm and solid and smelled like himself and everything. I think she asked him where—WHERE—he had gone. And he said she should hug him and then say a little prayer for him, that he was going away and going to his maker (except it didn’t sound corny in the dream, it sounded so sincere and so delicate and so him) and that she should—

She interrupted him and clung to him even tighter, saying No No NO! And then he was going away, and we were waking up, and she was holding on as tight as she could ever hold on to anything, yelling that she wouldn’t allow it…

FYI, that hope at the start of this entry isn’t going very well.

There have been countless—and I mean that literally—times since he died that I’ve sobbed so hard I thought something physical would break, so hard I felt maybe it could kill me. This was one of those times, and it carried on even after I got up off the bed and went for a wee and got  a glass of seltzer and did the bodily things that usually accompany the exhausted calm after a paroxysm of grief. Except that it carried on, and I was still shaking, and Casey was breathing in that shallow catching way, and sobbing, and I felt in the twilight of madness, as if I might encounter Ophelia or Hamlet. And I wanted to do something Desperate, but I couldn’t think of anything to do.

This is the first time that Casey had her own dream about Mr. Prior of the type I have about M. I used to have those dreams a lot. He’s here again. He’s back. He isn’t dead. Even, I know he’s dead but he’s here just for a moment. I hate those dreams. I really hate them. They’re cruel. Lately I haven’t had them much.

Then this morning I did have one:

It was early morning in my kitchen, and M was back. In this dream, he hadn’t actually been dead ever, just unconscious so much that everyone thought he was dead. But now he was back! I was so glad to see him, and there was a feeling of ultimate ordering and rightness. Everything was in the right place in the world, and none of the suffering that had come before mattered any more. I kept touching him, embracing parts of him, and again he was so physically, tangibly present. I thought of the life insurance money I’d have to pay back, and how difficult that would be, but I knew it didn’t matter and that we’d work it out. He was tired and curled up in a ball on the kitchen table. I convinced him to come to the bed, which was still unmade from me getting out of it.

“See,” I said, “your part is still there, and your pillow.” I smoothed it so he could lie down.

Then I remembered his job—the job he had held when he died—was actually open again. [This is true in RL, and also in RL it is a job I applied for 3 times after he died, but was rejected for 3 times, for confusing political reasons.] In the dream I had an epiphany: it all made sense why I had been rejected from this ex-job of his I wanted so much, and why they’d been through two other people since he left and had the position open yet again—it was a Divine plan, and now he could have his job back! I didn’t want to overwhelm him explaining all this, but I told him his job was open and they were desperate for someone and he should call, or let me call for him, ASAP. And like the sense of ultimate order at his presence, this coincidence of the job felt like a kind of justice. My suffering had not been senseless or for nothing. It was all a part of something good the whole time. Because he was home!!! And even though he still had the aneurysm and could in fact die any time, or live on for years, I didn’t care because he was there in that moment, and I knew that was all that mattered, and the future didn’t matter, and the past didn’t matter, only now, here, with him, so tangible and so real.

That was 6 o’clock this morning. Twelve hours later, Casey had her dream. I don’t understand all the symbols in these dreams. I don’t have the will to try.

Dear God, we really cannot take these dreams any longer, and we cannot take the reality either. We are bleeding everywhere there is to bleed. We are boring everyone with this same message. Please. Please. Where is the volume knob that turns loud enough to make you hear?

Please.

Recently I had the opportunity to inspect a friend’s toy collection, cleverly hidden inside a hockey bag. She had some particularly appealing straps, which I found myself wanting to try out on Marky. She also had several nice canes. (If my friend is reading this now, she will probably be shouting that the word nice should never share a sentence with the word cane.) Even more surprising than the desire to whack Marky was the discovery that after more than two years, my eye was still “in.” I discovered this when I arranged some patio chair cushions over the back of my friend’s sofa in preparation for demonstrating the art of caning.

Back in the day (e.g. when M was alive and I actually topped from time to time), I was the inferior top. He had better aim, better everything. I was a pretty shabby top altogether, I always believed. Now I think my insecurity wasn’t entirely accurate. When I took my friend’s canes and applied them to the misbehaving cushions, I found my aim good, my wrist snappy. My friend seemed to think I was hitting hard—and it was only 50% or so. I started to think maybe my topping experience hasn’t been normal, only having topped one person, a boy who liked to take a lot and hard.

Now, back in my own home, I have begun to wonder if I actually possess implements any more. I think they must have disintegrated in the closet, or got lot permanently wherever I put them away that I can’t now remember, like my work SIM card, or my husband.

A few days before encountering my friend’s hockey bag, another friend showed me her flogger. It was purple and brown and beautifully crafted. She let me touch it, and it seemed like it could be soothing and massage-y.

“Do you want to try it?” Friend Two asked casually.

I froze with a polite smile on my face: “I don’t know!” Friend Two didn’t push it; she just set the flogger down on the picnic bench where we were sitting. I remarked that if she’d told me it was a massager, I’d be all over it, but the word flogger was too scary.

But scary how? Certainly I wasn’t afraid it would hurt. I was afraid, on some paralyzed emotional level, to have anything to do with an object labeled Flogger. To use a flogger on myself , or to let someone else use it on me, felt at that moment like it would be crossing an invisible yet indelible boundary. It would mean engaging with kink on a level beyond the verbal. It would be in a way like a first kiss—the first kiss in this life after M.

My real first kiss (excluding stage kisses) came very late, at age 20, and by that time kissing had become a barbed, electrified barrier. I’m not sure I remember my first kiss with M. (Insane!) I remember the hug when we met for the first time, on top of the Empire State Building, and I remember the heavy make-out session on my futon, the first time anyone had touched me in a few places, and how hugely, overpoweringly exciting it was, like nothing I’d ever imagined.

But as for the flogger offered to me casually as a mere sensation experiment, I must have frozen because I was afraid to cross any physical barrier into anything that smelt even vaguely like kink. (How I hate that word, but when I use my word, tgi, people always ask me what it means, so I come off as elitist, speaking a dead, obscure code. But I miss that word. Lots! Come back to me!!) To have played with the flogger, even lightly in fun, would have been to step off of the sidelines and into the play. I wonder if on some level I was thinking, or Casey was thinking: If I do that, then people will start misconstruing my conversation and think I want to be whacked, and I don’t. Just like Casey was saying (it must have been her even though I didn’t know her name yet) before that first kiss at age 20: If you kiss a boy, it means you want to have sex with him.

I was terrified to kiss that first boy, but after two nights of faffing about (and confirming with my promiscuous roommate that kissing did not equal consent to intercourse), I finally kissed him. It felt strange, but not bad. His mouth tasted of popcorn, which he had been eating. He was a freshman and I was a junior, which was seriously robbing the cradle. I remember that night he asked me what I wanted. I was still adjusting to having crossed the first kiss frontier, though I didn’t tell him that. He said he wanted a Relationship, and asked if I did, too. I said I’d like to get to know him a little first. We dozed off, fully clothed, in my narrow university bed. A couple of days later, I heard in the dining hall that he’d started dating someone else. I was blindsided, embarrassed, crushed… Still, it was a good first kiss. I wasn’t in love with him.

Besides first-kiss boy and M, I think I’ve only kissed two other boys. I am 41 years old, and I know this is not normal. My sister makes out on almost every date. Even if she’s bored with the guy, she’ll make out with him to see if he gets more interesting. I haven’t kissed anyone except family, on the cheek, since I kissed M goodbye that morning 26 months ago. It’s not that I’ve resisted; there’s been no opportunity.

by Richard Dadd

Still, if the opportunity to kiss a man ever comes again, I’ll probably be afraid to cross that threshold. I think in person I can come off as very reserved, bordering on cold or conceited; the truth is I’m scared, paralyzed in a way that makes no sense when I explain it. I’m scared of sex, scared of kissing, scared of playing, and apparently even scared of touching a friend’s leather toy if it bears the label flogger.

In the Land of Fairy, you must never eat the food or you’ll have to stay there. If I eat the food in this new world—this hateful world without M—will I have to stay? Of course, this world isn’t like Fairy. We’ve got to stay no matter what, and there’s only one way out—the way he already went.

As a widow, I have a license to be bereaved, even two years into it. I cry frequently, and I’m not embarrassed about crying around other people, although these days I’m sometimes apologetic, as it seems a bit much in many circumstances to inflict it on others. I wasn’t always this way. Before I met M, I had a phobia of crying in front of other people. So I did my crying by myself. Over the 13 years I was with him, however, I gradually got comfortable(ish) with him seeing me cry. He told me that, contrary to what I believed, I wasn’t ugly when I cried; I was “so cute”. He said that when I cried it made him want to make love to me. Sometimes I wondered if he wasn’t provoking me to tears on some unconscious level, but on balance I think he wasn’t. When he died, my filters were so decimated that I couldn’t stop myself crying, or caring that I was crying, around anyone. I don’t think I’ve fully recovered the old filters, and actually, I don’t want to because I think it makes me a bit softer and more open as a person. It mitigates slightly against my reserve.

As a child, and still now, I found anger difficult. Lots of people are like this. Anger is Bad. Good people do not get angry. Anger is a destructive force–axioms of my personality. M and Mr. Prior did a lot of work over the years trying to rewrite some of the axioms, for instance trying to redefine Good as meaning honest & true, rather than Polite & Well-behaved. This is probably a long, boring topic for you, but the point is that my musculature is overdeveloped from holding in anger and other unpleasant emotions for most of my life. M did a lot to release this. The release normally took the form of tears.

This weekend I am in the industrial midwest, having travelled here with my brother and sister for my father’s 70th birthday. I’m the eldest and closest to my father, in contrast to my sister, who seems to have almost an allergic reaction to him. He’s a nice guy, a decent guy, an honest, hardworking guy. He’s also a workaholic, hard to connect deeply with, and prone to emotional tonedeafness. As a teenager and young adult, I felt a lot of anger towards him for having left my mom and thus destroyed our family. I’ve since forgiven him, and I feel a lot of compassion for him. Nevertheless, his behavior is sometimes very tiresome, and I have had a lot of it over the last two days, combined with trying to take care of his vulnerabilities while also taking care of my sister so she doesn’t go into emotional anaphylactic shock. Such is the way with family.

Last night I dreamed we were all together (my dad, stepmother, bro & sis) and my dad was talking. All of a sudden I said: “Fuck you, Dad. Just fuck you.” I continued with a string of angry f-expletives. He snapped and ordered me to go to the other room, just like I was little and he was ordering me to my room. I stomped off, part angry, part nervous of suddenly being in trouble. In the other room, I realized Casey was “in”. I think her shoes were even on my feet, and I was kicking stuff like she does, or wants to do, when she’s angry. I’m a little vague on what happened next in the dream when my dad came in to talk to us / tell us off. I think it was a combination of adult-me apologizing and explaining my frustrations, and Casey-me kicking in anger and shouting more provocative things.

I woke up from this dream and thought: I must be angry with him, who knew? But I kept thinking about the dream—you know how sometimes dreams keep drawing you back to think about them, as if they contain some kind of addictive substance? And what drew me back to the dream was the experience of Casey. I longed, and still long to be able to be back in her. Casey was frequently angry. Casey was allowed to be angry. Casey was allowed to scowl, to stomp around, to shout grouchy things, to make outrageous claims, to hyperbolize without rational tempering. M had a portmanteau for Casey’s go-to mood, which was glumpy (glum + grumpy). And Mr. Prior, the only person I have ever encountered in my life like this, he could deal with Casey’s feelings. He could take her anger. He knew when her misbehavior was anger, when her glumpiness was anger, when her sadness was anger, and when her anger was sadness. He allowed all of it, and he loved her so intensely when she was Bad, when she was out-of-control, when she was angry. He wasn’t afraid of it or her.

I think most tops, when faced with a scowling, sad-angry-provocative Casey Morgan, would conclude that she needing whacking and that I was indeed asking for whacking via “playing” her. It wasn’t like that. And he understood that. All those years of playing—if it can even be called playing—opened up huge wings inside the mansion of my personality, until they were more or less integrated, at least around him. But when he died, there was no longer anyone who could see Casey—See (deal with) her or see (perceive) her. I have to be a grown up all the time now, except when I am by myself. When M was alive, I sometimes found it a trial to have to be a grownup all day long at work. Now I’ve been grownup for 26 months straight. Now she mostly comes out in dreams.

I cannot tell you how much I want M right now, how much I want him every second, but especially right now. The last time I was here at my dad’s with him, we were looking through the famous & voluminous family photo albums. My father loved taking pictures when we were little, and you were often having to put on nice clothes and smile during photo shoots. I’d always loved these photo albums, but M saw them with different eyes. I remember him poring over some pages of me when I was two or three. I thought I looked happy (I was smiling), but he drew my attention to the eyes. Look how sad they are, he said. He pointed out  a lot of things in these pictures. I don’t enjoy looking at them anymore. The myth of the happy pictures was shattered for me. Don’t get the idea that there was Abuse in my childhood. There wasn’t. We’re talking ordinary life unhappiness that just didn’t have a legitimate channel for expression before I met him. Or so it seems.

If he was here right now, he’d hold Casey tight and call her by the pet names he had for her that said she was special and his and entirely safe and loved in his arms, no matter how she behaved. Once he called his real kid by one of those names and she got so jealous it wasn’t even true.

I’m sorry for complaining so much. I have an unbelievable amount to be grateful for. But Casey says being alive is unbearable. She’s a kid, so everything is exaggerated. Still…

self-pitying rant #677A-1610

in which I despair of my situation by rubbishing friends, acquaintances, and men I’ve never met

I’ve been feeling on some level that I am growing away from tgi, perhaps forever. This isn’t exactly an iteration of Lost Kink. I’ve been thinking that maybe I will one day look back on tgi, and on my marriage, as an immature phase, an ultra-elaborate construct, a fad. A thirteen year fad. I’ve even felt–and this may be the worst part–that tgi is starting to sound like an old term, some disused, past-life word, a word which is outdated and babyish—yes, with all the beautiful, naive genuineness we both had then—but which is nevertheless embarrassing and lost to me.

Today everyone I know is a grown-up and they speak of kink or spanking or TTWD. (There’s something cute about Graham‘s the activity, but to me that sounds limited to play transactions, transactions being the key word.) These grown-ups inhabit The Scene, a world of parties, of fetish categories, of cant role-play traditions and phrases, of play-dates, of poly couplings, of atheisms, and while many of these grown-ups are extremely lovely people, and have been extremely lovely to me, they are acquainted with other grown-ups who scare me, or who at least make me want to run home, hug the dogs, and then hide under the bedclothes and talk to God.

I never want to go to another spanking party. I never want to write another blog entry. I never want to get another Fetlife message. I never want to meet another top. I never want to read the word kink again. I never want to have to watch a spanking video or to read or write another spanking story. I never want to have to go on another coffee date, platonic or otherwise. I want to burn up all of Casey’s clothes and all the implements and toys and everything in M’s closet, including his newspaper from the day he died, and his unwashed laundry, and Mr. Prior’s tweed jacket [...no, not that, never that...] and his Church’s shoes and his kilt wot he wore at our wedding and all the rest of it [...except maybe a couple of Casey's clothes, ones we can wear out...] and never again hear the words kink, spanking, TTWD, and take the word tgi and put it in a little box, and dig a hole really really deep in the backyard, down where the tomatoes put their roots, down below the Gotham rocks, and put the box there and cover it up and let it get eaten by the worms and the roots and the little black ants that the exterminator sprayed for yesterday.

There isn’t going to be another person to look after Casey. Any person who gets beyond a coffee date, he would quite rightly say: Casey was who you had with M. Let it stay that way. Let’s have something else, a new character. I won’t be able to explain how Casey isn’t a character because I will be busy processing the psychological virtue of his suggestion. Mr. Beyond-a-Coffee-Date won’t be capable of, or interested in, loving me for who I am, in finding that out, or of letting me into who he really is. He will be busy listing his needs and deciding if I’m a girl who can meet them. Or maybe he will be trying to convince me that my needs are the same as his. Or perhaps, that an activity that he’d very much enjoy would be just the thing for me. He will be trying to convince me, directly or indirectly, to Let Go of the past, to Move On, to Accept the Death of that part of me. He may have read that this is necessary, maybe in a paperback book, and it will correspond very nicely with what he wants, which is to get my eyes off M and on to him, so I can start giving him what he wants. He will want to play. He will expect to use safewords, to negotiate. He will hope my Needs can be met without much effort from him while he gets his own Needs met by me. Isn’t that what relationships are, anyhow, mutual use?

The word tgi will never be mentioned. It is buried, and anyhow I will have learned not to say it. Oh, he’ll want to know All About me, but only to find out how much I am a suitable needs-match for him. He will never have experienced the world cracking open and God breaking into it, launching that blinding rescue operation, taking two people, each somehow lost, and steering them together, two rescues in one, a divine efficiency; steering them together not so that they can use each other as objects in their own fantasies, not so they can use each other at all, but so they can long to know each other, so much and so deeply that they sometimes forget themselves, that they become for each other human channels for that love that passes understanding, that love that longs for them too, that longs for them to grow closer and closer to their real selves, and turn more and more from the lies, the fears, the illusions, the distractions, the selfishness, the wounds inflicted by this broken world and its people.

Mr. Beyond-a-Coffee-Date might find such ideas religious and repellent, or perhaps lovely and poetic, but he will not understand the kind of sanctuary that can be made in a home like this. He may think he understands, because he may think he’s had it himself, but it will shortly become clear to me that he hasn’t. What he has had will have been a sympathetic fit with a woman willing to serve as a movie screen for his kinks and psychodramas, and vice versa.

So, yes, Casey is something I was with M, because–as I will suicidally explain to Mr. BCD–I am not actually kinky. I once fell in love with a man, and he loved me as I have never been loved, and Casey and Mark and the Others were ways we sometimes expressed ourselves, exercised ourselves, when we were loving one another. Mr. BCD will think he knows what I mean. This lifestyle is who I am, he will tell me. Kink is who I am. I won’t know how to explain that I am incapable of loving a kink. I’m only capable of loving a man.

And pretty soon it will become clear to me that I am guilty of the worst kind of leading on. I have entered into coffee dates and beyond on the pretence of looking for a friend, a playmate, or possibly “more”. Mr. BCD will think we are meeting in the hopes of a sexual relationship, or a play relationship, or at least a sympathetic ear for his concerns; perhaps he will be there for a simple diversion from the humdrum life between parties. I have, I’ll realize, led him on. The one at fault is me for being dishonest, not him for being self-serving. The truth is I want the old kind of love, but it isn’t something I can procure on my own. It needs that cracking open of the world, another wave in the rescue operation—for me, for him, and for the bits of the world we touch.

Come, you thunderclaps.
Come lightning, come quake.
Move, plates, atoms, seas.
Tear, curtain.
Blow aside, veil, an instant
All it takes.
Fall, arrows; roll chariots; pierce spears.
Come parachutes, come knights, come infants.
Burn, fire.
Pour, rain.

When I write the phrase little chat, it is usually in upper case, Little Chat. I think you already know what that means. It is probably time I attribute the phrase to its originator. Mark first used, upper case, early in our correspondence, but I incorrectly remember hearing it first in a vignette he wrote for me.

Our email correspondence (until he moved to Gotham) stretches to almost a thousand emails each, almost all of them saved individually in txt files with names like “fmark232.txt” [the 232nd email from Mark to me] or “tomark33″ [my 33rd email to Mark]. As you can imagine, it’s hard to find a reference amongst all that, especially 15 years after the fact.

Tonight I was searching for the text of this Little Chat vignette, which I did using the Search function on my PC. It turned up many emails, and the first one I opened turned out to be the one in which he confessed that he loved me. I barely remember this email, but encountering it again absolutely slayed me. I won’t quote it. My eyes are still swollen.

I did eventually find Mark’s vignette and have posted it below as well as under the Stories tab. The scenario was Mark and Casey at the Lewises. This was an alternate reality to Home School, one we only played a few times. The idea was that Mark and Casey had run away from the Orphanage and had been found and adopted by the Perfect People (Dr. & Mrs. Lewis). I later (or was it earlier?) wrote a companion piece to his vignette, which I also posted under the Stories tab. After reading them both, I feel his is much better: more direct, less fussy and complicated, more spontaneous and full of heart. Looking at both scenarios from far away, I would say that we never lived or much played the letter of them, but the mood and heart of them were a constant feature of our life together, especially Mr. Prior’s life with Casey.

Without further ado, then, here is Mark’s piece, Wednesdays.

Wednesdays

by Mark Hastings

Sundays are for Regulars, for weekly cleaning.  Sundays are always spent together, at the Lewises.  Casey and Mark go to bed sore and peaceful and clean and warm.  Whole.  Sundays are a deep rich blue, the smell of dark polished wood, a full stomach and a feeling of belonging.

By Wednesday, that’s worn off a little.  Mr. Lewis is fond of saying, as he shaves on Wednesday morning, that Wednesday is the worst day of the week. Equidistant from the comfort of weekend.  Neither the residual freshness of Tuesday, or the slight anticipation of Thursday.  Nothing but acres of dullness.  Mrs. Lewis has Commitments on Wednesdays, so supper is usually something cold.  Mark and Casey both have School things that they hate. For Mark, it’s morning gym, ninety minutes of effort with the school Sergeant’s swagger stick flailing its response to slackness, and the inevitability of at least one vault-horse caning, ‘poer incurriger les otters’.   For Casey, double Latin in the afternoon with the psychotically sarcastic Mr. Whitworth, whose greatest pleasure is to decline irregular verbs in time with his strap-strokes, and who makes a virtue of leathering girls just as hard as boys.  Out in front of the class, but facing towards your peers so they are spared the worst witness of unprotected strapping, and can better concentrate on construe.

Mark has learned to avoid the Wednesday vault-horse, and Casey the mid-week strap, because on Wednesday evenings they have their “Little Chat”.

The children do the dishes after supper, while Mr. Lewis goes to his study, and Mrs. Lewis rests up.  There is a sense of anticipation, although it isn’t the edginess of Sunday, before the Regulars, because often a Little Chat is just that.  Even so, the dishes get done well, and quietly, on the whole, on Wednesdays.  Mark and Casey smarten themselves up, and jaunt carefully along the downstairs corridor to the study.  Sometimes Mrs. Lewis joins them, sometimes not.

Little Chats are lucky-dippy.  In the months since Casey’s arrival they have ranged from a particularly uncomfortable interview over a broken ornament (Casey), cleverly replaced on its shelf (Mark) and not discovered broken for some time afterwards (Mrs. Lewis), to a riotous game of Racing Demon in which Mr. Lewis was heard to swear when Casey stole his Ace of Spades, was sent to the corner by his family and threatened with a very hard whacking by Mark if he ever did it again.  On average, one or both of the Lewises feel that one or both of the children would benefit from a little additional discipline perhaps one week in two.

Little Chat discipline is always the same – slipper, paddle or hand, administered in traditional manner, across the knee of the parent in the clock-ticky quiet of Mr. Lewis’s study.  It’s very different from Regulars. Canes, birches, crops and straps are banned.  Punishments are measured in minutes, rather than strokes.  Usually either a Quin, being–as Casey might explain–five minutes, or a Dix, being ten.  Mark hates Dixes, with a passion, especially when they’re paddle, and administered by Mrs. Lewis. Casey has mixed feelings about the whacking, but she loves the closeness and warmth of Little Chats, the fire glowing orange while the wind blows white outside on winter Wednesdays.

So, Wednesdays are made red, a smell of incense, a little adventure, and fun.

Think you?