why I am a dud at parties
As regular readers probably know, I have gone to a few tgi-oriented parties here in Gotham during the last six months. Those who have encountered me at those parties will know that I have not played at them. I haven’t really written about these non-play experiences. I love to read other people’s reports of play dates and parties, but I’m reluctant to write about my own experiences. I guess I don’t want to be the object of anyone’s blogging, so I shy away from talking about other people. I don’t mind people reporting that they had tea with me and that I am brilliant and charming, but I wouldn’t want an intimate play session shared with the internet. I’ve only written about some of my past scenes because my partner is dead. I don’t want to come off as censorious–to repeat, I love reading other people’s reports and do not disapprove in the slightest. Why, then, can’t I imagine writing about my own encounters? I can’t argue that I’m too shy to reveal myself. Heaven knows I’ve revealed the most essential parts of myself, repeatedly, right here. Maybe I’ll change my mind when I actually have an encounter to report.
Because here is how these parties go: I turn up, people are standing or sitting around in a central area, other people are off playing (behind screens or in playrooms). I get a glass of water. I eat a pretzel. I chat. I tend to be more relaxed talking with girls, probably because I don’t imagine any subtext to those conversations. Rightly or wrongly, on some level I trust women because I don’t think they’re trying to play with me. I don’t mistrust men per se, but there’s always the specter of possible play, no matter how respectful or even uninterested in me they are. So, I chat easily with girls (unless they’re acting frosty due to seeing me as some kind of competition–what a laugh), and easily enough with men. What do I chat about? Well, recently, I heard all about winter carnival arrangements in the midwest; I discussed scuba diving; I heard about motorcycle culture; I heard about the extent of the Scene in various other locales. All this serves, ultimately, to establish an ordinary human connection with my interlocutor, to remind us both that we are regular people who happen to have this hobby in common. 
Sometimes people show me their toys. I appreciate toys, as I would appreciate someone’s fountain pen collection. But do they turn me on and make me want to play? No.
I tell everyone that I am not playing. I explain I am bereaved and not ready to play. Everyone is respectful. I should take whatever time I need, they say; I will know when it’s right, and I must do only what I want to do, they say. We are all agreed on this point. I think I must confuse people, nevertheless, because here I am chipper and friendly (I hope), yet not playing. It isn’t as though I’ve gone with a partner or even with a group of friends. Given my solo status, why am I there, again, if I really really don’t want to play?
Sometimes people think I need reassurance, as if I’m a novice trying to take the plunge. They suggest that—when I am ready—I should think about finding a friendly person and just doing a little friendly scene to get my feet wet. Perhaps I do need to get my feet wet. Perhaps I don’t. But the more time I spend at parties, the more I begin to feel that it isn’t going to happen in that kind of environment. And, whatever you might say about my situation, I am about as far from an anxious novice as you can get.
Let me try to explain why—and before anyone feels hurt, it’s nothing to do with the parties themselves or the people at them. The parties and party goers are all welcoming, respectful, and just fine. The truth is that when I turn up at a party, I am actually about a million miles away from casey, even though I borrow her name. The person attending these parties is my ordinary, workaday self, under an alias. This person chatting away about spanking, scuba diving, history, whatever—this person could just as easily be on the telephone with some vogonic city department sorting out a business problem; or having a conference about some kid’s learning issues; or chatting with college or theater friends at their parties. This person is rational, confident, witty, empathic, together. This person is not casey.
As I was leaving a party recently, I was trying to imagine what would happen if I were to go off in one of the playrooms with some man I knew a little, a man I trusted to be moderate and not creepy. Off we would go, away from the party, and it would be just the two of us. And then, well, I’d have to dredge up casey. Why? Because casey is the channel through which I play (as a bottom). “Casey” is the label for that part of me, that vulnerable part of my personality, that young, gently cheeky, highly emotional side of me. The ordinary me has no interest in going across someone’s knee. The ordinary me is a completely together woman. So, here I would be with a man I knew only slightly, and suddenly casey would have to appear, or there would be no point to our encounter.
This, friends, is the sticking point. Because casey is something that was between me and M. And now casey is orphaned, scared, and bereaved, more bereaved than even I am. *
Is grief an activity or an emotion? Certainly, over the last year and a half I have allowed grief to work on me, as I try at church to let the liturgy and the music work on me. I don’t know how much it all penetrates to the part that is casey. Probably that is very protected and cloistered. It hurts a lot—a lot—even just now thinking of her and feeling her in my heart. I try to love her and take care of her and not bully her and do what I heard M say that awful day when we were interring his ashes.
God: casey wants to die. She doesn’t think there is any hope for life without Marky and RP. She hates people. She refuses to trust anyone, now or ever. She says I can quit going to these parties and quit blogging and quit tweeting and give all her clothes away to the poor.
So… of course I am not going to these parties to play. I am going simply to meet people and with luck make a few friends. And the thing with casey is that before she can be whacked or even spoken to in a toppy way, she needs simply to be seen. I mean that literally. No one has seen her face, no one has called her name—to her—in over 18 months. Just turning up in a room, wearing her clothes, and having someone speak to her, not a grown-up pre-match conversation, but as casey, as little casey. Someone would have to address her as a real person, not in some costume-shop top mode—young-lady-this-&-that, you’ve-been-very-naughty, etc. She might not even be able to speak the first time. She might sit there like some mute, traumatized orphan. So someone would have to talk to her, gently, not in a cotton-wool way, but like a strong adult with good boundaries and plenty of compassion. Like a real person would speak to someone in her circumstances. Just having someone speak to her like this might make her cry in about five seconds. It might be a long time, many such encounters, before it was anything like a good idea to introduce the idea of discipline into the relationship. Because—guess what?—whacking isn’t what it’s all about for casey, or for me. At least not now.
This, then, is why I am a dud at parties. I’m grateful to people for continuing to invite me. I guess no one ever claimed that the grief-stricken were any fun. I guess putting up with us is a kind of mitzvah. So…thanks.
* apparently a kind of theme/variation on this rant re. casey & play
