If a story has a long and winding plot, lots of dialogue, lots of love, is about a gay relationship, yet doesn’t show much (if any) wild, animal-like sex, chances are high that it was written by a girl.

It’s embarrassing to realize that my gender is that obvious. There goes my fantasy of being mistaken for a boy.

Why should I want to be mistaken for a boy, I wonder? Guys looking exclusively for guys would ultimately blow me off, so why pretend? Do I just stubbornly want the respect and attention that the m/m world reserves for boys? Some of them are squeamish about the very idea of girls, and perhaps I want to foil them. In fact, I have played with men (jointly with M) who only played with boys, but who consented to (and enjoyed) playing with me because I was un-girly. My MO was always: I am a tomboyish girl who dresses as a boy and avoids all sexual reference during tgi play. I never went in for the “N-n-no Daddy, not my p-panties!” scenario. Marky, in fact, was scathing about that type of thing. Even to this day, I hate the word “panties” and never use it unless it’s sheathed in ironic quotation marks.

But why should I want to be mistaken for a boy? Would it make me feel more respected? More seen? More taken seriously? Or is it that I imagine that I’m drawn to men who think they prefer m/m? When I met M (are all these initials getting confusing?) through email, he was writing fully m/m stories, and in fact asked if I was m or f. I ruefully admitted f, saying “I hope you don’t hate me.” He was fine with me being a girl; it didn’t seem to make a difference to him. That said, he was firmly ensconced in the m/m world. He had once played with a female, bottoming to Miss Singleton (a.k.a. Miss Martindale of Aristasia, before she got famous and eschewed boys).  That scene, plus one we did together with Debbie Ann, were the only times he played with any girl besides me. I don’t think he corresponded much with girls, if at all. All his online friends and chat-buddies were male, into m/m tgi and sex. I found this hot and not really threatening. And, despite all his m/m interest (and to a lesser extent activity), he was massively attracted to me, wanted me to deal with marky, and very much wanted to take care of cdm. In his mind, there were guys and there was me; guys were friends, but I was what he lived for.

Do I want to pass as a boy online because I imagine in some crazy part of my brain that it will lead me back to him? Do I imagine that I’ll find another husband in that world? Clearly, I need a knock upside the head. And at any rate, by Wilvalkir’s rule, my writing just screams GIRL GIRL GIRL to anyone who reads it, earning the scorn of men worldwide.

These stories are more severe than I really like, but they did make me long for the kind of post-whacking soreness that lasts for days. That’s by-the-by. What I like in the series is the firm and unapologetic assertion of authority. On the one hand, the Headmaster is choleric, loses control, and goes way overboard with punishment. On the other hand, the discipline master – himself calm – asserts that the boys’ disobedience is indeed wrong. When challenged: “But it’s just a haircut,” he replies, “Oh, but is it?” He understands and shines a light on the undercurrent: of course the kid had his hair cut to spite the Headmaster, whom he loathed. It isn’t about a haircut for any of them, but about the question of whether or not they should submit to the Headmaster’s rules, or only submit to the ones they judge satisfactory. The story says: Submit to all of them.

And suddenly, this rather extreme M/m story became for me a metaphor for submission to the love and the will of God, which has been a fairly unappealing theme in the book I’m reading about Lent. The attitude in this school is peculiarly English, I think. In America we have more tradition for challenging and rebelling against authority (despotism!) if authority proves unfit to govern (in the eyes of the governed). In fact, there’s a sense of duty to search for injustice and challenge it, especially today. There’s also an obligation for authority to be “reasonable,” i.e. democratically acceptable. But are private schools democracies (even in the USA)? They aren’t on mmsa anyway! Clearly they can be democratically inclined, and many (esp. secondary schools) try hard to involve students in governance. But, because schools are 1) in loco parentis; and 2) there to educate, they can never, I argue, be honestly democratic.

Contrast with the grotesque example of the Hampshire water authority that consulted the population (after supplying them with informational pamphlets) on whether to add fluoride to the water supply. There was a legal obligation to consult the population, but not to abide by its wishes. Result: 72% said no fluoride, but they got it anyway. So, it’s at best a pseudo-democracy, and at worst a cynical hypocrisy. Would it be better to say, We don’t consult the population because we are in charge and we know best, thank you. People would still be angry over the water, but at least it would be an honest representation of the relationship between people and water authority. They’d all be spared the hypocrisy and illusion. I think a lot of schools today, especially progressive ones, are confused about their own authority and what it means. As a result, they are more like the Hampshire water authority than they realize. All of which makes me yearn for the clarity Mr. Hicks’s adults provide, if not exactly for their level of tgi.

wonderfully well-used

Suffice to say I lost interest in the story and started thinking about all kinds of things…

and for across-the-knee:

Jacobs says that Lewis “insists strongly that such play must really be play, accepted as such on both sides, both fully voluntary and very temporary” (Jacobs 287). This revelation increased, exponentially, my feeling of connection with Lewis, a connection already powerful via his writings about his bereavement in A Grief Observed. I thought, He knows everything that’s true! How I wish I’d been alive when he was. I have the strangest crush on him. I think this is my first crush on a dead author, I mean a romantic crush. I want him to read my book. It wouldn’t be intellectual or rigorous enough for him, but I wish he’d read it. We have a lot in common, I feel.

The other reference was to some early letters with an Oxford friend in which he signed himself Philomastix (whip-lover) and opined about girls he’d like to spank (Jacobs 56). If only he’d met Casey Morgan (ho ho). The more I read about this man, the more I feel he was a fellow traveler in every possible way, separated by time. How nuts am I to be crushing out on a long-dead writer? Jacobs is a good writer, smart and sensitive, someone who understands and appreciates both literature and religion. He makes me want to try the other Narnia books, and he makes me cry at times. I often cry around C.S. Lewis. I often cry, period.

I did enjoy the quotes from Swinburne’s letters, particularly the one that “addressed” deSade and explained why Justine was so tediously over done – ha, ha, I agree! So, why is Lesbia Brandon so f-ing hot?

1. The massive pent-up emotion of it all; the heart; the transferred and frustrated love and lust.
2. The heightened tension of talking about it all. The dinner party, for instance, is hot because it is so excruciating for Bertie to have his flogging (and his heroism) discussed and alluded to in public. Reading it, I enjoy seeing the sensitive, pretty Bertie squirm; and, I also relish being him and experiencing that pleasing, burning shame.
3. The relationships are all so intimate and raw, unlike the endlessly-discussed, endlessly-analyzed relationships of today.
4. The birch itself is severe without being brutish. It cuts and draws blood (especially from sensitive Bertie), without wounding or injuring deeply. It’s rather surface. Anyone can recover from a domestic birching. In some contexts (sauna?), the birch can even be stimulating and therapeutic.
5. The bareness required is also hot. The birch nicely combines spanking with caning – sharp, uncounted strokes; necessariliy undressed application; area and point weapons, as Marky used to say.
6. There is also, in Swinburne, the powerful bonding relationship between the one who gives (here the tutor) and the one to whom it’s given (Bertie). It’s a big event between them. Not all big, intimate events involve sex.
7. The lushness of the language also makes it hot (as the queer essay author remarked, the use of flogging language for everything else, the sea, etc).

But the pent-up emotion is the nub of the matter. Imagine, for instance, that Bertie were merely flogged a la Charlie Collingwood (which is sillier and less hot; its only charge, imo, comes from saying forbidden things – bottom, birch, etc.) by someone who didn’t have feelings for him (even displaced feelings like Denham has). Imagine it was like deSade – hundreds of yelling strokes, blood all over, etc. SNORE.

And what if no one spoke of it? Or if they spoke endlessly and directly of it? Oh yes, sister, I was flogged today, on my bare bottom, oh hundreds of strokes well laid on. Did it hurt? dear me yes, how I howled the place down, the blood oh my did it run, and it still hurts most frightfully even now. — Ah, Mr. Denham, tell us all about it. — Certainly, sir. I began with ten firm strokes to the left flank, then I switched sides and gave ten to the right (the ambidextrousness, you know), Bertie howled thrice, “yelped” he would term it, but I gave him a stoke to draw blood at last, that raised the pitch but also likely signaled some release, if only of blood, ho ho. ETC…

Tedious, we say, esp. when you can have this:

The magnetism of the sea drew all fear out of [Bertie], and even had there been any discomfort or peril to face, it was rather desire than courage that attracted and attached him to the rough water. Once in among green and  white seas, Herbert forgot that affliction was possible on land, and in his rapture of perfect satisfaction was glad to make friends with the man [Denham] he feared and hated in school hours. The bright and vigorous delight that broke out at such times nothing could repress or resist; he appealed to his companion as to a school fellow and was answered accordingly. “He was a brick in the water,” Herbert told young Lunsford [a friend]; “like another fellow you know, and chaffs one about getting swished, and I tell him it’s a beastly chouse and he only grins.” This intimacy was broken by one tragic interlude; bathing had been forbidden on all hands one stormy day before the sea had gone down, and Herbert, drawn by the delicious intolerable sound of the waves, had stolen down to them and slipped in; having had about enough in three or four minutes, he came out well buffeted and salted, with sea-water in his throat and nostrils and eyes; and saw his tutor waiting just above watermark between him and his clothes. Finding him gone, Denham had quietly taken a tough and sufficient rod and followed without a superfluous word of alarm. He took well hold of Bertie, still dripping and blinded; grasped him round the waist and shoulders, wet and naked, with the left arm and laid on with the right as long and as hard as he could. Herbert said afterwords that a wet swishing hurt most awfully, a dry swishing was a comparative luxury. He did not care to face again the sharp superfluous torture of these stripes on the still moist flesh; and from that day he was shy of facetious talk in the water or out: thus the second stage of his apprenticeship began.

A. C. Swinburne, Lesbia Brandon, ch. II

*sigh* always wanted a whacking like that…

perfect dad, perfect lap

A dream I had before Christmas about the father in Ripping Yarns’s series of stories about the Aken family. The “In…” series…

It was like college, and I was living with roommates. Mr. Aken, the dad from Rip’s stories, turned up. He found some glass shards on the carpet, evidence of a broken light, and this was an expensive and important light in some way. He looked to me and I had to admit I’d known about it. It wasn’t clear if I’d actually been involved with breaking it, but I had known of it and done nothing, which was wrong. I was flooded with guilt when he looked at me.

He walked by me and touched my face with his finger (long, slender, feminine), under my right eye and then just below my eyebrow, as if tracing the contours of the black circles there. Then he was holding me on his lap and I was 7 or 8, like Dan in one of the stories. He was wearing a plaid flannel work shirt and so was I. Mine was over-sized and both were soft, and he was holding me in that hugely protective way, and I was weeping because it just felt so safe and so good on his lap, even though I was in trouble – especially because I was in trouble. He told me he’d be able to deal with this matter even though he couldn’t be everything to me that I needed and wanted. Still, I cried in his lap because at that moment it was perfect. Even though I wasn’t his son, and couldn’t be his son, he could treat me the same as his son for this brief time while I was on his lap and while he dealt with me for the broken light.

When I had this dream I had been tutoring Othello heavily, in particular Act V, Scene 2: “put out the light, and then put out the light,” (1) the first light being Othello’s candle, of course, and the second being Desdemona’s life. I may not have put out M’s light myself, but am I guilty, in my heart, in some way, for not catching it, for all the uncountable failures that preceded and maybe led to his death, for all the times I didn’t love him enough, for fighting about taxes, for all the forever left undone? How can I ever be truly forgiven all of that unless I can be allowed to have him back and redeem it, put it right with him, love him fully like I always really have? How can I truly and really redeem anything without him?

(1)

Put out the light, and then put out the light:
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me:–but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning’st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume.