Role-playing, and a plug 2003-02-28

My last girlfriend liked to role-play. (By last, I mean the one before my current, just in case anyone was thinking I've broken up with her. I haven't)
Anyway. Ian Fleming wrote that all women have a secret desire to be raped. (Ian Fleming was the author of the James Bond books) Now, I'm pretty reasonably positive that's all a bunch of bullshit... On the other hand, he could have been refering to my last girlfriend.
She loved sex. If we were fighting, she wanted to have sex. I think she thought that having sex would cure the problem. On the other hand, I did notice a certain trend in that she never wanted sex when she was blaming me for the problem...
Anyway. My last girlfriend liked to role-play. (back on track now, we are.) Now, I'll try most anything at least once. How are we supposed to know if we like it or not unless we do? With my last girlfriend, I found out that I don't really care for role-playing. (And I'm not talking about d20 and a character sheet. What I'm talking about is between the sheets. Role-playing games I love.) Especially since her favorite role-play was one where she was being raped, I being the raper...rapist...whatever.

So I did some research. Lots of couples like to role-play, and lots of couples role-play some sort of dominance over the other. They use safe words and other stuff so that whenever it got to be too much they could stop without it getting out of hand.
We had a safe word, though I forget what it was. We never used it though. She always told me to do more, be more forceful, more painful, more whatever... And I just felt more and more dirty. I wanted to kick my own ass.

I understand that everyone has their tastes, and it was only role-play after all... But any man who gets off on the power of dominating a woman sexually is a sick fuck, in my opinion. And that's just what I was doing when we role-played: pretending I was a guy who got off on the power of dominating a woman.
She didn't see it that way, of course.

So why am I bringing this up? Two things:
1) a-splinter wrote about rape in her diary, and I admired her bravery for it. And I also thought to myself, "What kind of fucking prick would do that to a woman?" And then I remembered, technically speaking, I have.
2)The Performing Arts Society at Chapman is putting up "The Vagina Show", a series of monologues, poems, and songs about college-aged women, written by college-aged women (with one exception), and performed by them as well. For what it's trying to do, it's an excellent show, and they bring up a lot of important issues.

The one exception mentioned above, is me. I wrote a piece for it, a monologue, and submitted it anonymously for a variety of reasons, the main one being that they probably wouldn't have accepted it at all had they known I wrote it.
Anyway, the show runs tonight and tomorrow night at 8 pm, and Sunday afternoon at 2. So if you're in the Chapman area with nothing to do, check it out.

And just as an afterthought, I decided to include the piece I wrote for it... Here it is:

I am drowning in a sea of happiness. Oh, I know what that usually means. Everything is perfect, life couldn�t be more wonderful, all that shit. But drowning in anything is hardly a pleasant situation, and the environment you are suffocating in is usually one you would rather remove yourself from.
I am drowning in a sea of happiness. Slightly more depressing this time, isn�t it?
I am drowning in a sea of smiling faces, each obscure and out of focus, like a cheap movie. I can�t tell one person from another, one face from someone else�s. Except his.
His face is crystal clear. I look up from this sea of happiness I am drowning in, and do not see a savior, reaching out a hand to help me breath. I see a man, leering, reaching out a hand to hold me under until I stop breathing.

FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! YOU�RE A PIECE OF SHIT ASSHOLE MOTHER FUCKER!

Sorry. I�m so sorry. I�m trying to tell you my secret, and I am shaking so bad I can barely get it out. Am I angry? Yes. Furious. So enraged that I can barely see sometimes. But I�m mostly scared.
They say the worst part about drowning is that you die alone. I feel so alone.
I am drowning in a sea of happiness. A sea of smiling faces surround me, and I want so badly to breath them in. But I�m too scared to open my mouth. I�m so scared, and sometimes I feel like I�d rather drown then open my mouth and let them in.

I don�t know who I�m supposed to trust.

I feel so alone. I want to talk to someone, need to talk, but every time I�m greeted by a friend

YOU SHIT! YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE MY FRIEND! FUCK YOU! FUCK!!!

Oh God.

Every time I�m greeted by a friend, I open my mouth, to cry, to cry for help, to ask forgiveness, to scream in rage, but my shame makes everything stick to the back of my throat. And everybody tells me they love what I did with my hair. It looks so good cut so short, and blond makes my eyes sparkle.
I want to scream at them that my eyes are sparkling because they are merely the lids to my tear ducts, and the reservoir is so full it�s been overflowing lately. I want to shout at the top of my lungs. I want to tell them that if I thought it would do any good I would have shaved my head completely. But that would only make me feel more naked. And more ashamed.

I lost count of how many showers I took. How many times I sank to the floor of the bathtub and let my tears mingle with water that was supposed to make me feel clean. But every time I got beneath the spray of water, it splashed hard against my body, like a fist it pummeled me. And no matter how long I stayed under those fists of liquid, I never felt cleaner. Purer. I felt dirtier. Soiled and used.
So I would turn the water back on again.
So many times I wanted to plug the drain and let the water fill the tub. Then I could sink beneath the water and be justified that what I was feeling and what was actually happening were one and the same.

I�m such a stubborn bitch. If I give up, he wins. If I stay silent, he wins. But if I bare my shame to the world, I lose. I lose my pride, my self-respect, my determination.
My desire to live now rests completely on the desire to never see this happen again.

So you watch out asshole. I may be alone, and scared, and merely a woman, that you took advantage of and tossed away like an empty liquor bottle. But you didn�t realize that the bottle wasn�t empty. I was a bottle full of possibilities. You should never throw away a full bottle. You should put in on a shelf and keep it. But you poured me out and threw me away, and I am nothing now but a puddle of fear and self loathing.
But I am also angry. And my wrath will be your scourge. And the scourge of your friends. And the scourge of my friends. I know who you are now. I may feel cheap, but this will pass, because I did not make myself feel this way. You will always be a bastard. Apologize a thousand times, because you were wrong. Apologize a thousand more, and maybe I will forgive you. But this is something we both will live with for the rest of our lives, and I will never let you forget it.
This misery I have should have belonged to you. This fear I have should have paralyzed you. You should have been the one to feel alone. Wipe that goddamn smirk off your face and stop telling everyone how much fun your party was. You may not feel these things now, and maybe you never will. But I swear no one else will either.

Thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for comforting me, though I cannot hug you, though I cannot hide in your embrace. You are my life preserver in a sea of faces. Though no one knows what I know. I have at least found the strength to tell you. Maybe I will be able to tell someone else.

Someday. But not today. Today I shall stop crying tears of shame, and cry the cleansing tears of resolve. And you will cry them with me.

Tomorrow is for hope. Tomorrow is for fighting. Tomorrow is for never drinking again. Tomorrow is for foregiveness.

But it�s still today. And today, I still can�t trust anyone, yet.