Published: September 4th 2018, 6:26:48 pm
A little over ten years ago I was in a very damaging relationship with a man, let's call him Alex. Alex masked his sexual abuse as kink and his verbal abuse as honesty. I don't know which has had more lasting damage but to give you an idea of how serious that damage was, after I finally got out of this relationship, I was not able to enjoy sex for two years. I was completely cut off from what had previously been a huge part of my identity. There were days I called in sick to work because I couldn't stop crying. It took a lot of time, work, and therapy to be a reasonably functional person again.
Alex is a regular attendee of sex camp. He's been there every time I've gone. I've managed not to let it ruin my whole weekend, but every time I've gone there have been multiple incidents that have made me need time alone to cry and be angry and process my thoughts, feelings and fears. And none of those incidences involved him so much as looking at me.
I kept thinking that seeing him would get easier but I walked into the dining hall and felt the same fight/flight/freeze panic take over. But this time, Maggie was with me. She's had her own experience with abusers and navigating shared space with them. She saw me stiffen and knew what was wrong. I pointed him out and then quickly left to be alone and work through feelings.
While I was alone, Maggie told our friends what was wrong, and who was the problem. Then she met me down by the lake and did a ritual to give me strength. It worked and I was able to go back to our friends and enjoy the rest of the evening.
For the first time I felt people close ranks around me. People made it clear that they were willing to confront him on my behalf if I ever felt I needed it. For the first time at camp, I actually felt safe. I felt protected. And it may have been the first time that I really believed that he couldn't hurt me again.
One of the people Maggie talked to said they'd been wary of him before because they didn't trust Doms that seemed to have a "gimmick" and gimmicks had always been Alex's thing. When I became a pro-domme he insisted that I make up a brand and a persona and have a symbol that I always wore so that people would remember me. And so I spent, like, a year trying really hard to seem like a badass and wearing a freemason pin so that people would think I was menacing and mysterious. It wasn't until I stopped listening to him and advertising as "the geek girl domme" that I actually started making money.
That was when I realized just how many gimmicks he'd taken on and how he had gained more with each passing year.
The first year he'd been wearing black leather fingerless gloves AT ALL TIMES which was pretentious but sexy if you thought kink was SRS BSNSS and therefore required some pretension. During the day he worse a straw hat, which I thought looked dumb but could at least be excused by the fact it was summer and an outdoor event.
The next year he'd added a metal rod, which did seem to get him a lot of scenes, and at night he carried around a glowing Chinese lantern which....made him easier to find, I guess?
This year he added antlers. Yes. Antlers. He had daytime antlers that attached to his stupid hat and evening antlers because I guess the lantern wasn't attracting enough attention.
And I'm not saying he wore this for a scene, he wore this all. the. time. Yes, whatever else he was wearing, he was also wearing antlers, black leather gloves and a hat in the daytime and big glowing ball at night. I never saw him in the pool but I'm VERY curious to know what that outfit would have been.
I'd spent so much time being afraid of him, and trying to pretend he wasn't there, I'd never really taken in the full scope of what he looked like now.
And the next time I saw him, I giggled.
I started calling him Starburns after the character on Community who is only known for his ridiculous affectations and for being kind of a creep.
He was alone for most of the weekend. I never saw him play. People told me that word was getting around (not just because of me) and more people were catching his red flags early. And for the first time I believed that he was losing his ability to hurt other women, which I think had always scared me more than what he might do to me.
There's a weight that's lifted from my life, now. It's not gone completely but it's so much lighter. So it turns out that the path to healing isn't forgiving your abuser, it's laughing at him.