Mistress Musings: On Shame
I’ll never endure the paradoxical drama of being an American man.
“Many men… reveal the depth and intensity of their desire only with a woman who is a stranger. For it is too often only here, in my temple room, that their passion is received unconditionally and without shame” (Fabian et al., 2018, p. 51).
My roommate stares, slack-jawed as I describe some of my more conventionally handsome clients & their Hefty, hefty, hefty (!) tools that face no trouble rising when called. “Why,” she wonders aloud, “are they paying you when they can easily get it for free?”
She inquires about today's activities as I close the office door behind me. Minutes before, pearls of laughter and murmurs, my flirting, echoed down our common hallway. Today’s shift was filled with Cam2Cam— men tip ~$10 to pull me out of my chatroom and into theirs for a handful of minutes. Suddenly I’m the voyeur peering into their living room (oftentimes, an office).
It still slips me up when they’re handsome. It’s not uncommon but I find myself wishing they’d warned me. I’ve autistically prepared my informal script to include this: “Excuse me,” I demand, voice shifting into a bratty shriek, “you gave me no inkling that you’re sexy and it’s upsetting the power imbalance. I’m supposed to be the good looking one here!”
I simultaneously scowl and smile. They return the latter.
It’s no secret that men don’t receive many compliments. There’s no male equivalent to Drunk Girls in the Bathroom Bonding. It’s not for lack of desire… but admitting to desire, as a man, particularly desire that requires the participation of others— that’s a vulnerability. In our current hyper-capitalist dominion, a valuable man is self-sufficient. A primate that’s surpassed his evolutionary destiny of interdependence, he is no longer a social animal. He is trained to isolate before succumbing to needing someone else. So they exist without much validation… or care.
Because needing validation and care, through the lens of domination, is “gay”? Perhaps. Most of my clients fall somewhere queer on the Kinsey scale, though they don’t acknowledge it offline. Some I guide through ancient wells of shame, identifying and filtering poisoned groundwater. See if we can shift some of the bubbling guilt and mental anxiety— nudge them towards supporting themselves from a more compassionate psychological foundation.
“But how difficult it is to think differently” (Deligny et al., 2015, p.56).
Others don’t entertain my inquiries but come eager to relinquish control to a demanding mistress. In the heat of our encounter, they serve against personal inclination in pursuit of my approval; my coveted attention attainable only through diligent service of silicone attachments. Per their explicit request and after payment clears!
And to an extent, I get it, though I’ll never endure the paradoxical drama of being an American man.
The first lifestyle Dom/sub relationship I experienced put me face-to-face with my fear and my want; the mind states I sought under her direction reflecting those of my modern clientele. I had my own desires to pursue and memories to alchemize. Objectification, possession, humiliation, desperation… to belong. Forget deliberate negotiations that may/may not have taken place1; it wasn’t my “fault” I was getting bound and fucked by a girl like it isn’t Mark’s fault he’s on his knees with a mouth full of rubber.
To no longer endure the insurmountable guilt I’d been outrunning since the day Mom dragged me to confess my “same-sex lust”. On one side of the wide wooden table, beneath golden-framed portraits of a glaring white Jesus, I sat in shame: my “cross to bear in service of the Lord”. The bishop's thin-lipped sneer burned its own brand into my delicate amygdala. A skinny twelve-year-old girl escaped hellfire by recounting middle school kisses to a man she barely knew.
But with my mindful lover, I found grace. Finally, I could be enough— even after acting upon cravings I’d been trained to fear… trained to suppress, if extermination wasn’t completely attainable. It wasn’t. In her arms after the emotional and spiritual purge of an intense scene, she’d hold me and remind me it was only a game. I was safe, loved, enough. I can’t express in words how much this time healed me.
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”
Proverbs 3:5-6 KJV
My best interactions with men seeking safety in their shame facilitate healing, too. All in service of their mistress. Me?! A digitalized higher power. The bishop and I— representative of one god and I, another.
Why so twisted, convoluted? Aren’t there more simple ways to get what bodies crave? Sure, if humans were indeed self-sufficient, self-directed, in rational control of our behavior. If authentic existence were as simple as we’d like to believe. We forget that we’re primates— memetic social creatures evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. We aren’t, as a species, spontaneously alive and devoid of historical legacy. We aren’t as independent as popular conceptions of free will insist we accept.
Humans are relational, interdependent animals whose behaviors, pathologies, and perspectives are motivated by historical and modern connections. We don’t act out of sheer uninterrupted clarity of desire; as individuals we are, from conception, “embedded in familial, social, and historical contexts” (Held, 2007, p.46).
“Humans surrender to the forces that have led them to where they are” (Deligny et al., 2015, p.76).
The current narratives around sex and queerness outside of queer spaces reject playful, experimental exploration in the bedroom (god forbid a sex club, you sinner!). Unless it’s within the confines of marriage, and even that has limits. No, every action of our lives that isn’t spent maintaining the working class and our abilities must be spent focusing on maximizing production for the business-owner. “Frivolous” pleasures (such as sex outside of child-rearing) are for the wealthy, the ones who have enough capital to step outside of prescribed action and norms. The rest of us can “choose” to reproduce, though the right to choose dissipates on the daily. As for queer people, well— they’d rather we didn’t exist.
Are we hopeless in our circumstances? Absolutely not. “We are not prisoners of our upbringing and circumstances. Our personal, familial, social, political, and economic relations with others enable or inhibit our access to significant options. And we are both enmeshed in and capable of shaping such relations” (Held, 2007, p.48).
We do what we can.
Sometimes the harlot— cloaked in shame, keeper of the underworld— waves Hecate’s lantern.
How can you feel ashamed in front of a whore?
My roommate sighs and slips on her helmet, preparing for her daily commute. “I hope you got good money for that.”
We both laugh. She says goodbye and disappears on her road bike. She’s headed downtown to entertain wealthy men, to sell them creature comforts. When she returns she’ll be exhausted. I check for a locked door behind her and head upstairs to climb into bed.
See also: The Madonna-Whore Complex.
References:
Deligny, F., Burk, D., & Porter, C. (2015). The Arachnean and other texts. Univocal Publishing.
Held, V. (2007). 3. The Caring Person. In The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political, and Global (pp. 44–57). essay, Oxford University Press.
Nagle, J., & Fabian, C. (2018). 3. The Holy Whore: A Woman’s Gateway to Power. In Whores and other feminists (pp. 44–54). essay, Routledge.
Negotiation always takes place.
This post rawks! I absolutely love the style of mixing fancy pants stuff like neuroscience and mythology with poor gagging Mark.
Watching this from the outside, it's worth acknowledging that the Bishop could have saved the day. He saw a scared kid on the edge of self loathing.
It would have been real cool if he would have said (just like the Dom did later), "Whoa whoa! This is all just a game! You can love whatever you want! In fact, this religions is supposed to be all about love and acceptance and taking care of each other even when it's weird stuff like what Mark is into!"
your writing is immaculate, and the insight and thought provocation from this piece is deep