Tag Archives: psychology

control, limerence, love, polyamory

On the nature of Love

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the nature of love over the course of my life.  Everyone seems to experience the expression of love in a slightly different way, and apart from being a place to rant about my discomfort with the state of the world, exploring the topics of love and limerence was part of my motivation for starting this site.

English is a very descriptive language.. it actually has more words than any other language, by a large margin, but I think that we sometimes miss with the focus for where we put those words, and that has some pretty dramatic implications for the way that the minds of native English speakers work as compared to everyone else in the world…

I tend to steal the Greek words when I talk about love – they had at least seven different forms.  Of course, because Latin is very dependent on Greek and English is very dependent on Latin, these words are often the roots of the words that we use in English anyway:

eros: this is the Greek word for ‘romantic love’ – but also lust – and as such is the most overused of these words.  Eros was specifically a word about sex though – it was, after all, the name of the Greek god of fertility. It was actually a frightening concept for them because it involves a sense of a ‘loss of control’ – which is commonly seen in art from and inspired by the period, including the very famous story of Cupid and Psyche wherein Cupid himself becomes overwhelmed by eros and tragedy ensues.  Using modern English words, the Greek concept of eros was probably far closer to limerence than love or even lust.

philia: this is what we might call ‘brotherly love’ – but it meant a great deal more to the Greeks – this is the word I use to refer to my chosen family.  To the Greeks, this was far preferable to eros.  This is the love that leads one to make sacrifices for others.  This is the love felt between soldiers on the same line – the kind of bond that remains in place no matter what barriers of space and time lie between the people for whom this bond exists, but the Greeks understood that even philia did not necessarily mean that both people in such a bond would be equally bonded.  I may be willing to sacrifice almost anything for you, but that does not necessarily mean that you would for me — that does not negate my own feelings of philia towards you.

storge: this is a special form of love that parents have for their children.  It’s akin to the above, but recognized to be a special case because there are ways in which you modify your own expectations and behavior for your children that you are unlikely to do for anyone else, even your romantic love(s).  This is really the only form of love that the Greeks thought had to be shared between both parties – because it was of an instinctual nature, beyond the view of the self.

ludus: this is what we might call ‘affection’ – it’s the love that children have for each other, or the physical aspects of love that are not carnal in nature – hugs, dancing, playing.  In our Western society, we tend to reserve expressions of this only for people with whom there are taboos involved that prevent sexual expression, which kind of perverts and cheapens it, if you ask me.

pragma: this is what I might call ‘patient love’ – it’s the love that you build over a long time with someone, that allows you to overlook small character flaws or acute events of an unpleasant nature and still keep a pristine mental image of the person that you care for.  This is ‘mature love’ – or what we expect most romantic relationships to settle into once eros has taken leave and you have a chance to return to your senses.

agape: this is also a pretty commonly stolen word, often misused because we don’t think like the Greeks did… this is ‘hippie love’ – or ‘love for everyone’ and sometimes referred to as ‘brotherly love’ as well, but in the “society is full of my brothers” sort of way, rather than, “I would die for that man,” sort of way.  This is really meant to be more like the Theravada concept of metta.  I fear greatly the expunging of agape from the minds of people, but that does seem to be the way the world is moving – division is the rule of the day, not love.

philautia: self-love… to be held in direct opposition to narcissism – this is the concept that all expressions of love for anyone are really just manifestations of your mind recognizing in other people things which you value in yourself – if there is nothing that you value in yourself, you cannot love anyone at all.

And all of this information is useful, but kind of secondary to the point that I’m trying to make, which is that when I say, “I love you” to someone – I may mean that I feel any or all of the above things in differing measures, and the phrase may not mean the same thing to everyone to whom I speak it – just as it doesn’t always mean the same thing when I hear it from different people.

For some people, love is a jealous thing – it is possessive… if I say “I love you” to someone, and I mean in a romantic sort of way, society tells me that I’m not supposed to say that to anyone else – but that doesn’t stop me from feeling it, and because I’m polyamorous, it doesn’t stop me from acting on it either, but that may not address the feelings of the person involved with me, and sometimes that can cause friction.

I don’t have a silver bullet here – jealousy is a very normal thing to feel, and there is no way to magically stop it if that is what you feel, but surprisingly I’ve also found that the converse of jealousy is often almost as important to some people’s feelings of love.  I have had partners who, while telling me of their interactions with other people, have wanted me to feel jealous and when I do not exhibit that kind of reaction, they begin to doubt the truth behind my statements of love.  If I am not jealous of them being with someone else, how can I really love them?  And yet, I do.

Love is one of those dangerous and chaotic things that makes our lives in this universe worth living, and yet it is also the one thing that has consistently laid me low when a relationship ends.  I don’t think I will ever completely understand its power or be able to control it, and perhaps that is why it is so compelling for everyone and the subject of so many works of art and media.

Hopefully by communicating about it, by understanding that there are different facets to it and how those things are each individual spectra of emotion, we can find a way to live beside it.

There is a reason why every pantheon of gods contains at least one, if not several, deities who are personifications of this powerful force in our lives.  Love is every bit as powerful as the sea or the wind or fire, perhaps even the Sun itself, and I consider myself fortunate to be its acolyte.

life, story

Being Damien

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This is not a post about kink – sorry… my soapbox, I get to talk about the things I want to.

Today I’m going to talk about what it’s like to be Damien. 

Damien is one of my alters.  If you don’t know what that means, educate yourself here or some of what I say next may not seem to make much sense.  But that’s okay, it probably won’t make much sense after you learn anyway.

Damien is one of the main three personalities that I express most often, along with Rant (that’s me), and Apollo.  

Damien is a bit of a handful…  He is very much in tune with my Dominant side, but he takes the things that I do and kicks everything up to 11.  He has no shame.  He has no fear.  He rarely forms attachments.  He believes himself to be good at everything.  Somehow he does this without attaching his ego though.  If you insult him, he’ll just laugh it off and then try to buy you a beer.  He is arrogant and charming at the same time.  It’s really kind of strange. 

Whereas I am very patient, compassionate, forgiving, and I do not judge people; Damien judges everyone and everything, he is not very patient, and he has been known to hold a grudge.  He is, however, generally kind and he will moderate his behavior when he knows that it would not meet with my approval… sometimes, anyway. 

We are both Hedonists, but while I enjoy wine, women, and song, he enjoys everything and everyone if the context is right.  He is very, very everything that he chooses to be, and he gives absolutely zero time and attention to the things that he does not care about. 

This incompatibility in our values can sometimes be difficult to deal with, especially when he acts out in a manner that would be inconsistent with what people have come to expect from me (Rant). 

I often find that I have to apologize for things that I don’t remember because Damien took something too far or stuck his face in someplace where he wasn’t necessarily welcome. 

However, being able to be Damien under the right circumstances is kind of a super power, and I wish I had more control over it.  He tends to come out on Wednesday nights, or if I’m super stressed out or otherwise emotionally overwhelmed, especially if I’ve been drinking – and it seems to matter very little how much I drink, even just a nip from my flask can bring him out if he’s lurking.   

He thinks that I am entirely too emotional and he has no problem telling everyone that.  In the beforetimes, he would try to pack as much activity as he possibly could into every time that he was at the fore.  He is well known for dragging people from one party destination to another, to another, and then finishing up with breakfast at 4am in a diner someplace, preferably one that sells pie.

Damien claims to have access to my memories, and sometimes I can remember his, but I do not understand how this works and while he claims he does, I don’t really believe him.  However, I can remember being Damien sometimes, and it’s a very different way to experience life.

I’ll almost certainly follow this up with another entry on what it’s like to be Apollo, but that is a more extreme shift.  Apollo actually experiences the world differently than I do, which is kind of hard to explain, but … that is also not this post.

Damien does not see the world particularly differently from the way I do, but he tends to ignore things a lot more than I do.   He is interested in the things he is interested in and nothing else matters.  This means that our behaviors are different in subtle and not-so-subtle ways…

Back in the beforetimes, if I had to navigate through a crowd, I would take a path that winds around people and other obstacles in my way, trying not to bump into people and letting the speed of the crowd slow my progress in order to avoid those sorts of unintended contact with people.  Damien – he walks a straight line and if you don’t get out of the way in time, he might run into you, but he’ll then stop and apologize and be very charming about it and probably get your phone number…

In the beforetimes, when I would go to a grocery store, I might take a cart and go up and down each and every aisle, looking to see if I find anything new and interesting that I might like and then take my stuff up to the front and largely wordlessly put my goods on the conveyor belt, help bagging them, thank the checker, pay and then leave.  Damien – he walks straight to the thing(s) he wants, grabs it, and then goes and flirts with people in line or with the checker while waiting for someone else to bag his stuff on the way out. 

He just sort of expects that everyone wants to please him all of the time, and he is correct more often than he has any right to be.  

One time Damien was at a nightclub and as they were closing and kicking everyone out, my girl went to the bathroom, leaving me standing there alone in the club, waiting for her and the bouncer told me to get out of the building.  Damien told him that we were waiting for my girl and that we would leave when she got out.  The bouncer decided that this was not sufficient and that we needed to leave immediately, so he got into my face a little bit.  Damien just laughed at him and said, “What do you think you are going to do?” and the bouncer just walked away without saying anything else.

Being Damien feels powerful, most of the time. 

I don’t really suffer from social anxiety all that much, but I think every person is affected by it from time to time – except Damien.  He walks into a room and expects to be the most intelligent, best looking, most captivating person there, and kind of just refuses to acknowledge any reality that may be different from that.  

As you can imagine, this does not always rub everyone the right way, however, he is so charming that most of the time he gets away with all of it.  He leans heavily on Apollo’s assessments of people and when he is interested in something, he pays very close attention to everything about it or them.  At the end of a single conversation with Damien, he can make people feel like he knows them better than anyone ever has before.  He can create instant connections with almost anyone if he wants to, and often he wants to, though his EQ is not quite as high as mine and sometimes I have to clean up his messes.

I really wish I had the ability to turn those sorts of abilities on and off at will.  It really does feel like a super power sometimes, and if I could control it, I wonder what doors it might open for me.  I doubt that it would change my life entirely, and Damien is far too polarizing as a personality to be able to be Damien all the time, but I do wonder what it might be like if I could be Damien whenever I wanted to be, especially if I could always remember the things he does along the way.

Being me is not easy, but Damien makes lots of parts of it fun in ways that I might never even think about.   He is in many ways like the brother I never had.  The pandemic has had him visit less regularly and for shorter periods of time, and I actually sometimes miss him, as odd as that may sound.

 

bdsm, control, dominance, life

The Zen Dom – as read by Rant

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Continuing in my series of audible blog posts, here is me reading one of my oldest, and probably most fundamental (about me) posts of the blog.

I hope that you enjoy.

The original post can be found here, and the text that I read is reproduced below.

You may have some questions about how it’s possible that I, admittedly a Dom, possibly a control freak, could possibly live without attachment.  It seems antithetical to the very mantle which I’ve just taken up, does it not?  I mean, the essence of Domination is control, and my own personal road to happiness was rocky and uncertain until I embraced that mindset for myself again and accepted my Dominant nature.  How could those two things possibly coexist in the same person?

Perhaps they are not as incompatible as they might at first seem…

Ever since I first read Leaves of Grass in high school, this has been a favorite passage of mine, from Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman.

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then, I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Even as a teenager, I understood and related to those words as part of the complex structure that makes up me and I have used them as a balm over the years to quiet my worried mind.

My personal journey to get to where I am in life now has been interesting, but I am finally and quite possibly for the first time in my life, happy.

I’ve studied many religions, practiced several, sought wisdom in self-help books and the writings of others.  I have been through individual therapy, group therapy, couples’ therapy, and psychiatric assistance.  I have used drugs, both natural and synthetic, prescribed for me or found through illicit channels.  I have done yoga, exercise, meditation, hypnosis, and attempted to express myself in art.  I have retreated into virtual worlds and even made my own.  I have worked as a video game programmer, for a private investigator, and even as a sex worker.  I have cleaved to my family and ostracized myself from them.  I have told the fortunes of others and cast rods to divine my own future.  I have been married, twice.  I have had several intimate relationships and lots and lots of sex.  I have driven fast cars and ridden running horses.  I have tried almost everything that anyone has ever suggested to me as a way to become enlightened, to lift my dark spirit and to try to find happiness.  It does not surprise me at all, today, that none of those things worked for me.

I am a Dominant.  I am an atheist.  I am a pacifist.  I am a father and a guide and a feminist.  I am worthy of being loved and I love myself.  I am calm.

Throughout all of those experiences that I detail above I fought my inner self.  I denied my feelings and persecuted myself, borrowing the Catholic guilt that I was raised with to hold my own desires at bay… I told myself that the me who desired to Dominate was wrong.  That each person is his own individual and it was wrong for me to want to have that authority over another.  I found myself submitting to others, not in the BDSM sense, but in a very real-world sense, all of the time.  I did not have the confidence to stand up for my feelings because they were wrong.  I hated myself for those horrible thoughts that I had about what I wanted to do and who I wanted to be.

How did I resolve that with letting go?

I stepped away from myself and looked at the dynamic.

I let go of my self hatred.  I let go of the assumed societal restrictions on permitted thoughts and desires and I accepted myself and my ‘dark’ side.  I have no desire to hurt anyone, quite the opposite, actually.  I have no desire to injure anyone, I have no desire to inflict unwanted pain, but there is also the pain that reminds you that you are alive and the pain the brings with it the intense emotional release that I got when I submitted to Simone.  There is such a thing as an embrace of pain that frees you from other pains.

I was molested as a young man.  It was no one in my family, and indeed, they still don’t know that it occurred and if this ever gets linked back to me and placed in front of them a great many uncomfortable discussions will likely result, but it happened and it turned me into a brooding, angry, anti-social young man for a long time.  Simone’s compassionate brutality helped me to face my demons and reclaim for me the things that were taken from me.  Some of them, anyway.

I Dominate those that give themselves to me willingly.  I will not accept submission from someone who is incapable of understanding what they are doing and I will not attempt to hold anyone who does not wish to be with me any longer or even those who can no longer benefit from doing so, whether they choose to see it or not.

This is a very scary thing.

Strong is the impulse to hold on, to claim a lover as mine and mine alone, but I know that I cannot be all things to all people, and no one person can be all things to me.  To truly open my heart, I must accept that now, in this time, at this place, this person is trusting me with herself and the joy that brings me is incomprehensible.  The joy that I feel when given that trust and that submission cannot be measured, and there is nothing wrong with me for feeling that way, just as there is nothing wrong with her for wanting to give herself to me in such a way.  These are maladaptive behaviors, perhaps.  They may be remnants of a primitive psychology, or they may simply be facets of a larger gem, I don’t know, but I want to know, and I will never give up exploring, and yet for now, right now, accepting is good enough.

Yes, I get off on having a pretty girl sit at my feet and lean on my leg and look up at me through long eyelashes with doe eyes and say, “yes, Sir.”  If I believed in any gods, I would invoke them now to prove the conviction behind my thought.  Once I thought that this made me a monster.  Once I thought that this meant that there is something wrong with me, but there is not.

I am a kind Master, and a brutal lover, and a king of my own domain, and the confidence that I have to be these things, and to love myself for them comes from letting go of everything, even those lovers and that domain itself, because wherever I am, it is with me, and whoever they be, I am loved.  And I am happy.

I am Rant.

control, dominance, instruction, life, sex work

How did you do it?

After people get beyond the novelty of talking with a former sex worker and I answer all of the questions that I did in my last post, the thing I most often get asked about is how it is possible for me to create connections with people right away.  

In the context of the work that I did for Mistress Simone, this was trivial.  I already had a certain amount of native talent in the area. I was fit, good looking, well spoken, and I have a fucking amazing voice.  The people that I saw were already primed and seeking a connection – all I had to do was not fuck it up. Of course, I still sometimes did – and not being an idiot, I try to learn from my mistakes and do better the next time, or at the very least, make new mistakes. 

All of those first-date like meetings served to teach me rather well in how to create a connection and how to maintain someone’s interest once I do.  As a result, I’ve created the neural pathways to instinctively know how to attract and maintain the attention of almost anyone.  

I don’t necessarily mean a romantic or sexual connection here – and it would be impossible for me to create such a connection with anyone, since there are at least a large number of people out there who would not find me attractive – at least, not right away.  But even when you are not taking sex into consideration, it is often very useful to be able to establish a connection right away, even if it is shallow.  This is a core skill for salesmen, or personnel managers, or product marketers, or just about anyone, actually. 

People are already hard-wired to look for connections.  Humans are social animals – without a clan, we die – and when an opportunity arises to meet a new person, you make a snap judgment – whether you want to admit it or not – about how you feel about that person.  Is this a person that I want to fuck? Is this a person that I want to talk to? Does this person make me feel threatened, or does this person make me feel safe? I can almost guarantee that all of those questions are going through your mind about every new person you meet, every time you meet someone new.  You may not be cognizant of them all at the moment you meet, and the answers to those questions can (and do) change – often quite quickly – but every person answers all of those questions, and dozens others besides, about every person they meet, within moments of meeting them.

The good news is that most people are actually pretty decent people, and that most people really do want a positive outcome to meeting anyone.  That does not mean that everyone wants to fuck you, but it probably means that more of them do than you realize. 

The worst part of this post is coming right now: there is a trick to it.

It’s not something that I started doing intentionally, but eventually I noticed the effect, and I can occasionally be something of a social scientist brat – so I performed experiments.  I talked to my friends in new ways, I talked to their friends and watched their reactions intently, and I interacted with total strangers.

It’s actually much harder to do this in the context of a normal social club/bar/party setting than it is as a contracted sex worker, but the stakes are also a lot less and I really didn’t care about being rejected – I was inoculated to rejection when I was a younger, more instantly visually appealing man.  Which is to say – I’ve been rejected a lot…

But I said there is a trick, and it would be really mean of me to mention it and not tell you, wouldn’t it?  So here it is: if you want to create immediate connection with someone, no matter their gender, age, or motivation, the answer is always the same…

Make eye contact and smile.

Seriously.  That’s all that’s needed.  Most of the time, you get a smile back and then you can move to the next step, but often you will get a shy look away or a terrified turn of the head or even see them get up and run away.  Don’t worry – you’ll get another chance, but there’s also the chance that they just don’t like what they see and you should give up.  

If they look away but eventually look back towards you, you can try it again one more time – but more than that and you are being creepy and need to stop.  Otherwise you’ll ruin my reputation. More often than not though, if you don’t stare at them and try to will them into talking to you, they will be intrigued by the non-threatening smile and return their attention to you and give you a better chance – but it’s a bold thing to hold someone’s gaze who isn’t expecting it, and it intimidates a lot of people at first.

The next step – and the crucial one, I’ve found – is to ask them for a favor.  It has to be something trivial that they can complete without needing any skill in a short period of time, and it cannot be in any way sexualized.  Anything creepy here is going to just push them away and tickle their ‘not okay’ vibes. Besides – you’re not in this for the sex anyway, because if you were, you’d be smart enough to realize that the best way to accomplish that is to just pay for it.

This will require you to actually think a bit, perhaps, but as a good example, imagine that you saw an attractive, clean-cut, non-threatening looking man smile at you and give you some time to react, then he gets close enough to ask a question and says, “Would you mind holding my drink for me for a moment?  I’ve just noticed that my boot is unlaced and I’d like to fix it.” Then he hands you his drink.

Most of you are thinking, “well, now I roofie him and when he’s good and lit, get him to take me back to his place where I fuck his brains out and then roll him for any cash he might be carrying on my way out – hoping never to see him again.”  

No.. wait.. That’s not what I want – and that’s only happened once…

But you do see the point, right?  You’ve created a connection, immediately.  You’ve engaged their compassion as well as curiosity and maybe lust. 

But isn’t this all terribly manipulative and premeditated and awful, Rant?  How is this different from any of that pick-up artist crap that you are always shitting all over?  Aren’t you just using psychological tricks to manipulate people?

Well – maybe.  But name any interaction that you have with anyone, ever, where there is not some form of manipulation taking place.   The whole point of communications is usually that there is something that I want (even if it’s pretty mundane) and I want you to help me with it in some way.  And more to the point – you do have to start somewhere, and while I could just stand next to someone until I hear something that I can talk about and then try to jump into the conversation… that is a really weak place to start, putting yourself in the submissive position before you even begin to communicate – verbally, at least.  

By asking for a trivial task to be accomplished, you’re giving your conversant the power to say ‘no’ and walk away, or to pick up the gauntlet and do something trivial in the interest of more conversation. And conversation is the goal here, so you have to follow up after this and actually have something interesting to talk about.  There must have been some reason you wanted to talk to this person. Maybe you overheard them talking about something you are interested in, or maybe you just really like the way they make that dress look and you want to fuck their brains out.  Talk about it – whatever it is – or let it go and forget about it entirely. 

Interesting – or perhaps the opposite, actually – is that this works equally well with people who are sexually attracted to me as those who are not.  In either case, I’ve engaged their curiosity and given them a focus, and then all I have to do is hold it. 

Of course – you must also be charming and debonair and have impeccable sartorial choices if you want to maintain this contact, and that becomes a much more involved process and there are no tricks for that – either you will establish a real connection, or you won’t – but that is entirely up to you.  The vast majority of the work involved in making a new connection is in those first moments of uncertainty, and by looking for a smile and asking for a favor, you can short circuit a lot of that. 

life, question, sex work

What was it like?

What was it like?

That’s the question I get more often than anything else.  It’s a part of my past, and there are posts about it here on this blog (starting here, and then going through parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 – and more to come) but once people learn that I used to be a sex worker, that is the question that I get more than anything else… 

 

What was it like?

 

Well – it’s not really an easy question to answer…  I could come up with some suitable metaphor if I spent a moment trying to do so, but that would only give you a part of the answer, and the real answer is quite complicated.  

It was different things at different times.

In the beginning, it was fucking awesome…  literally and figuratively.

Oh sure, I was terrified at first, but once I got over that and sort of jumped into it with two feet, it was really pretty amazing for awhile.  Though eventually I started to become unhappy. I had no control over my own schedule, no choice in who I saw, no vacation days, no benefits, and while partying all of the time can be great for a while, eventually I started to burn out and then I just wanted to be a real boy again.

And this is where I start getting interrupted with questions about specific things…

 

Did you ever have to have sex with a client that you didn’t find attractive?  

 

No – not really.  I worked for what amounted to a high-end brothel that operated right under the noses of everyone around, and maintaining such an enterprise required a lot of money, so my Mistress (Simone was her name) charged a lot for my time and kept the client list pared to those that properly fit in with her aesthetic.  I am still not 100% sure that I know what that was, but nearly all of my clients were married women in their 30’s and 40’s, and they tended to spend a lot of time and money on their appearance. They chose me not because I was younger/hotter/better than the men they could get – almost any of them could have easily found sex for free in the wild, but they were paying for discretion and often for a very particular set of interests.

It did happen that I would have to see clients at times when I was not particularly “in the mood”, and unlike my female counterparts, I did not have the option to just lube up and lie there, so I learned all about pills and creams and pumps and rings, and I employed them all from time to time.

 

But did you ever have to have sex with someone who was just fat or ugly?

 

No – I had clients who were overweight by society’s standards, even obese in some cases, but I would never classify someone as fat unless it was a name they claimed for themselves, and the only ugly I ever see is the kind that stains a person’s soul – and has nothing to do with their body.

 

Did you ever have sex with men?

 

No – or at least, I don’t think so… I was offered money to on several occasions – sometimes it was quite substantial, but trauma in my past has always prevented me from being sexual with men – at least from the active position, and if I were ever used as an inactive participant, I was not present for the act.

I used to be adamant that this never happened, but I get glimpses of memories that make very little sense otherwise, so I have to wonder what I don’t have full memories of… 

There was certainly a time where I could not conceive of the possibility that this may have occurred, and I will fully admit that even writing these words causes a spike of anxiety for me, but in retrospect it really makes very little sense that I never saw male clients. 

I was certainly involved in several group-sex scenarios where men were present.  I can remember those pretty clearly.

 

Where is the most interesting place that you have had sex?

 

Interesting is such a strange word… but my answer to this question is actually pretty easy, and it has nothing at all to do with my life as a sex worker.  

I had sex in the confessional of Saint Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco.  The only thing that would have made it better is if she had been wearing a nun’s habit when we did it.

I know.. I’m a blasphemous devil who will burn in hell for all eternity…  

I’ll keep the lights on for you.

 

How much money did you get?

 

Not as much as I should have…  this is not to say that I didn’t ‘sell’ for exorbitant prices – my time went anywhere from $200 to $700 an hour, depending on duration, activities, and when in my ‘career’ I was engaged.  However, Simone managed and held the money in almost every case. There were a few outcalls where I would be expected to collect the fee and return with it, but more often than not I saw people in the apartment that Simone provided for me and she handled the money before they ever arrived at my door.   She covered my expenses, kept me clothed and fed and housed, and gave me chunks of cash from time to time with the idea that I would use it to splash out and have fun of my own. It probably contributed to some of my idiosyncratic spending habits now… all of my day to day expenses were handled for me and I didn’t have to worry about them, and while I did have bank accounts and credit cards of my own – for the most part I always paid cash for everything and carried large amounts of it.

I honestly have no idea what my income was for the not-quite-two-years that I spend under Simone’s direction, but as I was her property, I didn’t decide many things and I didn’t really keep track of what I did.

I probably spent close to $50k in cash across the time I was with her, and my expenses probably ran close to $100k per year, but I was living at a much higher standard of living than I would have chosen for myself and didn’t have much choice in the matter. 

All told, if I had to do some diner napkin mathematics to guess at the totals… I probably cost Simone close to $200k per year, and I probably earned her about 3-4 times that, quite possibly more.. Most weeks I ended up with appointments for at least 15 hours – sometimes as much as 50 – but those were generally inclusive of longer sessions with discounted rates, so I’m not quite sure how it evened out.

The important thing to realize though is that I never really got to keep any of that.  Perhaps I could have been more responsible and pocketed or even deposited some of the cash that I was given, but I tended to spend it – just as Mistress Simone had instructed me to do, and often at the places where she instructed me to do it.  But it was not all bad – she took me shopping somewhat regularly and put me in expensive clothes (that I also didn’t get to keep) and generally kept me up well – I just had nothing to call my own, not even my body, and I viewed it all as normal and expected.

 

Did you ever have sex with any famous people?

 

Depending on how famous you are asking about.. yes, but no one on the A-list or anything like that.  More often they were important people than famous people.

 

Who were they?

 

I’m not telling you that.

 

How many clients did you have?

 

I had several regular clients who I would see on a regular schedule – or sometimes an irregular schedule, but I also saw a lot of clients only once.  I’d say it was close to a 50/50 split between clients that I saw only once and clients that I saw more often than that. Some of them would see me at the same time every week – almost like going to see a therapist or a chiropractor, and I suppose I served a very similar function to some of these women.

All told though, I don’t really remember how many it was over the span of my time working for Simone.  I tried to stop counting at 150, but ended up keeping track up to about 180 and then I really did lose track.

 

What was the weirdest session that you had?

 

There were a few that stand out, but I do think the mother/daughter doubles session that I had was probably the strangest.  The mother of the pair was a regular client of mine, and her daughter was a purported virgin at 26 and that was apparently a problem for both of them.  I would honestly have had no qualms at all about seeing the daughter in a separate session, but her mother brought her along to hers and was present the entire time. 

I did not end up interacting – physically – with both of them that day, I only interacted physically with the daughter while the mother watched and provided commentary and instruction – to her… it was all very odd.

 

Did you ever have a problem ‘getting it up’ with a client?

 

Yes, I did, but it was not frequent – and it was almost always because I was pushing my body too hard rather than anything else, though I can occasionally get in my own way, psychologically, as well.  I had a pump that I could use if I absolutely needed to have an erection, and strangely enough – even though I suspected that it would cause problems, it almost never did.

There are exceptions, of course… and I was punished for those.

 

Did you always have sex with your clients?

 

We always performed some sort of sex act, yes, but it was not always penis-in-vagina sex that was happening.  I had one regular client, in particular, who would visit me at the same time every week and have me spend her entire hour just going down on her as she climaxed over and over again.  We almost didn’t even speak about it. It was all very utilitarian, but she would usually orgasm around 20 times in the hour.

Some of my female colleagues would talk about their clients who would just want emotional intimacy and often only limited physical contact, but I never had a client like that.

My theory is that the women who would come to see someone like me had already made their choice and were not going to be dissuaded by last-minute cold feet that affected many of the men, or that the men sometimes rationalized things… right up until it came time to make the action that would be the point of no return in their mind.  The women had already passed the point of no return before they walked through my door. 

 

Did you ever get asked to do something you didn’t want to do?

 

Sure – that was pretty frequent.  Most of the time I had to do them anyway, but sometimes I was allowed to say ‘no’.

 

Okay – what kinds of things?

 

Well – I was not terribly keen on the mother/daughter virgin team that I talked about previously, and there were some of my clients who really enjoyed degrading me or physically causing me pain, and while I found that I could lean into the physical pain, my reactions to the degradation were all over the place and never positive. 

 

Did you ever fall for a client?

 

No – though I did have clients fall for me.

I was emotionally walled off from the ability to care for anyone other than Simone at that time of my life.  She was my world, and everything I did was to please her. 

 

Did you ever run into clients in ‘the real world’?  And if so, what did you do?

 

Yeah, I did – though rarely.. The places that I would go to socialize catered to a different caliber of folks than the pool of people from which Simone’s clients was taken. 

If I saw someone who I recognized from the job, I would pretend that I didn’t know them, even when one of them once made the mistake of recognizing me and then perking up to start to say something, realizing the company she was in, and then didn’t know how to handle things.  I told her politely that she must have made a mistake and that I have ‘one of those faces’ that everyone finds someone recognizable in. It helps that that is actually true. 

I have been asked other questions, of course, but these are among the most common.  If you have other questions that you would like to ask – I respond to emails as quickly as I am able, and you can always write in the comments section as well.  I will do my best to answer anything you ask.

question

PSA: No – some hacker did not record you masturbating

I’ve received dozens of emails like the following, where some ‘anonymous hacker’ writes to me and tells me that I have been caught masturbating and that if I don’t send them bitcoin really soon, they’re going to send a video of me masturbating to everyone in my contact list and completely ruin my life.  Given how common this is, the chances are pretty good that you have received a similar message as well, or that you will someday soon.

This email is from this past January – and while I did remove some of the parts about how to pay this guy, with what remains, you can clearly see that I’m well beyond the 72 hours that I was promised, and this ‘Brant’ did not even do me the service of sending people my masturbation video like he said he would.  How rude.  I’m pretty sure that most of them would have liked to see it…

LAST WARNING [email protected]!

You have the last chance to save your social life - I am not kidding!!

I give you the last 72 hours to make the payment before I send the video with your masturbation to all your friends and associates.

The last time you visited a erotic website with young Teens, you downloaded and installed the software I developed.

My program has turned on your camera and recorded your act of Masturbation and the video you were masturbating to. My software also downloaded all your email contact lists and a list of your Facebook friends.

I have both the 'Lordrant.mp4' with your masturbation and a file with all your contacts on my hard drive. You are very perverted!

If you want me to delete both files and keep your secret, you must send me Bitcoin payment. I give you the last 72 hours. If you don't know how to send Bitcoins, visit Google.

When you pay in full, I will remove both files and deactivate my software.

If you don't send the payment, I will send your masturbation video to ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND ASSOCIATES from your contact list I hacked.

You саn visit the police but nobody will help you.
I know what I am doing. I don't live in your country and I know how to stay anonymous.

Don't try to deceive me - I will know it immediately - my spy ware is recording all the websites you visit and all keys you press.
If you do - I will send this ugly recording to everyone you know, including your family.

Don't cheat me! Don't forget the shame and if you ignore this message your life will be ruined.

I am waiting for your Bitcoin payment.

Brant
Anonymous Hacker

P.S. If you need more time to buy and send 0.587043 BTC, open your notepad and write '48h plz'. I will consider giving you another 48 hours before I release the vid, but only when I really see you are struggling to buy bitcoin.

I would really love to just eviscerate this message, because there are so many things here that simply make no sense – like, anyone who knows me knows that I don’t have an active facebook presence, so threatening to use my facebook contacts is a pointless threat, and there are numerous other reasons why this is ridiculous, but I don’t really have time for that…

I will admit though, I do kind of like the whole “type ’48 hr plz’ into notepad” thing – that implies scrutiny is continuing, which ups the fear level a bit.

It is admittedly pretty scary, if this is something that you would pay attention to or be scared by.  And with shows on TV like Black Mirror and all of the other various techno-dystopian views being presented to us all of the time, along with real threats like identity theft, this can be a very disconcerting thing.  However – I can authoritatively say that I’ve received many, many messages like the above and never once has anyone ever been shown a video of me masturbating – even if they really wanted to see it.

This is not to say that things like this are impossible – it’s certainly within the realm of possibility, which is probably why it is an effective scam, but that’s really all that it is, a scam – it’s not true extortion and you’re better off keeping your money or your bitcoin to yourself and just deleting the message from your inbox.

control, dominance, life

The many faces of Rant

2 Comments

I have made a number of difficult admissions through this site.  This is probably the most terrifying thing I’ve ever contemplated posting to a public site and it has nothing to do with BDSM but everything to do with me.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I have been through psychotherapy and have been on prescriptions for psychoactive drugs at various times in my past – over the course of writing this blog, even.  However, I have not been completely open about one of the more challenging aspects of my atypical neurology, and in order to be consistent with my mission, I have to be unflinchingly transparent and vulnerable, so here I am…

I have Dissociative Identity Disorder.

For those of you who don’t know what that is,  you can follow the link above or just accept that it is the current accepted terminology for what used to be called multiple personality disorder.  There is literally more than one person living in my body – though the degrees to which they make themselves known can vary tremendously.

The ways in which it can manifest are legion, and I have been in deep denial about my own condition for years, which created more than a few problems for me.  I was able to conceal it from almost everyone, even from myself – perhaps most especially from myself, by being paranoid and attempting to control every aspect of every moment of every day of my life.  I spent huge amounts of mental and even physical energy in just monitoring myself for consistency and trying to portray an unbroken narrative for myself and everyone who interacts with me.

It was exhausting.

I developed habits though… I repeat myself a lot, both in written and verbal communications.  Most people completely fail to notice, but those who do tend to think that I am merely emphasizing the things that I want to say for effect – and often that is the case, at least in part, but sometimes I’m also doing it so that I can make sure that I will remember…   I meditate – and when I forget to do that, or when life gets in the way too often and I don’t make the time – I suffer for it. I use drugs to force my mind into the state I want it to be in sometimes as well. Nootropics and psychoactive chemicals are my friends and allies.

The memory gaps are the worst thing.

I can be working, sitting at my desk, writing code and being in the zone, and then I will lose track of time and space and my consciousness will return and I will find myself in a completely different part of the office or in the kitchen or even in my car, completely unaware of hours of time that have passed where I have had conversations with coworkers, accomplished work goals, even eaten meals or used the bathroom.  That happens with some frequency, and I’ve just grown accustomed to it. I have learned to ask leading questions and prompt people to fill in missing information for me in conversations all of the time, because when I’m at work, about a third of the time it isn’t really me there.

Sometimes when I go out to my favorite weekly event – Bondage a Go Go – I will end up finding myself at home in bed and not remember how I got there.  Sometimes there are people with me throughout this entire process – my former partner would frequently accompany me to and from BaGG and spend the night with me, and often I would not remember things from some point after our arrival until the next day.  Often pieces will come back to me, but sometimes they won’t – until my personality shifts again, and then all of the corresponding memories come flooding back in again, only to be lost anew when I shift again.

My personality shards – my alters – to use the common parlance, each have different motives and desires and personalities and while I am fortunate enough that these are almost always in concert with each other, sometimes they are not.  Sometimes they even conflict with each other… and as you can probably imagine, this makes dealing with me difficult sometimes.  I can seem like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at times, I’m sure.

Recently, this has all been very different though – and not in a very flattering way.

When I was suppressing the expression of personality shifts, I would minimize the impact, even when they happened.  I would go on with life as if I was always the one at the controls and while I had gaps in my memory of things, I could usually fill them in pretty effectively and by denying the gaps existed, I was presenting myself and everyone around me with an unbroken narrative.

And that is how we experience the world, I’m realizing… I mean, I’ve always known this, but it is not something that I usually spend much time thinking about.  We experience everything as a continuous story, beginning when we are born and ending when we die.  This is the normal, expected, and understood way in which people live their lives – when you’re trying to explain anything to someone else, one of the most effective ways to do that is to relate it with a story.  

With the exception of our daily sleep periods, humans experience their entire world as an unbroken narrative.

Except — I don’t.  There are breaks in the narrative for me – every day.  When I was not monitoring myself as much, and when I denied my interior pieces, I failed to notice this, but the narrative of my life is not unbroken – and there are pieces missing for me all of the time.

I had no idea how much this was affecting me.

To be experiencing so much missing time and to be openly accepting the transitions was causing my mind to fragment even more.  Personality characteristics that are dominant with one alter were beginning to bifurcate more tenaciously and rapidly, leaving my dominant self, the one who I most often consider to be me, with the least agency that I can remember ever having.  

The parts were growing at the expense of what remained of me.

For some reason that I can’t explain – maybe it’s self-selection bias, maybe it’s something else – the BDSM community seems to be home to many more people with DID than would match population statistics.  I know several people in my local scene who also have DID and one of the more fascinating things to me is how the disorder manifests differently in different people.

Most of my friends and acquaintances who have the disorder have the ability to conduct conversations between their alters within their own mind.  The only way that I have ever been able to have an actual conversation with a different part of myself was very recently when I was staring at myself in the mirror and having a conversation with myself.  

My alter – who is known as Damien, though he doesn’t refer to himself that way except to note his presence to those in the know – would talk through my mouth at me as I stared at the mirror, and he would respond to things that I thought back at him – so anyone watching the conversation would only hear Damien’s voice, and I imagine it would have been really fucking freaky to watch.

Damien told me about the world as he sees it, a little bit about what he wants, and a lot more about how he wanted my former partner to succeed, and plans for how she can probably do that.  He told me about his disappointment in me. He told me that he does not understand why I let myself get hurt, and he offered to take over for me. Permanently.

I almost let him.

It is something that I still think about.  Since having that weird conversation with myself a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been unstable.  I have a very hard time concentrating on anything at all. I can tell that he feels much more stable, more in control, more complete than he used to be.  

A completely different alter – one who lives in a very different world than I do, and who believes in things like magic and supernatural connections between things – led Damien and I through a ritual that was intended to close some of the gaps in my memory and help him to cope with the fact that his carefully laid plans were falling apart and give him some broader context in which to operate.  

As far as I can tell – from his perspective – it was a complete success.  I feel slightly more grounded than I did, and it did return a small portion of the personal agency that I feel was eroding, but he is resplendent.  He has been staying out of the light because I did not accept his offer to take over control for me, but his fear and doubt are gone, and mine still remain – and may be even greater, and while I don’t actually know if his offer is still valid, it tempts me even now.

But it is a terrifying thing.  It feels like a lesser form of suicide.  If I do this – who will I really be? I know that I won’t disappear entirely, Damien doesn’t when he is no longer in control – and he continues to learn and grow.  

I am nearly certain that this is something that I have already done once before – not to let Damien take over for me, but for me to take over for the one who could no longer handle living.

I may very well be the result of a first suicide of this type, and the original progenitor me is still locked inside me somewhere, but he never comes out anymore – would that be my fate if I were to surrender to the more Dominant part of me?

Who knows?  Perhaps it is all delusion anyway.

I’m still too afraid to try – still too afraid to know.

And so – I remain Rant.   For now.

 

community, control, life, love, subspace

Words have power

1 Comment

My life is awesome.

What appears below the fold, after this entry (and now encapsulated as a part of it), is a piece of writing that I first posted to my fetlife account about five months ago.

In it, I recount a rather simple change in the way that I interact with the world.  I literally changed one phrase that I commonly uttered to another phrase that had exactly the same meaning in my own mind, but where the words that I used to express it were different – in a rather fundamental way.

Think of this as the update that I hinted at with the original fetlife post – and a way for those of you who do not know me on fetlife to catch up to an important change in the ways that I perceive and interact with the world.

Six months ago, when my friends would ask me, “Rant – how are you doing?”  my response would likely have been, “I’m alive.”

Six months ago, when my friends would remark on how well things appeared to be going for me, I would agree with them, but I would say, “Yeah, my life doesn’t suck.”

Six months ago, my trademark method of self-expression was to use understatement as a means of conveying my real feelings.  If I were to ever say something like, “It’s better than a sharp stick in the eye,” what I would really mean is, “It’s fucking amazing.”

It was an inside joke.  It was a ‘clever’ way to express myself without overextending myself.  I felt like those that really knew me would know the difference, and it would mean that I was somehow at least understood a little bit by a small number of people in a way that is not obvious to the uninitiated, and for some reason, that was important to me.

But, fuck, was it a limitation on how awesome my life could really get… and that was something that I completely failed to anticipate.

In the past several months, I’ve taken that narrative and completely rewritten it.

When my friends ask, “Rant – how are you doing?” I emphatically reply, “My life is awesome!”  and I mean it.  

When my friends remark on how well things are going for me, I don’t respond with, “Yeah, my life doesn’t suck.”  Instead, I say, “Yeah, I know! My life is fucking amazing!” and I mean it.

Oh sure, I have off days.  Today is kind of an off day.  Life has been keeping me very busy, and while 90% of those things are wonderful (at least for me) and I would not trade places with anyone I know or even that I know of, not every day is perfect.  

I wish I had more time to write.

I wish I could finish Part 8 of My Personal Journey (and Part 9, and 10, and however many more parts it will take to finish).  I wish I had time to compose the follow-up to my piece on subspace that I’ve been tinkering with for years. I wish I had time to write general responses to some of the questions that I receive in email rather than just barely keeping up with responding within a week or so on an individual basis.  I wish I had time to finish the novel that I have decided to complete and try to get published before the end of next year. But the things that keep me away from doing the things that I want to are just some of the most amazing and wonderful things I could ask for…

I am living a life of embarrassing riches in terms of love and joy.  I have the respect and support of dozens of people in personal, romantic, and professional capacities.  People want to be around me.  

This is not exactly new – but my previous self-deprecating behavior was serving as a barrier to forming new connections and standing in the way of expanding or strengthening those that existed.  My confidence and competence were always there, but my demeanor was standoffish or aloof or even anti-social and it was limiting me in ways that I didn’t even understand.

Words have power.

I’ve known this for a long time.  I’m a writer, after all.  And even before I could recognize that, I always had the capacity to be persuasive and elicit responses in the people with whom I would interact should I choose to make the effort – I just rarely did… and I have no idea why.

Perhaps I was afraid of rejection – that was certainly at least part of the problem.  While I’ve always had reasonably high self esteem – years of social pressure to be like someone I am not turned me into a bitter and angry man at points of my life, and even when I thought I was out from under the weight of those things, when I thought that the stark depression that kept me holed up inside my house for days at a time was gone for good, I was still not realizing my potential because I was holding back.  I was holding back with my actions, and I was holding back with my words, and I was holding back with my emotions.

Deciding to never hold anything back any longer and believing that I have the power to overcome any awful thing that life might throw at me, and then proving it to myself, over and over again, with everyday annoyances and life-shattering realizations, was the thing that opened the world to me.

I am living my on my terms now – and part of the reason for that was really just as simple as choosing more carefully the words that I say.

It’s been awhile since I’ve said it, but I am Rant.

This was neither a rant nor a story nor a lesson, and it may be ultimately nothing more than a piece of mildly masturbatory self-praise, but it is my truth for now, and my life is awesome.

What follows is the text of the original fetlife post.  There are reasons why I won’t link from here to there, but I will likely repost this to fetlife as well and link there to here.  Feel free to drop me an email if you’d like to understand the reasons why or if you’d just like to let me know that personal stories like this are something you actually care to read – or use the comment form below.  

I will find a way to carve out more time for Part 8 soon – do not despair.

Until then – I remain…

 – Rant

My life does not suck.

It’s a mantra… almost a catch-phrase. It’s a common part of my personal vernacular, and it’s undoubtedly true. I use it to express pleasure.

But words have meaning, you know?

My life does not suck is the thing that I tell my friends when I am happy.

I say My life does not suck when I realize that the choices I have made have led me to a place, or a person, or an event where I feel at home.

But a friend recently pointed out to me that there is a kernel buried deep within that phrase – that it conveys doubt or uncertainty.

At first I blew him off – I don’t mean anything bad by the phrase, I see it as a refutation of a state that feels unpleasant. I see it as a positive affirmation of my choices and direction.

But words have meaning, you know?

Yesterday, before meditating, this was one of the last thoughts to pass through my mind. An offhand comment at a party where I had a hard time hearing over the din led to days of percolating thoughts and introspection.

I kind of love it when things like that happen.

They give me a chance to see the things that are hidden from my attention, but that have an effect on me, my presentation to the world, and even how I see myself at a subconscious level.

To say My life does not suck is the bare minimum above My life sucks.

Does this mean that I am afraid, most of the time, that my life does suck?

I do often feel misplaced, like I don’t fit anywhere, like no one will ever really understand me. This community accepts me, but still does not understand me. The moments when I feel like I belong are few and far between, but I fake it as best I can.

Am I contributing to that feeling with the words that I use, even if the meaning is completely distinct in my own mind?

I’m still not sure, but while my life does not suck, from now on I think I am going to say My life is awesome! instead – even when I am not feeling quite that strongly that it does.

We shall soon see what difference, if any, this makes…

 

bdsm, life

Second Interlude: The Ravings of an Insomniac

It’s just after 3 am where I am, and I am – obviously – not sleeping.

Insomnia is one of the side effects of the work that I’m doing to purge my demons.  Of course, insomnia has been something that has plagued me for most of my life – reaching back to these very same events that I am trying to relate here.

It’s almost certainly appropriate that the song I’m listening to as I write this is My Demons, by Starset.

I had planned to write something different here, but something within needs to get out now, so here I am.

I’ve been to see many counselors and healers of various different specialties.  I’ve been on drugs, both the prescribed-for-you kind, and the self-medicating variety.  I’ve meditated and even cast spells in an effort to push the memories away, but they will     not     die.

I know that every event in my life has contributed to make me who I am today, and for the most part, I am proud of that man, so I do not express the opinion lightly that despite that pride, and even against the chance that I am now a better person than I would otherwise have been, I wish I could undo certain things from my past.

I have striven to make amends for all of my past mistakes, and I am content with what I have been able to accomplish in that regard. Those are not the things of which I speak.  I would have that younger me not endure the things the he did…  and I feel terribly selfish for thinking that.

It’s not just possible, but likely, that without the experiences that I have had, that I would not be nearly so compassionate, kind, or thoughtful.  Without the suffering, I would likely not have learned empathy to the extent which I have.  Without the years of bitterness and resentment, I would not have built a stronger character that can weather hardship without becoming spiteful.  Without my relationship failures, I would not have been introduced to BDSM, I would not have had children, and I would not have started this blog.

I know that my reach is not vast and that this is an insignificant piece of a vastly larger construct, which is, itself, infinitesimally smaller against the vastness of the universe itself.  What I do or don’t do does not change the course of things much.  However, as a result of this blog, I’ve met some of the very best people from all over the world.  I’ve made durable, lasting, loving friendships that I treasure.  I’ve been told more than once that my message and compassion have saved a life.

And I would wish all of that away if I could.

Sometimes I wonder if the demons are me.

I feel weak.  Most of the images that I would wish away are not even real.  At least, that is what I tell myself, as I hide behind my bastion of science that does not allow for such things to exist.  But either way, most of the images that I would wish away, changing the course of time, are not even real.  So I am weak, and to be rid of these unreal, troubling images, I would undo all of it.

One of my psychologists was very interested to know about my views on religion, and asked me to question my own adherence to atheism, pointing out that because one cannot prove that God does not exist, atheism is as much a matter of faith as Christianity.

I made a pithy remark about the tenuous existence of a God whose existence depended on the logical fallacy of proving a negative, but there was no real passion behind it, and I realized that whether she was right about atheism being a matter of faith or not in general, it didn’t matter at all, because for me, it was.

I had to believe that there was no such thing as God, because if there was, then the things that I took part in were real. I had to believe that the supernatural was impossible, because if it was possible, then the things that I saw were true.

I have always been a firm believer that observable events always have rational explanations, even if sometimes those explanations are not something that we understand just yet.  But for a time, even that definition was too permissive.  That might mean that the things I witnessed were real, just not something I could understand, and that is an even more terrifying idea.

I’m in nowhere near so fragile a place now, and writing things here does help.

I know that my experiences were drug induced – poisons, really.   That is all the rational explanation I need.  It fits.  And with the exception of the occasional late-night bout of insomnia, I really am dealing with it much better now, on my own path.  I know that I will soon be to a point where I can get past the hold these things have on me, where I can use the experiences that I had to help others heal, and I know that the journey is worth the sacrifice, but sometimes I wish that younger me, the one who was curious and bold, would not have had to be broken first, and that I didn’t sometimes become him again in my dreams.

 

 

control, life, story

My Personal Journey : Part 3

Part 3:  Power corrupts

I am going to stop making promises about how far I will get with this story in each installment – since I quite obviously have more to say on some of these topics as I commit them to the page than I initially thought.  So – from now on, I’ll just keep adding parts of my story to the journey as it unfolds.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the fact that this post took me awhile to get up because of the effects that writing it had on me.  I began by writing about the change of power dynamics in the Lodge, and how that affected me both then and now, but as part of writing that, I began to relate in some detail one of the rituals that I was always the center of attention for, and as I was writing it, I started to re-experience the feelings that I had, and I had to stop.  I have cut most of that, but I’ve left what I can, for now.

One could be excused for thinking that the feelings that bothered me so much were feelings of victimization or exploitation, but that’s not what really bothered me.  I felt megalomaniacal, with delusions of grandeur.  I’ve been having some small amount of difficulty in keeping these feelings from bleeding over into my day-to-day life. , but I think I’ve managed to normalize things at this point.  I am somewhere in the middle of where I want to be: warm and open, honest and bold – and where I was: cold and closed, aloof and narcissistic.  I’m not as open and warm as I was just a few weeks ago, but neither am I as aloof and unconcerned as I was twenty years ago.

But to get back to the story…

My interactions with Joe’s extended family and a few others from the neighboring communities started to have a profound effect on my view of myself as a man over the next couple of years.  I will refer to this extended group of followers from now on as the Lodge (since that was how we referred to ourselves).

My interactions with the Lodge began to take on more and more ritually significant roles, and either by fate or happenstance, this coincided with my own realizations concerning my atypical neurology and how I interacted with the world.  This would prove to have a profound effect on who I became and the decisions that I would make for the next decade.

However, in order to understand how this happened, it is first necessary to explain something about the central concept at the core of our beliefs – the Thelemic concept of True Will.

I could probably write a book on that subject alone, but to provide just a small bit of context so that this makes sense, I will relate the two meanings that the concept of True Will carries.

Firstly, the meaning given to the outer order and the world at large – and the only official definition – is basically this: every person has a ‘best path’ – or True Will – for them to live in this life, and as long as you stay on that path, you will be happy and things will be easy for you.  All of the things that are stressing you out now are things that are happening because you are not aligned with your True Will.  This concept goes a bit further and early induction rituals involve contacting your own personal Holy Guardian Angel to help reveal your True Will, but basically you are told that there are different voices within that speak to you about what you should do, representing different facets of a cognitive being that connects us all, and you need to be able to filter out the voices that do not belong to you and that once you do that, everything will be perfect for you.

Secondarily, there was the meaning given to the inner circle.  This may have been unique to our Lodge and my future interactions with members of the more official Ordo Templi Orientis would indicate that they do not generally acknowledge any other interpretation of True Will.  Whether this facet was a perversion unique to Frater Jubal (for he did claim to have secrets) or a more widespread ‘inner doctrine’ I do not know, but the gist of this facet of True Will is this:  as long as you are aligned with your True Will, you can do no wrong.

That is a very simple statement to encompass a much broader range of things, but that was the justification for every evil thing done by Joe or myself or any other member of the inner circle of the Lodge.  If I am acting on my Will, what I am doing is absolutely – even Divinely – right.

Tying destiny and will together like this is insidious.

And then Joe did something that I’m certain every other Thelemite would balk at – he told me that I had the power to read others’ True Will.

According to everything that I had read, this should not be possible.  One’s own True Will should only be revealed through a few specific rituals or ordeals.  But Joe called me an Ascendant Being and told everyone that I had the ability to read their True Will, putting me in the position of being the Lodge fortune teller, for the most part.

In retrospect, I see it as a cunning move on his part.  He thought he could control me, and he saw the opportunity to use a smart, observant kid to gain even more control over his flock.

I actually have no idea if this was his true motive or not, but it certainly makes a great deal of sense.  By not claiming the power for himself, Joe was being falsely humble, and by telling the members of the Lodge that I had the ability to read their True Will, and then ‘guiding’ me to do so in such a way as to get everyone to do what he wanted them to, Joe was able to elevate himself – and me – from teacher/priest to demigod.  Suddenly, if you had too much difficulty with the initiation rites (which was a very common problem for new acolytes), you had another option – you could just ask me.

This made me indispensable,  and Joe continued to groom me to ascend to leadership positions within the Lodge.

This break from previous teachings actually caused a few people to leave, but those who remained were even more loyal and bound to us.

Ultimately though, this would prove to be the linchpin that gave way and allowed me to escape the Lodge.

As I grew older and more confident in my abilities (and while there was always a part of me that knew that something wasn’t quite right, I was, for the most part, a believer at this point) I began to disagree with Joe.

I can still vividly remember the argument that he and I had after I had read someone’s Will and gave a different pronouncement than Joe had pre-suggested to me that I should tell her.

It was a direct challenge to his authority, and he began as you might expect, by distancing himself from me and pronouncing that I had strayed from the path, appealing to the Lodge to oust me, for the most part.

It worked too – but only because I let it, and realizing that has been one of the biggest events of my life.

He made certain that our argument was very public, and while Joe was a very smart man, he was outclassed in this fight.  He said that I had lost my way and that I would need to do penance to find my way again.  This was not the first time that he suggested that I would need to do penance, but it is the first time that I disagreed.  I took Joe’s own words that he had previously lavished upon me when I was a more timid, more compliant acolyte.  I stopped speaking to Joe, even though he was the one in front of me – I started speaking to be heard – and I said that as an Ascendant Being, my mastery of Will was complete, and that as an avatar of the Lightbringer, I was the only being capable of discerning the Truth, and that, indeed, Joe had lost his way.

The last part is almost certainly actually true, but I no longer cared.  I was about to leave for college and I was beginning to see things for what they truly were – a dangerous cult built around some stolen ideas and a charismatic personality.  I was happy to let that argument be the last interaction that we had before I moved hundreds of miles away.

It wasn’t until much later that I would begin to understand the actual value of the things that I was taught and to use the gifts that Joe had helped me to hone in reading people as a way to gain personal power, and even later than that before I realized that to be such a creature would be to lose myself completely.

When I was 18, I graduated from high school as Salutatorian and left behind my small rural home town.  I would spend a few days back in my parent’s home during that first year away, but after that, I would limit the amount of time that I spent in the area, even to the point of seeking poorly thought-out plans to ensure that I wouldn’t have to return.

One of those would result in an early and inappropriate marriage – and the other would result in sex work and my first introduction to BDSM.

I’m nowhere near done yet…

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