On Portland, Chastity Belts and Misleading Airbnb Descriptions -L.
Monday, June 5th, 2023:
I just got my hair cut. Only the tips are a reddish-orange still, the lingering remains of my purple hairdo for Greece two summers ago.
After the trim, the hairdresser blow-dryed it.
It feels glorious. Soft, smooth, silky. I wish it could look like this all the time!
I’m recovering from my weekend. Too many things all at once tipped me off my center and I went drifting, drifting away.
Summer is here. My nasturtiums have burst into bloom, and the basil doubled in size last week! Part of me wants to go into the woods this summer, but the other part of me is like, What do I do with my terrace and my gazillion house plants?
I wonder if Riley wants to house-sit this summer.
I wonder if they would keep my house cleaner than Gale’s…
I saw Gale last week, at a singing potluck. A mutual friend was hosting. It was nice.
I didn’t go to the spa with her, earlier that day. Instead I told her we needed to talk.
It was a really hard decision but it felt very much like the right one.
She said she agreed, that we shouldn’t keep brushing things under the rug.
Of course, who knows when she’ll stop moving long enough for us to sweep it back out again.
But that’s okay. We can take our time.
The sensitive thread I have with my mom got really intense really quickly.
And in other news…Etienne is back in Montreal!
Oh, my life.
Marisol and Andrés are coming over for dinner. They’re going to help me with the Spanish portion of this weekend’s presentation, and I’m going to cook us sausages.
They’re bringing the wine.
I had sworn off of wine, after my last trip to Gale’s. Apparently age 37 is the year I start getting wine-hangovers.
But part of me wonders if it was a Gale-hangover, because I cautiously drank a glass and a half on Shabbos, and lived to tell the tale.
Mindy and the troupe have landed in New England. Four hours away. Practically neighbors.
Last week I jumped into a Communauto and headed down to Lake George to meet up with Rosie and Grace.
I hadn’t seen Grace in a decade. The last time was at Rosie’s wedding. It was a simple, last minute backyard affair. Sekhar and I drove up from Pennsylvania to Connecticut to toast the bride and groom. I think we drove back down on the same day.
Right afterward, Rosie moved to Hawaii. I had seen her a few times over the years, but I hadn’t seen Grace.
“Wait, really? You haven’t even talked since then?” asked Rosie. We were sitting in our tiny little cabin in the kitchenette, eating some angel-hair pasta with chicken that they had whipped together the night before. The cabin boasted very little in the way of amenities except for the extravagant wood-carved furniture upon which we were sitting. The woodwork was very pretty, but we all would have traded it in for some more comfortable beds.
“I mean…we were never really friends, independently of you,” I explained a little apologetically. I hoped I hadn’t said anything wrong, but relaxed when I saw Grace nodding in agreement.
We had picked Lake George because it seemed to be the perfect halfway meeting spot. Rosie had found the place on Airbnb. Perhaps if we had looked a little bit more closely, we would have realized it was actually a string of motels, rather than the small grouping of rustic cabins that the description alluded to.
They blatantly misrepresented most of that description.
But it didn’t matter. We had good food, art supplies, and a joint Rosie had found just for me. Grace brought her jewelry-making kit and taught me how to make earrings!
“It must have been the age difference,” I said later that day. We were all chatting and I caught myself thinking, why hadn’t Grace and I been friends?
“When I was 13, Rosie was 16. That’s a bit of a jump, but not too bad. You were 18, though, Grace. That’s a bigger one.”
“I think you’re right,” said Grace.
“I was always worried you’d think I was immature,” I said. “I wanted to act all grown-up like my brother.”
“Like Joseph?!” Grace said with an unexpected chortle. “You were way MORE mature than him!”
Oh. Hmm. Interesting.
Tuesday, June 13th, 2023:
It feels like it’s been a hundred gazillion bajillion years since last I wrote. And it’s not just my imagination, either. In the whole month of May, I only wrote one post. Granted it was long, but certainly not my longest!
I just booked a tiny home in the woods, though. For nine days.
I know the muse maaay not follow me there, but I’m certainly hoping it does.
I’m going to turn off my phone, fire up my laptop, and write.
I don’t think I’m even going to have Internet.
Eek!
I’m doing the laundry. It was time. I had no clean underwear left.
Well, I had one pair, which I don’t really like so I always shove to the bottom of the pile and never actually wear it. It’s too tight around the thighs.
Did you know that some people wear thongs for, just, relaxing in?!
I thought thongs were one giant wedgie you wore to impress a boy and took off as quickly as possible.
But apparently sometimes they’re comfortable. I’m going to myth-test this and I’ll get back to you.
Today was Day 2 of Gale’s 7-day Dance Extravaganza. It’s a festival she hosts every year, except during the pandemic when it was cancelled.
Last year I was supposed to teach there, but then I got Covid.
That was one of the first things I wrote about in Life and Love in La Ville.
You know what that means, don’t you?
It’s been a year since I started writing this blog.
This is scheduled to be my 82nd post.
Gah gah gah gah gah gah!
I was initially planning to either take a rest day or bump out early, assuming I could see Mommy, but the universe had other plans.
Headache got me. Go have fun, kitten.
Gah gah gah gah. Poor Mommy!
When the universe sends Mommy her BNH attacks (that’s our nickname for Back Neck Head), she can’t even move to reach her phone to text me, usually.
But I am under strict instructions not to dwell on Mommy’s pain, so usually I just dwell on my own, in the form of I miss Mommy gah gah gah gah gah.
This is what I tried to explain to my mother in our Be Careful Thread, the one where she’s asking me all about the submissive stuff.
I’m not sure what she thought of the explanation and I’m too nervous to check. I’ll wait until I’m ready. There’s a part of me that feels pre-emptively sad that by sharing this blog with her, I’ve ruined my mom’s impression of Dee. The last messages she sent me were all about how it seems to her like I am lonely and Dee isn’t around for me.
And I was like, Um, yeah. That’s because I wrote those posts when I was lonely and Dee wasn’t around for me! But, that’s okay! I don’t mind missing her sometimes. Plus, I don’t write about the entire days and weekends we spend together, because I’m too busy not being lonely and the bliss is sometimes too hard to put into words!
I think that by talking about BDSM and Domination (which our relationship really isn’t about, anyway; she’s my Mommy and I’m her little girl, which is different. I tried to explain that to my mom, too, but it was like trying to explain an entirely different language. Different universe. Different…everything) I’ve led my mom to think that she’s just some power-hungry pain-inflicting meanie.
Which she isn’t!
Believe me, I’ve met those before. I’ve studied the difference. Thoroughly.
But I have to let my mom live her own process, just like I live mine.
Outrageous!
I checked my bag the other day, traveling home from Portland. Oh yeah! I went to Portland and I had a really good time. Like, so much fun!
I was Super Boss Bitch by day, and Baby Girl by night.
I met Lizzie’s mom for lunch (Joseph’s mother-in-law), and shopped in stores that sold gem stones tarot cards, and volumes of sets on Fairy Magick (I wanted to buy everything but stuck to diaries, because, who wrote those books, anyway?)
I took myself on a shopping spree and bought some ridiculously respectable-looking professional clothes. Plus a teeny pink tank top.
Auther’s note: I debuted the tank top today at Dance Extravaganza. It was marvelous.
In Portland, I stayed with Patrick, who I met in Panama last year.
The extra bedroom had its own bathroom. That is the lap of luxury.
Jay, the person who formerly inhabited the room, had moved out several months prior in order to live with his boyfriends.
That’s right. Boyfriends, plural.
I never met Jay, but he came up in conversation all weekend long. People talked about his “thrupple” admiringly, in sort of hushed, awe-filled whispers.
“Want to know the crazy part about the thrupple?” asked Kael at the party on Saturday night. It was Patrick’s friends’ joint Taylor Swift themed birthday party. Everyone, boys, girls, and Generation Z-ers of ambiguous gender, had dressed up as Taylor Swift.
The scene was one of drunken yet tasteful debauchary. The backyard sporting the beer-pong table was impeccably taken care of. I think Montreal needs more friends with backyards, I thought.
“What’s the crazy part?” I asked Kael. I was studiously not playing beer pong (actually flip cup, but still just as gross).
“All three of them, the whole thrupple…sleep…in the same Queen bed!”
I laughed, and then said, “Yeah, well…I have something even crazier. I’m staying in Jay’s old bedroom. In his old bed. Which is…a full. And according to my sources, all three of them used to sleep…there.”
Gah gah gah gah gah!
You want to know the crazy, crazier part? At first, it was just the two other boyfriends. Jay was a third add-on.
And now he sleeps in between them.
“You could totally consult Jay on your future thrupple-dom!” laughed Kael. “He’s an expert at wedging his way into the middle of relationships!”
And then I’ll sleep in between Dee and Matt!
Okay, Mom, if you’re reading this, or Matt, if you’re listening, I’M JOKING!
Mostly.
Gah gah gah gah gah.
Okay no seriously though, the orbits have gotten way way way way WAY way better. All of them. I haven’t wanted to say such things aloud for fear of jinxing them, but it’s going on four weeks now that I have felt Calm and Stable most of the time.
My Gale Orbit has stopped. Like in its tracks. Stopped.
My Etienne Orbit has slowed (and he’s here! In town! Right now!) (I saw him last week.) My Marijuana Orbit is not currently bothering me, and last but not least…my Mommy Orbit is stopping, too.
The Orbits are all different. With Gale, it’s about me dropping everything to see her and then vicariously suffering all of her trauma while she triggers me with every single story that she tells about how her boundaries have been trampled upon. With Etienne (and pretty much just men in general), it’s about being able to be myself and speak my truth.
The Mommy one is complicated, and I’ve definitely been stuck in it for a little while. I actually didn’t know it was happening, not until a few months ago when Mommy said, “You know, it’s wonderful that you love me like you do, and I want you to love me, but you shouldn’t orbit around me any more than you should orbit around Gale or Etienne.”
My impulse was to tell her that I didn’t orbit around her.
“I don’t have a Mommy orbit,” I said immediately, and then barely had time to exhale before admitting, “Oooooor maybe I do.”
I definitely do have a Mommy orbit. But, ever since we named it, its power has been fading.
Mommy and I started our journey together seven years ago. SEVEN! Five, if you decide to subtract the year and a half that went by between meeting and seeing each other again.
When we started, it was casual.
It’s not casual, anymore.
And that’s okay. We’re all happy with it where it is; Mommy, Matt and me. But we’ve had to renegotiate boundaries and adapt, and that takes a lot of kindness, compassion and courage.
It also takes noticing orbits and talking about them.
We talk a lot.
“Aww, your spider plant needs watering!” I told Patrick the night I arrived. It was already 10:30pm PST, which is 1:30am EST, which means I had been awake at that point for 20 hours.
“Oh, yeah, we haven’t been the greatest,” said Patrick.
Damn straight you haven’t!! There were dead plants all around the house.
“They were all Jay’s. He took the expensive ones and left the others.”
Outrageous!
I watered the spider plant just in case the four remaining green leaves might be able to survive. I cut off about 20 dead ones.
The next day, I could swear that the leaves looked less droopy. I watered it again, and carefully scoured the rest of the house for plants to rescue.
By Friday, the spider plant was standing up straight and tall, like a bald man who proudly combs his four remaining hairs across his head. That’s when I decided a Rescue Mission was in order, lest I leave and all the plants go back to being neglected.
I bypassed the ones that were absolutely dead (there were several, including two dead ivies. Who kills ivy? Ivy is HARD to kill!)
In total, there were seven plants that made it into the Plant Orphanage. Eight, actually, if you include the giant one I found in the corner. It must have weighed 50 pounds, and clearly had been home to a grand plant at one time. That plant now had two remaining stalks that looked a bit wobbly. It was too heavy to lift, so on my “Please Rescue Us, We’re Too Young to Die” note, I said the Plant Pixies would be forever grateful if somebody rescued the plant in the corner by the sofa.
I left Patrick with strict instructions to put the plants up for adoption at their party next week, and to scold Jay for being a Plant Killer.
He laughed, and thanked me, which was a relief, because he was basically thanking me for being a hopeless meddler.
Wednesday, June 14th, 2023:
Phew. Day 3 is over. Fifteen hours of dance. I was very smart to schedule my workday for tomorrow because I think my body may no longer remember how to move.
Everyone else went to the meet-up after the day was done. I don’t know how they’re still going. I was kind of done, though, and I was hungry. Plus it looked like rain.
Etienne said he would be there later, so I’m missing him. Gah gah.
I’m doing the thing where I really enjoyed myself but I’m focusing on the negative.
The negatives are really negative, though!
The thing I had been quietly trying to avoid finally hit me in the face: Clyde asked me to dance.
I didn’t even think about the words before they were out of my mouth. Even though moments before I had been obviously scanning the room for a partner, I said abruptly, “No thank you, I don’t want to.”
“Oh, okay!” he said, a bit surprised, but still bright. Then he walked away.
I felt guilty for rejecting him, even though I’m allowed. I did exactly what the Consent Poster said to do.
Gale made sure to put up that poster. It’s really well done. It features cartoon characters kindly asking each other to dance, and cheerily accepting whatever answers they get. There are other posters, too, plus the Letter to the Community that I wrote.
The letter was prompted by a conversation we had about Clyde. At least, I was pretty sure it had been. Was I misremembering?
I’d never met Clyde, but I had heard Gale say on more than one occasion how multiple women had reported him, and if I’m not mistaken had been actually banned from demonstrating spotting because of inappropriate touch.
I thought the outcome of our conversation had been that he would not be invited back.
What’s the point of running a community and waxing on and on about the importance of consent and communication if you don’t set boundaries and instead let the predators roam free?
But on the first day when we went around saying our names and our pronouns, there it was. Clyde. He/Him.
Was it possible there were two Clydes in the Dance community?
“Hey Gale, wait up a second?” I asked, running after her down the hallway, briefly dodging out of the class. The teachers were explaining something but I would catch up.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“There’s somebody here named Clyde. Is that…Clyde? Like, Clyde, Clyde? The Clyde?”
“Yes, that’s Clyde,” she confirmed.
What the fuck.
“He’s been really well behaved this week, though,” she said. Of course that’s Gale’s logic. He hasn’t been a predator for at least three days, so he must have changed!
“Okay. Well, good. I’m glad I didn’t abruptly reject the wrong stranger. I’m staying away from him and I told him no when he asked me to dance.”
She nodded her approval.
I went back to rejoin the group, heart thumping loudly in my chest.
What the actual fuck.
The other negative had to do with more run-of-the-mill group dynamics and hurt feelings. In a nutshell, I found this really cool group to work with this morning. We were all at the same level, and similar enough sizes to be able to base and fly cool tricks. It was fun and it felt good; finding dance partners is hard, but today it felt right.
Until lunch, when Jean Luc came over to me and was like, “Hey, we’re going to switch up the groups, I hope that’s okay.”
“Oh! Okay, yeah, thanks for telling me. What’s going on?”
“Well, Jade wanted to work with Dex for this part.”
“Oh right, yeah she said they’d come specifically to learn these moves. But what about Jayla? Could the three of us work together?”
“Oh well I think we’re going to work with Jade and Dex.”
Oh. Wait. That means that the group went from being…Jade, Jayla, Jean Luc and me, to Jade, Jayla, Jean Luc and Dex.
So by “rearrange the groups” you meant kick me to the curb and replace me with Dex.
That’s fine. It’s only my feelings.
Also, kind of ironic, given the whole thing about awkward rejection and Clyde.
Oh well. You can’t win ’em all. I did have a good time despite the crap. It’s been nice to spend entire days in my body instead of my head. It reminds me of Panama. And in the end I found different partners who were pretty cool. One he, one they/them. So hopefully might possibly be less likely to harrass me?
My everything hurts, now.
I wore my chastity belt to the festival. I felt sexy with it dangling around the hips of my yoga pants, with the moon Mommy gave me draped around my neck.
I felt protected.
When Mommy put it on me, she said something along the lines of, “This is a symbol of your protection. May you never again spread your legs unless it is safe and you really, really want to.”
I can feel it even when I’m not wearing it, now. The safety. The protection.
My kitty can feel it, too. She’s more curious, lately. More excited to step into a personality she’s finally allowed to possess.
The chastity belt helps me overcome my Sexual Partner Orbit. The one that makes me suddenly only care about what will please them. The one that self-conciously tells me to change my personality to suit them. The one that doesn’t know how to say “no” for fear of disapproval, confrontation or rejection. The one who doesn’t know how to say “yes” without igniting all the fires.
Gale saw it when I walked in.
“Is that speeecial?” she asked with a grin. “Does it come from Dee?”
“Nope!” I grinned back, obviously teasing. “Nothing special at all. Just something I felt like wearing today. Gah gah gah gah.” She laughed and hugged me.
She already knew the answer; that it was special, that I did get it from Dee. She also knew what it represented.
“Why on earth would you want to do that?!” Gale had asked me, horrified, when I told her about it a few weeks ago. The last time we hung out for real, actually, and I had the hangover and realized we needed to talk.
Gale can’t imagine a universe without sex, and I love that about her. She lives passionately. I want to live in that universe one day. I’m just not there yet.
“Because I don’t know how to communicate what I want and need with my sexual partners, and I struggle to say no,” I said simply. “So this will be a sexy reminder to prioritize myself and keep myself safe. And it’s extra special that Dee’s the one giving it to me. But I asked her to do it. It was my idea.”
I don’t think Gale believed me, though. I think she can’t imagine wanting to hit the pause button on play, so she thinks Dee must have convinced me or something.
But actually, the idea just landed in my brain one day and felt so completely right. That’s when I asked her to help me with it, and she agreed, because she knows, like me, that it’s a good idea.
Oh well. Etienne agreed too, and that’s kind of more important than what Gale thinks.
And with that…I think it’s time this post be finished.
Love,
Lorelai
