Peace and Freedom

She had rattled about the world. Rattled and ranged and raged -- and wrecked.

Ejected like a fireball from the small town she grew up in at 17; a brilliant student, a quiet, well behaved girl, considered a bit weird, perhaps, but harmless, she had suddenly, in a history class one day, called bullshit on the teacher. Refused to back down, trashed every single argument the man made. Weeks of turbulence after that, disrupting all her classes. She had no particular ideology, religion, principles -- it was just that she saw clearly, now, how much bullshit, how many convenient untruths were accepted, inconvenient realities ignored, and it was no longer possible for her to play.

It wasn't fun, it was frightening. The level of kickback she got, the absence of support, even from those who agreed with her, quietly, in private, about some things, but found her unacceptable still -- it was impossible.

One day she just left -- didn't wait to be expelled from school, kicked out of the house. She just went. Went to the city.

She got herself involved in all sorts of groups then, people she thought, who said, who wrote things that sounded as if they, too, had had enough of bullshit. Except that they, too, were incapable of accepting her -- she was 'too weird', 'confused', 'a trouble-maker', 'arrogant' -- and those were the constructive words. This went on for years.

There were boyfriends, too -- not great ones, though; some abusive, others transactional, some scared off. She was in some sort of low-level pain or stress, so much of the time. She took shitty jobs, got fired, moved on.

Then one boss she had took her out to lunch, and explained her to herself -- told her, quite simply, what she was. It was remarkable. She'd only been there two weeks.

He told her how it must be with her, from what he saw -- that -- the way she was built -- she could not trust in anything -- not anything made of words. He didn't try to psychoanalyse, or tell her why she was this way, just identified it, laid it out. Then, on top of that, he said, she was clever enough that, when people tried to give her something they said was more trustworthy, she could always see the contradictions, the paradoxes, the implications they had missed. Not surprisingly, people hated that, pushed her away, while she lost another level of faith in people being capable of making sense, cleaving to the truth, however inconvenient.

She was thunderstruck. How could all this horrible, gripping maelstrom of ideas, thoughts, insights, criticisms, projects, campaigns, principles that she found again and again to be limp tissues, falling apart as soon as you tried to use them -- how could all of this have been seen, analysed, understood by this guy -- this random boss of a small sales operation, within a couple of weeks of meeting her?

She fell for him -- not because he was anything special, but because he had seen her.

Also, because he said he knew what she needed.

She needed hard rules. Inflexible rules. They would be bullshit rules, he said -- of course they would; not intentionally, but she would see that they were flawed -- of course she would. The difference was, that these rules would be imposed. Imposed on her. It wouldn't matter that she didn't trust them, that she could prove they were crocked. They would just be -- like the laws of chemistry. They would set the ground rules of her life, whether she believed in them or not.

Bullshit, she had said, at first -- but with doubt, with a smile -- for she was still in awe at his insight -- still hadn't found anything to knock it down with.

"OK, let's try it", he had said.

"You will be in work by 7am every morning. You will make 50 cold calls before lunch, which will be 15 minutes, at 12. You will then produce 20 proposals and email them out. During the day, you will close 5 deals."

"You will wear one of five outfits we will buy, a different one each day. Every evening you will run 5 km. Your diet will be regular -- you will buy the same list each week, eat the same meals in rotation."

"You will read only the books I give you -- sales strategy and tactics, time management techniques, that sort of thing. You will make notes on all those books, criticising their propositions rigorously. You will do this in the evenings, writing your notes longhand, putting them on my desk each morning. I will read your notes, and then burn them."

"Your life will not have meaning, but it will be ordered. Your pay will be arranged as a baseline -- all your basics will be paid for directly, by the company. You will be paid additional bonuses on results, tax-free, which will be paid into an offshore account that you will have no access to -- a lawyer will control it, and you can consult the lawyer monthly, to understand how much you have, how it is being managed."

"You will take no holidays. You will sign a contract for a year. I guarantee you that this will be the most peaceful year of your life since you left school."

Without really thinking about it, she had said yes the next Monday.

He had taken the chance to sleep with her -- she had made it clear she was available -- but only several times. There had been no real chemistry, but the experiences stayed with her. To have sex with someone who dictated her life in such minute detail -- that was -- well, she didn't know what it was, but it wasn't like any other sex.

They hadn't persisted, though. He was married, and she didn't argue.

It was an incredibly tough year, in some ways.

But he was right -- his prediction came true; it was also the most peaceful year since she had left home. She worked. Like a dog. When she met targets, they were increased. When she failed, there was no punishment, except for the impact on her bonus. They had lunch together most days -- 15 minutes. He was unchangeable, rigid, uncompromising.

"Everything I make you do is bullshit," he said; "but I will make you do it; and you will feel calmer, you will be healthier, and you will be richer. These will be objective facts."

And again, it was true. At the end of the year she was calmer, was fitter, was richer. Significantly.

He got promoted, to the regional centre. He took her with him, and gave her new, and more complex targets, using what she had learned from the books, and she had another year of order.

Then, in the third year, he had broken it. He had told her that he wanted a particular contract. That the man was a womaniser. That she must offer to sleep with him. She had done it, had won the contract. Had hated it.

But now it was part of her rules. When he told her she must, she would offer herself as a sweetener to the deal. It was no different than any of the other rules, he told her. She should not question it.

But it was different. It made her less calm, not more calm.

She told him this, distressed, and he simply laughed at her, and said.

"Still calmer than you would be if I fired you, sweetie."

He was right. She found out. Not by getting fired, though, but by leaving. She made sure with the lawyer that she could access her money -- the exact terms and conditions -- found the clever trick that would have had him keep it, found the loophole, planned her exit. She complied with the terms to the letter, but refused to compromise, to discuss. She performed at top intensity until the last minute of her last day -- even sleeping with three clients during her notice period.

Now, she had no job, no controller, and freedom. And nearly half a million in the bank.

She went crazy. Not quite literally crazy, but wild crazy. The aftermath of all that controlled intensity was that she no longer cared about bullshit. The whole world was bullshit, nothing made sense. You just did what you did.

What she had found, though, was that her body was real. She'd never cared about her body until she'd started having to fuck clients -- and maybe, too, until she had been fit. Her body, it turned out, was honest. Her body was not a bullshitter. She had read -- at his instruction -- lots of excellent scientific and psychological coaching books about running, and had discovered that she could trust her body. Not because it gave her hard information -- on the contrary, because everything was fuzzy, there was no need for lies. The body was what it was, gave her the feelings she could feel -- that was what it told her -- how she felt. The feelings weren't truth -- not in any specific way -- but they weren't lies either.

So she pursued feelings. Sensation. Took a large number of different drugs in a large number of contexts, with a wide variety of people, did all sorts of wild things -- climbing cliffs, partying for four days straight, endurance running, martial arts -- to the point of amateur cage fighting. She took no responsibility at all for anything -- she had tasked the lawyer with maintaining her established existence basics without her intervention -- simply with an instruction to warn her when the money went below a threshold.

Apart from that, she did what she and her body agreed on. Sometimes she pushed her body, sometimes it pushed her.

In the end, though, she ran out of control.

The intense habits of the last few years had kept her in some acceptable zone for quite a while, but gradually, the lack of regulation, the wilder experiences that came up, inevitably, during these excesses, these had consequences, sometimes, that pushed her further out -- and in the end, she had collapsed.

When she got out of hospital, the money was all gone. She had not even noticed the many warnings from the lawyer.

She found that she didn't care; lived for six months in a cardboard city under a freeway, dirty, hungry. Again, there, she found a world without bullshit. Lots of nonsense -- broken people don't talk much sense. But again, a world of physical reality -- and powerful, non-arguable constraints: warmth, calories, physical safety.

Because she had no need for drugs, because her mind was calm, now, calmed by lack of opportunity, by being used up on actual survival tasks, she found she could think. Think for herself, not in reaction, not in opposition.

One day, she found that she had a plan, and immediately acted upon it. She ate very little for three weeks, bought nothing, then starved herself for a week, did nothing but solicit money the whole month, hardly sleeping, until she had the amount she needed.

A phone, a tiny room in the cheapest hostel in town, a suit of clothes, an afternoon in a cheap beauty parlour, and she was in business. Since she had nothing to sell, she brokered deals between people she knew. Her fees were low, her expertise and knowledge came back to her as if she had never stopped. Her expenses were essentially zero, so she made money fast.

She was 24. Within a year she had paid cash for her apartment and her car, she had three staff on the phones, and it was rolling fast.

Already, though, she could feel everything going crazy again -- no control, no controller, no control.

For the first time in her life, she was actually scared. Scared of herself. Scared she was not going to be able to find her way. That he had been right -- her abuser. She knew that about him now -- that he had abused her. She didn't hate him, but she would never again allow herself to be used like that.

How, though?

She met Galena as a client, and liked her. Galena was calm. More, Galena was always amused -- a little. Life was a source of endless humour to her. When she asked Galena about this -- in the 'ok, we've done a deal, it worked, let's find out what the opportunity landscape looks like for further business' stage of the client relationship journey -- Galena said;

"It's all bullshit. So it's just as much a comedy as a tragedy. I choose comedy."

She had felt dizzy, then, for a moment. How had it been that she had never considered this? That she had always found the bullshit tragic -- or, when not tragic, cruel, and when not cruel, then barren, lifeless.

It was too late, though. She tried. Tried terribly hard, to adopt the Galena attitude -- to smile at the tragedy she saw all around -- to find the banality, the meaninglessness, the cruelty amusing. She really tried. It just made her miserable; her own inability to laugh at it compounding the awfulness of what she saw. Making the bullshit seem to laugh at her for her own inability to laugh at it.

She made a good team with Galena, though, and Galena seemed to like her. They did a number of deals, bigger, better.

Galena was the person she thought about when the fear got really bad. When the 'out of control' threatened to overwhelm her.

So when Galena asked her to a party, she went, against her usual policy of keeping business to business contexts -- of avoiding getting mixed up in other bullshit.

The party confused her. It was totally -- almost ludicrously -- laid-back. So cool that it was hardly there. A hundred people -- perhaps more -- in a large villa with a giant garden, great pool, and nowhere was anything getting intense. Things just flowed -- great food, friendly conversations, gentle laughter, people doing tai-chi, singing together, talking seriously, but quietly, without argument.

There was something else strange, too -- it was Galena's party, this was Galena's house, yes -- but when she asked Galena how it seemed also that it was lots of other people's party, lots of other people's house, too, and they all seemed quite.. different.. from each other, Galena had smiled at her, and laughed.

"Oh my dear, of course, you don't know -- silly me! I'm just used to everyone knowing. Well, I hope you're not going to be shocked! It's the stupidest thing -- the thing that makes me laugh the most. There are seven of us, and we're all -- well, we're all each others' lovers. It's crazy -- but it works. And it means we can have this huge house, and -- and freedom from a certain kind of bullshit. No-one gets to own anyone. Either you can learn to surf it, or you're out. We.. we have had our stresses -- but we've been pretty much as we are for years now, and we can all laugh at each other."

"And the sex is -- everything. Anything. Nothing. We used to be wild, I guess -- a little -- but actually, there's nothing we aren't now, that we want to be -- that we might want to be -- wild when it suits, dreamy, when it suits, mechanical, when it suits, none, when it suits."

It's not that she's shocked -- she's heard of this -- polyamorous -- thing before.

It's that she's jealous. Instantly, intensely, urgently, physically jealous. Needing.

She has to sit alone for the longest while to be understand this, to be able to manage herself. The party allows her this, without abandoning her -- people stop by, every while, with a drink, a smile, some food, an invitation, but just as softly retreat when she, tense, twitchy, shakes her head, or looks simply blank, unhearing, abstracted.

When she knows, though, she knows and she goes to find Galena, waits, patiently, her eyes on the woman, watching her smiling, laughing, dancing, seeing and smoothing little knots that might disturb the flow. When she can, Galena -- seeing that Alison is a knot all of herself, makes her way over, makes a quiet space with almost no effort or disturbance -- a small shift of a chair and they have a private room -- even in the middle of everything.

"How.. how do I join? Join your group? I.. I'll do anything."

Galena's laugh is at the same time unrestrained and full of acceptance.

"That's so funny. Christian was just saying how pretty you are, and Sara-Anne was asking if we had ever -- you and I."

They hadn't. There had been no hint of anything like that.

But it doesn't work like that -- there's no such thing as 'joining' -- it either happens, or it doesn't.

"I.. I want it to happen. What can I do? I'll do.. I'll do anything. Please, tell me."

Another laugh;

"Well, as to what you can do, that's easy --" she turns;

"Christian, come over here, can you, when you're done with that lobster? Alison here would like to be seduced."

And she had been.

Then later Sara-Anne had gently, sweetly, massaged her until it was just the two of them somewhere and the massage had become a sex dream that had had no sex in it, but had been powerfully erotic nevertheless, and then she had fallen asleep, and then awoken to party morning-after, which had turned into a day of sexual encounters which felt not much more intense than the party, actually -- all flow, and low intensity, until there had, quite suddenly, been some very high intensity indeed, and she had had Christian in her ass and Bruce in her pussy and Justine sitting on her face, all humping at her and calling out, and the others watching and commenting and stroking and kissing and she had lost her mind.

Later, Galena had gently told her that it was time for her to go home -- that she should remember -- flow, process -- not force anything, not push it.

She had tried. Tried hard, And failed -- failed hard, too.

She couldn't stop herself calling. Then turned up, uninvited, then done it again, even after she'd been carefully, lovingly told that it was a bad idea by Sara-Anne, and Renata and Bruce, in their different ways.

"It's not that we don't like you, or think you're not cool, or find you unsexy. You're just.. you're too intense."

All she got from this, though, was an urgent need to try harder, to find ways of being with them that relieved her intense need without seeming intense to them -- treated it as a problem-solving exercise -- strategy, tactics, plans, execution...

Miserable, miserable failure. It came to a head when Christian -- who clearly really liked fucking her, even though he hardly spoke to her, had said the only way he could see her was not at the house, and had spent the weekend at her place -- until, on the Sunday, clearly upset, he said;

"Come on -- we're going to talk to them. I want you around to fuck when I want to, and you want to be around us, so I'm going to tell them."

She had been frightened, but so needy, too, that she had not argued, had gone with him, and there had been an almighty row -- almost a fist fight, even, between Christian and Roger, and between Sara-Anne and Bruce. It had been awful.

Galena's smile had been broken, even though she remained calm.

But Galena it was who had resolved the thing, that night.

Quietly, into a terrible lull, a bitter silence broken only by occasional sobs and harsh breathing and the dragging noise of the ceiling fan, which had been damaged when Renata started throwing cushions, and now wouldn't turn off, either.

"OK. This difficult cunt, here. This Alison. She is the source of this trouble. But we can't throw her out, because too many of us like fucking her, and because she is more than eager to be fucked. As well, from my knowledge of her, she can help us with money. Lots of money. We can get a better place, and you Sara-Anne, can stop work and paint full time -- and you Christian, can stop doing anything at all, as long as you cook."

"She wants to stay, there are good reasons to want her, but she causes all this trouble, she's just too spiky, too fucked up, too needy."

"So I have a suggestion."

"We keep her. We fuck her, we get her money -- so she needs to keep on working. She has to pull her weight, too -- housework, shit jobs."

"But she can't be herself, here. Not unless she learns, at least."

"So the deal is, we make rules for her. Tight rules, Strict rules. Punishable rules."

"She's to be no trouble, she's to be sweet, she's to be fuckable, she's to work hard, she's to bring us money, and she's got no say in anything - she's not to suggest anything or ask for anything. She's here to accept, not to propose, not to impose. And if she fails, she get punished."

"If the rules don't work for us, we change them -- she gets no say in that either. And we give her three months."