Writing Away the Darkess Pt. 02

Warning: This sensitive topic involves real-world emotional incest. The author advises sensitive readers not to read it. In my previous essay Writing Away the Darkness, I detailed the experience of what I now know is called emotional incest and some of my history of healing from it. I've done some additional writing since both new stories and journaling. I have come to realize how deep the trauma goes; and how fundamental it is to my character. The emotions involved are complex. I've gotten greater clarity on what I felt. I can face my own feelings, historical and current, to a much greater degree.

One thing I need to admit upfront. My former lover Bess, herself an incest survivor, had said, "It was hell for both of us, but at least I got sex." I never told her how she hit the bullseye on that—yes, I a part of me very much wanted to fuck my mother, though, by the grace of God, I never did. Writing this is the first time I have been able to admit this, not to my closest friend, not to a confessor, not to God himself, not even to my own conscious mind, not even in my dreams. This is the darkness beyond darkness, Death Absolute—the farthest possible remove from Love Absolute, which some of us call God.

I have detailed the warps in my soul the experiences caused, the fundamental mistrust of my own sexuality. It's been a long road to healing that has had many twists and turns. My essential core issue is that I don't know how to feel both loved and wanted. I've had a fair amount of both, but virtually never together. Mom sure as hell didn't want me as the son reality gave her, though she wanted me as friend, lover, and confessor. A fair number of both women and men have wanted me sexually but not loved me. A fair number have loved me, but not wanted me. I'm not the legendary sexual technician my alter egos are, but I have a fair amount of skill satisfying a pussy or a cock.

In my Literotica profile, I describe myself as bisexual. This is correct with respect to physical sexuality, both men and women get me off just fine, and I enjoy getting both off. Both genders name me a tongue artist. Indeed, when one lesbian friend and I were too long celibate, on a night when we were slightly drunk, she let me "do her woman-style" and liked the orgasms so well that she let me finish man-style. I came in her pussy after she first sucked me rock hard. She was quite good. For what I had done for her pussy, she named me an honorary lesbian.

But I am by no means bi-romantic. Gay sex for me psychologically resembles the deprivation homosexuality in prison. As one ex-con friend of mine said, "pussy is pussy, even if it's another guy's asshole." I have never loved a man romantically, nor had any thought I might. I have of course experienced the non-romantic love for a father, a son, or a good male friend. One friendship became strained. He was unsure of what direction his sexual preference ran. I would have gladly taught him all I knew about gay sex, but he wanted us to be in love. That was not going to happen. It's just not me, my brain isn't wired that way, life might have been a shade less difficult if I could be in love with a man.

Sexually, I can enjoy fairly vanilla, but the milder forms of kink are enjoyable—I really like them, but don't find myself feeling deprived if they are absent in an otherwise satisfying relationship. I gladly have both given and received anal, as you might guess from my stories. The single most enjoyable thing I've done is licking a woman I love to multiple orgasms. Something about that just sends a warmth to the depths of my soul. To me, it's an embodiment of Codependents Anonymous' final affirmation: "I am enough!" I feel powerful in a loving, giving way. A way that incidentally internally feels very feminine. I am an undoubtedly cisgender man—the issue is actually trusting that not wanting to be something else.

I'm sure my readers have noticed my characters are larger than life, both my alter-ego male protagonists and perhaps even more so the female leads. "I dig strong women" is a massive understatement. Sometimes it shades into digging "dominatrix". I haven't done anything in real life with the physical props of BDSM. I do have a bit of a submissive streak, and psychology is the essence of it anyway, OTOH. I can enjoy being dominant when that's what's wanted. I remember fondly the woman who asked, "Stop listening to me bitch and pin me down and fuck my brains out." I know, dominance by engraved invitation, so who was actually dominant there? Now ask me if I give a two-penny damn.

The healing goes on, but overall, I like who I am. I am a man, I can now fully enjoy my own male sexuality, and if the way I experience it has a feminine undercurrent, so be it. If that makes me less of a man in someone's eyes, so be it. That has sometimes been a factor in how women relate to me, both sexually and non-sexually. My current wife enjoys that aspect of me, my ex despised it.

Likewise, I've taken pleasure from women whose female sexuality has masculine undercurrents. There is just something so appealing about a woman who takes the initiative and lets you know what she wants and how (and how often) she wants it.

Even for those of us who are cisgender heterosexual and comfortable with the gender binary, the binary isn't everything. Jung asserted every man has a woman within (anima), and every woman has a man within (animus). I rather like mine and enjoy letting her come out and play now and again. One physical aspect of this is how much I enjoy nipple play—receiving even more than giving, which I love. As I wrote in The Yellow Rose of Texas, "If that makes me gay, slap my ass and call me faggot," while doing it again.

I will continue writing, I enjoy it, as I enjoy reading. As inspirations will, I may try my hand at sci-fi/fantasy (I find Tolkien's elves sexy as hell. Hey Celeborn, do you mind if I give Galadriel a nice tongue bath?), a story where anal is the primary theme, maybe others. The glimmerings of a mermaid story are bubbling in my brain. Non-con is off the table for me, I won't write it, and I hardly ever read it—just enough to know I don't want it. It rubs my trauma the wrong way.

My stories have gotten down close to my issues. Some were just fun. But in my now being re-edited for publication Grandma Kate..., I have a story of incest between a 50-ish, sexy, recently windowed grandmother, and her 20-ish inexperienced but not virgin grandson who was her son in all but name. Cutting it pretty close to my foundational trauma.

My next story is a brother-sister story where the little sister takes the initiative—always a turn-on for me. The older brother is trying to be "moral", while the younger sister is showing him what he really wants. I had fun researching that, and I found out incest is not a crime in Rhode Island (though incestuous marriage is not legal but is also not criminal). Yes, this time they have a kid.

Let me get on my soapbox here. The way I understand morality from my not entirely orthodox Christian perspective is that it consists of choosing love over hate or indifference, keeping Christ's final commandment "Love one another as I have loved you." By that standard, loving adult consensual incest is moral, though other forms are very much not. I condemn any force, coercion, fraud, or exploitation. This applies to incest particularly, but not exclusively, force, coercion ... are wrong in sexual and non-sexual situations, excepting in defense of self or others.

My last writing before this essay was a fifteen-year age gap romance between my alter ego and a fictional version of a bright, attractive young woman who I could have loved in an only slightly different world. I met her in computer school at the turn of the millennium. I also give an account of my imagined (100% non-erotic) relationship as stepfather to her two-year-old daughter. I recount my conversation with her mother, who heard my childhood trauma and accepted me as her own child, in a perfectly proper mother-son relationship, the very thing I most lacked. This, not romance, was the most healing part of the story to write. Proved by the number of tears I cried.

It all comes down to loving and being loved, wanting, and being wanted. Every human being needs that. So do your part, now stop reading and go out and get some good loving and more importantly give some.