The fear hits too late, as it always does. I’m lying underneath one of the most beautiful dykes in the world as she holds a scalpel right over my left breast, and her eyes light up with hunger. Let me be clear, I wanted this, I asked for this, I quite literally begged on my knees for this with her hand in my hair. And still, the fear comes rushing like waves through the blood she’s meant to take, crowding my mind with thoughts of telling her no, stop, too much. But it’s too late, and that is the intersection where I meet thrill. I meet what I imagine is the closest thing to looking into death’s light or void, whichever suits your purpose. I meet the triumph of having bested the fear that encases the body like cement. A slight pinprick and drag, the first line drawn. Red beads bloom, her tongue is warm as she consumes them.
I don’t live my life in fear and yet, I am a cripplingly fearful creature. Compulsions and ruminations chase each other’s tails through my mind at night, making sleep an elusive little animal hunted in thickets. If I am sleeping alone, I will turn on a galaxy projector or colored lights or some socially acceptable version of a nightlight. Walking into a crowd where I know no one and they all know each other takes multiple days of talking myself into being excited about the prospect. Climbing a ladder too high at work will send in visions of my bones cracking across tile and wood. I have moved cross country 3 times, built events, danced for crowds with nothing but a G-string on and yet fear is a permanent frost I have to slowly, consistently melt. But eventually I began to discover the exhilaration of that holy meeting between fear and acceptance. Feeling your heart racing so fast you wonder how your body could contain it, while having nowhere to go but deeper. And on the other side, the knowledge of knowing the powerful grip of fear can, indeed, be broken.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a scene: me kneeling at a purple-lit altar, under a heavy cross that sparks nothing familiar but seems to press on my spine. My friend asked if I wanted to do magic and I’ve never been one to deny a trip through a portal. She splashed hot wax on my front and gave me my first needle wings, the burning and stinging forming a velvety texture in my mind. She commanded me: “Tell me something true.” For the life of me I can’t remember what I said but her face closed, as if it was something sad. Deeper and deeper. The real world’s sadness is mixing with the fantasies now and it’s wrong, they were never supposed to meet. I eventually have to say stop. She brings me berries and whipped cream and we hold each other, shaking off the depths and travelling back up, up into the warm night.
We have a short, sharp fear of physical breaking, illness, and any number of harm to the body. But the long, impossibly deep crevasse we stare into is the simple fear of feeling hurt. Fear of being embarrassed, fear of unrequited love, fear of stripping every protective artifice away only to be laughed at. Love magic is the most lucrative because everyone wants divine protection from the agony of a broken heart. The origin of every curse is a lover scorned. The scariest part is that we don’t get to choose. We can fling ourselves off cliffs and climb on the back of a motorbike but we have no defense against “I don’t love you anymore”.
I know the lies fear tells me but I still let it guide me into my worst mistakes sometimes. I let relationships and more ambiguous ties drag on until every silence between us felt heavy with resentment, because I didn’t know how to lose them without losing myself. The first woman who tied my arms and legs behind my back and beat me until I began laughing and crying all at once, is the same one who I lost because I couldn’t find the courage to speak my mind. In a fountain in New York City, swimming in a sea of wet dykes and rainbows, I cut my arm and another woman I loved wraps her mouth around my skin and a clarity takes hold. A year later we fought for hours on a hot night in Florida and for 3 years after that we revisited that fight again and again. Despite letting myself be physically broken in new ways every year, it was the emotional sting of letting go of love that I didn’t think I’d survive.
We’re huddled together under the full moon on a winter’s night. The dark wooden cross in the corner is finally unoccupied after a steady stream of blissful occupants. I haven’t let anyone touch me but the heat coming off of the bodies undulating on every surface is enough to feel somewhat satisfied. But still. I want to feel more than secondhand sensation. A friend of mine has dual floggers she spins like fire, and it burns just as pleasurably. It’s the first time in almost a year I’ve allowed someone other than my girlfriend to leave a mark.
In these containers, in these dimensions carved out of time, pain and fear are under my total control. Everything defined, ratified, crafted by those I trust with intention and, above all, care. I journey to these treacherous places because any monsters I may meet here are only shadows.
The dyke who carved my heart on my chest is beneath me. A reversal: she is writhing and begging, and I’m the one holding the instrument. Not a knife this time but a slender glass wand that sends blue and orange sparks across her skin. I run it down the contours of her body, stopping at her chest and clit. She shakes and screams and I find myself laughing as I drag the shockwaves across her, over and over again. The scent of ozone wafts up to me and mingles with her sweat. Her skin flushes, bright red spots bloom under the surface.