Goddammit, Damian

So yesterday afternoon LJ calls me to tell me that Damian will be spending the night at the house again. (Damian lives in Wisconsin and "commutes" down here for business purposes.) Okay, I say, and go on about my business.



LJ and Damian show up around 9:00 and immediately Damian goes into full entertainer mode. Mind you, he was drunk off his ass--in fact, he took the time to enumerate exactly what-all he'd had to drink in the past 24 hours, and the list was extensive. But he was perfectly coherent all the same--just unusually expansive, even for him.



So we were sitting in the living room, LJ had gone upstairs to take a shower, and Damian and I were talking, to the exclusion of even worrying about what's on TV. I think it was CSI or something, and there came a lull in the conversation, which coincided with a point at which the TV was showing a scene of some S&M dungeon-type thing.



He looked at the screen and said "See, that's just a little TOO weird for me."



"Also, totally fake," I said. (I have very deeply-held beliefs about the legitimacy of organized/ritualized roleplaying and S&M--I've too often seen it used as currency to purchase the sexual version of street credibility. That's a whole 'nother blog post, for which I will have to be in a certain, very specific mindset.)



"Yeah?" he said.



"I've known lots of people who were into that," I told him. "They were all...artificial, at least in that way. It's like they had to stage everything in order to feel something." (Which is not exactly my objection, but I wasn't feeling verbose enough to get started for real.)



"You know what that is?" he said. "That's people who just can't get off any other way, so they have to do some big scene just to get off." (Thinking of Nelson Algren's take on such things, I had to agree with him--you just don't see much staged sexuality outside the middle and upper classes.) He continued: "I mean, I'm a freak--I'll admit it--but that shit..."



Judiciously, I did not say anything leading. Then again, I didn't need to--though if I had, things might have gone down a very strange road indeed.



I should back up, since no one here ('cept Nob, because he read one of my poems) knows what the hell I'm talking about. I have never gone into my sexual history here--not the bits of it that are in any way defining of how I see myself, anyway. As always, the pieces I've concealed trace a straight line directly back to JP...JP, who taught me about anger, about rage, about scratching and clawing and snarling and biting, about bruises and scars--and taught me without a drop of malice and without the slightest wish to harm or scare me. We had very, very basic rules--a safeword, actually--but there was never anything planned or staged or ritualized about it. It just was; it just happened, if and when it did; we accepted it as we accepted everything we had, as a wonderful piece of luck that we had found each other.



I have never recaptured that. What I thought I saw in CR was an echo of it, but it was laced with CR's real, unreconstructed hatred of all women--myself included. There's a difference when they do it to hurt you, when it becomes something you don't want and don't consent to and they care not at all. And LJ...well, he lacks the imagination.



I have my suspicions of Damian, however, in that regard--but damned if I'd be the one to bring it up, was my point of view last night. My style of flirtation--and let's be perfectly honest here, that's what it was--is quite restrained; listen, laugh, toss in a couple of quips here and there, and don't ask questions. This last is based on the premise that people will tell you what they want you to know, and you can learn a lot by what it is they choose to tell you.



And Damian fell right into the very center of that particular web. Without saying anything that would even hint at flirtation, I was handed the following bits of information:



1. He is, as aforementioned, not averse to freaky behavior.



2. He is apparently also not averse to fucking around with older women (some 42-year-old he screwed the other night was mentioned...with details included. Either this is You're One Of The Guys, So I Can Tell You, or....well, just "or".)



3. He is NOT married.

(I'll admit, I had to break my no-questions rule to get this one--he said something about Lisa, and I said "I didn't know you two were married."

"Huh?" was his response. "We're not married..."

"LJ said you were married!" I told him.

"Man, you gon' listen to what that n***a tells you? He don't know what he's talkin' about." Either this is the truth (which I suspect from the next item) or it's a Why Would He Tell Me That Unless.)



4. To quote him: "Yeah, I think Lisa's days are numbered." He then went on in detail about how they argue all the time, she doesn't keep up her end of things, she nags him to get a "real" job; she doesn't cook, doesn't clean, and she won't fuck him. And apparently only that last is unforgiveable; as he said, "I could handle all the rest of it if I was just gettin' some of that ass once in a while..." Again--this could be You're One Of The Guys, or it could be one of those thinly-veiled hints.)



I was SUCH a good girl, too. I could have jumped right into the fray--he left me an opening I could have driven a bus through--but I didn't take the bait. He made some remark about how lazy he was--and followed it up with this: "Yeah, I'm so lazy, when I wanna fuck, I just lay on my back and make her climb up on top of me!" Then a couple of seconds later: "I'm just playin'--you're standin' over there thinkin 'Yeah, I can see why his girl don't wanna fuck him!'"



What I COULD have said--maybe SHOULD have said--was: no, I'm standing over here laughing my ass off and thinking that you've just very accurately described MY situation, though you don't know it. I COULD have said that, but I didn't. (Karma BETTER have something good for me after THAT, is all I have to say.)



And then LJ came back downstairs, and we turned on Scarface, and the conversation veered back to less-charged territory. Which was also strange, and sorta supports my hypothesis.



Leaving aside the question of how much of what Damian says is true and how much is bullshit and/or drunken braggadocio, I still find it intriguing that he would even choose to bring these things up unprovoked. I'm no expert on guys...god, what an understatement THAT is...but my experience is, when, in a conversation with someone else's girl, they pick their sexual habits and their discontent with their current girlfriend as the topic of conversation, there generally are other intentions behind it. (Guys, feel free to correct me. But do it gently, will you? Because my ego was kinda enjoying the attention.)