Maybe a week before the party was to happen, I texted TA to ask whether blatantly sexual stuff was also on the table for her, or only BDSM play type stuff (I knew the venue itself allowed for sexual stuff). Make no mistake, I was just as nervous about trying to sex her up in front of an audience as I was about trying to beat her in front of an audience, and maybe ultimately I would have chickened out of doing it, but I wanted to at least know whether it was an option I could decide to do.
I had an idea in my head of strapping a dildo to my boot and dismissively ordering her to fuck it, perhaps while I sat in a chair and gripped her hair and told her what a depraved little slut she was (an idea I’d told her early in our relationship that she was super turned on about at the time). I suppose I felt like if the play party atmosphere got TA into The Headspace – if I could get access to the version of her I used to know, the one that got so stupefied with lust she could barely speak – then ordering her around sexually so the whole room could see her being aroused by me and compliant to me would undo some of my insecurity around knowing she was going out and fucking everyone else on Earth but me. I would show the whole room that she was mine, at least for that night. Because, as it stands, this crowd of friends were mostly or all people who have seen her play and fuck at the local sex club. They are in a position to compare how TA is with me to how she is with other people.
Anyway TA responded to me asking if she was up for sexual stuff at the party with “let me get back to you on that” but then she never did. Maybe this was a deliberate “soft no” or maybe she genuinely forgot I’d asked because the idea of us being sexual has become blah and forgettable for her. Either way I took the hint not to ask again. I’ve been through too much similar shit with The Dandy when we were going out and I finally learned my lesson.
But when I went to TA’s place so we could head over to the thing together, she had a bag of toys and stuff that she was bringing and I noticed there was a bottle of lube in it. Seems like she was hoping someone would get up in her holes. Just not me.
TA did reserve play for me, which I appreciated. She made no agreements to play with anyone else that night, and even refrained from playing with others for a few days beforehand so there wouldn’t be any pre-bruised areas I’d need to avoid.
But for some godforsaken reason she ended agreeing to, or volunteering for, DM duty for the first stretch of the party and our scene was scheduled for like two or three hours in. Which means that I – her faceblind, socially anxious partner – needed to basically fend for myself for a long-ass time at a social event full of people I barely knew. I was only at this thing for TA, and had our scene happened earlier on, I could have had the freedom to just leave after if I wanted to (I’d been afraid to go there by myself because I assumed the front entrance wouldn’t be super obvious (and I was right). I had, however, looked up some stuff on Google Maps and was confident in how to get home via public transit). Instead I was kind of trapped, waiting.
It wasn’t too bad. Some people were outgoing enough to come up and talk to me even though we didn’t know each other. And a friend of TA’s whom I’d met before eventually showed up and we chatted for a while. Also there were pairs of people doing BDSM play around the room pretty much all night, so there was always stuff to look at. I did feel a little bit alienated because most if not all of the other attendees clearly saw this party as an excuse to either dress up sexy or get naked, and meanwhile I’m awkwardly mid-transition and not willing or able to do either of those things. So it was a room of mostly transfeminine people frolicking around in lingerie or nothing…and then me, parked on one end of the leather sectional couch, wafting up testosterone stink in my sweatpants and oversized t-shirt.
TA, by the way, was one of the naked people. She stripped down immediately, before anyone else had, and it kinda turned me off tbh. She’d told me that she always ended up naked pretty fast at the sex club, so maybe I should have anticipated this, but like…it’s a sex club. Nudity is the default there. I assumed she got undressed quickly there to advertise her wares to the fuckbois, and to fuck them more easily. But her getting naked here, at a play party where I’d thought she was kinda my date, when nobody else was naked yet and we were nowhere near our scheduled playtime…that smacked of exhibitionism, to me. And I’ve had bad experiences with exhibitionists, such that when I know someone is a “hee hee, I’m naked, look at meeee!” person I brace myself for getting my consent violated*. (Plus I just find that kink tedious…yes, yes, you have a body, so does everyone else here, it’s not shocking or naughty). So, y’know. Bleh.
Also – and I definitely should have anticipated this, given the things she’s told me about her sex club outings with these people, but I am a dumbass – everyone was idly groping TA that night. She was coming up to them and soliciting it. And I…maybe I’m less progressive and more slut-shamey than I thought, or maybe I’m just jealous, but it bothered me a lot.
Evidence in support of “jealous”:
I’ve felt profoundly undesired by TA for a long time now. There was a point where I’d given up on us ever having sex or kinky playtime again anytime soon, but I would still sometimes kiss her or touch her in a sensual way or bite her a little bit, just because those things are fun and intimate in and of themselves. And she would immediately assume I was hitting on her and say “I’m not in The Headspace for anything sexual right now” (or “I’m not in The Headspace to play right now,” depending on what I was actually doing). And I would respond that I wasn’t trying to start anything up, just doing the thing as a brief standalone act. And I meant it! But I feel like “I wasn’t trying to doooo anything!” is probably the mating call of the Fuckboi Who Was Definitely Trying To Do Something, and I would get so worried that TA thought I was lying that I would stop whatever biting or groping or etc I’d been doing immediately lest I look like a big pushy liar. Also she developed a habit of saying, deadpan, “that’s my boob” or “that’s my butt” when I’d put my hand there, like she was confirming that I had indeed grabbed the body part I’d been aiming for. Which could have just been a silly ritual, but one day she let it slip in conversation that it’s a thing she started doing to people who groped her when she wasn’t, I guess, in The Headspace, to show her disinterest. So it would seem that it is indeed an annoyance cue.
Given all of this, of course it would suck to watch her gleefully go up to ten or twenty other people so they could slap her ass or honk her tits. I’m sure she would have let me do those things, too, that night, but she didn’t come up and put her body parts in my face to ask for a groping like she did with other people, and at any rate I’d felt consistently rebuffed for weeks or months by that point so I pretty much associate the sight of her naked body with my feelings getting hurt.
Evidence in support of slut-shaming:
Seeing TA naked in a room full of other people made me feel almost queasy. It also suddenly felt like our scene would be somewhat less special because a bunch of other people had been touching her instead of just me. These thoughts caught me off guard; I really thought I was above that shit at this point.
I…think my slight feeling that she’d been sullied isn’t entirely slut-shamey, though? Like…biting her tits is a pretty solid part of our kink repertoire together, and something I was planning to do that night, and I’d watched a bunch of people put their hands on them. Usually when I see TA she’s showered and come directly to my place. Or, fuck, maybe her live-in gf did god-knows-what to her before she came over for all I know, but my point is I can at least pretend that I’m biting pristine flesh.
I’m usually too low-energy and executively dysfunctional to wash fruit before I eat it, but if I just watched an apple get passed to me hand-to-hand along a lineup of 20 people, I’d be reluctant to bite right into it, is all I’m saying.
To be continued.
*yes, I know, #notallexhibitionists, don’t @me.
hiding in plain sight 