Weird mirror, part 3

Marie's answer to my puzzlement was long and explicit.

Hey, my beautiful philosopher (and philos)....

 

Um, sweetness.

"Wait ... that was the similarity you saw?? Girlfriend 1's hand [a {female} hand on a vulva]? Sweetheart, that’s going to replay every single time there are two women in bed together"--

 

Er, yes, my love. 

 

I did notice that. 

 

Thirty-plus years ago, even.  That's why, after I failed at sex with L. (and succeeded subsequently with [my next boyfriend]), I stopped trying with women altogether.  I pretty much decided I might find women compellingly attractive, might even fall in love with one, but that if I had any hope of actually having a sexual relationship it would have to be with a man.

 

Since "look Ma, no hands" isn't exactly a desirable attitude in a hetero relationship--but it's pretty much a deal-breaker in a lesbian one. 

 

A hand on a vulva, particularly a woman's hand on a vulva, was a trigger that made me freeze up, sexually.  For decades.  

 

I knew that before.  But, huh, I never realized before, how much I gave in to despair at that young an age.  

 

I mean, when I failed with you I decided I couldn't have sex at all until/unless I'd resolved my issues about being molested.  Which therapy hopefully would do, but I didn't have time for intensive therapy until I was out of college.   So I put sex on hold until after I graduated and was in therapy.

 

And then, yes, L. was the first attempt after that, and then L & D.

 

But when I failed with L... I was in therapy.  But when I panicked once in bed with her, I didn't decide, "Therapy hasn't worked fully yet, but give it time."  

 

I think now that I decided not to try any more for a full healing, and just to try to heal enough to make it through the motions of anything that could be considered "sex."

 

So when, with [my next boyfriend], I successfully took his penis in my vagina (and noticed! and accepted the fact!) I essentially said, okay, done.  I'm cured! 

 

And the fact that I continued to be unable to come, and continued to react to a hand on my vulva the same way I did the first time I felt it (freezing in terror), well, so what. 

 

I could screw a man; what more did I need?

 

Huh again.  That's also another (completely independent) reason for me to have given up academe.  Because the areas I was most interested in about then were Women's Studies-- feminist approaches to literature/philosophy/sociology/history.  But the cutting-edge work I was reading was being done by lesbian-feminists, and I couldn't ever be one.  But I could program computers....

 

Okay, back to your story about Girlfriend 1.

 

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but inadvertent flattery is even more sincere.

 

A measure of how much I've healed in the last two years is that I didn't notice until the next day that "female hand stroking vulva" was the very centerpiece of the story which you recounted and which I found explicitly (and extremely) exciting.  

 

But.  Let's try for a few more points of similarity, shall we, my love?

 

First off, as you chose to recounted the story, your presence might have been negligible.  Possibly a catalyst, possibly an accelerator, possibly null.  And you didn't at all dwell upon your own sexual reaction, though one might infer it (I imagine I could with some accuracy!--did I mention that the story is hot? I should imagine, I sincerely hope, that you found it hotter to observe than to recount....) 

 

So.  Stripping the husband ruthlessly out of your story, we have:  

 

An experienced woman in her sexual prime and a clueless virgin. 

 

(Mom would have been 33 the winter that I was twelve.) 

 

One is in bed, blamelessly.  The other enters the bedroom, with (consciously at least) innocent intentions.  She sits down on the edge of the bed, and starts caressing the other.

 

In the course of the (initially innocent) caresses, the experienced woman becomes overtly and obviously (obviously at the time to any experienced observer; perhaps only in retrospect to the virgin) aroused. 

 

(So eventually does the virgin, ditto.)  

 

The bedcovers are eventually pushed aside.  A hand is introduced under the chaste nightgown, and starts stroking a thigh.  And moves up, and up, despite at least one token protest, until it's rubbing the reclining figure's vulva.

 

And the stroking hand goes on. 

 

It doesn't stop.

 

*

 

Um, Hosea my love, exactly what differences do you see between your story and mine?

 

Or maybe I just had never quite given you a full, detailed, graphic account of my molestation...?

 

I've speculated for decades that part of my problem dealing with my molestation might have been that I might have been physically aroused at the time, and couldn't  deal with that fact.  (Since I felt/believed that being aroused would give permission to the event.)

 

Now, what you've just given me...   

 

When Mom molested me, it was a profound violation of my trust in her. It poisoned our relationship.  And it was absolutely inappropriate between a mother and her daughter, in any culture I've ever heard of.  Taboo.  

 

There are strong relationships that should be sexual, and strong relationships that shouldn't.  

 

But what actually happened, physically....  

 

Ever since it happened, my thoughts about sex have been influenced by my first sexual experience.  As anyone's would be. 

 

Naturally.

 

But I've been unhappy about this obvious influence, ever since I first registered it was in operation, since my first sexual experience was Dead Wrong.  As wrong as anything well could be.

 

The wrong gender, rape (nonconsensual assault), inflicted on a pre-pubescent (a child), by someone trusted, by a parent, by the mother.

 

If there's any taboo (or even warning flag!) of our culture that Mom DIDN'T violate when she violated me sexually, let me know.

 

But.

 

If you strip off all the violations, all the things that should and do make any right-thinking person recoil in horror at the very thought of what mom did to me:

 

If you recast the story without all the taboo-violations, if you rewrite it to leave all of them out....

 

It's hot.  

 

Legitimately.

 

Which, my love, makes it legitimate on my part that I should, still, respond sexually to the memory, or to stimuli that evoke that memory.

 

Gods, what a gift you've given me!

 

I still react sexually to my first sexual stimulus because it was a legitimately-arousing sexual stimulus!  (It's not wrong of me to do so; my feelings, if I admit them fully, don't constitute permission to rape another child....)  

 

 

Your reeling but much happier

Marie