Guest Blogger: Nobody’s unicorn

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve had erotic fantasies in which I was captured and tied up, and been subjected to various indignities, often involving scanty outfits. I tried to play these games with little boys that I knew, but they just didn’t get it. Eventually I figured out I should stop sharing these darker corners of my mind with people who really don’t want to know. That’s why I’m writing this anonymously.

When I eventually discovered, thanks to some pretty seedy chatrooms, that there were other people like me, I immediately wanted to come out and tell everyone about my new label. It was like falling in love and wanting to talk non-stop about the object of my adoration. I did tell a few people, but they just didn’t get it. But at least now I knew how to find people who would understand, and who might even want to do these things with me.

I’m glad I didn’t come out when it was all shiny and new. I’ve been able to label myself ‘submissive’ and ‘masochist’ for a good 15 years now, but only a small handful of other people know. Sometimes this level of privacy frustrates me; I feel judged by people who are more open about their different sexuality (or who have more mainstream labels), and I want to say no, you’re wrong about me, I’m much cooler than you think I am. Sometimes I think I should stand up and be counted, so that I can contribute to a changing society where people like me don’t have to hide the way they are. But I don’t, because there will still be people who just don’t get it, and I have too much to lose now.

And I’m glad I didn’t hang a label out at any point in the last few years, because that’s given me room to evolve. My circumstances have changed and even now, more settled than I have ever been, I still find more things I want to do, and feel, and be. But I’m also in a place where I have very limited opportunities to try out all these interesting things, and that frustrates me too.

You might look at me and think, well she’s getting on a bit now. I feel better about my body than ever in my life. It has been scarred and kneaded and stretched and broken, by life events more than by deviant behaviour, and I’m in awe that I’m still sane and still standing. I have no regrets. I am so fucking lucky.

This post was written by a RWL Guest Blogger – Emma writes a blog and some people read it, so you might know her or you might not. Either way, she’s not planning to tell you who she is, but she will tell you that “you don’t know me as well as you think you do”.

Image via Iain Cuthbertson’s Flickr photostream.