i'm not here, this isn't happening

radiohead kid a was the cd of the moment. i had spent a week with a close friend, a bottle of tequila, a carton of orange juice, and radiohead on repeat. exhausting sex had ensued as well as talk of the missing two years of my life. my friend believed i had been assaulted as a child. said i was a "raped dream", like that was a compliment. i don't know why i don't remember the chunk of time from seven to nine. i remember the day before the last day of school before christmas break in second grade. and then i remember trying to kill myself by smothering myself between the mattress and the box spring. i was nine then. in the new house. there are plenty of reasons to block out that period. my best friend burned to death in a christmas tree fire. my alcoholic and early alzheimers (although we didn't know it then) grandfather came to live with us following a car crash that left him unable to walk. we moved for the first time. plus the first rush of hormones and childhood depression seems almost logical. but i was looking for answers. and sexual abuse seemed to fit. if i knew what happened, i could heal. but really it just opened me up. made me a cavern of vulnerability. maybe that is what attracted mark. i just typed his real name and left it. the sparks behind my eyelids start flashing and i feel like gushing forth but tears refuse to come. if only i could cry...
so i'm processing. i even made a cd to process to. the playlist is:
1. giving up - ana nalick
2. summertime - janis joplin
3. precious things - tori amos
4. roads - portishead
5. history (repeats itself) - aos
6. how to disappear completely - radiohead
7. breath - ana nalick
8. let go - frou frou
9. fair - remy zero
10. say goodbye - throwing muses
11. flower - eels
12. little girl blue - janis joplin
13. whispering pines - dar williams
14. hold on - tom waits
15. i shall believe - sheryl crow
16. hallelujah - leonard cohen
17. wait - get set go

tonight was spent with a glass of wine, a glass of water, half a pack of cigarettes, and this cd. the cigarettes assure that i keep breathing. which was a task once "how to disappear completely" came on. the song was playing when i woke up to find mark on top of me. it was almost instructional. dissociation, my selection from the fight, flight, freeze response trigger, came too easily. i watched him fuck me from above. his eyes closed. mine open.

i had been asleep. dreaming. woke slowly, pleasantly, still drunk and downtrodden from mono, not really present. my hips were moving involuntarily but not altogether unpleasantly. i had no idea what was happening except my head was spinning. then i heard him moan. breathing heavily. i opened my eyes. when i realized, if i realized, i was already above the bed looking down.

when i felt the weight of his fingers in my ass, i anticipated pain, but none came. only numb dull fullness. my body opened for him.

this betrayal of my body. even though i did not consent. had said no repeatedly and firmly earlier in the evening due to the lack of condoms. had gone to sleep with the matter settled. i awoke fucked, fucking, and my body responded.

i held my breath but my hips returned his rhythm. i wanted to cry or cry out or feel the searing pain of this violation but i couldn't. my body refused to feel but acted on its own.

once he finished with my ass and returned to my wet (goddamit, how could i be wet at a time like this) pussy, i closed my eyes, not able to watch anymore. i tried to just go back to sleep. pretend it wasn't happening. let it all be over. just let it be over.

he came inside of me. the warm wet seeping between my legs is the only sensation i can remember of the night.

later, when my period was six weeks late, i kept putting off pregnancy tests because i did not want to admit it had happened. even when i finally bought one, it was due to unprotected sex, not rape.

it took me over a year before i could get an hiv test. i knew i was hiv positive. only after working with wonderful hiv positive folk at gmhc and coming to terms with how i would live the final ten or so years of my life could i finally get tested. still, from drunken unprotected sex. not rape.

the first time i applied the term rape to the situation was in my hiv and society class. we did a blind writing assignment where everyone wrote about their first hiv test or why they hadn't had one yet. i wrote "i was raped. i knew i had hiv. i put off the inevitable confirmation as long as possible. when the test came back negative i wanted to cry, but was only numb." the group next to mine got my response. there was a lot of conversation and speculation about who it could be from. the professor handled it gracefully.

so tonight my goal was to cry. i shook and heaved and my mouth sobbed, but my eyes remained relatively dry. maybe i'll be able to cry in the bath.

drunken blogging

so i am pet-sitting for my family this weekend. translation: i am getting drunk on my parents' wine while the dogs bark with sandy.

i have been getting drunk a lot lately. part of it is social excursions, such as drunken yahtzee at the maple leaf (yes, a canadian bar in houston). and part of it is coping/avoidance and general escapism.

my therapy is taking a hard turn. we are beginning to deal with being raped. chances are i will be talking about it more often, as i have finally "confessed" to a few friends and have generally been thinking about it at great length.

my therapist and i are utilizing a great resource: staci haines' "the survivor's guide to sex". some of you may recall my previous mention of her dvd "healing sex" (DO NOT WATCH THE DVD IN ONE SITTING!!!!). it is a wonderful tool. so my therapist and i are reading a chapter a week. our first chapter is chapter three on dissociation.

i am a master of dissociation. not only did i dissociate when i was raped, but i had dissociated during many earlier sexual encounters and continued to dissociate through many later sexual experiences. part of this was healing. part of this was preserving and protecting myself.

later, dissociation surrendered to drunkenness. i can count on one hand the number of times i have had sex sober. yeah, i have issues. we've established this. i was drunk for not only the worst but many of the best sexual experiences of my life (including fucking dacia).

i have always had a low tolerance for alcohol. add my current dosing of antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and tranquilizers and you get a sloshed jane from two drinks and a cigarette.

so five drinks and half a pack of cigarettes later you have a drunken jane blogging to hundreds about her lack of ability to fuck sober. granted not a total lack of ability. there have been rare and tender moments completely lucid (think the tantalizing and boobalicious rachel kramer bussel). but they drown amongst the drunken times.

lately though i have made an improvement. i have stopped fucking. if i can't fuck unless i'm fucked up then i'm not fucking at all. although i'm still fucked up. how many times can i type fuck in one paragraph? anyways, i have not had sex since i left new york. this is a great and healthy choice. i'm taking care of myself and my body. doesn't mean i don't get horny and lustful. but i haven't had an intimate connection with anyone worthy of breaking celibacy.

so the inevitable outcome has two options. either i fall in love/deep like and "make love" to a lucky someone or on one of my drunken occasions, i fall in to bed with someone and have a great time. we shall see...

Lesbian Smut

First-Timers: True Stories of Lesbian Awakening

The lovely Rachel Kramer Bussel's newest anthology is out! First-Timers: True Stories of Lesbian Awakening, is available at bookstores and on Amazon now. I will be reading from my story "Wear Me Home" on June 21st at In The Flesh.

I'm actually in the book twice! Once in my own story about my first sexual encounter with a transman and then again in Audacia's story, aptly titled "What's a little fisting between friends?" You can guess what that one is about.

So check it out, then check me out In The Flesh.

trippin'

among the crying randomly (goddam garden state) and jerking off furiously (jon stewart, yum!), i have been globetrotting, or nation-trotting if you will. really just two location-trotting, but enough with the semantics.

a few weeks a go i had the opportunity to spend a full week on my parents' land in north carolina, hauling rocks around a mountain. i built rock walls and lined ditches and bridges. i also built a mock kiln that operated as a fire pit.

i ate cinnamon apple pancakes with my father at grandma's pancake and steak in Cherokee, then cruised next door to the talking leaves bookstore where i bought my first sherman alexi (the lone ranger and tonto fist fight in heaven). remarkably, i was able to read the book (a task that has been difficult since my breakdown this fall).

i played with my baby cousins and tolerated my middle sister (until my parents' tried to force us to drive 13 hours together, bad bad bad idea).

i even planted a mountainside garden. down the slope from the house (because my mother didn't want the birds scatting all over the yard) i planted mounds of squash, zucchini, watermelon (three kinds!), pumpkins, gourds, and a couple hundred sun flowers. the seed packets promised low maintenance and drought resistance so i hope they come up.

sandy is truly a mountain dog. although at first she was afraid to walk over raised branches, by the end of the trip she was galloping through the woods. once we arrived after the two day drive, sandy decided she did not want to get back in the car. so she chased the car up and down the mountain instead of riding along. her tongue flopped wildly. half the time you could only see her tail swinging along in the rear view. she had a blast.

after a short week back in houston, i took off again. this time for the sex work matters conference in new york. i met many lovely ladies (http://xflickerflyx.livejournal.com, http://www.sacredwhore.org/, and http://www.jessicamelusine.com/ among them). unfortunately, dacia and i were struck down with flu-like infections and had to leave the conference only half-full of the knowledge and networking provided.

the night before the conference was spent at the sex worker visions art show http://sexworkervisions.blogspot.com/. the place was jam packed. i was performance artist Melissa Gira's bodyguard for the evening. i really wanted to buy christy road's self-exam piece (yeah, speculums and mirrors).

oh, and my cleavage was reunited with miss rachel kramer bussel's boobage. the girls are still rosy from the encounter.

I was even interviewed by the new york times. okay, so i'm not a foot fetish model, but i've done foot play. i just didn't want my grandmother to see my picture in the new york times (and they took plenty of pictures) with the subtitle, "jane vincent, a self-proclaimed whore". and the reporter was super skeezy. he was pissed that i wouldn't give him my real name. props to the photographer, who was chill and down to earth. The link is long and you have to be a ny times member, but it was the "an old profession that's new to doing taxes article" of april 5th, if you want to check it out.

that saturday was spent gallery hopping with a sex worker posse composed of melissa gira, jessica melusine, audacia and myself.

on sunday, my flight was rescheduled due to my massively swollen ear drums. so i slept all day in dacia's bed, drinking water and dosing myself on mucinex.

but the unfortunate illness allowed for a surprise appearance at monday night's Pervert's Saloon. I read from "the naked man in my bathroom" http://educatedslut.blogspot.com/2005/06/naked-man-in-my-bathroom-whole-story.html#comments. The best part was meeting so many fellow bloggers and readers. A special shout out to Rose of http://www.aliferestarted.blogspot.com/aliferestarted.blogspot.com who wrote an amazing piece for O, my first orgasm (send in your submissions, people, to omyfirstorgasm@yahoo.com) that you can read at http://omyfirstorgasm.blogspot.com/2006/03/im-not-its-not-broken.html. one day i will learn to do little link things, really.

so, now i'm back in houston, where i'm looking for jobs in my field (at least with some form of youth leadership, teaching, or health angle because all the sex is abstinent only or requires a clinical license), making friends, drinking too much but doing so in public therefore it is social outreach (my shrink is big on social activities), writing a business plan for a coffee shop, and going to the occasional lesbian wet t-shirt contest.