Last night I started writing an entry and it was flowing so well and then I hit some key and it all disappeared. Damn laptop! Keith brought over his laptop the other night and left it here for when he moves in and he was kind enough to give me an AOL profile (me, AOL? Gasp!) but it�s got this mystery key, some kind of super duper easy delete!

Friday after I did that exhausting entry I went on my artist�s date, finally � it was abbreviated because I was so wiped out, but I did it anyway. I went to Papyrus Books on 114th (not a used book store, but an indie) and browsed and bought two books (Dorian Gray and a book on women�s creativity) and then I went to Mondel Chocolates and bought some chocolate mousse candies � it�s funny, I�ll often spend money on junky bad chocolate, but I rarely treat myself to the real stuff. Then I rode the M4 to 5th Ave and 106th and strolled through the Conservancy Garden in Central Park, and I found a fountain with a sculpture of three dancing girls, and then as I continued to walk I heard a torrent of water and I was simply drawn, how I love the rush of water, and I found a much bigger, unadorned fountain. I laid down on the rim and looked up at the sky and the water droplets tossed up, rounded and thick, and then closed my eyes and just listened. I probably wasn�t there for more than fifteen minutes, but I was astonished how rejuvenated I was when I left, it was amazing. I am so all-or-nothing, I would have never imagined that ten minutes of silence could be so refreshing.

And this has all got me thinking, how difficult it is to treat myself to genuinely good things. How hard I am on myself, so punitive. Anything that would constitute treating myself truly well, as if I believed myself a truly worthy person, is something that I sneak furtively, guiltily, as if I didn�t deserve it and I am in fear of censure from some vague higher authority ready to smite me for my hubris.

This may be overblown, but is a relatively accurate depiction of my fears. I look at my whole life, and it scares me how deeply this current of self-hatred runs in me. I am tired of it, it exhausts me, I don�t want it anymore, but it is as familiar as the proverbial old pair of slippers, and some part of me clings to it like a baby blanket.

(How clumsy this all is, how little sense this makes, and I can only hope that as I write the thick layers obscuring my truth will continue to slowly slip off�)

What upsets me the most is my fear that deep down, I chose to stay with the Louse and his cruelties because he only externalized, made physical, what has been in my head my entire life. I think that part of me felt like if I could only somehow persuade him to see what he was doing to me, make him see, he would wake up and stop and apologize and finally give me all the love and affection that I needed, and I would finally find redemption. This process, of course, that I need to do myself.

These thoughts of how I treat myself brings me to, surprise surprise, sex - isn't that where I'm the most confused? (Warning: I�m pretty sure that this is going to go into Too Much Information territory. You may not want to know all of this about me. I�m not sure I want to know all of this about me, but I want it out of me. Scroll down if you want to continue.)

I believe that I�ve written before about my sexual fantasies, if not here, then in my saturngirl13 diary (which unfortunately is not visible online anymore, although I can get at the files, maybe I�ll repost some of them eventually.) But for a lot of you, this may be new. And it�s uncomfortable to talk about. And I�m feeling very clumsy and poorly spoken but I feel like I need to get this out, even if it takes me three times as long and three times as many words as are necessary. Thanks for bearing with me.

But yeah, my sexual fantasies. Ever since I was a kid, I�ve had these really extreme S&M type fantasies � perhaps not so extreme in the actual situations, but extreme in that they all revolve around me being dominated, humiliated, degraded, punished. Punishment. That�s really the key, I think. Sometimes I am so sickly aroused by the thought of being treated roughly, spanked, slapped. These thoughts come and go � I remember they were last at their peak during the worst times with the Louse, the whole last year, really. He would go months without touching me, rejecting me when I would reach out to him, and at night while he slept next to me, sprawled out and crowding me against the wall, I would touch myself with harsh cruel words in my head � I couldn�t get aroused without the cruelties, without a litany of that�s right bitch take it you cunt you like it like that don�t you you slut you like it when I hurt you you dirty filthy slut - and I would hate him while I came, hate myself, hope that he would hear the cries I would smother into my pillow and see what he drove me to yet all I did was stuff down my voice, my rage.

So many ways in which he treated me like nothing, and yet how complicit I was in it all.

I laugh about this with Jill and Keith, and in an X-rated Seinfeldian way it is funny � I will give myself credit, I can almost always laugh, at least later � perhaps six, seven months after we met, the Louse was over my apartment on a Sunday afternoon and as we sat together on my sofa he surfed through the channels on my illegal cable box and when he came to the Spice channel he left it on and I took that as an invitation of sorts. As I began to reach out to him he stopped me, �no, I�m not in the mood� and rebuffed my touch yet he undid his pants and began to beat off right there next to me on my sofa in my apartment in the middle of the afternoon. And yet I did do anything, I didn�t yell, I didn�t kick him out � granted part of it was the who does that? factor � but I just sat next to him feeling ashamed and humiliated and unattractive, so low, worthless, and yet still so sickly aroused by the TV, by watching him, maybe by being treated so badly?

Goddamn, this is excruciating to admit.

Now, I believe that I have discussed before how he got me to agree to having an open relationship. It was early on, I believe right after his birthday, and it was late late late at night, perhaps 3 am on a weeknight, and we�d just finished making love � I hate using those words to refer to him but that�s what I thought we had then, so early into it � and I was punch-drunk and thickly drowsy and honeyed with a feverish love like I�d never known before and he began to talk the way he did up until the very end, obliquely, pseudo-profoundly, about his personal philosophy, about how he had so much love in his heart (hah!) that he couldn�t limit it to just one person, how he wanted to be with me yet wanted to share our love with others, you can just imagine. In my post-coital bliss it all sounded fine and dandy � I of course crammed down the anxious kick-in-the-stomach that began to bubble up � and I had been familiar with polyamory in theory, good old �responsible non-monogamy� and of course that wasn�t what it became. I just looked back at my old journals to look for the date, my fountain-pen-and-paper journals, and it was the beginning of October when he first slept with another woman and threw it in my face.

I remember it was a Saturday, still warm and sunny, the last remnants of summer still tantalizing in the air, and that morning we had been getting ready to pick up his niece Priscilla and his nephew Joel (pronounced Jo-el, like Superman�s father?, but everyone called him Junior) at his sister�s in the Bronx to take them to the aquarium near Coney Island, and as we were on our way out the door he said, �I�ve got something important I need to talk to you about tonight� but he didn�t say one word until twelve hours later when we got home. The day was lovely and tiring and god how I loved those kids and all the while anxiety ate at me like rats scavenging my innards. While we sat at a table at McDonalds and waited for the Louse to bring our food, Junior asked me �what did my uncle say to you to get you to like him?�, and on the train ride home (so long, to get from Coney Island to the Bronx!) the kids and I played Hangman and I taught Priscilla to play MASH (you know, mansion, apartment, shack, house) and she was delighted and couldn�t wait to tell all her friends and again, all the time I was half-sick with fear.

Finally after we dropped the kids off and took the bus home from the Bronx � I was still so love-stupid that I moved in with him, more than a year after all of this � finally he sat me down on his battered black office chair while he sat on the living room windowsill and told me what I had been afraid to hear all day.

He told me that he had slept with a woman on Thursday, just a few days before, in the same bed that we had shared the night before, that morning. (I realized that I should have known; there were candles around the bed that he hadn�t lit for me, and that hurt almost more than anything, that he would seduce her.) It was Theresa, and he had met her at Mezquita, the club on Broadway and 190th, the one that I am delighted to note looks like it is closed now, the club that his sister introduced him to and where he would take me and everyone there knew me (even though they spoke Spanish in front of me all the time, I was always on the periphery, in the dark), and everyone must have known that he had taken Theresa home, Theresa whom I would later learn was a mother of four kids, kids who had been taken away from her, one of whom had tried to kill herself, only 14 years old, Theresa who was doing coke that night, and it was Theresa he brought home and fucked in the bed that felt like ours, fucked her without a condom.

I remember sitting in that chair � it had wheels, and I felt like I�d been hit, pushed back, the air sucked out of me and replaced by a low and keeing wail, and I was so angry and yet so betrayed and devastated, and now I am enraged to think of it, that half self-satisfied smirk he almost succeeded in hiding behind his mask of contrition, and believe me, that contrition wasn�t real and the pretense didn�t last long, but at the moment I just felt so hurt and wounded and all I wanted was release, comfort, succor, and I wanted it from him. If I was hurting so much, and he was the one who caused it, shouldn�t he be the one to make it better, assuage the pain, take me in his arms and promise me that he would never do it again, couldn�t believe that he could hurt me so much, someone so wonderful and dear to him, he was so sorry, so sorry, let me make it up to you, anything, you mean so much to me, I am so sorry, let me hold you and make it better. (Yes, yes, I know how sick this is, yet I need to confess�)

But the more I cried, the colder he got, and somehow he was angry at me, and I still don�t know how he justified it, but he must have hated my pain and anger and he shut me out and we went to bed and it was only a full-sized bed and we were both big and you couldn�t help but be close together in that bed yet the gulf between us was immense, that cold stone wall of fury he threw up to block me, and I needed so much to tear it down and I need to remember now to be kind, I did the best I could with what I had and I had nothing, but the shame is still so strong.

He laid next to me and stared at the ceiling with his rage boiling off of him and I was exhausted with bewilderment, what did I do to make him so angry, how could he be angry with me when he was the one who hurt me, and I just wanted it to stop. I reached out to him, all I wanted was for him to hold me and stroke my hair and tell me that we would work it out, yet he rebuffed my touch (I can�t even begin to describe how lethal that was to my soul, almost two years of my affections being tossed aside like so much garbage, and that�s just what I felt like, nothing but garbage, I felt like he had the Midas touch except that all he touched turned to shit and that�s all I was, disgusting and excremental and worse than worthless; a contaminant) and his silence and fury was too much, it was consuming me and I had to get it out of me and I didn�t know how to let it loose and I wanted release and the only thing I knew was sex and yet he wouldn�t touch me so I touched myself and I needed the pain to be outside of me and I am so ashamed to tell this but the not-telling is worse.. I begged him, please please, if you won�t touch me, hurt me, please hurt me.. I begged and he did it, I was on my knees and he pushed my head to the bed to quiet me as he slapped me, bit me, brought his wooden hairbrush down on my skin, tore at my hair, and it hurt so much and I hated it but I needed it, needed to feel something other than the devastation in my head, needed it to find physical form and as much as it hurt it hurt less than the emotional pain and I don�t even remember if he fucked me while he hurt me but I know I came ferociously, furiously, throbbing and aching everywhere, raw and exposed, and it was only then that I could collapse into sleep, into safety, into myself.

And today� today is so much later, almost two years later, and I want to think that I am different, that I have changed, that I could never and would never invite this again.. yet there is that false comfort of familiarity to be wary of. I have not had sex since September, and I don�t like to count that, but I have to � my one foray into sex since the Louse was with someone who treated me with just about as much regard, and I have been so scared of myself to get anywhere close to being with a man again for fear of repeating it again, and again. I am so scared of my sexuality, still. I am in bed alone every night and I am so often numb as I touch myself and sometimes that list of cruelties sneaks back into my head just to feel something again and I don�t want that anymore, yet thoughts of kindnesses and affection still leave me numb and yes, that scares me. I like to think that were I with someone I could trust, someone kind and loving and respectful, my fear and suspicion and loathing could melt. I have the fantasies of a twelve-year-old girl � frankly, the twelve-year-old girl I never was, because that girl was furtively diving into her father�s hard core porn collection � I daydream of lying with a man who would hold me, kiss me, so gentle, his hand on my hair and my cheek gentle � but those fantasies stop there, once my imaginary lover reaches past my neck I freeze and can�t imagine gentle caresses building to passion � passion isn�t safe. I can�t yet reconcile the affection and tenderness I crave, the safety I need, with my sexual feelings, not in my head anyway, not just yet.

And I am scared that I am beyond repair � sometimes I feel held together with spit and chewing gum and Silly Putty and maybe I can find some tenuous shape but no permanent integrity � and my scars and jagged seams are a warning. What man would ever want to love someone so damaged?

Of course I hope that is not true, and really, I guess I need to not care any more. I have to live with myself no matter who is in � or not in � my life, and I need to finally allow myself the kindnesses I crave. I need to tell myself, you are not the same woman you were in that dark and shame-filled bedroom, but I need to love her too, and I need to forgive her.

Perhaps this is my first step.