Content warning throughout the essay: domestic and sexual violence. In sections that involve trauma, all content warnings will be included in brackets just after the section break. Please always read each section’s bracketed content before proceeding.

Introduction

3So now we get into it. This essay is three-fold:

1. The ‘not mischievous’ sexual experiences are those that are desired and affect an increase in pleasure. These sections indicate my current and future life and are signified by this code preceding the section: + Non-Mischievous/Pleasure +

2. The ‘mischievous’ sexual experiences are those that were not consented to, involve trauma, and caused great harm. These sections refer to my past and are signified by this code preceding the section: ― Mischievous/Non-Consent ―

3. Reflections on how Bentham’s theories reverberate still today, signified by the code * Benthamian Reflections *

4Pay special attention to the brackets that start some sections. They offer content warnings for what’s to come in that section. Read those before moving on to the new section.

5And with that: are you ready? I’m not sure that I am, but here we go.

+ Non-Mischievous/Pleasure +

6Skin tingles. Painful heat where Capzasin was rubbed in. Wrists pull slightly against bindings. Stars explode in my periphery through closed eyelids blanketed by soft fabric. Patters of rain tap dance on the window to my left. Purple splotches of color bud behind closed eyes, bloom and merge, shift with subtle burgundy.

7‘You’re smiling,’ Derek says. ‘I’m not sure I did my job right.’

8I feel my smile widen.

9‘Hmm. Or maybe I did.’

10Face still crunchy with mucus from minutes or hours ago when I forgot where I was. Tell me what you need, he says. You are here with me now. You are here with me. You are here with me in our cabin. You are in Provincetown with me. You are warm and safe. You are warm and safe. You are warm and safe. Breathe. Deeper. Take your time. Tell me what you need. Tell me when you can. Holding me in a bear hug and not letting go until my breathing calmed and my heart rate monitor beeped its alert that I was back below sixty beats per second: the agreed upon protocol if I were to be triggered.

11He holds me to his chest and doesn’t let go.

12I imagine raindrops, oblong and overfull, dripping through invisible cracks in the roof overhead, falling and bursting on my upturned face, bouncing off those pretty dark floors and upwards and back towards me yet again.

13The maelstrom comes from all sides, rain licking the windows on all four walls of the cabin. The softer sound pattering a rhythm all its own on the roof above our heads.

14We are quiet for moments without end. Cadences of murmuring rain melding with his irregular pulse strong on my cheek merged with rhythms of my own stuttering breath.

15‘What do you need now, Heather?’ He uses my name so I know the scene is over. Another agreed upon signifier.

16I am snuggled in. I am warm. I am safe.

17‘Still hold me?’ I ask quietly. And he does.

18I am warm and safe.

19I am warm and safe.

20I am warm and safe.

21My new mantra in this strange, strange world. A gift I will neither lose nor forget. This, for now, is good. Still, maybe someday I will find a way to create my own rhythmic precipitation.

―Mischievous/Non-Consent ―

22[Content warning: graphic sexual assault and domestic violence.]

23Though he didn’t use the word, Bentham wrote frequently of consent as a matter of utmost importance when it came to any form of sex. In brief: if there was desire and consent, Bentham argued, then ‘irregular sex’ was of the ‘non-mischievous’ variety and should be warmly accepted by a society seeking to maximize the happiness of its citizens.

24Bentham, though, is specific when it comes to non-consent: to ‘mischievous’ sexual activities.

25So when I say that I was sexually assaulted by a past partner—let’s call him Anders, for the sake of an identifying name—I’m referring to this ‘mischievous’ variety of sex, though admittedly the word ‘mischievous’ irks me given our current cultural understanding of the term as one we often apply to children inclined to non-malicious impishness. Nevertheless, when the first entry in the Oxford English Dictionary describes ‘mischievous’ as an event that is ‘unfortunate, calamitous, disastrous’ and as one causing unequivocal harm, that’s Bentham’s framing and so that’s the definition I’ll use as well.

26For instance: when I discuss, say, bondage, I’m discussing a consensual activity. When I tell the story of being bound by Anders, I’m telling the story of a highly mischievous act.

27I am bound to the bed with technical scuba diving line, also called distance line. It is hard polymer with ridged edges. It must not fray when rubbed against the rusty edges of a sunken wreck, nor from friction against a rocky cavern wall, nor from the barbed barnacles affixed to almost everything in the northern Atlantic. It is designed such that it can pretty exclusively be cut only by a sawing motion from the serrated edge of a diver’s knife. If I wriggle too hard against it, it sloughs skin almost as readily as a grater on firm cheese. It is the only binding material Anders had nearby. It is the only binding material he had that would allow everything that happened next.

28When Anders whispered in my ear—in response to my desperate pleas—that clearly I wanted this because I’d asked for it in the past: well, let’s just say that the distinction in my early-twenty-something brain was muddied. And Anders made damn sure I believed that I’d brought this out in him. He conflated the mischievous and the non-mischievous, and I was too young, and too inexperienced, and too desperate to find sexual fulfillment for the first time in my life, so I bought it. I thought that this must be a part of BDSM. I thought that if I didn’t just take what he wanted to give, well, then I wasn’t really submissive, was I? Just like he said.

29In my desperation, I failed to understand the difference.

+ Non-Mischievous/Pleasure +

31And I was confused, irretrievably so, for long years after Anders. Confused and scared. If my core needs had the capacity to elicit such violence, how could I possibly safely explore them?

32It required decades of therapy to move past this. Decades that could’ve been far better spent if our culture around irregular sexualities had progressed beyond the LGBT and included more of the +. If our cultural narrative included power play as readily as it did homosexuality and, eventually, the fluidity and expansion of gender. The years were long, those decades when I didn’t live my authentic life: those times of self-inflicted, self-annihilating torment. Those were the times I fixated on my sexuality to the point of neglecting everything else in my life. I could not be there for friends, family. I could not do work that mattered to me. I could either focus on my desperate need to find sexual fulfillment, or I was wholly fixated on shoving my needs back into the dark matter where I thought they belonged. I was too busy needing to do much of anything else.

33So, now—as of a mere year ago—that I’ve finally fought my way into a desperate, reluctant, excruciating, and utterly necessary acceptance:

34The world I create. It is my world. A safe one. A safe irregularity all my own, made for and by me.

35It’s about me, my world. About my own needs. It is a means through which I create a world that makes sense, to me. A world with rules I imagine, and create, and understand.

36Here’s the thing: my world is one, for example, without the misogyny that causes me to be treated like a silly, hysterical woman when I try to explain to my surgeon—twenty-two surgeries in, no less—what is happening inside my own body. It is a world in which men don’t alternatively try to take advantage of my kindness and then disparage with biting words when I stand up and assert my own needs. It is a world in which I do not have to worry about my safety when I limp alone to my car after dark each evening, knowing that I am now a vulnerable target in my disability. My world is one that is fair. A world in which I know all the rules before playing the game. A world in which I can safely break those rules, if I want to. Or need to. A world in which I’m seen enough by someone that they notice that I broke the rules. In which someone notices that I too have needs, and wants to satisfy them. In my world I am seen and known.

37There is nothing arbitrary in my world. I have built it carefully. I intimately know its walls, its corridors, its open expanses, its tunnels and its burrows. My world is consistent. I know my world because I am attentive. I know my world because I know what I need. I know my world because it is me. Because I know, finally, who I am. And in my world, I make sure to give myself what I need.

38The rules tend to be little things. Insignificant but for the significance I give them:

1. You may tickle Derek’s right foot, but never the left.

2. Do not hide Derek’s keys in coffee mugs. Clear drinking glasses are fair game.

3. If you make the bed, make both sides. Under no circumstances make your side of the bed and leave his all crumpled.

39Arbitrary rules. Playful ones. Ones I can choose to break, when I need to. Ones I can break when I desire consequences. Consequences too that are predetermined and safe. Consequences that I have negotiated and specifically consented to. It is a game, and a fun one. What can I get away with today? What can I not get away with? What actions must I take to instigate desired reactions?

40It is in playing to perceived submission, in controlling the scene I wouldn’t normally get to control, in setting the boundaries and the rules, that I subvert my own weakness and pain. That I turn it all on its head and manifest power. Or feel I do, anyway. And isn’t one’s individual perception, after all, the catalyst for sexual fulfillment and of self-actualized identity?

* Benthamian Reflections *

43Again, when sex isn’t sex, we might ask: in our culture, why still do we experience such negative reactions for acts that cause no social harms and, if anything, only add to human happiness?

+ Non-Mischievous/Pleasure +

44I pull hard against fleecy ropes with all four of my limbs. Derek bound me and stretched me into a mildly contorted shape. Dark silky material covers my eyes. I see nothing besides exploding shapes that merge and shift, same as I do every time I close my eyes when I play. I wonder, does everyone like me experience this visual maelstrom? This play of lights and shapes when I am getting this thing I so urgently need?

45Corners, four of them, supporting sheltering walls that rebuff darkness and cold and the inclement and, often, pain. It feels a light haven, this cabin, a place of warmth and comfort, of drawing and building, of creation. A refuge from the lingering chaos of what feels to me an often-nonsensical world. Just outside, gardens further insulate and protect.

46‘What did you say you needed?’ Derek asks, pulling the blindfold up to my forehead.

47I look up at him, eyes wide.

48‘You can do it.’

49I shake my head no.

50‘It’s hard, I know, but you can try.’

51My eyes feel large in my face.

52‘It’s okay. You’re safe,’ he says gently. ‘You can try.’

53I pause, then do as he asks, or at least try to.

54He smiles and approaches the bed. Puts his hand on my torso, tickling upwards. I try not to move.

55‘You’re the one who broke your rule. You know what happens next.’

56One deep breath, in and out. I recall that bright green meteorite two nights ago, burning ancient nickel into my atmosphere, primordial history turned present turned past all in one sweeping arc across my sky. Time is nothing, after all, but air and space and heartbeats between strung-together words. My astrophysicist father always tried to convince me that it doesn’t exist, time, not really.

57Euphoria rises lighter than air in my chest.

58I feel as if I just might be able to do anything. Anything at all.

59I create now. I create my own world with my own rules in the sanctity of our cabin. I live the life I always wanted.

60‘Are you ready?’ Derek asks.

― Mischievous/Non-Consent ―

61[Content Warning: physical and psychological domestic violence.]

62After a particularly harrowing twelve-hour drive to Nova Scotia for vacation—and a particularly harrowing argument along the way—I wake alone in a bedroom in my parents’ cottage. It is one in the afternoon and I rouse, hungry. Anders is not in the bedroom, but I smell coffee. I walk into the kitchen, pick up a mug and fill it.

63‘Rough night,’ he says when he sees me. I can’t tell if this is a statement or a question. I shrug.

64‘Don’t ignore me, Heather. We’re gonna hafta deal with this sooner or later.’

65‘Later, please. I’m groggy.’

66‘It’s my issue that you slept into the afternoon?’

67‘I was awake for over twenty-four hours. You got to nap.’

68‘See, this attitude is exactly what I can’t have.’ He picks up an extension cord from behind his seat.

69‘Don’t talk to me like that again,’ I say. ‘Not like you did last night and not—’

70‘Don’t you dare interrupt. It’s your turn to listen. You’ve been talking for half a year about wanting us to play rougher. I think it’s time.’

71That throws me. ‘Play rougher?’

72‘Rougher.’ He holds up the cord, brings it close to my face. ‘Spice it up, right?’ He rises from his seat. I back away. ‘You’re the one who’s been trying to get me to. What, you don’t like it now? Now that you know it’s deserved? I said don’t interrupt. This is how it works, right?’ He pauses. ‘Don’t make me come get you, Heather.’

73Our dog rises, stands between us, not sure of what’s happening but sensing danger. She looks from one of us to the other, as if uncertain as to whom she should protect.

74‘What…who are you?’

75‘Get over here,’ he says. ‘Now.’

76I suppose mischievous is one word for it. Using my irregular sexuality against me as a means of control. Could anything be considered more mischievous?

* Benthamian Reflections *

79So we’re not so far off from Bentham’s time after all. It feels to me as if social acceptance surrounding power-dynamic kink and fetishes is about a generation behind that of mainstream LGBTQ. But why? When consensual power play dynamics are included in the cultural narrative, people like me can share what we know. Mainstream society likes to boast of its culture of consent, yet people like me, out of necessity, have far more robust conversations about consent, and we could help others learn more too. The stakes are higher for us, especially given the higher risk of injury in our style of play. We intimately know negotiation and consent. And sexual fulfillment? Of the order that can only be achieved through authentic, fully embodied expression? Consensual, carefully negotiated kink shifts what was once pain into a beautiful wholeness that exceeds my ability to describe. A wholeness that transcends sexuality and veers far more into identity. But that’s a story for another time.

+ Non-Mischievous/Pleasure +

80My earliest memories include this knowledge about myself. I have memories from younger than three in which I knew—really knew—that I was different. That this part of who I am needed to hide beneath a placid surface. I had deep curiosity about certain words: punish; discipline; dominate; rules. I don’t know how I knew I was different—‘bad,’ even—more than likely a result from subtle responses from my parents and peers when I made comments and asked questions. And I fixated. Obsessed over every book, television program, and movie that portrayed playful power relations. When I was old enough, I obsessively looked up words in the dictionary. Often the same words every day. I realized those particular pages were starting to look worn, so one year, fearing that my parents would notice, I bought my own dictionary at an elementary school Scholastic Book Fair. At least then I could live in peace and obsess over my own dictionary in the sanctuary of my room.

81I knew I had to hide. I knew I was different. I knew I couldn’t help it. I knew it was who I was. I knew I needed self-created rules. I knew I yearned to break them. And I knew I needed—not wanted—consequences when I did.

* Benthamian Reflections *

― Mischievous/Non-Consent ―

83It hadn’t always been like this with Anders. Earlier in our relationship, his body would curl around mine like roots of adjacent trees. I would ask him to play and his strikes would tingle, warmth blooming pleasantly on my skin. His face often looked semi-static, even bored during our sessions, but I wondered if that was just the look he got when he was focused. He didn’t get aroused, but I wasn’t too worried about that—I didn’t always get aroused by play either. It’s beyond sexuality for me anyway, veers far more into identity. I thought maybe that was true for him too.

84After years of suppression, I finally learned that relationships couldn’t work for me without this piece. I finally learned that this wasn’t mere sexuality to me. It was something more. He acted so unsurprised by my big secret—more so than anyone else before—that I thought maybe he was that way too.

+ Non-Mischievous/Pleasure +

85I’ve lain on my bed for some minutes or hours since Derek untied me. Faces rush past my window, stormy and grey as the sky overhead, anxious and moving fast, many eyes fixed on the sky. Fractals reflect fractals (reflect fractals reflect fractals), the air and the sky mirroring a dance all their own. The sun, old and milky behind darkening clouds, kindles an impossible luminescence, one that brightens the very shadows the storm threatens further to shroud.

86A harsh and beautiful wind. The kind that stings when it hits your face. The kind that comforts in its shocks of cool breath. It whips veiny green leaves and velvet pink petals by the open window.

87Just as immediately, the wind pauses, takes in a deep breath all its own, the briefest respite. Perhaps it is peaceful because of its ephemerality. The second breath feels as if the clouds themselves tense and tease.

88The natural third breath never arrives.

89A child shrieks as the sky opens. She bounces in joy, small face raised skyward towards the pelting droplets. Her mother smiles, winces, draws her daughter’s hand closer, pulls her and rushes towards the safety of home.

90I sit inside, warm, and smile.

* Benthamian Reflections *

92It is as simple and as complex as this: in my world, when I lose power, I gain a beautiful, dynamic, fundamental control.