The Other Women.

Something has changed about the way I see your other women. Look, I know, on a human level, there's an ethical, moral understanding with which we operate. I never bound you in the chains of monogamy, and you never asked to bind me, which is not to say there's anything wrong with those chains, I'm the last person to object to the pleasure of being bound, but it's not who we are. Our hearts wander. So it is unfair for me to refer to any other women you have as the other, it's condescending even, maybe to them, or to myself, but I can't help it, it's what the heart wants. 

It wants to see all the right in the world as wrong. What we do is right, there's nothing wrong with it, after all, everyone is willing, aware, consenting and enthusiastic about everything we undertake. There is nothing wrong, we know, in sharing our bed with another, but that information is somewhat incomplete. I don't want to share, is it? I want you to kick me out of our bed, and take another. Make me watch. Or don't. Turn me out. Or don't. Ignore me. Or don't. Make me a part of it. Or don't. None of that really matters as much as the condition. You do not take another, you remove me to accomodate another. We're allowed to do that too, it's harder to reconcile with the well-thought out and very sane policies of the polyamory of the modern age, but I explain it the way I explain everything that inconveniences my conscience, I do it in service of my sexuality. 

In some way, I suppose, I recognise that you and I are cheaters. You've cheated and i've cheated, on other people, and while we can spin heart-wrenching tales that make the reader think about the events the led us to dozens of other beds with almost relief and sympathy, let's not, let's admit it at face-value for a change. I know why I cheated on men, and there is nothing virtuous about it. I did it so i could tell them, so I could watch them internalize my betrayal, I could watch their pain and it would finally be okay for them to retaliate against me in violence, and have it be justifiable. I did it for the panic of the moment of admittance, and the fear that follows. I did it to test the men i loved, and see how far they would go to punish me for my acts of indiscretion. But I also, I also did it because I wanted to be on the other end of that, and I couldn't make people cheat on me so the closest I could come was doing it myself, and watching their responses. 

Not with you. 

You can cheat on me, right in front of me, and devastate me, and we can walk away from the wreckage, hand-in-hand, and take it all apart one sick pleasurable conversation at a time until it reads like the dirty little book that I kept hidden under my mattress all those years ago. I suppose it's not quite cheating, we are more ethical and moral than we once used to be, and maybe it's for the best that we bring out in one another the need to be better in some ways, but it doesn't matter what we call it — cheating or cuckolding or breaking all the little parts of my heart that have the audacity to still be intact — it still isn't an act of compersion. It is not a joy for me to watch you pleasured by other women. I don't allow myself jealousy nor insecurity, these are not emotions i really ever feel, but i do allow myself inadequacy. I can play with that. 

But it's different now. 

It used to be about the thrill of the pain, of being reduced simultaneously by you and your little ladies, but I don't need that anymore. It used to be about being the discarded rag in the corner of the room, that you retreat to in a panic when you have something to clean, but that doesn't hurt anymore. It used to be about finding in myself all those little things that I cannot do, and watching them be done with ease right before me. It used to be about realising that other women, women who are not me, are able to kiss with joy, receive pleasure with abandon, be touched without discovering every nerve is a minefield of a lifetime of wars fought on a soil that doesn't even belong to the fighters, but i don't need to realise any of that anymore. It's clear to me who I am, and who I am to you, and I resigned. 

In the game of Madonna and Whore, I am now Madonna. I don't mean that I am pure or virginal, nor that I am the creature at home with whom you cannot be sexual, no that definition doesn't serve this situation at all, but the sentiment does. I am the thing at home. I am barely even woman to you anymore, and I notice it sometimes when in your outlook towards me as your slave you completely miss my gender. I guess in that way there are no *other* women, for there to be others, there would have to be one first, and I don't think I am a woman to you, as much as I am your slave. There is no spunk, nor sass to me, anymore, and if ever I was fiery and volatile, I have no memory of that creature anymore. I am exactly who you made me, and I am resigned to this place. 

It doesn't hurt me anymore to watch a woman enjoy the pleasure you give her, I understand that pleasure was never my place. I doesn't make me feel like it's unfair that you give them the right to say yes and to scream no, nor that you let them express their pain and pleasure, in sound, and on their faces, it's not unfair, I cannot have that, because it's not mine to have. It doesn't sting to watch you accomodate others with comfort when you won't even toss me a blanket when I shiver naked on the cold floor, it makes sense, because you cannot give me the consideration of being your woman, I am not that. And I understand that at last. It doesn't hurt, resignation doesn't hurt. 

Resignation is one of the great underrated emotions of our age. It sounds sorrowful and tragic, but it isn't, it's quiet and accepting, and I suppose the emotional quality of resignation has a lot to do with what you are resigning to. I don't feel any sadness about this, it feels like coming home, and even when home is a messy place with a sink full of dishes, its comfort is incomparable. When I watch you now, with women who aren't me, and I take note of how different those interactions are from what I know to be your sexuality, it feels like coming home to an uncomfortable truth, and the truth, no matter how jarring is still a warm tumbler of scotch compared to the cheap arrack of delusion. 

Something has changed about the way I see your other women. Well, I guess that's not entirely true. Something has changed about the way I see myself, I no longer subject myself to the pain of the aspiration of the inadequate. I stay in quiet silence until I am needed. I'm not here to be them. I cannot be, because there are no other women. There are women and there are slaves, and it's very clear who I am to you, and now there is no more pain, there is no more cheating before my eyes, there is you exercising your will, and me, embracing the chains in which I am bound. It is quiet, even as they moan on top of you, or maybe it's just me, I am quiet. I am the silence in the room, because it's all I am allowed to bring.