Scared Selfless

by Michelle Stevens, PhD

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  COMING TO TERMS with the slave training and the sex parties and the strange men in motel rooms is all very difficult. But these memories are nothing, nothing, compared to my memories of Frank. Frank was a professional pornographer who lived in Manhattan. He worked out of his apartment in an uptown high-rise. Frank’s place was big by New York standards, with a den, sunken living room, three bedrooms, and a spiral staircase that led to a loft. Fronting two corners like it did, the place should’ve been bathed in light. It was always dark, though. In adulthood, I realized this was because every single window was covered by drapes. This was practical. Frank made dirty movies. He didn’t want natural light. Or prying eyes.

  The first time I went to Frank’s, I was nine or ten. Gary dropped me off one weekend with no explanation. I’d had enough slave training by then to understand the game. Frank was to play the master; I was to play the obedient servant. The minute I met him, though, I understood that Frank did not play games. He was a different kind of person than anyone I’d met before—or have met since. Frank was the kind of person one hopes never to meet.

  Frank was probably associated with the mob. It’s not the way he spoke, looked, or acted that makes me think this—although he certainly resembled the characters in a Martin Scorsese film. Instead, my hunch is based on knowledge of the pornography business circa 1977.

  Before the era of free love, pornography was banned by censorship laws. As a result, porn could only be acquired on the black market, a market dominated by organized crime. In the 1960s, the Supreme Court ruled that porn was protected by the First Amendment. Now legal, the pornography business exploded, with adult bookstores, movie theaters, and peep shows providing an ever-increasing variety of product for horny customers. By the early 1970s, pornography had become so profitable for the mob that it was netting an income of approximately $250 million a year—a sum that would be considerably higher today if adjusted for inflation. As pornography became more socially acceptable, hard-core stuff became far more available. Depictions of bondage, torture, and a wide range of fetishes grew commonplace.

  One of the most popular fetishes was pedophilia.

  Pedophilia became so popular and accepted in the 1970s that it actually entered the zeitgeist. Child prostitutes were all the rage in films like Taxi Driver and Pretty Baby. Woody Allen’s obsession with young girls, epitomized in Manhattan, also reared its ugly head. In the porn world, periodicals like Lollitots, Naughty Horny Imps, and Child Discipline, as well as a plethora of films, offered images of young children performing fellatio, having intercourse, and being gang raped. Remarkably, such merchandise was sold over the counter in Times Square and other cities. In San Francisco, a hard-core kiddie porn festival even ran in a public movie house for five weeks.

  The reason child pornography flourished in the 1970s was because, shockingly, there was no federal law to stop it. As a result, child pornography quickly grew into a booming, multimillion-dollar business. By 1977 (the year I met Gary), there were at least 264 different monthly magazines that featured child pornography. The cost for this type of entertainment was high. A typical magazine cost $25 while a short 8-mm film cost $50. Adjusted for today’s inflation, these items would cost $89 and $178, respectively. Needless to say, kiddie porn was a very lucrative business.

  Because Frank’s apartment doubled as a film studio, there was always a lot of activity going on. Various men came in and out to work the lights and cameras, and various people in S/M garb usually seemed to be hanging around. There were always a few pretty (probably underage) girls in the bedrooms. But there were no other kids, and no one seemed to acknowledge the fact that I was only four feet tall.

  Life at Frank’s involved absolute degradation and authoritarian control. During the day, I worked as an actress, performing whatever perverted sex scene Frank could dream up. This usually involved sex with one or more adult men in one or more positions. I was used to all that. But doing it in front of a crew and a room full of porn actors made the whole thing a thousand times more mortifying.

  For the most part, I simply kept my head down and did whatever Frank commanded. I knew it was pointless to resist, so I shut off my thoughts and feelings and did as I was told. One time, though, fear got the better of me.

  I was required to do a scene where a male master led me in on a leash. A domme then entered the scene, and the two of them discussed me as if I were a dog about to be bred. I waited on all fours, still held by my master’s leash, while the domme went offstage to retrieve her slave. She returned with a man on a leash. Like me, he pretended to be a dog on all fours, but this other dog had on a black leather mask. I don’t know why, but the thing scared me to death. I jumped up and backed away, inadvertently ruining the shot. This was the age of expensive film, not cheap video.

  Frank was furious. He demanded I get back on the floor.

  But I refused. In a ten-year-old’s temper-tantrum way, I refused to return to the scene. I doubt I was able to verbalize that the mask was scaring me. Not that it would’ve mattered. Frank told me to go to his bedroom. So I did and felt relieved.

  Not for long. When Frank came into the room, the expression on his face was all business. It was clear that defiance would not be tolerated. Without a word, he hog-tied me and hung me on a hook in his ceiling. For the vast majority of people who have never been hung by their extremities, it’s difficult to convey how it feels. The stomach wants to fall to the ground while the arms and legs are being pulled behind the body straight out of the shoulders and hips. Very quickly, the muscles in the thighs and buttocks start to spasm while the shoulders suffer searing pain.

  In all my years of slave training, I’d never experienced this particular type of torture. Panicked, I struggled for relief, but it was all in vain. I cried out, and Frank very quickly returned. Silently, he took me off the hook, released the bonds, and left the room. I followed with my tail between my legs. I did the scene where a man in a mask fucks me from behind like we’re dogs. I just tuned out everything and did it.

  PART II

  CONSEQUENCES

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  For he who loses all often easily loses himself.

  —PRIMO LEVI, If This Is a Man/The Truce

  Scared Selfless

  It’s truly astounding what some people are able to endure. Each year more than a million children in the United States are repeatedly neglected, physically abused, and/or sexually abused, yet they get up each morning and go about the business of living life. Victims of domestic violence do the same, as do combat soldiers, refugees, and civilians in war zones. They go to work; they stand in bread lines; they stroll their neighborhoods knowing that at any moment they could very well face pain, dismemberment, death.

  According to psychiatrist Judith Herman, author of Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, “The worst fear of any traumatized person is that the moment of horror will recur.” For victims of prolonged violence, this fear is realized over and over again. How do victims cope with the sure knowledge that their worst nightmare will return? Simply put, they block out reality. They pretend the truth ain’t so. There are many terms used to describe this pretense: repression, denial, dissociation, doublethink. While each word may describe a slightly different mental process, they all serve the same purpose: They keep us moving forward and functioning despite our fears.

  Fear is an unbearable emotion. No one can stand to feel it. Not for long, anyway. When we are overcome by fear, our bodies instinctively try to combat it through fight or flight. But if circumstances prevent us from throwing punches or running away, we get overwhelmed by terror and freeze up, becoming physically and emotionally petrified. Physiological freezing in the face of fear is inborn and so common that it’s the basis of a universal nightmare—the monster is coming to kill us, but we are too terrified to run or scream.

  Paralysis also freezes the mind.
This is why we usually remember bad events like accidents, disasters, and assaults in slow motion. During trauma, our brain’s ability to process information becomes suspended. Our emotions also enter a state of suspended animation. Countless people who have survived accidents, surgeries, and rapes describe the sensation of being whisked out of their bodies and observing the trauma they are suffering with detached calm. The surreal feeling that people experience during trauma is the result of dissociation—a psychological term that describes an altered state of consciousness in which thoughts and sensations are separated from their accompanying feelings. When a person is dissociated, he can witness horrible things and know that they are horrible, yet the feeling of horror doesn’t register. Dissociation of this sort is an ingenious defense mechanism. When we can’t fight or flee, our psyche still finds a way to shield us from the full brunt of pain. We become, quite literally, scared out of our minds.

  Freezing and dissociation are involuntary responses to terror. But even in the absence of a life-threatening emergency, a person still has an irresistible urge to mentally escape fear. Anyone who has ever sat in a dentist’s chair awaiting a root canal knows how hard the mind can work to avoid panic. We hear a drill; our heart starts to pound; and we will our brain to “think happy thoughts.” Suddenly, we’re taking a mental vacation to a beach in Cabo. And just like that, we’ve entered a state of altered consciousness.

  To a far greater extent, this is exactly what victims do in order to cope with prolonged trauma. They use their minds to create a different reality, one that is less frightening and painful, one that allows them to get through the day. Political prisoners and POWs have often described inducing self-hypnosis and trance states to help them cope with hunger and torture. Likewise, victims of child abuse and domestic violence are notorious for finding ways to repress, deny, or minimize their abuse. Sometimes these efforts are conscious; sometimes they’re not. Either way, it’s the mind’s ability to pretend that allows victims to endure long-term trauma.

  While these sorts of mental acrobatics are effective at quelling terror and providing a false sense of safety, they come with a price. Over time, lying to one’s self can become a habit. When that happens, the victim can lose sight of reality. In cases where there are other victims present, such as soldiers, prisoners, refugees, and some hostages, victims often rely on one another to maintain a grip on what is real and true. In cases where the victim has no social support, as with battered wives, abused children, and kidnapping victims, the perpetrator’s version of reality invariably wins out.

  This false reality almost always involves a belief that the perpetrator is good and safe. According to psychiatrist Keith Ablow, victims must adopt this stance because “to maintain one’s desperation and grief and rage for many years would be too damaging to the human mind, so the human mind tells itself a story about safety and contentment to safeguard itself.”

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  WHEN I WAS A KID, I would tell myself a story. I told myself that my mom and dad were happily married and that I was their beloved child. In this story, I was a normal little girl from a normal family who had nice, caring parents—the kind of parents who would never hurt their own daughter. I believed so fervently in this fairy tale that I soon thought Gary was my biological father and Lundquist was my real last name. If you asked me about my ancestral heritage, I would tell you that I was Swedish, like Gary, as opposed to the Swiss background of the Brechbills. I was so delusional that I loudly and vehemently talked about my happy family to anyone who would listen. I needed my teachers and classmates to see me as a normal kid so I could see myself that way as well.

  In order to maintain this self-deception, though, I had to willfully and repeatedly find a way to block out all the real things that were happening at home. I did this by dissociating—mentally going away anytime anything happened to me that didn’t fit my picture of the perfect life. Whenever Gary or the other men abused me, I automatically altered my consciousness. “Normal” Michelle would drift away to her happy place, totally unaware that her body was being used for sex by grown men.

  If this is hard to fathom, think about driving long distance, especially at night. Nearly everyone has had the experience of zoning out and missing an exit, then suddenly “waking up” and realizing they’ve been so engrossed in their thoughts that they forgot they were even driving. Highway hypnosis is a form of dissociation. It demonstrates just how easy it is to get completely lost in a daydream while still performing a vital physical task. The mind has a remarkable ability to divide its consciousness, allowing the psyche to focus its attention on multiple tasks at the same time.

  By dissociating during the abuse, I was able to maintain the delusion that I was a normal child living a normal life. I could go to school, socialize with my classmates, and listen to my teachers without dwelling on the horrible things that would happen to me later that night. While in public with Gary, I could act the part of the dutiful daughter unburdened by the knowledge that at home I was really his sex slave.

  Leading a double life, though, has consequences—especially when one is not consciously aware of the fact. In time, this duplicity began to manifest in my personality.

  Well . . . personalities.

  See, I developed more than one.

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  IT’S HARD TO DESCRIBE what it’s like to have multiple personalities, which is technically called dissociative identity disorder. The first thing that comes to most people’s minds is Sybil or The Three Faces of Eve. In books and on screen, alternate personalities are always portrayed as obvious and dramatic. Mild-mannered Norman Bates turns into a cross-dressing killer. Dr. Jekyll turns into the vicious Mr. Hyde. Housewife Tara Gregson turns into just about everybody, from a sexed-up teenager to a beer-drinking good ol’ boy. To hear the media tell it, people with multiple personalities are a bunch of gender-confused, sartorially challenged, homicidal nut jobs!

  I first realized we multiples had a PR problem about ten years ago. I had just been admitted to a psychiatric hospital because a few of my alternate personalities were running wild. In the ward, I was surrounded by detoxing meth heads, suicidal manic-depressives, and schizophrenics who either pissed in the halls or wore tinfoil on their heads so the government couldn’t hear their thoughts.

  At breakfast that first day, all the patients shared their stories. The meth head talked blithely about her overdose. The manic-depressive talked proudly of driving her car through the front window of Cartier. But when I simply said I had multiple personalities, the table went silent. Everybody stared at me like I was an alien. Then the schizophrenic who actually thought she was an alien said, “Whoa, multiple personalities? That shit freaks me out.”

  That shit used to freak me out too, which is probably why I didn’t even know I had multiple personalities until I was in my early thirties. I’m sure this sounds strange. I mean, how could I not know if I was constantly dressing up in outlandish costumes and speaking in altered voices? The thing is: Multiple personalities are not as flamboyant as they seem in movies. Well, not most of the time. In the real world, alternate personalities don’t just pop out willy-nilly and announce themselves at the grocery store. That’s because alters develop in childhood to protect the main personality from harm. How protective would these personalities be if they constantly drew attention to themselves? So, contrary to Hollywood portrayals, most multiples don’t stand out in a crowd. Many have spouses and kids and steady jobs, like football legend Herschel Walker and comedian Roseanne Barr. While their various personalities may appear during the day, the switch is so subtle that others don’t notice.

  The scary part is that the person with multiple personalities might not notice either. That’s because alternate personalities develop without the main (or “host”) personality’s conscious awareness. People can live for many years without the knowledge that other people live inside them. But that doesn’t stop those other people from taking ove
r the body from time to time and running amok. What’s worse, some alters are the moral opposite of the goody-two-shoes host. A devout, mousy wife suddenly starts drinking and smoking and shagging every guy in sight. When Suzy Homemaker returns to her own body, she may have no memory of all the naughty things she’s done. At best, she’ll find a mysterious pack of cigarettes in her purse and feel like she’s entered the Twilight Zone. At worst, she’ll get an STD, not know where it came from, and be utterly terrified.

  Having multiple personalities is terrifying. I can tell you firsthand it’s awful to “wake up” after a dissociative episode, realize you’ve lost time, and have amnesia for the things you’ve done. If little clues appear—a matchbook from an unknown bar or a bus ticket for a faraway city—you rack your brain trying to remember what the hell you’ve been doing. Was it dangerous? Was it illegal? The uncertainty breeds panic that never subsides because you always fear losing control again. The whole thing makes you feel unbearably crazy, which, technically, you are. It’s the stuff of nightmares.

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  TO UNDERSTAND how all of this happens, one must first understand how multiple personalities develop. The generally accepted theory is that they are the result of abuse in childhood. And not just any old abuse. We’re talking cruel, consistent, crushing mayhem. On working with multiples, psychiatrist Frank Putnam, author of Diagnosis & Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder, said:

  I am struck by the quality of extreme sadism that is frequently reported by most MPD victims. Bondage situations; the insertion of a variety of instruments into vagina, mouth, and anus; and various forms of physical and sexual torture are common reports. Many multiples have told me of being sexually abused by groups of people, of being forced into prostitution by family members, or of being offered as a sexual enticement to their mothers’ boyfriends. After one has worked with a number of MPD patients, it becomes obvious that severe, sustained, and repetitive child sexual abuse is a major element in the creation of MPD.