Whip Smart: A Memoir

by Melissa Febos

  My sessions stopped here. I let them go with relief, like sandbags that had kept me from floating out into sprawling blue of my own desire. My judgments loosened as well; I no longer had to cling so tightly to my superiority over the women I’d worked with, or the men. It felt good to renounce my expertise in judging others’ limits; it also made the world bigger, gave it back some of its mystery. Funny, that I had spent so much time trying to shrink the world to a manageable size when that smallness so broke my heart, when the burden of it weighed so heavily. The unknowable is frightening and difficult to trust, but what is the alternative?

  In the weeks that followed, I filled with a surprising tenderness, for myself, for all of us humans, so much more alike than we thought. I felt the urge to somehow make amends for my ignorance, my small-mindedness. It never ceases to amaze me, the conservatism that those who consider themselves liberal are capable of, myself a case in point. Scary, how easy it was to judge and belittle those around me, even while I shared their experience. In my meetings, people talked about those who were constitutionally incapable of looking at themselves with honesty. Honesty had turned out to be something I grew into. Some truths are too much for some constitutions, though I have seen my constitution change more than once.

  But whom did I have to make amends to? Calling old clients was out of the question. It wasn’t about apologizing to anyone or even articulating my new awareness to another person; I wanted to simply exist in honesty about my current constitution in the presence of someone who might understand. But who? Autumn was still my closest friend, but I didn’t know the particulars of how she and her therapist handled the subject; besides, instinct told me she wasn’t the person for this. I needed to call Jacob.

  35

  I PARKED MYSELF on a bench outside the health food market across the street from our warehouse building. We called it the Snatch, partly a play on the actual name, Brooklyn’s Natural, and partly because it snatched so much of our money away, with its monopoly on soy milk and vegan cookies in the industrial waste-land of our neighborhood.

  I have always been fetishistic about preparation and the minute circumstances surrounding activities both pleasurable and not. For instance, I could never smoke while dirty (I had to shower first) or while walking a dog. I didn’t like to mix pleasure with duty and enjoyed prolonging the anticipation of pleasure. To call Jacob (an experience both pleasurable and anxiety producing), I armed myself with a fresh pack of cigarettes, a five-dollar iced tea, and freshly shaved legs. Late May, and the heat already lubricated the inside of my thighs under my cotton dress. I shifted to separate them and lit a cigarette. I had quit and then begun again after leaving the dungeon. I still spoke to Jacob occasionally. I usually called him. I knew that he couldn’t refuse my calls or even articulate why he should. Although I privately knew his guilt over our continued contact was in some way justified, the pang of my own misgiving when I dialed his number was manageable, and whatever still drew me to him I didn’t resist.

  “Hi!” That stagy quality his voice always had was still there—a symptom I think of his internal reaction to me: a simultaneous push and pull, an urge to give in and to resist, to expose and to hide; his words fell somewhere between these dual urges and thus always seemed a little false.

  “Hi!” I smiled for the pause that followed, our mutual knowledge of each other pooling like water into its shallow basin. This was why I still called. “What are you doing?”

  “Well, I am sitting on my couch with Barrett.”

  “Oh!”

  Barrett was one of Jacob’s three best friends; they had interned together during college, and been close ever since. When I first began dating and Jacob and I still got together for an occasional meal, I had asked him for boyfriend recommendations, half-kidding, knowing it was a little bit cruel, but still hurt that he had abandoned our friendship for a girlfriend. Jacob had recommended Barrett. “He’s tall and lanky, just your type,” Jacob had said, implicitly self-deprecating. “Give him my number,” I’d said, and he had claimed to. Barrett never called, Jacob said because he was going through an ugly divorce and off making documentaries in Latin America to escape it.

  “So, what are you guys doing?”

  “Talking. Hanging out.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yup.”

  “Huh. Why don’t you ask him if he wants to go out with me sometime?”

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”

  I’m not certain what prompted me to do this, and I didn’t even wonder then. Historically, this was the spastic approach I usually took when it came to matters of dating and sex; many of my first kisses were initiated by a non sequitur “wanna make out?” My prospects usually interpreted it as confidence or caprice, which I encouraged, though it was born more from anxiety.

  There was a muffled scraping as Jacob passed the phone to Barrett.

  “Hello?” There was nervous laughter in his voice, and excitement tickled my diaphragm.

  “Barrett?”

  “Yes?”

  “I was wondering if you wanted to go on a date with me.”

  I hid behind what little irony this phrase offered; the formality of proper dates was an alien, old-fashioned concept to me and, I assumed, to the rest of my generation.

  “Ah, sure.” I could hear his smile mirror my own.

  “Well, good.”

  “How about this Friday?” he suggested, and I felt the subtle shift in power between us, his delicately grappling for it. It reminded me of some pre-session consultations, but not in an unpleasant way, as the dynamic with Brian the architect had.

  “This Friday, the first of June. Sounds good.”

  “Okay, I’ll call you later this week about the details?”

  “I’ll talk to you then.”

  “Okay, I’m going to put Jacob back on now.”

  “Okay. Bye.”

  “Bye.” The phone shuffled between them again.

  “Wow. You don’t waste any time, huh?” Jacob was laughing, but his tone had a bitter edge.

  “I guess not.” I suddenly felt sheepish. “I should let you go.”

  “Yeah, another time.”

  “Sure, I’ll call you.”

  Barrett and I met at a vegetarian place outside Washington Square. Though we’d never exchanged photographs (but he’d seen one of mine, in full nurse costume), I recognized him immediately against the brick wall beside the entrance. Lean and long-eyelashed, he tugged his earphones out and smiled at me.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.” We kept smiling at each other and awkwardly shook hands. How do you greet a blind date?

  Being a regular, I knew the menu by heart, and suggested the most benign incarnation of pseudochicken. When the apathetic tattooed waiter wandered over I ordered for both Barrett and me. He adjusted his legs under the tiny table. We took turns sharing hunks of information about ourselves until the food arrived. He grew up in Westchester, went to NYU, and just got back from a three-month stint in Mexico, following the Zapatistas around with a video camera.

  I talked about writing and sobriety, my family a little. When the food came, Barrett and I ate quickly, sharing bites, half-covering our mouths as we chewed. Eating feels surprisingly vulnerable in situations like this; you are trying to present yourself as fairly immaculate, and feeding is so animal. For me, hunger is a naked state, a symbol of innate need, and desire. The height of vulnerability to me, then and now, is the expression of need and desire. My dependence on being a dominatrix was partly due to the power I felt in my lack of desire, relative to the need of my clients. I’d unearthed my own need beneath that craving for desirelessness and power, but the impulse to reach for the safety of that emptiness was a long time going.

  Chemistry is funny. When it’s not there, I am never sure and often try to convince myself that it might be. But its presence makes that effort laughable. I’d learned not to wholly trust my instincts, especially when it came to attractions. The craving to get out of my
head, out of reality, muddied desire. The knowledge that my desires often hid deeper, truer ones confused things further. Trying to figure it out didn’t work. I’d learned to ask for help, to run things by people not influenced by the rationalization machine in my head, the wily, default escapist. But being in it, that chemistry, doesn’t make you worry about what it means; that’s for later.

  After paying the check, Barrett and I stood under the awning over the restaurant’s entrance and smoked. Dinner had only taken an hour, and I tried to figure out the best way to prolong our date. Then the sky opened up. Torrents of rain pounded the awning above us, and pedestrians ran, shrieking, soaked magazines clutched over their heads. Barrett and I stood close, our shoulders wet, in a tiny room with walls of water. Ludicrously sexy.

  “It’s early,” I said, our bodies so close I could smell his shampoo.

  “Yup.”

  “Do you want to come back to my place and watch a movie?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  “Okay. Good.” More smiling.

  With subdued giddiness and wet hair we browsed the DVD rental/coffee shop next to the Snatch, cautiously commenting on things we’d already seen and had confident things to say about. In the beginning, there is such a hurry to leak identifying information but also to please and impress; every subject and activity is a nervous opportunity. We settled on the newest Terrence Malick: The New World. The symbolism didn’t occur to me then, though I sheepishly realize it now.

  Before heading back up to my loft, we smoked a cigarette on the loading dock beside my building’s door. Swinging our legs, we watched the rain again pelt the parked cars and running bodies so hard that it bounced back off of them in halos.

  “So, is it weird for you how we’ve met?” I asked, in a hurry to get the words out but consciously slowing myself down.

  “Well, I thought it might be. Before, I mean. But you aren’t what I expected.”

  “I don’t act like a dominatrix?”

  “Ha-ha. No, you don’t. I mean, you don’t act like I would guess someone who used to be a dominatrix would act, if that makes any sense.”

  “Sure, no, if I had never been one, I probably would be skeptical about going on a date with one. I mean, I wouldn’t think they’d necessarily be like me, if I can know with any accuracy what that is.” Ugh.

  “Yeah, you seem really real. And no offense, but I would expect someone like that to be more affected or something.”

  “Yeah, well, they can be.” I resisted the urge to explain that I was different, not really into it. “Is it weird that I was Jacob’s dominatrix?”

  “Well, yeah. But I haven’t been thinking about it the whole evening, or picturing anything freaky, like I was afraid of doing.”

  I laughed. “Well, that’s good.”

  “Yeah.”

  It was weird, but not too weird to go ahead with. It would be now. In fact, if the opportunity presented itself today, I wouldn’t go on the date. Whether Jacob was in a happy relationship now or not, knowing his former feelings for me and the nature of our former relationship would prohibit me from going there. I’m not sure what to make of that, as I can’t imagine my life today if my scruples had been then what they are now. But then, would they be what they are now without Barrett’s influence? It’s unlikely.

  We made it about fifteen minutes into the movie before we kissed. It was so easy! That kind of kissing is what it is: like stepping into a sun-warmed pond at dusk. I’ll forgo further explanation; if you know what it’s like, you know, and if you don’t, well, I hope you someday do.

  We kissed for two hours. Eventually, I led him into my bedroom and pulled off both of our shirts. He stopped me.

  “This might sound weird; it’s not typical guy response.” I froze, suddenly awkward. “I mean, if I didn’t feel the way I do with you I would be all for it, but I kind of think maybe it would be good to wait. I’ve rushed into sex, and had it be a mistake.” He shrugged apologetically. “I mean, if it’s safe to assume you are experiencing the same date that I am, then I think we will have time.”

  I was a little flabbergasted and more than a little embarrassed. How could I explain that the idea sounded like a huge relief to me, that I didn’t quite understand where the impulse to start taking my clothes off came from? I had had the same experience. I rarely enjoyed first-time sex with partners, largely because I usually did it before I really knew or trusted them. Here was where the difference between what I knew and did remained wide. The shame I felt wash over me was tinged with that hatred of my own innocence. Was I still so green? So unconfident? Had I gone straight out of the extremity of sex work to the innocence of my adolescence? Where was all my self-knowledge? Still, I was relieved.

  “Of course. I agree totally.” I clutched my T-shirt to my chest and smiled at him. “And yes, I am on the same date you are on.”

  “I thought so,” he said. “I mean, I don’t think you can feel like this when it’s not reciprocal.”

  He left at 2:00 A.M. and called me at 11:00 the next morning to schedule our second date.

  36

  FOR WEEKS I LIVED in a low-level state of delirium, which would have been heaven if I trusted myself more. Don’t mistake me; it was wonderful, but thrilling with a nervous edge, as if there might have been an unseen cliff’s edge just beyond my sight. It was different from the beginnings of past relationships, but I couldn’t point to exactly how, other than the strength of my feelings. It really felt like falling—my insides swooping downward while thinking of him on the subway, in the supermarket, during classes—the intensity unnerved me; instincts that strong had to be old, right? My newer instincts tended to be the safer ones. Not that that slowed us down at all.

  On our second date, he discovered that I didn’t back up my computer regularly, only e-mailed myself drafts of my writing occasionally. On our third date, he gave me an external hard drive. I spent that night at his apartment and backed up the contents of my computer the following afternoon. Two days later, my computer crashed, rendering everything inside of it unrecoverable. I took this as a sign in the parlance of a twenty-first-century cupid. We spent nearly every night together for the next month.

  Our first fight happened about six weeks after our first date. An exgirlfriend of mine whom I’d dated as a teenager and had remained friends with ever since was passing through town and needed a place to stay. I didn’t think twice about sharing my bed with her. There hadn’t been sexual tension between us in a decade, although that wouldn’t have stopped me in the past.

  Barrett got quiet when I mentioned it, but didn’t comment. I fleetingly remembered that Jacob had described him as the jealous type. “Sarah jealous” was his exact phrase. Sarah, Jacob’s girlfriend, was one of the reasons I should have stopped calling him when we stopped doing sessions. Not only had it been sketchy moral terrain to be calling a man known to have had unreturned romantic feelings toward me, but also his girlfriend actually forbade our talking. I thought him an idiot for telling her that I had been his dominatrix in the first place; what girlfriend wouldn’t have such a reaction? Still, I knew what “Sarah jealous” implied.

  An evening a week or so later, Barrett and I were walking through Madison Square Park, an oasis of benches and sculpted foliage in the middle of the busy intersection just north of the Flatiron Building. I commented on his uncharacteristic quiet.

  “Something on your mind?”

  He sighed heavily. I sensed his reluctance and felt a pang of both fear and excitement. Any kind of disclosure in the beginning is exciting.

  “What?”

  “I just feel a little weird about your ex sleeping over. In your bed.”

  I paused at this, unsure of my reaction.

  “What’s to feel weird about? We have been friends for about a hundred times the length of our romantic relationship. I’m not attracted to her at all; there’s nothing sexual there at all.” I understood needing reassurance in such things and was happy to give it.

 
“Yeah, you said that before, but it still makes me uncomfortable.”

  Here I started to feel annoyed.

  “Well, why?”

  “I know I can be kind of conservative or old-fashioned or something about these kinds of things, and I don’t want you to feel accused in any way, because I believe you that nothing happened, or could have happened. …”

  “But?”

  “But it’s more the appropriateness of her sleeping in your bed.”

  “You think it’s inappropriate?”

  “Not because you did anything inappropriate, but more in it’s relation to me. I mean, I just wouldn’t even consider having an exgirlfriend sleep in my bed, not because I think there would be even a remote possibility of anything happening, but just out of respect to you.”

  I simmered. How dare he? I could be friends with whomever I wanted and could invite them to sleep wherever I deemed appropriate! I was a feminist, for crying out loud! He had no right to impose his Waspy values on me! He couldn’t tell me what was appropriate! I prided myself on the level of physical comfort that such boundaries (or lack thereof) implied. I hadn’t been raised to fear sexual connotations, I thought, and believed that this confidence suggested a sophistication that transcended the rote adherence to antiquated social mores and manners. In slightly calmer tones, I told him as much.

  “Autumn and I share baths together, for God’s sake!” I said. This did not relieve him. I had never seen him look that way before. He was angry. As righteous as I felt, there was something that scared me in the tightness of his face. Was he going to hit me? Leave me? Had I fallen in love with a crazy, possessive control freak? It did occur to me that had he done the same, I would have been furious; in fact, hearing him reference such a possibility gave me pangs of jealous outrage. “Okay,” I said. “Can we just table this for now? I mean, it only worries me because I am friends with a lot of my exes, and not that they will be all sleeping in my bed, but I do talk to them.”