The thing which interested me was the backstory, the actual need. In the case of the typical submissive male fantasy, he goes through some sort of physical torment at the end of which time, either the woman standing in for “Mommy” will give him affection or be pleased with his compliance, or if he is twisted too far to even dream of that he will have the “privilege” of licking her boots.”
What I wanted to know was this: was there ever a way out? Could “Mommy” ever be pleased to the degree that the abasement was no longer needed? Would this ever de-escalate instead of escalating? Could the tormented child ever become an adult with neither the need to please a person who was willing to hurt them, nor the willingness to hurt anyone else?
What about the fantasies which seem harmless but represent non-harmless things, and often escalate?
Imagine a submissive male. His fantasy is to be dominated by a 50-foot tall woman whom he calls a “goddess.” He has rehearsed this fantasy to the point that he is incapable of arousal without it. He imagines himself as a tiny little man, only a few inches tall. The “goddess” will not only dominate him, but literally crush him underfoot. Strawberries crushed under her twisting high heeled shoe will help him visualize the spurting blood, and complete his excitement.
The “goddess” in his fantasy is sexually turned on by committing murder, and he can only please her by dying. I invite those of you who have a particularly strong stomach to look up “crush” and ask yourself whether the mice can consent.
Over time, I observed that female dominants were invariably angry. The complaints would always be the same. Sure, the dominant woman wanted to be strong and in charge, but she didn’t want her partner to be an irresponsible twit. She would find the parallels between her situation and that of a mother and son to be vile and infuriating.
On the flip side, male dominants were invariably insecure. It is very easy for a strong man to find an ordinary woman to date, and the way men and women typically operate already puts him in charge. If he is incapable of taking charge and gets mixed up with dominant women, he might be angry and frustrated while not knowing a way to make a different relationship.
But this is not the same as a man who eroticizes being dominated, or worse, eroticizes injury to another person. If a man needs to humiliate women or subject them to violence and pain, he is not strong, he is dangerous.
The worst of that lot I ever met was a man who claimed he had been a prison guard. He wanted to put me in handcuffs and interrogate me. My arms are long, so I brought my hands to the front, which annoyed him a lot. He was cold as ice. The thought that a former prison guard would be turned on by humiliating and terrorizing a female “prisoner” disgusted and appalled me. I refused to ever see him again, of course.
What about the guy who wanted a girl who looked like a preteen, and wanted her to wear a Catholic school uniform? Is seeing a professional an alternative to acting out on a pedophilic impulse, or is it simply going to strengthen the fantasy? Are we to conclude that men with dangerous fantasies must take them out with professionals rather than becoming offenders?
We do not lose our impulses by acting them out. We strengthen them.
What is a man really looking for in a strong woman? Maybe he is a strong man who wants a strong partner, or this is the most common idea.
Among most of the men who sought me out for my strength, they wanted me to do what they did not want to do. Either they wanted to abdicate the traditional masculine role or to feel like a child again. Some men see sex as entertainment, and the strong woman he seeks will care for herself, and pretend to need nothing from him. Certainly a strong woman will never trouble a man by having children.
But this model does not work for women, no matter how strong we are. These role reversals negate any possibility of “happily ever after,” and no amount of strength will ever destroy all our dreams. Role reversals do not lead to the happiness they promise, and often they do not even lead to anything resembling mutual respect.
I remember walking into Bondage-A-Go-Go at the Trocadero Transfer in San Francisco and seeing a woman dressed in red. She informed me that she was a dominant goddess and that men worshiped her. “How boring.” I thought to myself. After all, if women are so superior, why on earth would we pad about in uncomfortable leather and stiletto heels? Why would we not be devoting ourselves to bettering whatever it was that made us so superior in the first place? And even more specifically, exactly what would make a woman superior, and in what way? One might as well say that a cat is superior to a dog. They are different.
It is more likely that this “superiority” routine comes from feelings of inferiority. We can never truly control anyone, and any sense of fear and insecurity can make that lack of control seem almost unbearable. BDSM slaps a veneer of pretend-control over the reality of no actual control at all. Perhaps the silly notion of “I am superior” would avoid any dates with any man who would refuse to go along with such an absurd routine, while making an easy path for men who were at least willing to appear to be controllable.
Women rarely realize that men are a whole lot smarter than we think they are, and they are more than willing to go to considerable lengths to get us to go along with what they want. Men are used to having to deal with the irrational antics of women. Pretending to be submissive to get laid is not rocket science, but a standard tactic used by men who might not otherwise be chosen. I see a woman claiming she is a goddess, and what I hear is a little girl saying “I want you to do this for me, Daddy!”
I was grateful for my time at the House and in the Scene, even if I would never have anything to do with it again. I got to talk to a lot of people about the psychological dynamics involved in strength, weakness, dominance, and control, and I began to see what my parents had done in a slightly different light. Viewed only in the context of the “Doctrine of Consent,” my mother had done a lot of non-consensual BDSM and criminal intergenerational acts on me, even if I knew deep down I would never even try to confront her over what she had done.
Chapter 38: Marriage, Merriment, and Mother (1994–1999)
“Our mother who aren’t in Heaven, hollow be her fame…”
—David Bradley
I fell in love, and got engaged.
My mother was delighted. Lisa withdrew the amortization schedule for the house, on the condition that I would give her my entire inheritance.
One decision I had made when I moved back to Northern CA was that I was going to be in my mother’s life. I believed in forgiveness, and I thought that she was old and sick and I could do some good by being there with her. I understood that she was not easy to get along with and I thought if I could only anticipate what she would do, I would be able to cope with it.
I was wrong. I could no more cope with her ongoing verbal abuse than I could fly. But I tried.
I would talk to Mother about whatever she felt like. I weathered her verbal jabs. My job was to protect her. I would steer her away from anything that would trigger her into rumination, tears, and tape loops. She was incapable of introspection. It had never been her strong suit but the dementia made it worse. She could not understand the bad things in her life. She wanted to blame, to rage, and sometimes if she was upset enough, to drink.
She repeated her story about trying to beat me to death twice to my future husband, who was appalled. He was more appalled the day we came home and my neighbor handed me my cat, Carlotta, dead in a cardboard box, telling me she had been hit by a car. I cried, and my mother laughed and mocked me savagely for crying over a cat.
One day, he drove her somewhere and she lectured him on the merits of Communism through a long, long traffic jam. She then soiled her diapers while not wearing any, and showed no concern whatsoever for the mess she had made. Of course, I cannot say whether she was unaware, too embarrassed to speak, or simply not worried.
We planned a traditional wedding, rather than the “dress up in Faire costume” sort of thing most of my family did. I thought since a marr
iage was a real thing, it should reflect our real lives, not a fantasy. We had bridesmaids, groomsmen, and Lisa took charge of much of the planning, paying for it with Mother’s money. One of my bridesmaids was an unusual size, so I got to make her dress out of the same fabric as what we had for the rest of the bridesmaids. I paid for our wedding venue by playing the harp at an outdoor garden spot for ten weeks during their Sunday brunches.
We had a joint attendant’s party at my house the night before the wedding. A few of my friends asked me to play the harp. When I sat down to play, Lisa started noodling on the harpsichord. Instead of confronting this rudeness outright, I did something passive-aggressive and vicious.
I offered to accompany her while she sang.
She proceeded to create auditory hell while I put on my best Sphinx-like poker face, and behaved as though the noises she made were the most natural thing in the world. The men who were sitting outside came and closed the window. After she was done making sounds, I played the harp and sang for my friends. After she was out of earshot, my friends asked me quietly why I had let her sing and wondered why I had been so calm when she had done so. I laughed and laughed.
The only saving grace of living around Lisa had been that she was utterly talentless in a household full of people who did things. She might have stolen my mother and my inheritance and my peace of mind, but she could not sing to save her life.
The wedding was gorgeous. We had prerecorded orchestral music and traditional vows. I walked down the aisle to Le Cygne by Saint-Saens, which I still adore. My cousin Ian’s wife Elizabeth told me she wished she had had a non-costume wedding.
We set up housekeeping, and went to church every week.
I continued to stay in close touch with Mother and Lisa, and I ended being almost a referee between them. Lisa was intent on making Mother seem Christian to the public, and dragged her to the Episcopal Church every week. Mother confided in me that she only went for the music and to keep Lisa from getting upset with her. She told me that she would have been much happier leading rituals at Stonehenge, but Lisa would not hear of it.
I did not sense that Lisa felt the slightest concern for Mother’s immortal soul. It seemed that all that mattered to Lisa was that any pictures of Mother in the paper would be of her going to church. I suspect Lisa wanted to distance both herself and Mother from paganism because of the ongoing legal troubles.
Mother was not Christian. She had been telling me she was not Christian since I was old enough to figure out what she meant by “6000-year-old Jewish fairy tales” and “outdated screwing license” and “God is a bedroom snoop and a kitchen snoop.” She told me that she had turned her back on God when He didn’t save her from her daddy, so why should she bother with Him now.
To be fair, it is unlikely that she would have written the books that she did if she had been even remotely Christian. They would have been intolerable to her, as they have been to some of her Christian readers. The “intergenerational sexuality” alone makes many people’s skin crawl. Also, there is a clear anti-Christian bias, not only because of the invariably demonized paternalistic elements, but because of the schism between the controlled sexuality allowed by the Church and the considerably more liberal sexuality she herself advocated.
I very much wanted Mother to become Christian, and I took her to church many times in her later years. I have no idea whether she ever converted, or whether she merely put up with going to church to have a visit with me.
Even more offensive to me by then was Lisa’s campaign to deny and whitewash her relationship with my mother. After making like a cuckoo and doing her best to drive off not only my father but both my brothers and me, Lisa was going around calling herself my mother’s “cousin.” She even openly addressed Raul as her “boyfriend.” Mother was expected to not be hurt by this, but she was. Maybe Lisa didn’t care that Mother was crying, but she was.
Apparently, calling herself Mother’s “secretary” did not adequately explain Lisa’s presence.
Lisa decided she never had been a lesbian, that is true, but how could Lisa be with my mother for twenty years and lie about the nature of their relationship? It is wrong to pretend that that the woman who gave her life to you is nothing but a distant relative!
I felt sorry for Mother. It is one thing to have your relationship break up, but to deny it ever existed is a cruelty which seems unimaginable to me. I do not know whether Lisa denied their relationship to Raul: I had always assumed that Raul would know everything. Maybe Lisa felt she could only seem adequately virginal if she denied her entire history with my mother and the rest of the sticky cast of characters.
I had begun a teaching practice, training harpists and singers and working locally as a harpist. My husband told me it was his dream to live in Truckee, in the snow, among the beautiful trees. Then, to be closer to his work, we moved yet again to Sparks, NV, and I went back to school. I began a Master’s degree in vocal performance.
I also grappled with being profoundly suicidal.
…Before her blue eyes closed for good She handed me a folded note
I blew my stack, I punched the wall, I read her scribbled, sad misquote
“No one will listen, no one cares, I’ve got to solve my own affairs
I’ll give the Eagles tat for tit. Just tell them “she got over it!”
—Moira Greyland, She Got Over It
In 1998, Mother and Lisa are embroiled in civil suits about my father’s molestation of Kenny. They are both charged with negligence. My mother and Lisa countersue Mary Mason, and claim that she knew what was happening all along.
I was called on to testify about my mother and Lisa, and the lawyers and the court reporter came to my counselor’s office to take down my testimony. Their lawyers were so horrified by what I told them that they quit, and had to be replaced: Apparently Mother and Lisa didn’t bother to tell them the full details of the case.
To make a long story short, my mother and Lisa lost and dropped their countersuit. Reading their testimony was a long piece of hell. Mother knew, Lisa knew. Some of what they knew horrified me. Here is a piece of testimony that might have changed my feelings about being around either one of them if I had known about it beforehand: Lisa knew my mother had molested my brother.
“MR. DOLAN: Is there any particular reason why you did not relate what Patrick had told you, to Marion Zimmer Bradley?
ELISABETH WATERS: At the time, we were all so traumatized that I didn’t want to add to anybody’s trauma anymore than they were already traumatized, and Patrick was an adult at that point, and whatever Marion may have done to him in the past was clearly over.”
The lawsuits were over in 1999, and Mother died soon afterwards of a massive heart attack.
She did not die in her own home, as she had always wanted to. Lisa was having an elevator put into the house and she has moved Mother into a disgusting little apartment in the pits of Oakland. I was there once, and it was as Spartan and cold as might be imagined.
Mother could not be counted on to eat regular meals or to control her blood sugar. She could not change her own diapers without leaving them all over the floor. She did not see well enough to prepare an injection of insulin. If she had to inject herself, she might be able to do so without breaking a needle, but it was doubtful. She had a toe amputated because of her diabetic peripheral neuropathy. She was suffering from multi-infarct dementia, as well as high blood pressure and congestive heart failure.
It did not surprise me at all that my mother died very soon after being left alone in that awful place and expected to care for herself. Either she got a shot wrong, forgot several shots, let her blood sugar go sky-high, or forgot to eat. In any event, on September 25, 1999, my mother had a heart attack and died.
Her funeral was a large affair. I had been asked to sing Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit from the Brahms Requiem, and the choir at the church joined me. Lisa and the other sycophants were front and center, and my brother David and I were way, way, way off in t
he back. My brother Patrick, now called Mark, did not attend and wanted nothing to do with Mother. He did not even acknowledge any efforts to contact him.
One might think it is a singular achievement to alienate all three of one’s children.
Mother wanted to have her ashes scattered at Glastonbury Tor in England. Lisa had her cremated and packed up her ashes in a Tupperware container. She told me again and again that she would find herself talking to my mother’s ashes. Eventually the ashes are taken to Glastonbury and scattered. Yet I find myself puzzled at the notion that my mother’s final resting place was a piece of Tupperware for the months before Lisa got rid of her by figuratively throwing her off a building.
Given that Lisa was already in the habit of having Mother sign things covered in that gray folder with the rectangular hole in it, and given that Mother’s writing style differs considerably from Lisa’s, it my considered opinion that Lisa wrote Mother’s will. It is also possible that she simply wrote what Lisa told her to. It hurt that my brother and I were referred to as “strangers” in the will, rather than as her children. It was also baffling that the will was full of effusive praise of Lisa, the sort of praise that Mother simply did not give, but Lisa got what she had wanted all along. She got half the estate, and the San Francisco Opera got the other half. After all, I had made Esau’s bargain, and I had my house. It was my job to take care of myself after that, and that was just fine.
What I couldn’t square was excluding my two brothers. David was on SSI, and the only thing he ever had from my mother was a new pair of shoes and some dental work. My brother Patrick, who was calling himself Mark by that time, had two little kids, and he had suffered a lot at Mother’s hands. Understandably, he had wanted nothing to do with either Mother or Lisa after our father had died. Was it just because they didn’t try to get my father out of jail? No. Lisa took Mark’s house from him too. It took a little longer, but she managed it. Mother did nothing, either because she didn’t know, or because she didn’t want to upset Lisa.
The Last Closet_The Dark Side of Avalon Page 36