The routine of Bones saved me from losing my mind entirely. Maybe I could’ve latched on to any number of procedurals available at that time, but Bones became a kind of savior for me. When I watched that show, I knew everything would work out. Something that started as a mess stumbled upon by strangers became a human being who had people fighting to give their story a proper ending. I needed that.
Because I was in the middle of a major depressive period, I watched the show mostly from a place of numbness. I enjoyed it and paid attention, but I hardly ever had an emotional reaction to anything. I could recognize the humor, the sexual tension, the patriotic (read: xenophobic) lessons Booth tried to impart. (Bones was a good show, but it wasn’t particularly subtle.) If anyone had been watching me during this binge, they would’ve seen a blank-faced woman staring at the TV, unblinking, moving only to go to the bathroom or grab food. Then I made it to the ninth episode of the second season, and something finally broke inside me.
“Aliens in the Spaceship” introduces the first serial killer of the show via a pair of twins whose remains are found in some kind of capsule. They had been buried alive. The same killer kidnaps Brennan and one of her colleagues, Jack Hodgins (T. J. Thyne), a conspiracy theory–loving entomologist, and buries them in a car underground somewhere, leaving Booth and the rest of the team to try to figure out where they are and how to get to them before they run out of air and die. It’s a pretty intense episode. Hodgins admits his love for another of their colleagues, and they both write out final letters for their loved ones, if they don’t make it. They’re going to try one last daring attempt to blow themselves out of wherever they are, because they’re not sure if Booth got the signal they managed to send using their big ole brains and expertise.
Of course, Booth finds them just in time. They’ve been buried in some kind of sandy construction site. Booth sees the explosion, runs like his own life depends on it, slides down a huge embankment all heroic-like, and begins digging with his bare hands. He pulls out Brennan, and they hug and sigh over each other, and with my butt going numb in the real world, I turned into a blubbering fool.
Did anyone out there love me enough to rescue me? Who would my last thought be of before I slip away? What would my last letters say to the ones I loved? How could I pull myself out of this gritty depression, which was sanding down my real self and making me an emotionless zombie? Did I love myself enough to be my own hero?
That episode fucked me up, and I still go back to it when I need a good cry.
They didn’t find the killer, and the routine of the show, the most comforting part for me, had been disrupted, derailed by a menacing outside force. The mission was now survival. Without the show’s routine, Brennan and Hodgins got to know each other as human beings, not just as colleagues, and Hodgins realized life could be over at any moment so he had to be bold.
I’d had plans, too, and then depression came and sat heavy on my chest. I hadn’t yet figured out what was next, but suddenly I knew I wanted to make it out alive. I knew I had people who loved me and who would miss me. I had people I’d yet to meet that I wanted to love.
It didn’t matter that Brennan and Booth didn’t find the killer then, that there was no neat ending. They’d survived. Sometimes that’s all you can promise yourself—that you’ll survive—and then the new plan for the next steps will come together.
After I cried over a set of fictional characters I had never particularly related to before, I began to watch the show differently. I could giggle at Hodgins’s horny lovesickness. I could admire Booth’s broad shoulders and slim hips. I could nod my head to Brennan’s frequent and unapologetic acknowledgment of her own worth and expertise. The zombie was gone.
This is not to say Bones cured my depression. Absolutely not. By the time I eventually made it back home to Nashville, the amount of emotional energy it took so I wouldn’t appear as depressed as I was drained me until I finally ended up crying in my mother’s arms. So, no, Bones did not make my depression disappear, but it made me realize the fighter in me was still there. I just had to dig her out.
The Life of a Succubus
Men have been crawling on their knees for me for a long time.
When Rocco and I broke up at the beginning of my senior year in high school, he cried. I tried to remain as coolheaded as possible, but I broke down, too. I finally told him to leave, probably because my mom would be home soon. He walked away, head low, tears streaking his face, but he suddenly turned back. He dropped to his knees and crawled to me, begging me not to break up with him. He grabbed me by the waist and pushed his face into my lower belly, sobbing all over me.
We were seventeen. The only thing we knew how to do with any cool was sneak out of the house.
I rolled my eyes at Rocco’s dramatics. Too many R&B videos and too much Boyz n the Hood had led to this. In the film, Tre’s impotent rage after an encounter with police had sent him to Brandi’s house, where he fought the air before falling to his knees and crying in her arms, his face pressed to her stomach. The incident led them to make love for the first time. My friends and I would later mock the dramatic moment because Tre had already been such a horndog, constantly trying to get Brandi to stray from her Catholic beliefs. He finally got some sympathy tang.
I shouldn’t belittle Rocco’s emotions at the time. He may well have truly been devastated by our breakup. We’d talked about going away to college together and getting married, and we were each other’s first real relationship. Even though I knew he was acting his little heart out, watching him crawl to me sent a twinge through the right side of my lower belly, the place where instant, powerful arousal hits me. He’d never crawled to me before, and my exposure to porn had never shown men in such a submissive position. Men would be on their knees, sure, but they always maintained power. I didn’t know that’s what I was experiencing at the time, but I felt a rush of some secret strength. I’d made this man-boy beg.
This is my strongest sexual memory of Rocco.
When I try to trace the history of my need for men on their knees, this is what I think of.
* * *
As I’ve mentioned before, my Good Lover Radar™ has a 90 percent accuracy rating, and when I saw Alex in person for the first time, I knew he was filthy and had a big dick. A big dick he knew how to use. That’s important. Some men think all you need is meat, but what about the seasoning?
Alex and I met on Okayplayer, where all of us members were supposed to be talking about hip-hop but more often than not, we were flirting and trading insults, music, recipes, and eventually bodily fluids. Alex was short and wiry, strong just the way I like, with ’tweener brown skin and a little Ewok nose. His voice was deep and raspy on the back notes, not quite late-night quiet storm DJ, but you knew he was capable of it. He was witty and fancied himself a writer, so the after-dark phone conversations of our long-distance situationship left my sheets far too warm. He knew what to say and how to say it. Alex was thunder in the bedroom: noisy and roof-rattling.
I would visit Alex in his basement apartment in Chicago. I liked taking black-and-white pictures of him. He gave good profile. With his head between my thighs, he would turn his face in every position he could to make sure he reached every curve. He ate me out like he wanted to coat his entire face with me. One time, I looked down and he looked up at me with wet pussycat eyes, begging me to tell him what a good job he was doing. It made me catch my breath.
Guys look up to gauge your reaction, to see praise on your face, but it’s usually about their own egos. This was different. Alex wanted to make sure he was doing a good job because my pleasure wasn’t validation; it was his purpose.
Sometimes after a particularly intense session, he’d whisper, “Thank you,” and I swear, it melted me, but I wasn’t sure how to handle it. I’d never had anyone thank me for letting him come before. Internally, I loved it, but was I supposed to? I told my friends about it, but hesitantly, hoping to use their reactions to figure out how I should respond.
My guy friends would shake their heads and say, “Nah, he shouldn’t be doing all that,” but then they’d give me assessing looks, trying to figure out what I had done to make a man thank me for sex. My girlfriends would giggle, then get a far-off look in their eyes, perhaps imagining what it would be like to have a man lose himself in such a way.
I knew about BDSM and what a dominatrix was, but I’d never truly explored it. At the time, my porn habits were very basic—heterocentric and formulaic: sloppy blow jobs, cursory cunnilingus, pound pound pound, facial. Men were dominant, with little care for the woman’s pleasure, and women were, if not necessarily submissive, largely passive, accepting what was being done to them with fake moans and ruined mascara.
I may have been considered aggressive—I’ve always tried to be direct and clear about what I want sexually—but in the bedroom, I loved letting the man be in control…and I loved it when he lost it, shuddering between my thighs or across my tongue.
* * *
In 2014, it had been over four years since my last relationship, and I was tired of the long stretches without sex. I was worried I didn’t know how to be in a relationship anymore, that I’d lost my skills in the bedroom. I wasn’t naïve to the hookup nature of online dating, but I also knew that Black women have the lowest reply rate of anyone using these sites or apps. So when I finally activated an OkCupid account that spring, I didn’t expect so many white men to reach out to me, or for them to move so quickly into revealing their fetish for Black women. One guy even referred to me as an “ebony girl,” as if I belonged in a tag on a porn site.
ME: It’s cool you’re open to new experiences but I don’t know if I can give you what you want
HIM: I think you can. I’ve never been with an ebony girl before. & you know the saying once you go black you never go back? Lol I’m curious if it’s really that good. Is there any truth to that?
ME: Ok. You’ll definitely have to find someone else to entertain your “ebony girl” fantasies. I definitely can’t help you out there. Best of luck!
I largely ignored the men asking me to dominate them, which happened as frequently as every third or fourth message, but they did make me wonder: Were these men simply casting out a large net, or was there something about me that served as a beacon to white male submissives? Or was it simply enough that I was a Black woman?
As I headed into my late thirties, I thought of all the opportunities of sexual exploration I’d been denied because it may have interfered with an ex’s “manhood,” or because of my own lack of confidence. I frequently had held myself back from approaching white men, because I didn’t think they’d be attracted to me physically or because of cultural differences. Yet here they were presenting themselves to me—even if I had to weed out the creeps. It would be foolish to continue to deny myself. I remembered the surprising thrill I’d felt when Rocco crawled on his knees and begged me to stay together, when Alex looked up at me, the lower part of his face shining, and thanked me for coming in his mouth.
All of this coincided with my decision to make 2014 the year of new adventures, and to stop being afraid of taking chances. So when I received a message from a white man in his early twenties asking if I wanted deep conversation or a sub, I decided to say fuck it and go for it.
After a few messages, I gave him my Google Voice number, and we began texting. In my mind, I started to call him Baby Sub, because it became clear that he, too, was exploring. I made him call me “ma’am” or Miss Q (I won’t reveal the name). I knew a little bit of the language used in the D/s community from erotica and eavesdropping on Twitter conversations, but sometimes he’d reply with a term that left me Googling. One time, he told me he liked to watch JOI porn. After a quick search, I discovered the world of “jerk off instruction.” I’d later use the genre as a tool to punish him.
After a week or two of texting, we met in person at a café. Close-cropped, wavy strawberry-blond hair framed a face that made me second-guess his age and whether or not I could go through with whatever was about to happen. I checked his ID. He was old enough to drink, but the double-digit age gap between us still left me wary. He was visibly relieved to see me yet also nervous. When I made him go into the restroom and change into a pair of my panties, he stumbled. He modeled the underwear as best he could in a public setting, and there was no doubt about his state of arousal. He liked to be humiliated. He went to work wearing the panties that same day and frequently texted me his thanks. Seeing him in the bikinis did nothing for me, but making him wear them gave me a rush. I wondered what else I could get away with.
ME: Why did you reach out to me? Why did you offer yourself to me?
HIM: You looked really lovely and I decided to take a chance.
Further prodding revealed he had explored some sub behavior with another older Black woman. He liked the maturity of Black women and how we don’t put up with a lot of bullshit. He said white women his age were vapid and frequently dismissed him because of his youthful appearance. I didn’t feel threatened by his ignorance, even though his desire for a Strong Black Woman to take control of him sexually was an echo of other messages. I wanted to test the limits of my sexuality, so I let it slide.
As my relationship with Baby Sub progressed, I was surprised at how easily some domme behavior came to me. Small things, like forbidding him from interrupting me while I talked, were thrilling. I made sure never to punish in anger, but being able to express my anger was exciting, as was his fear of it—and I didn’t have to worry about him passive-aggressively punishing me by hanging out all night with his friends or flirting with other women, or even cheating.
In previous relationships, I could be aggressive in the bedroom, usually with the purpose of getting the guy I was with to ramp up his own aggression. But there were limits. I was expected to be the only one willing to experiment sexually, so whenever I expressed a desire to do something basic like tie up my partner or blindfold him, I was met with resistance. That led to discussions about masculinity, not to mention straight-up fear. My then boyfriends couldn’t trust me enough to respect their boundaries. The thought that I might do “butt stuff” to them while they were tied up was too much for them to bear.
Still, when I told my male friends about what was happening in my sex life, they weren’t surprised. In fact, one friend was shocked it had taken me so long to get to that point. My love of men on their knees is no secret among my friends. And neither is my sexual appetite. My love for receiving head and wanting sex as much as I can get it are favorite subjects of mine. Add being a feminist and my love for Wonder Woman, a character somewhat created from kink, into the mix, and I guess my guy friends figured I would’ve donned the latex and leather a while ago.
But even with Baby Sub, I never wore the expected leather-and-latex uniform of a dominatrix. Instead, I shaped my previous experience as an educator into my domme persona.
Baby Sub texted me precisely at the time I’d given him. He told me he’d been to his classes that day and needed to study for a test. He was using flash cards to help him learn musical terms. I told him to clean up. I was coming over to help him study.
When he opened the door, his hair was still wet from the shower. His face was flushed. He was excited to see me and had barely finished greeting me (“Thank you for coming to my apartment, ma’am”) before he asked how I would help him study. I reminded him he was not allowed to question me, and then I led him to his bedroom. He had a couple of textbooks and some handmade flash cards on his bed. As soon as we crossed the threshold into his room, away from the curious eyes of his roommates, he assumed the position: on his knees, head down, hands behind his back. Good boy.
I looked at the flash cards. Words and phrases on the front, definitions and explanations on the back. I walked behind him, still on his knees, and ran my hand along his shoulders. He let out a sigh. I pulled his head back roughly, then leaned close to his ear and spoke softly: “I’m going to get in the bed. Once I’m settled, you may get
in the bed. Stay at the foot, on your knees, just like this. I’m going to read a term and you tell me the definition. For each one you get right, I’ll let you service me for ten minutes. For each one you get wrong, I’ll subtract ten minutes. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“That’s a good pet.”
I made Baby Sub grow his hair out so I could have something to pull. I put him on masturbation restriction. He wasn’t allowed to touch himself unless I gave him permission. When he had too many typos in his texts, I made him call me and repeat an apology, which included calling himself too horny to type properly, until I told him to stop. He had a journal where he had to answer questions I posed. Sometimes I made him watch his favorite kind of porn, knowing he wouldn’t be able to give himself any relief. I did not allow any race play, and I would penalize him when he’d say something ignorant about his experiences with Black people, like when he’d disparage the significance of marching bands within HBCU culture, belittling what he saw as a lack of musicality. After a while, it was clear he was bringing up racially sensitive subjects to bait me into punishing him, which led me to forbidding discussions about race.
He was a bratty sub, who frequently tried to exert control by doing things he knew would require punishment or trying to manipulate me to get out of punishments, something called “topping from the bottom.” I hated it. It magnified how young he was. And I preferred rewarding him with praise and permission to touch me, rather than punishing him. He wanted to be spanked and insulted, so he would push until I had no choice but to retaliate. To stop his bratty behavior, I put him on time-out: I refused any contact with him. He couldn’t see me. No phone calls. No texts. He wasn’t allowed to service me. It left him without order, without purpose.
Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be Page 19