2 November 1994

If I tell you what I’ve been up to, you will just laugh your socks off at my ignorance.         
That I ever thought fall 1994, would be the time when I would write a groundbreaking book on consent play within unconventional and highly exciting relationships between dare I say “superior” minds.
I haven’t heard from my lover Bear for ages, and I would not be surprised if he is with another woman, probably a less problematic one.        
So I’ve already been punished for my arrogance of calling us superior minds.

On the bright side, since I’m already in pain, this does entitle me to start speaking my truth because I’m no longer promoting a success lifestyle here.             
The current situation immediately illustrates the drawbacks of being so demanding in your love life.      
If it works, this relationship style will bring you the best thing you ever got, the best thing he ever got, and in all likeliness the best thing anybody going back three generations on both sides ever got.
But most likely it will not work and you’ll end up totally alone and everybody will believe you totally deserved it.         
And I probably did.

You know what the problem is, aside from having pictured life differently than feeling old and terribly underused at age 22?
That once you’ve gotten used to playing at the level Bear and me did, there is just no way you’re ever going back.         
If he wants a normal family life with someone else, or a woman who will inspire him to be monogamous?             
Then I will not get in the way.   

And I’ve already proven that because every time he fell out of communication or put me on the back burner like now when we see each other once every three months or so; I stay exactly where I am.
I don’t approach him to see where we stand or, more precisely, to ask him where I stand.

I don’t make plans to end it and get someone else instead.

The only repeating pattern is that his absence makes me realize it would be better to have multiple lovers, because it’s just not ideal to have so little sex.             
But owning my Miss Arrogance Catherine Tramell Basic Instinct persona:             
Who says other people have sex this good?         
Or a relationship this exciting?

Whenever I think not hearing from Bear is my cue to take action and start dating, or at least actively entertain the thought of getting a second lover (one equally good) it doesn’t happen.
And when I started writing this book on consent play, I originally thought it was limited to what Bear and me did between the sheets. Consent play would define as sex where I play I am the victim of some sort of abuse, to put it bluntly.

And I don’t think the word “play” does it justice, because it’s best known as a term in S&M, which is something entirely different from consent play.   
For multiple reasons none of which I will get into.

But “play” also makes us sound like really bad actors when our words, each and every one of them, are improvised and meant to arouse and increase pleasure, both of ourselves and the other.           
We are at different levels of reality, and we play/talk/act on these different levels, at the same time.

There is our real life selves, who are the main thing.       
Our normal conversation is still part of what we do, especially for quick check-ins.       
And then there is our play connection.

This can be singular, where we really deliberately play out one fantasy. But more often it’s an improvised scene, something one of us initiates, and two or more concepts of consent play could be covered in one session.

Finally there is the connection based on our past as well as our future selves.              
Memories of what we did in the past, or things we’d like to do in the future.              
Fantasies like “How would you like it if one day..”

These multi-leveled sexual encounters were absolutely mind blowing compared to anything I ever had ever done with any other man.
But because I was still a virgin when we started out, I didn’t think much of it.              
I assumed that all people must be doing this.

It wasn’t until after a few years that I began to understand how lucky I had been.    
I had asked Bear to make love to me, just once, because I knew he could do it (he was a player) and I was a virgin and wanted it to be done right.         
When someone like that sticks around, it takes a while before you understand most men would not have been comfortable being asked so directly for sex, nor would they have stuck around to discover your sexuality, and find the magical match where you (the girl) likes to be taken against her will and he (Bear) likes to do that.

So because of my relative inexperience, it had taken me a while to realize that Bear was worth his weight in gold.         

A few weeks ago, I decided it was a good time to write the consent play thing down, since I didn’t seem to have a sex life anymore.      
It could serve as a guide for others but also for myself if I ever wanted a new man.    
Having a manifesto on my first real relationship, would make sure I preserved what I had learned, make it my own.      
Even if Bear would no longer want to see me, I would live on as the woman I became because of him.
Which was not the sexless, worker bee shadow of a woman, I had become.

Late at night, before I went to sleep, I started writing in a journal.
It wasn’t the best time to write, but at least it was the last thing I did before I went to sleep.   
Something that nourished me on a soul level regardless of how bland my life was.     

The last time I had spoken about our relationship style with friends, things had turned sour.            
Why I appreciated Bear so much, and found it difficult to picture myself meeting someone that was “up for it”.

I discovered a discrepancy between what I want from a man, and what seems to be accepted as normal.           
It was impossible to explain what Bear and me have, without challenging their beliefs.

Here are some of the beliefs I encountered in others when I tried to explain my current (or perhaps past?) relationship with Bear:

1. A belief that monogamy is a trade-off

There seems to be the misconception that because Bear has other women “I can do whatever I want.”, implying to have sex with other men.                
Yes, I can have sex with whomever I want.          
As can you and you and you and everybody in their right mind.

However, I don’t like men touching me with whom I don’t have a long-term understanding.
The initial one-off with Bear was a necessary evil because I wanted to lose my virginity and didn’t want to claim him.

The reason Bear is my only lover is because so far he is the only man I am in love with and with whom I have matching sexual preferences.
My fidelity is not because I feel I owe it to him, nor because I believe monogamy is the morally right thing to do.         
It just comes as a natural consequence of the current situation and my preferences.

As does the other side of the coin:          

2. They believe someone who cheats/ has multiple partners is not serious and uncommitted

The reason I often let this pass, is because I don’t want to come off as if I’m trying to prove that Bear loves me.         
I don’t know what I mean to him and maybe he is uncommitted and not serious, who knows.      
And who even cares?

I think my biggest problem with this insatiable urge to know if someone is serious, as in aspiring a life-long monogamous pairing, is because I find it of no value.           

What I value is:
What does someone do to make our time together unforgettable?
And I do not mean any planning going out for the day, which is not as good as deciding in the moment itself.   

Bear and me both show up clean, interested, funny, laid-back, trusting, good-humored.          
To me to then start investigating if someone is serious, is as if you’re pissing in your own drink.

Don’t piss in your own drink.    

3. They believe a good sexual match is;
   Irrelevant compared to the other parts of your relationship, or;
   That good sex is sheer luck, or last option;          
   Good sex is a natural consequence of liking each other.  
   All wrong.

This was really the point where I stopped working on my book about consent play, because I realized it all starts by making sex the main event in your relationship, in your life.            
Something you are going to facilitate and make a top priority.

Something to be taken into account with every move you make, and every decision as a couple:

“Is this beneficial, or detrimental to my/ our sex life?”

That it is absolutely impossible to aspire having a normal looking relationship on the outside, and enjoy meaningful, layered consent play in private.

So in the end consent play, wasn’t a sexual preference at all;       
It was a relationship style!         
It was the game we play when we’re not in bed.

The constant tension of not knowing if I will ever see him again, was what made me such a big fan of our play.        
Any man wanting to know where our relationship was going, or wanting me to take responsibility for his feelings, for his life, was not going to get anywhere with me.            
Our mysterious undefined relationship, had been a prerequisite in order to do the consent play I intended to write about.

If I wanted to write a book that would serve the world, it had to be on the relationship style itself, which I found a totally boring topic.
I didn’t want to write an entirely boring book.    
But it was this relationship style, which me and Bear had accidentally invented, which was the basis for the great sex life.

The consent play had been the most remarkable aspect of what we did. And it was the aspect that got confused with S&M a lot, and partly because of that I had been so motivated to write an entire pleasure guide on consent play and how to do it.     
But I knew now that our consent play would never have existed without that Catherine Tramell, Nick Curran, Basic Instinct relationship style.

And with Bear gone, not a lover in sight, and my self-esteem reaching new lows after every workweek, there was nothing left to write about.

I need to get my act together and start doing what I had set out to do, the moment I started writing in that journal late at night.
The real reason behind me claiming the level Bear and I had reached, was so that I would be able to keep it, long after he had left.      
I had hoped the writing would help me to become the strong woman I used to be.        
But I was wrong because it was never in my writing, it was in me.
Or it had been, because “it” wasn’t anymore.

I need to start remembering.     
Start becoming.             
Start embodying that bold virgin that asked him for an encounter over coffee, at a cafe December 1989.            
The young woman with whom he went to the movies, seeing Basic Instinct, in 1992. Several times.

And how we somehow knew we’d be the only people in that audience who would understand that this wasn’t about if she had done it.
That Basic Instinct was about Catherine Tramell’s and Nick Curran’s desire to live an exciting life.       
A life no one would understand.

Bear may have returned to his normal life, but that should never again be a reason for me to stop being Catherine Tramell.