senses-working-overtime:

D is for Deer illustrated by W.F. White

“John Martin’s Book for Little Children,” April 1913, Vol. II, No. 1 Subscription

Sir likes to say that my fantasies revolve a lot around being the ingénue. They involve innocence, reluctance, corruption. Within the context of a “scene” or “play,” I never initiate in my ideal scenario.

Call it a way of sublimating shame, maybe. Playing the reluctant victim implies I don’t actually have to own up to enjoying the disgusting things I like. Or it might just be that the idea of not being in control of my experience is kind of hot. But part of it, certainly, is the freedom to be unaccountable and immature.

Saltine showed up almost twenty minutes late for coffee. I considered it a power play until I saw the way they came in: sweatpants, glasses on, no makeup. Saltine’s the kind of person who can carry it off, which is a quality I’ve always envied in that type of person. If I do that, I just look like I’m sick.

But I realized what was really happening here. They ordered hot chocolate while I sat there with black coffee. They spun out on tangents about other people they’d dated, about foolish choices they’d made prior with people whose age and experience they equated with credibility and safety. And I understood why Saltine had annoyed me so much: they were the ingénue.

What’s more, from the things they told me, they were me. Not me at this point. But Saltine was nineteen years old now, just the way I was right around the time I started this blog, when I was at a point where I wanted to take control of myself and my sexuality, when in the past I had kind of been just stumbling around with it, throwing myself into things.

The conversation went well. They understood that I had different standards about boundaries and said they would respect them. And though I acknowledged it was unhealthy to project it on Saltine and I shouldn’t try to protect them, I told Pup that he and Saltine could sleep at my place after the play party.