REGULARS

  

Index
Introduction
Early Diaries Intro

I Wanna Be Cremated

Introduction: Recently a woman on the radio read a short, non-stop quivering story on branding and the joys of submission and humiliation: "My lover caressed the bared flesh of my thigh which trembled, tried to ready it for the burning ember at the end of the metal rod he grasped in his other hand . . . " Erotica stops short of mentioning what happens after the orgasm is over, just like the last page of a Harlequin Romance is always the day before the wedding. But that's what I was so curious to find out: What happens after the book is closed? I dreamt of humiliation without a "safe word," with no distracting glamour or eroticism.

    

In 1993 I interviewed the industrial music godfather/prankster/Barbie collector/Satanist/magister in the Church of Satan — let's call him Joe — and I thought, "This might be the man to make my awful dreams come true." To say I faked submissiveness with Joe would be unkind. Let's say I "replicated" a woman saying "Yes Sir." The confusion and nonstop sex in our early relationship were like a feather mantle over my head, keeping me from ever getting quite enough oxygen. My dreams grew vivid. Every night I was a man and the docile girl I was pretending to be was underneath me and I'd rescue her from burning buildings and murderers, only to pry her thighs open with strange machinery.

    

Ever since I was a little girl I've had such a hunger to save and control someone all the way, but since bossiness isn't nice, I try always to tone it down, to let those around me have their little freedoms. Now, at last, I was able to truly subjugate someone — myself. It was I holding down my independence, not Joe. I showed myself no mercy. The simultaneous infusion and drain of power was

overwhelming.

    

But then it became real and I finally learned how true humiliation can destroy any personality, even mine, and replace it with nausea and insomnia and boredom and fear (I think that was exactly what I had wanted, to lose me). I was no better than the erotic writers — I stopped writing there. I was embarrassed. I also refused to answer questions about Joe in interviews, despite his being somewhat famous and the father of my child. When it was over, I curled up in a hole to recover and I pretended it never happened, right up until today, when I am calm and happy, and faintly the need stirs again to torture myself, just a little. Just for fun.

March 1, 1993

San Francisco

"You cannot resist what you wanted your whole life," said the evil Borg on The Next Generation. Joe makes me bad. He's taught me how to stop stopping myself. Christians have to tell you you'll go to hell. Otherwise, everyone would be selling their soul! As soon as I stopped feeling guilt and doubt, all these opportunities befell me. This guy at Kinko's offered to let me produce my magazine for free. A woman gave me an extra doughnut with my order this morning. I think people respond to the cheer of guiltlessness. The strangest thing happened on my way out of the doughnut shop. I was trying to make it across the street before the light changed, and this man said, "What are you running for? You think I killed someone? Why don't you turn around and look at yourself?" On top of that, bite-like marks have appeared on my right breast three times in six months. I think it's the Devil. Either that or ringworm. Magic always occurs when one falls in love . . . but who said magic is necessarily a good thing?

    

I've always wanted to be submissive, but it never worked out. I get too annoyed with "masters" when they don't outsmart me. Yet it seems attainable with Joe. I'm happy! I'm still an aggressive person. I'm being aggressively docile. Joe doesn't want to dominate — he just lives, and is rather careless of me. I want him to ask me to do something for him, favors. I'm reading this psychology book that says the worst thing is for someone dominant to be attracted to someone more dominant. They commit crimes together. At least I think that's what it says. Let me catch my breath — I'll mis-hear any lyrics or mis-read anything in order to make it fit this excitement I have right now. I always thought I would be a criminal. That's why I never got a tattoo or a credit card and always lied about my statistics on my license. I never knew what sort of criminal I wanted to be. I used to be a kleptomaniac. Now I'm just a tax-evader.

    

Joe does not like to be opposed. It's a game to me, to not oppose him. He is like my father except my father's stealthy and Joe's just slippery.

    

"I don't like the sound of him," Rachel said. She describes his theory about sperm eventually entering a mate's DNA (so that the woman starts thinking like her man) as "stupid," which I guess it is. Joe answered that sometimes approaching things linguistically or mathematically doesn't get to

the answer like knowing something instinctually does. I told Rachel that Joe could answer anything, and she said: "Joe, do you prefer roses or wildflowers?" She is irreverent!

March 1, 1994

San Francisco

I was wearing teal silk and lace panties. Joe said if I had some that laced up the front he could undo them like this (he demonstrated under my skirt on the way to the store). He said my panties were so fragile he could rip them off. Then he said, "I will." I was rubbing my thighs together in all the aisles. We came home and I took off all my clothes except my panties. I put the sexy dimmer light on. He spit on his palm and rubbed it around the head of his penis and he put his other hand on my panties and ripped them apart with one yank. Then he shoved his penis in. He had his hand on my chest the way he puts it there. I said, "I like how you handle me." In the store at one point I'd stopped him, because I didn't want to give the old lady shoppers sex nightmares from witnessing us. "Don't ever say no to me again," he said. I said okay and laughed, and he said, "I'm not joking." He kissed my hair and said, "You're my little girl. I'll always take care of you."

March 1, 1995

Denver

Joe's friend Ricky:

1. Drinks too much.

2. Is cruel.

3. Is wild.

4. Is handsome except for the pig nose.

5. Is someone I had a sex dream about last night!

These are the things (substitute gorilla chest for pig nose) that drew me to Joe, and now these very things make me fret. I pretended to be a subservient woman to annoy my equal opportunity San Francisco friends and to annoy myself for fun, but really what am I? I live in a basement, I write maybe one hour a day — the rest of the time I'm sweeping, mopping, cooking, washing dishes, taking care of Wolfgang, buying food. I have to walk everywhere because we have no car. And wasn't it supposed to be a joke, about how he's the man so he drinks a six-pack a night and watches TV and describes everyone as "fucking nitwits"? Was he like this before? Yes, but he explained it as "there are times to absorb knowledge and time to act out what you've learned" and that "fun is the law." I can't remember for sure, but I think that sounded good to me at the time. Isn't everyone the opposite of what they appear? I thought we were playing the same game. I thought I was a cobra putting on a dress and Joe was a doll wearing a snakeskin. But now I wonder if he might really be lazy and mean.

    

Wolf has always been scared of the vacuum. Rachel used it when she was visiting, and Wolf ran (well, crawled) at it, right up to where the noise and air came out, yelling at it with his little voice. I picked him up and saw that he was crying so hard! What a brave boy, to rush at his fear like that. This is the first thing in my life I've been exactly and thoroughly sure of — my love for my baby. Joe doesn't believe that. He says: "You have this dream of the family, but really you are like me — a loner. What you always put first is your career." No one knows anything.

March 1, 1996

Denver

Well, Diary, things were much worse than I suspected. He wants to leave us. When Joe got back from England, he said what he wants most is an end to the friction, more than he wants to work on our relationship. I told him I would do anything. I said I'll never break up our family, I'll never let Wolf lose his dad. I suggested going to a counselor, he said it's too late. I said I'd give 180 percent if he'd give twenty percent. I said I'd get the "JOE'S" tattoo like he's always wanted. He got an erection at that, but wouldn't put it in me. I said, "You still love me, right?" He didn't answer. Finally he said he has love for me but it's buried way down under all the crap. I said, "I'm begging you. I've never begged anyone for anything in my life. Please give me something to hope for. How can I be bewitching if I'm terrified? I can't lose my family." He answered that his twenty percent is allowing me to try. I went into the bathroom to vomit and all this mucous came from my nose as tears shot from my eyes.

2001 postscript: And that's how submissiveness looks when it's naked — not secretive and playful and sharp-witted, but scared, pathetic, bent over the toilet bowl. It spends $35 getting that goddam mark of ownership on its ass, and then learns that it costs a thousand to have it removed. When I picture that thing in my coffin with me, I think I'll get cremated instead — burn my whole body up just for the satisfaction of finally burning it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
	Lisa Carver is the author of the books Dancing Queen, Rollerderby, The Lisa Diaries and Drugs Are Nice. She's written for Hustler, Index, Icon, Feed, Newsday and Playboy, among others. She lives in New Hampshire.

©2001

Lisa Carver and Nerve.com, Inc.