Reboot: Sex Spoken Here: Sex Love Stories 1
Reboot, so please enjoy:
Sex Spoken Here: Sex Love Stories 1 Intro and My Story
Welcome to my virtual therapy room! I am Dr Lori Beth Bisbey and this is Sex Spoken Here. Remember that this podcast deals with adult themes so if you don’t have privacy you might wish to put on your headphones.
Today I am starting a series that is different from the ones I usually do. Since I started this podcast, I have covered different topics to do with sex, sexuality, gender and relationships over two or three weeks, looking at each topic in moderate depth. In this new series, I am interviewing people from all walks of life about their journeys to sexual authenticity and integration. Different people are in different places on their journeys. Some are close to the beginning, others in the middle and still others have reached a place of authenticity and integration and their journeys are focused on more pleasure and more learning. For each story, I’ll give a short summary and I will provide some advice or tips for further learning or help if you need it with any of the issues talked about during the story. It is my hope that you will see yourself somewhere in these stories and you will gain support and inspiration from them. Some of them are really hard in places and they also contain great joy. Your sexual journey is as unique as your lip print (which is as unique as a fingerprint – as is your nose print, ear print and your eyes).
My journey is a long one, so grab a cup of tea, coffee or your favourite tipple, any nibbles you choose and get comfortable. When you listen to these stories, try to listen without judgement. Reflect on your own story and each unique piece that makes you authentically you.
Many people believe that all good stories begin ‘Once upon a time’ but that beginning is for a fairy tale and my story starts in the real world. As a pre-teen, my fantasies were about having a master and living in a bottle like the show I Dream of Jeannie. I created a decorated a bottle to live in. I didn’t know why I wanted this, I just did.
By the time I reached my teens, the fantasy was more detailed. There were Masters and Mistresses, and other slave women (for that is how I saw the genie). I was sexually precocious for a number of reasons that I will leave for another day. At 13, I was desperate to lose my virginity but I was ashamed of my desire. I got it in my head that doing so at 13 would be too young and therefore make me a slut so I decided to wait until after my 14th birthday. I had a boyfriend at the time and I made him wait until 10 days after my 14th birthday. Before my birthday, I discovered the joys of blow jobs. I loved the feelings that giving a blow job gave me. My boyfriend counted himself lucky.
My boyfriend’s parents were divorced. He was 16 and lived with his mom. She didn’t mind him bringing me to his bedroom. As a result, I lost my virginity in a comfortable room, in a clean comfortable bed, with Pink Floyd’s Darkside of the Moon album playing on the stereo. We used condoms and he was careful to work on arousing me before the first penetration. There was nothing at all traumatic about the experience. It hurt a little but within a few minutes it was feeling good. It was a great entry to the world of fucking and I have been grateful for this ever since. When I finally did experience traumatic sex, I knew that sex could be seriously good which meant I knew it could be again.
Shortly after this, I had my first proper girlfriend. I had fooled around with some of my female friends earlier – kissing here and there, an occasional fondle. S was my first real girlfriend. With her, I discovered the joys of eating pussy. At that time, I preferred to be the one giving not receiving.
My desires to be forced, to be a slave, to be told what to do, just increased as time went on. At 14, I got involved with Perry who was 18 while I was at summer camp. He worked in the kitchen and I was a camper. He was so sexy and wrote poetry. He would read to me. It wasn’t long before my parents broke us up. The age difference was the main reason. I had not even entered high school and he had already graduated and was headed to university. Perry introduced me to proper erotica. As I was and still am a voracious reader, I was in heaven. I was relieved to see that there were other people like me, who had cravings like mine. None of my friends who I tried to confide in understood my cravings at all. I would end up feeling shamed when I spoke about my desires so I quickly learned not to speak of them. I also loved sex and had no desire for a monogamous relationship. This had me labelled as a slut very quickly.
The girls I got involved with didn’t want me to be with boys. The boys I got involved with wanted me to bring the girls I liked home so they could watch but weren’t happy if I saw them separately. High school was filled with experimentation and promiscuity. I did not feel good about myself, however. I had accepted what others were saying – that there was something wrong with wanting the things I wanted and something wrong with wanting sex with more than one person and something wrong with wanting boys and girls.
I read the Story of O and Return to the Chateau. At 15 while at summer school, I saw the movie. I also saw the movie Swept Away with Giancarlo Giannini. I read 9 ½ weeks. But I still hadn’t yet had a relationship that included much more than pushing my head down when I was giving head.
I went off to university at 17 in the autumn of 1980. I was registering for English classes when I saw a lithe man with long hair, a goatee who was smoking a pipe. I fell for him before we even spoke. His presence struck me and when he introduced himself, I was stammering. J and I began a relationship shortly after. Our sex had more than a little power exchange. There was some breath play and lots of intensity. It was electrifying. This was what I had been fantasising about since I was 9. Our relationship was cut short by his live in girlfriend just before the end of my freshman year. By this point, I was a bit less ashamed of my desires. Some of them had begun to feel just a part of me. I didn’t feel bad about my love for men and women. I no longer beat myself up because I often loved more than one person at the same time. I still felt pressure to fit in to my parent’s model of relationships but I was away at university so I felt a degree of freedom to experiment.
I started sophomore year with a re-newed relationship with J with D’s agreement. This was my first proper foray into an ethical non-monogamous relationship. It fit me beautifully. I was thrilled to be able to be honest and I certainly didn’t want one partner. The first semester was filled with exploration and lots of seriously hot sex. I still had a small amount of shame about my desire to engage in rough sex and to be dominated, but I was feeling better and better about myself.
At the end of May, D introduced me to Alton telling me ‘I think you two will really hit it off.’. Alton was 26 years old and I was just 19. He was tall, slender with burnt sienna skin, a long-ish brown fro with a small white stripe – reminded me of a lightning bolt. His eyes were captivating and his voice hit me right in the pussy – deep, smooth, liquid with plenty of bass. The attraction was immediate. We went out for a bite after work. Alton drew all sorts of information out of me during that first talk. I was unsophisticated and didn’t see how he was leading me. By the time the evening came to an end, I was lost. He took me home, kissed me goodnight and arranged to see me the next day.
Alton told me that women he dated had to agree to obey him or he didn’t get involved. He promised we would go slowly and if there was anything I truly did not want to do, he wouldn’t press me. He was one of my fantasies come to life. It didn’t take me long to agree.
The next night, Alton came over and we had sex for hours. It was hot, intense sex. He was very large so it took me being extremely aroused to manage his size. When I gagged on him, he pulled back, helped me to relax and try again. It got easier to manage his size even when he was controlling the action. Orgasm had mostly alluded me during fucking and or having any kind of penetrative sex and my male lovers to that point didn’t eat pussy. Orgasm with Alton felt easy. His hands pulling my head back, his teeth on my neck and breasts while he pounded into me just seemed to work.
This was 1982 and I used a diaphragm for birth control so I didn’t use condoms. I was careful to make sure my diaphragm was inserted properly. I didn’t want to get pregnant. I didn’t worry much about disease as I believed all the myths of the time about catching diseases and most of the things I might catch were relatively easily curable. I was like most of my peers. We felt invincible.
After a few days, Alton stopped leaving my place in the morning. He didn’t move stuff in but he stayed. 10 days after we first went out, we headed out for a drink and his attitude was more serious. There was an edge I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t know that he had a cocaine addiction. In fact, he used intravenously. I didn’t know he was withdrawing and that was making him really ratty. I didn’t have access to money to give him. My bills were paid by my parents. My extra money came from the same job that Alton had – telesales. I was a supervisor in the office, checking the sales made by the others.
We got to the bar and Alton began to interrogate me. He asked questions about my other lovers. He demanded details about what I had done, how I felt. He told me he didn’t believe that I was committed to him. He told me he thought I was a fake, not really submissive, not really willing to obey. I felt confused, hurt and also scared that he would leave. I was having the best sexual relationship of my life and I had strong feelings for him. I didn’t want to lose him. By the time we left, I was feeling off balance. We were half way down Brookline Ave when he pushed me into a doorway and down to my knees. He demanded I suck him off. I was overwhelmed, frightened and a little excited. My hesitation was met with a growl of ‘Obey!’. I did and when he finished, he dragged me to my feet and we headed back to my flat.
From that evening, things changed. Alton was rough and mean in his handling of me so at the end of the day, I said no. I told him I wanted him to leave. He laughed at me. He came for me with a closed fist and began to beat me. I was shocked, then I struggled but it did no good. He was far stronger than I. I screamed but no one came. Eventually, I just took the beating. When he finished, I couldn’t put my legs together as my thighs were too bruised.
For 5 days, Alton kept me captive. He beat me repeatedly. He raped me repeatedly. He humiliated me. Twice he choked me until there was no breath in me and I died. When I came back it was to him pounding on my chest and giving me mouth to mouth. He fed me nothing. He poured alcohol down my throat. Friends came to see me but I was too afraid to say what was going on directly. I tried using code. I was convinced he was going to kill me. On the 6th morning, Alton got up, showered and dressed and told me he was going out and I wasn’t to talk to anyone or to go out. An hour after he left, J came by and found me shaking and weak. My face was covered in little red dots (called petechial hemmorhages) because he burst all my capilliaries strangling me. The bruising on my vulva and my inner thighs was so severe that my skin was black. I told J that I needed to get away, that I was in danger. I packed a gym bag with socks, a t-shirt, sweats and butcher knife, a set of hand cuffs and my jewelry and my journal. I wouldn’t tell J where I was going. I was afraid Alton would find out. I told him I would let him know when I was safe.
I went into Cambridge and was lucky that a good Samaritan found me wandering aimlessly and took me to a café and bought me a meal. I had no money with me. He helped me contact D and she met me at the hospital. The rape exam is a story for another time. As is the story of the police, preliminary hearing and the eventual plea bargain because the DA was afraid to try to prosecute rape when I had slept with Alton consensually before.
I developed PTSD after this event. Probably no surprise. I entered therapy quickly with a lovely older man who was a Jungian analyst. I remember very little of the contents of the therapy except that I remember a warm non-judgemental presence who helped me to be able to breathe and continue my studies but who was unable to help me get rid of the nightmares, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts and the intense shame that despite all that Alton did to me, I still wanted rough sex and a dominant partner and there were some things that he did to me that I would fantasise about.
I found myself attracted to older men who had an edge. These were Vietnam veterans who had PTSD. It was a strange coincidence. I was now 20 years old and there wasn’t anywhere where I came into contact with veterans. But I was involved with three in a row. All of them were 16 years or more older than I. All of them were dominant but only with the last one did I enter any kind of stated power exchange relationship. My liasions with women during this time were fleeting. And all of my sexual relationships were tinged with shame.
I graduated from university and re-located to North Carolina where I met S. This was my next power exchange relationship and I fell into it without really knowing what was happening. I spent the next year exploring the dynamics of a dominant submissive relationship. There was just one problem. I couldn’t surrender. I wanted to so badly but I couldn’t let go. Orgasm eluded me as it had mostly since Alton because orgasm meant losing control. I was fine if I was masturbating because I was safe. With a partner, orgasm was nigh on impossible. In the autumn, I left North Carolina for graduate school in clinical psychology in California.
Throughout graduate school, I took reckless sexual risks. I hooked up with strangers to try out various kinks and BDSM. Looking back, I’m lucky that I was not injured or killed. I was in therapy during this time, still trying to get my PTSD symptoms to go away and deal with the resultant depression. They did not. Hypervigilance had me walking round the house at night, checking all the windows and doors repeatedly. I lived with G for a year and he taught me that orgasm was much more likely if someone was eating my pussy. I had a couple of girl friends who added evidence to this lesson. I hooked up with J, G and T from university and indulged in group sex. I spent time on Compuserve and on bulletin boards talking with people who were Masters, slaves, tops, bottoms and into all sorts of kinks. I went to private parties and underground clubs. I met K and had a whirlwind romance with elements of all of my desires and it ended badly. I got involved with a woman who insisted that I was truly a lesbian and that the reason I was sexually unsatisfied was that I hadn’t found the right woman. She wasn’t the right one. (This has happened a lot – both men and women have felt the need to explain to me that if I found the right insert gender here I would be het or gay or monogamous or I wouldn’t want kink)
Then I met my first husband at a conference on PTSD and a treatment method called Traumatic Incident Reduction. His accent did me in. He was tall with dark hair, moustache and pale skin. Extremely good looking. I was on the rebound. The initial sex was good though very vanilla. There was no orgasm for me but I enjoyed the sex.
I signed up to experience TIR and spent a week working intensively with a facilitator. It was nothing short of miraculous. At the end of that week, my symptoms of PTSD were gone and most of them were never to return. (I still have some hypervigilance in certain situations and get tactile defensive). I had my energy back. I was no longer depressed. I could sleep. No more flashbacks. 3 months later I agreed to marry Stephen and 3 months after that I was living in the UK.
Stephen was alcoholic. I hadn’t really understood that until he went into withdrawal before our first wedding date and ended up in hospital with a gastric bleed. He agreed to stop drinking and did for three years. Those three years were a nightmare. Alcoholics who stop drinking are crazy for the first year or two of recovery depending up on the severity and length of the addiction and whether they are working a program. He was not. Our sex life was sporadic and not satisfactory for either of us. I remember clearly when I complained that he didn’t wait for me to even get close to coming, he said that he didn’t care if I came as long as he got his. When Stephen started drinking again, it got worse. I had sex 12 times in 8 years. I finally left.
I met up with N, 4 months later. He gave me permission to play again. After 8 years of no sex and at 35 years old, I was back out in the single world. I did some personal spiritual work and personal development work that left me feeling comfortable with my desire to submit, surrender, be dominated and even comfortable with my more masochistic desires, feeling comfortable with my desire for non-monogamy and happy in my bisexuality. I told N that I was finally ready to go back and explore BDSM and the rest of my kink. We enjoyed swinging together and have stayed family to this day. 6 months later, I met my second husband, F.
In hindsight, my hormones were driving my choice of F. He is 12 years younger than I and was happy to be a stay at home dad. He was relatively inexperienced sexually and it was quickly apparent that we weren’t sexually compatible. But my hormones drove me forward. I wanted a baby and time was running out. This was not conscious! Before we married, we clearly made a contract about ethical non-monogamy. We decided that we needed to talk with each other before seeing another person and that each of us had the right to say we didn’t want a relationship to begin or continue. F wasn’t interested in any of the kink that captivated me but I wasn’t concerned because I could find other partners to meet those needs. In theory, it should have worked well. In practice, it was a disaster.
I had my incredible son and became very ill. My sex life with F was non-existent. I began to explore again following the terms of our ethical non-monogamy. I caught F lying about an online hook up and making plans to bring her to our home when I was away on a business trip. He apologised and said it wouldn’t happen again. Two years later, he had a real life affair that lasted over 6 months. He told me when the husband of the woman he had the affair with threatened to tell me. We separated 6 months after I found out about the affair.
I spent time in 2004 and 2005 at sex positive and BDSM events in the UK. Time I spent running round with a pro Domme and a pro Master and their pro slave really got me to a place where I felt totally comfortable with all of my sexual self. I finally felt that I was able to express...
