My 1-year-old nephew, Charles Xavier (yes, like the X-Men character), was puttering around the living room, thumping and bumping off furniture with a rubbery resilience that astonished me. No matter how many times he fell onto his bottom, he picked himself up and toddled tearlessly on. I’d never seen such a composed baby. As if to italicize the point, little Charles crept under the kitchen table, only to have his mother accidentally kick him in the head as she crossed her legs. My sister-in-law gave an embarrassed laugh, then scooped up her barely weeping son and plopped him in her lap. Charles quieted at once.
Then my sister-in-law asked the dreaded question. “Are you guys gonna have kids?”
I’m amazed at how many mothers and fathers ask this of childless couples. Of course you’re going to have a baby, they’re really saying. It’s not a question of having one, but will you stop at one? What do you hope for? All boys? All girls? One of each? What if you have triplets? What a blessing that would be.
“We’re not having kids,” I said, with as much finality as I could muster.
“You think you won’t,” my brother said with that sly knowing parents always exude. “You’ll change your mind after you have one. I thought I knew love before I had Charlie.” He shook his head and smiled, as though with wistful amusement at the ignorance of his younger self. “Being a dad’s the best feeling in the world.”
Beside me on the love seat, my wife kept her social smile firmly in place, but I could feel her secret death glare.
I know it burned my wife to hear my brother imply that the love she shared with me was somehow inadequate, that it required the supplementation of another life. My wife once acted as a human shield for pregnant women braving the righteous mobs outside abortion clinics. She believes that if she had a choice, she would have chosen never to be born. She would never dare force the bittersweetness of existence on another.
Before my wife had a chance to voice any of this, I jumped in with the pat answer I always give when asked the dreaded question:
“We believe there’s three kinds of people in the world: Those who live for their art, those who live for their children and the lucky few who can do both. We’re creative. We just love going on adventures, love our little projects. They’re our children. And if they ever disappoint us, at least we’re not stuck with them for the rest of our lives.” I patted my wife’s thigh. “Plus, it’s nice being able to have sex whenever you want.”
My brother and sister-in-law gave us looks mingled with patience and pity. We’d learn. One day, the heavens would part and a perfect, precious cherub would descend on a sunbeam. Then the scales would flake from our eyes and hearts, and we would finally taste true love.
In all fairness, I do not know what it is like to cradle a little bundle of possibilities in my arms, to know that part of my soul resides behind those wide, curious eyes staring up at me, to feel that wondrous weight of responsibility of being trusted with protecting and nurturing this tender creature. But my brother will never know what it feels like to have a mind that isn’t an ocean whose depths are clear to the very bottom, but a bog in which I wander, lost and lonely. Even during my brother’s troubled teens, our father never looked at him like he was a mistake he desperately longed to take back. Though it breaks my heart, I choose to be childless because it is the lesser of two regrets.
A story: When I was 16, I came home from school one day to find my mother poking around in her garden by the backyard porch. The moment our eyes met, I knew something had happened to burst the membrane of normalcy that surrounded our lives.
“What?” I said.
“Your grandmother.” She clarified. “Your other grandmother.”
“She’s –”
“– dead, yeah.”
I had two grandmothers, but I only knew one of them. I’d grown up with my mother’s mother, and I adored her. She was a leathery old lady whose Halloween displays were the best in Upstate New York. My other grandmother, though, was a dark hole in my memory.
“How’d it happen?” I said.
“She had a breakdown in a car when she was in her 30s. She was in a mental institute. She died there.”
I’d never even considered the possibility that my paternal grandmother was still alive, let alone where she was and why we never visited her. Hearing she’d spent more than half her life in an institution — it was another brutal reminder of how horrible my father’s childhood had been, and why he never talked about it.
Now the world wobbled and whirled. A grandmother I’d never known, dead. It was too much to process.
“Your father –” my mother began.
“Yeah.” I headed to my room to think.
” — he’s pretty broken up — “
“Yeah.” I shut the door in her face. Enough. I didn’t want to hear any more.
Inside, the house was filled with that purgatorial darkness that only seems to exist in dreams where you can’t turn on the lights. My father was sprawled on the couch in the living room. Asleep, awake, dead to the world? I couldn’t tell. Watching him, I felt some small measure of relief for him. The last, lingering goblin from my father’s nightmare past had gasped and gone. Maybe now he could have a little peace.
My father opened his eyes. I have tried hard to forget the look he gave me then. At first I thought it was regression, the little boy whose father left before he was born, whose mother was taken away from him, who grew up with his fairy tale-cruel grandmother and grandfather.
But I saw that look again, on the night I had my own nervous breakdown, in the rearview mirror as my father pulled into the E.R. cul-de-sac, as he muttered to himself, “It’s my childhood all over again.”
Though he spoke of the past, I suspected his mind was on the future, my future, and the long shadow this night would cast over it. He had brought a child into the world who was born with his mother’s broken mind. In that look I saw guilt, and regret. I believe my own father regretted that I was ever born, that I would suffer as his mother had suffered. Did I blame him? I sometimes wonder why he put me in my mother’s belly, knowing I would come out wrong, damaged, my brain a shattered citadel. But no, I cannot and will not blame him. I choose to believe his hopes outweighed his fears when he found out I was growing in my mother’s belly, a cracked little seed. I choose hope.
Not for myself. But that a time may come when a parent can hold his child in his arms, look in his eyes and know that the mind behind it is perfect, every single synapse. That a father will never look at his son like he’s an error that can never be corrected.
Understand, I am grateful that I exist. I would never choose nonexistence, like my wife. I love this world, where every horror is matched by something doubly wondrous. I love my wife. Ours is a pleasurable symbiosis. I even love my malfunctioning mind.
I do not love my cowardice, which I’m afraid has won out in this situation. But I cannot bear the thought of driving my own child to the hospital, when he has his own nervous breakdown, and having him catch me staring at him in the rearview mirror, wondering, Are you a wrong I can never right?
I whisper an apology to oblivion, where my never-to-be-born child dwells. I am sorry I’m not strong enough to let my hopes overcome my fears. If you wish to know what I would have named you, come closer. Let me breathe it in an ear that will never be formed, so that it can be known by a mind that will never know memory.
I got up around seven on my wife’s birthday and made her breakfast, as usual. I do all of the cooking, the cleaning, the laundry, buy groceries and run all errands, even for those embarrassing feminine hygiene products. My wife never asked me to shoulder all household chores; I insisted. The arrangement suited both of us perfectly. I always wanted someone to take care of, just as she always wanted someone to take care of her.
While we eat breakfast, it’s tradition that we watch “Law & Order: SVU” on Netflix. “Do you want to watch cop-who-rapes-his-wife or little-girl-in-a-coma?” I asked.
My wife chose “cop-who-rapes-his-wife,” while I, the sentimental one, opted for “little-girl-in-a-coma.” We broke this impasse the same way we make other minor decisions: With a wrestling match.
I know many couples enjoy a bedroom tussle, but when my wife and I grapple, we’re out for blood. We bite, scratch, punch and twist each other’s limbs into painful pretzels. I am proud to say I am married to a woman who can kick my ass. This is how we are in the bedroom, too, where it’s a constant shifting of dominance, rough and wild, neither of us on top for long.
My wife won, finishing me off with a move that would be illegal even in a street fight. I let her get her licks in while she could. Later that day, we were headed to the dungeon. There, I would show her no mercy.
My wife works as a submissive at an S&M dungeon. Men fork over hundreds of dollars to chain her up and whip her. Sometimes, when my wife and I walk down the street together, I wonder what passersby think of me when they glimpse the handiwork of her clients on her shoulders and thighs. I can’t meet these people’s eyes, even though my wife proudly displays her contusions. She thinks they’re sexy, admiring her mottled behind in the bathroom mirror. I know there’s nothing to be ashamed of, but my face goes red with guilt, anyway. Long before my wife got her job, we were doing weird, kinky stuff in the boudoir, too.
I imagine how the “SVU” detectives would respond. I imagine being in the interrogation room with Christopher Meloni, telling him my wife was asking for it, that she enjoyed every blow. “Yeah, yeah,” he’d snarl. “Typical wife-beater line.” In another room, Mariska Hargitay would be counseling my wife, telling her it wasn’t her fault.
This whole chapter in our lives still surprises me, since I’ve never been an S&M enthusiast. But my wife is what’s known as a lifestyle submissive — in the movie “Secretary,” she’d be the Maggie Gyllenhaal character — and the day came when she finally asked me to assume the position of dominator. She asked me to cuff her to the headboard and slap her across the face — “Hard. Harder!” While I’m no conformist, I certainly wasn’t eager to start whaling on my wife, even if she badly wanted me to. Still, if I have one weakness, I am pathologically incapable of saying no to her.
I sucked it up and slapped her across the right cheek. Her head flopped limply to the side and her cheek burned bright from the blow.
“Again.”
So I slapped her a second time, praying silently that the neighbors couldn’t hear us.
“Again.”
Part of me felt detached, watching in silent judgment as I hit my wife, that inexcusable sin. Another part — God help me — was enjoying it. My wife had asked me to open the door, just a crack, to my darkest self — and it turned us both on.
When my wife was hired at the dungeon, I was overjoyed. Not only did we desperately need the money, I hoped that working there would help my wife deal with some of the issues she has with sex. She enjoys sex and is very good at it. Still, she’s always felt inhibited. She thinks this is because a babysitter molested her when she was very young, forcing her to take off her clothes and lie in bed with him.
I am also the victim of sexual abuse. I was bullied during a sexually confused time and the kids at school did things to me that I don’t feel comfortable putting into words. As kids, pain — both physical and emotional — and sexual pleasure became all knotted up together for my wife and me, to the point that there’s no hope of untangling them. Our abusers took control from us, and sadomasochism is a way for us to wrest control back. If pleasure cannot come without pain, at least we’re the ones inflicting it. When our nerves say, “no more,” we have the power to stop, a choice we didn’t have when we were young. I know it sounds strange, but it works for us.
That afternoon, we headed to the dungeon. On my wife’s lap she carried a pair of Tupperware containers with peanut butter cupcakes, which a friend had baked. She wanted to share the rest with the subs and doms she worked with.
When we walked in, I grew quiet. I studied my shoelaces while my wife introduced me to her leather-clad co-workers. In social situations, I rarely open up to other people. I’m a hermit, preferring my books and thoughts to human company, while my wife loves to socialize. She’s the one exception; I feel totally comfortable with her. So I don’t mind playing the submissive when she drags me out of the house, letting her do most of the talking. It can be comforting giving someone else all of the control.
I handed over $200 to the mistress behind the front desk and my wife and I headed over through the garden to the Bastille room, my wife in a leather coat like Trinity in “The Matrix,” so passersby on the sidewalk wouldn’t ogle her. As we got closer, I felt both anxious and giddy, like I was committing a crime I knew I would get away with.
I smiled at my wife. “You look hot.”
As always, she looked surprised but pleased. “I do?”
My wife is a medium submissive. Her clients can use the leather whips and paddles. Nothing made of wood, though. When it was time to pick my instrument, I chose a small cat-of-nine-tails, and my wife shut the door. A clock started counting down our hour of playtime.
That’s when I started to panic. How, exactly, should I go about torturing the woman I love?
“Are you sure this is legal?” I said.
I knew it was. Professional sadomasochism technically falls outside the legal definition of sex, so it’s not prostitution. Still, I felt nervous and paranoid.
My wife laughed. “Yes, honey.”
I pointed at the intercom. “Can that mistress lady hear us?”
My wife shook her head. “Nope.”
I tried the door. “Does this thing lock?”
My wife took me by the hand, and we sat down on a bench. “Nobody’s going to walk in on us. It’s just you and me. Relax.”
But I couldn’t relax. I knew good men didn’t do things like this to their wives. What my wife wanted me to do was immoral, and yet it made her so happy. I was scared of going too far. I was scared of liking it too much.
My wife pulled me to my feet. “C’mon,” she said, shooting me that tomboy smile of hers I’m completely helpless against.
She assumed the position, a willing victim to her own torture. I realized how much she trusted me in that moment. She knew I was a good man. That’s why she had no problem with me letting out my dark side every once in a while. She knew I was strong enough to lock it away when our hour was up.
“Okeydokey,” I said. “And here we go.”
I cracked my wife on the ass. Then I chained her up and paddled her some more. I threw her over something that looked like a pommel horse and let her have it.
When it was over, we lay on the floor, holding hands.
“This was the best birthday present ever,” she said. I wanted to kiss her — but it was against the rules.
Afterward, I felt a little guilty. I couldn’t help but feel bad about hitting my wife, no matter the context. But I was also tremendously pleased. It was remarkable just how much intimacy can be found being so vulnerable with each other. And it felt good being bad, at least for a little while.
That night my wife and I slipped into bed together, her butt flecked with marks, my stomach sore from when she punched me during our wrestling match. We lay together, healing from our pain — friends, foes, equals.
In 2009, I had a fight with my wife, Raquel. It was “Lord of the Rings” epic. Like most fights between couples, it was complicated and scary and boring in its details. Unlike most fights between couples, it was about a ménage à trois. Raquel wanted to have one. I did not.
Raquel is bi in a big way. (Raquel is not her real name, by the way.) We’re monogamous in our marriage, but before we met, she’d made hot tub love to another girl, made out with girls onstage at Anal Blast concerts, had her own “Bound” experience with her girlfriend and said girlfriend’s husband. She currently does ample work as a fetish model and performs as a scream queen, doing “B” movies with titles like “Bad Girls Burn in Hell.”
I, on the other hand, am a bit of a prude. I grew up square in the Bible Belt and didn’t even know what fellatio was until I was 22. I lost my virginity at 26 and married the girl I lost it with. Even now, after being with Raquel for four years, I stand in the bedroom doorway, shyly toe the carpet and ask her if she wants to “experience sexualities.” And yet, our relationship has worked, ever since we first met in 2006 on a writing website by bonding over “Titus Andronicus” and Harry Potter. I’ve grown accustomed to Raquel’s freewheeling lifestyle. Not long ago, I found myself backstage at a lingerie show, surrounded by naked lovelies and a drag queen named “Bitch Flowers” performing as MC, when I realized just how far I’d come from my fundamentalist roots.
Still, I have my limits. When my wife informed me a gorgeous European girl named Yasmin (also not her real name) was going to be crashing with us for a week, right around my 29th birthday, I worried that she had ulterior motives.
“Do you think Yasmin is hot?” I asked Raquel.
She nodded. “Do you think Yasmin is hot?” she asked me.
I nodded. (Hey! I may be embarrassed by my penis, but I still have one.) Yasmin had a body that was pure Botticelli and a temperament like a tidal wave. There was no resisting her. This was the dream girl for every Yank who’s ever traveled through Europe, hoping to run into Julie Delpy. Yasmin is also bisexual.
“Would you like to have sex with Yasmin?” I asked.
Raquel nodded eagerly.
“Would you like to have sex with me and Yasmin at the same time?”
Another eager nod of the head.
I know this is the stuff of movie fantasy, but I wasn’t turned on. I was furious. I was deeply hurt. I sputtered my defense: When you’re in love with someone, it’s not just sex, it’s a communion of souls. It’s intimacy of the purest kind. You’re not just baring your privates. You’re baring everything. Why would Raquel want to share that with someone else?
Now, before you tell me I’m some sentimental wimp, or some puritanical zealot, I am well aware that it is healthy for people in love to have fantasies about other, often far more famous, people. I get that. Raquel has a thing for Ewan McGregor, James Franco and Leonardo DiCaprio. Good for her! I have a thing for Jenny Agutter and Jenny Wright (and maybe for Leo, too). But things get messy when a raunchy fantasy becomes reality. It’s one of the messages of “Chasing Amy”: Threesomes are a bad idea. And this is from the guy who gave us ex-porn-star Traci Lords blowing bubbles out her who-who place.
But my anger about the ménage à trois surprised me. I took a hard look at myself in the bathroom mirror: What was wrong with me? Was I just too uptight? Was I too paranoid of losing the love I never thought I’d have or deserve?
My views on sexuality, of course, were forged by a conservative upbringing. And while I don’t believe in God anymore, I am still a big believer in C.S. Lewis’ book, “Four Loves.” For Lewis, romantic love is divided into two categories, Eros and Venus. Eros is that feeling of being cosmically attuned to another person, while Venus is the urge to get into their pants. I can feel Venus for any woman, but Eros is something special, something I can only feel for Raquel. But feeling Eros for her, I don’t want to experience Venus with anyone else.
The other thing that’s shaped my definition of love is my mental illness. I have intense OCD, and it makes socializing difficult. Being around other people freaks me out. An obsessive-compulsive’s life is defined by rituals and routines designed to prevent anxiety. I check to make sure the front door’s locked 52 times before I go to bed, so I can sleep in relative peace. But socializing is made up of hundreds of rituals and routines and they all cause anxiety. Hell, the number of rituals I had to go through to overcome the anxiety of just one socializing ritual — it really wasn’t worth it.
Like most obsessive-compulsives, I am terrified of touch. The only other woman I’ve been with besides Raquel I kissed a grand total of three times in two years. Just holding this poor woman’s hand was agony for me.
I’d lie awake in bed every night, dreaming of that perfect girl who would change everything for me. I didn’t really believe this dream would ever come true, but then I met Raquel. I’ll never forget the first time I made love to her on the linoleum floor of her Minneapolis home. It was the most natural thing in the world. I have never flinched from Raquel’s touch. I truly believe our relationship is the greatest argument for kismet. We shouldn’t be, but here we are.
So Raquel is my Eros and my Venus. She’s the answer to all those pathetic, sleepless nights of longing. With her by my side, I doze peacefully. I sweetly, simply love her. Only for her would I move 2,000 miles away from everything and everyone I’ve ever known to live in Los Angeles. Only for her would I write a love ballad and sing it to her at our wedding in front of 200 people.
Which is why I was so hurt when she wanted to have a ménage à trois with another woman. After all I’d been through to find her, I couldn’t believe she wanted to share me with some hottie she met on Facebook.
But Raquel isn’t me. She understands my pain, but she’s not burdened by it. She loves me. Sweetly, simply. In fact, she feels Eros for me so much that Venus doesn’t really matter to her all that much. For her, having some threesome with a Facebook friend would never endanger what we have because her love for me is so huge; sex with a stranger means nothing. It’s like worrying about a speck of space dust altering the orbit of a planet.
The next day at work, I couldn’t get the dilemma off my mind. I finally sought counsel from one of my female co-workers, a mother of three working toward her R.N. When I showed her one of Yasmin’s modeling photos, her eyes grew wide. “Hell, I’d do her if I were you.”
What the hell? As we continued to talk, I discovered that not only had my “staunchly heterosexual” co-worker dabbled in lesbianism, but she’d carried on an affair with a female co-worker. A manager, no less! I went home feeling more dejected than ever. How did everyone get so naughty, while I stayed such a prude? Was my fixation on having this pure and perfect love keeping me from having some fantastic experience with the woman I love? Was I a true romantic — or a total coward?
My birthday came. I turned 29. Raquel “sprang” her gift on me. Yasmin cornered me in the kitchen, asked me if I wanted to have a threesome. I ignored the question. When they asked again, I stalled and said let’s do it in the morning. When they came in to ambush me the next morning, I pretended to be so deeply asleep, I couldn’t be roused. I didn’t say yes and I didn’t say no. I just let the opportunity pass me by.
I can imagine envious males reading this and shouting at their computers, “Are you insane? This is every guy’s dream!” Maybe it is. But I’m not every guy, and I don’t ever want to be.
And this is the only truth that matters: I am loved. I am lucky that I have someone who would share me with another girl and think nothing of it, because no matter what happens, she knows I’m hers. Would a threesome have been fun? Maybe. But there will be other risks, other thrills. Every day is full of discoveries with Raquel. And love is constant.
Joshua LeSuer is currently working on a memoir.
