Jill Malone

I have one rule about my blog: Never post when you’re angry. That’s it. Everything else is a guideline. I rarely name names. It’s possible, in all likelihood, to sort out who’s who, but you’d have to keep a chart. And even then, there are usually not enough details to be certain.

I’m unscrupulous about stories. I’ll report whatever I choose. And in the proud tradition of Henry Higgins, I apply my bad manners universally. Nobody gets shit-talked more than I do. This is where I confess, and process, and hone.

So, last week I pissed a chick off. When I got over the irony of her reaction, I thought about old-school writers’ journals (e.g. Anais Nin). The juicy dirt in those journals often didn’t see publication daylight for decades. By that time, who really cared any longer? Devotees, perhaps, but the players themselves, how affected were they?

I broke up with this boy in grad school, and his parting words were, “Please be kind to me in your writing.” I stood outside my car afterward, keys in hand, and thought, Why the fuck would I write about you? You’re boring. Still, I appreciate his sentiment. The people around me worry because nothing appears to be sacred.

Here’s what I’ll tell you. I stalled for months before posting about masochism. I checked in with Mary beforehand dozens of times. People will think this shit is about her. They will. Even when this shit has nothing to do with her. And I have learned that she’ll always encourage me to post whatever I want (I find her pathologically against censorship) but there’s a dragging thing she does with her head when she’s uncomfortable. It’s only happened once — the subtle resistance — and I know better than to post something head-drag worthy.

I use my best judgment. I walk an edge much of the time because that’s where I’m standing. I never mean to pull anyone over. I never mean to fall over myself. But it happens occasionally because I push. Because I chase. Because I can’t let anything go. Because the mechanism has to be deconstructed before I understand how it works.

I don’t get cutting. I mean, I’ve never had the urge to do it. Or starve myself. Or induce vomiting. My punishment has always come in the form of exercise — track and cross country being the most notably evil. And bondage. I’m reluctant to trace masochism back to my preschool self, but I can. I can take you all the way back to four years old quite easily. The memories intact, the dialogue specific.

Why masochism? I don’t know. I have ideas about it. Theories I kick around. And maybe you’ve never experienced it. Maybe you’ve never had the world go entirely white, and your body fall away. Maybe you’ve never been without self. I think that’s what happens. I become solely my body — the pain explicit, focused and direct — and then white. A flash of white, and nothing. I used to think of it as peace. To recover a place without thoughts or emotions.

What if masochism is a safety test? What if I have placed myself in the most vulnerable of circumstances repeatedly, not in an effort to have my power extracted lash by lash, but to release it myself. Not to have it taken, but to give it away. What if I have sought your mercy by asking you to separate me from myself? What if your agreement is an act of love? What if the moment when you give it back, when you return my power, is the one in which I love you most? Because I am never helpless, never bereft. I am at our mercy. Yours and mine.

The attorneys took us out to lunch today. They are, to use my mother’s favorite descriptor, characters. Today, maybe because one had just been to his 40th high school reunion, or perhaps because public school begins tomorrow, they were reminiscing about the nuns. (Actually, I’m fairly sure it started with a Wal-Mart comment. One of the attorneys said that if he were leading an expedition, and needed pirates, he’d recruit from the camping aisle at Wal-Mart. This statement, naturally enough, led to a discussion of the nun patrol.) Anyhow, they start in with stories of torture at the hands of the nuns: boys grabbed by the throat and dragged before the class to apologize for lying; a girl smacked off her chair; the first-grader hit in the head with a Webster’s dictionary; the beating of a diabetic kid on even days.

And then Jim tells about a recess they were all kept indoors because of rain, and were sent to play in the basement. They stuffed a kid in a box, piled boxes and chairs and other heavy items atop the box, and left the kid there. Later, in their classroom, when they were asked if they’d seen the kid, they all said no. Finally, Bob told about being dumped in a trashcan in the girl’s bathroom by three freshmen girls. He was a 7th grader, and it was the first time he’d ever seen a feminine hygiene dispenser.

Maybe these stories are as close as we come to adventure tales. The old brawling days. The teachers you were forewarned not to push. The ones wielding sticks. The ones who kicked desks, smacked heads, enjoyed humiliation. The ones you weren’t to be alone with. The fact that you learned, early, the tactics of the schoolyard. Learned there was always someone bigger, stronger, more ruthless. That sometimes things just happened from boredom. A rainy day in a basement.