Why do I want things I can’t have?  The irresistible appeal of the unattainable.

Some time ago my bestie said to me, “you seem to want things that you just can’t have.  That’s why you want them.”  She was referring at the time to my love of the professional dominatrix.  That it is both safe to love them, but also the knowledge that they are unattainable is part of the attraction.

Never mind that I have learned that for some dominatrixes, being unattainable is precisely what turns them on.

I’m not an argumentative person.  When someone says something about me, to me, and I haven’t heard it before, or it delves into an intimate landscape that might be unknown or uncomfortable, my general stance is to want to explore together.

“But why?” I asked.

“I think it came from your dynamic with your mother,” she said.  She knows me really well.  Including the weird sexual dynamics that my mother played out with me.  “As a baby, you didn’t get what you really needed.  And there is nothing wrong with that hon—in the sense that you didn’t do anything wrong.  But you didn’t get the most fundamental thing that a baby needs.  Nourishment.  Love.  The feeling of your mother’s heartbeat and warmth on your cheek when she literally feeds you from her body.”

“How am I going to fix that?”

“Somewhere along the line, you told yourself that not getting what you want is how to please someone.  That being denied pleasure is pleasure.”

“It might be true.”

“It is true.  Look at your dating history.  How many women you go out with.  I don’t know many people who are approached as often as you are.  You’re gorgeous.  Successful.  Generous.  Kind.  But what happens?  Somehow you manage to turn even a woman who wants you into someone who is unattainable.”

“I don’t know.  How could I be doing that?”

“I don’t know either.  But think about it.  The dominatrix you see, she is totally unattainable.  You know that.  Do you even want to “attain” her?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  I like being stuck like a fly in her web.  Admiring her.  Never having her.  Never daring. Love in aspic.”

“You’re a hopeless romantic in the weirdest way.”

“I know.”

“I think you need to work on this.”

“I know.”

“Baby, you can have what you want.  You can have a woman who loves you as you are, for who you are.”

“I’d love it.”

“Maybe.  Maybe it’s too scary.”

“Maybe?  Are you kidding me.  It is scary.”

I love my friends.  I love especially the ones who know that I am submissive, and who have access to my deepest me.  I love it especially when they don’t judge me.  I have just come out of a 25 year relationship which came at tremendous cost to me…the negation of myself, the relegation of my deepest core to a zone of shame.  I refuse to have shame be a part of my life anymore.  My life has tasted so delicious, but is so bittersweet.  And I do sincerely love the people I meet, and feel my soul flutter up against theirs.

I just spent a blissful few days with a woman I shall call The Companion.  I posted about meeting her over a light evening of shibari.  She falls into the world of me not understanding the universe.  How and why did the most beautiful woman in a place of several hundred decide within seconds that she wanted to spend the evening with me?  Or at least be curious enough to stand next to me, and then once things began to flow, to encourage them.

As I have slowly begun to know her, I have discovered that she is exploring the world of Femdom.  We had a wonderful and humorous conversation about beating men and about female empowerment.  

And in this really confused state I find myself, where I am desperately trying to work out how to engage with women as my body and brain change, I look at every woman I encounter with a kind of heart-longing.  How do lesbian women do this?  How do trans women do this, knowing that women who love women is a bigger pool, though tiny compared to straight women, but knowing that women who love trans women is even smaller.  And I am lost, truly lost.

I have always been someone who women have approached.  Even as a man, somehow I put out energy that made women come up to me.  I have to think that I gave off non-predatory energy.  I gave off gentle energy.  I don’t think that I have ever delivered the male gaze to a woman even when I looked at her, and was attracted to her.  I always had a different way of looking.  I am a bunny.  When I felt desire for someone, I would look at her in a way that said I was open, was curious, that I wanted her to come and ravage me.  It was a kind of invitation.  A submissive flirt.  It was never about me possessing her, never a sense of me taking her.  There are lot’s of women who don’t want that kind of man.  Sometimes I felt it was most.  Certainly growing up it felt that way.

But I also cannot deny that what my friend said was true.  I cannot go to a social gathering and not have at least one woman attach herself to me and latch on to this energy.  I don’t say this to boast, because it is nothing to be proud of, it just is.  The greatest honor I can imagine is for a woman to feel safe around me.

Two things go through my mind as I figure out these feelings in the context of my changing and body.  Putting out ‘safe’ energy has become more important to me as I have transitioned for so many reasons.  First, women have become much more intimate with me.  Trans me has made me seem even ‘safer’ I think.  Second, I think that many women seem to want to protect me.  How could one ever betray that desire to protect by showing desire?  Third, I can’t help but feel that my behaviour is a reflection on other trans people, and that we all have this “duty” to be ambassadors because of the highly politicised climate we live in.

[I just need to pause for a moment on that last point.  This is a trans version of what I feel is a parallel to what some of my favourite feminist writers like Helene Cixous have said about how society uses “female virtue” as a way to police female behaviour.  And it feels very similar to me.  That I must be virtuous otherwise I betray my trans brothers and sisters.  And that is wrong.  It feeds the discrimination against us.  What I should be saying is the same as what a feminist is saying, which is to refuse to accept that self-policing.]

Picking up the thread again.  This matters so much to me, because not only has the number of intimate female friendships in my life increased exponentially, but also my fear of expressing my desire to a woman has increased.  Not because I am afraid of rejection.  Not because I am afraid of desire.  But because I am afraid that I will somehow betray the sweet innocence of how our friendship has been born.  But I can’t seem to understand that we can love and feel each other and be tremendously intimate without desiring each other.

But as I look across the landscape of my female friendships, over all time, every single one of them began as an attraction.  Every single one of them.  With a small number there was kissing, an even smaller number, sex, but with every single one, there was always sexual tension and eventually at least a discussion.  And what is weird is that every one of them has been okay with my desire.  I don’t understand it.  Not for them.  Not for me.

Do they like or love me in part because I ache for them but will never do anything about it, and will always control myself, always be a “good girl” or “good boy”?  Is the crackling air of mutual attraction a part of it?  And this what friendship has to mean for me?  Do I only make friends with women I can never have?  Is that what friendship ends up being for me?

I went on holiday with The Companion recently.  And part of me wonders.  Does a woman decide to go on a vacation with someone she barely knows without wanting to explore more than just a friendship with someone she’s intrigued by?  Star Child came and stayed with me for a month after I met her at a party, had coffee with her, told her I was a slave, and then had me walk her to a date in the rain as I held an umbrella for her.  She quite literally behaved in an unattainable way, and it might have worked, but I don’t like being taken advantage of, and that is what she made me feel like.  And part of the growing up I have done and am doing is learning about my boundaries and being strong enough to protect them.

The Companion came away with me with even less contact.  But she was scrupulously even about going Dutch.  And that spoke friendship, equity, all kinds of things which were absent from my time with Star Child, who was along for the ride.  My kids referred to her as a gold digger.  I have no gold, however, so she is what I would call a fool’s-gold digger.

Sometimes when you engage with a woman, she gets a look in her eyes that means she is aroused.  There is a glassiness to her eyes, a sparkle, and a flush on her skin.  I know what this looks like.  I saw it on the face of my favourite therapist when I talked to her about submission and how I wished to serve.  I saw it again on The Companions face as I answered her question about my submissiveness, after she had told me of her entrée into the world of femdom, and I had finally admitted to her that I was a slave.

She’s beautiful.  And we had a wonderful time together.  And on so many levels with our vanilla lives and interests, there is a lot of common passion.  She is also half my age.  She also has liked men in her relationships.  But what do I do?  I’ve never been one to lean in for the kiss.  The times I have as a man have led to relationships being born on the wrong track, not least my marriage.  But I am older now.  I want to make my intentions known.  Or at least to know what track we are on.

I leaned in for the kiss with the Reflexologist, and she made it clear without words that this was not our track.  We never needed to speak about it, and our friendship has only deepened.  But she had already said to me two things: “I am not afraid of love towards a trans woman, on the contrary”…and…”sometimes you do just have to jump on someone.”

So, I felt that I did have to do something with The Companion.  And when I had used words with Star Child I heard them in my own mind in reply and hated them, and hated how they sounded.  I regretted not just kissing her.  I have never done that before.  Never without permission.  I decided that I had to kiss The Companion.  But I also decided that I would not do it until the very moment we parted, because I did not want to colour our time together, or make our time together feel awkward for her.  And in the end, I am glad of this, because we had a wonderful time spending almost every waking moment together for three days traipsing around and exploring a new city.

In the airport, as we were saying goodbye, we were just standing there, kind of looking at each other.  And she had this look on her face, the same kind of glassy eyes of arousal, and in that moment, as we were standing so close, I leaned forward, ever so slowly, to give her time to know that I was about to kiss her, and she leaned forward too, but she turned her face as she did and it became a cheek kiss.

It made me sad.  It made me scared that the beautiful friendship which started might be in danger.  It made me sad to find that someone who I knew I could explore and feel things with will not ever be such a person.  It made me sad that some of the things that we have planned to do together might be jeopardized.  I hope not.  It made me sad that I broke my rule of not being forward and being directed away.  It also made me sad that there is not likely to be a potential evolution of our relationship towards the exploration of D/s.  I will confess I cried after.

I will also confess that this weird leftover feeling entered my mind as a sexual feeling the very next day and realised that being enamoured with the unattainable remains strong with me.  And although I hope that this will not impact the evolution of our friendship, I also don’t just want a bunch of unattainable friends.  My main therapist would say to me that it is healthy that I can just “let go” and not be a chaser.  I am not a chaser.  I have never been a chaser, and I don’t think I ever will be.  I associate “chaser” energy with testosterone.  I don’t know if that is true, but knowing that my testosterone has always been at the bottom end of normal (and weirdly, it is now too when I am benchmarked against the profile of the natal female, just as it was when I was benchmarked as a male against other natal males), provides a chemical body confirmation.

And I guess that I am troubled by the fact that her turning away, a kind of rejection, seems to have turned me on.  And I am troubled by the fear of losing her when I shouldn’t care.  And by losing her I simply mean to continue to get to know.  But if I also look back on my life, whenever this crossroads has come, I have never seemed to lose a female friend.  And in that sense, even in this case, I had no regrets, just shame.  Shame that I could feel that way to someone who doesn’t want what I want.  Shame that I feel this way.  Shame that I seem to still want people I can never be with.  Shame that my women friends are all people who have denied me in this way…That this became the birth of chaste love.

And what is it?  And why does it hurt so much?  The Snow Queen told me that she has no need for men any longer.  That she makes love to God every single day.  And my first thought as I cried in the queue to board my flight was how I wanted to call her and ask her to teach me how to make love to God.

Is there something wrong with me to want to stay friends with The Companion?  Is there something wrong with me to have to pass through this trial by fire to become friends with someone?

Things that hurt like this can’t possibly be good for me.  Maybe it is just that showing myself to her so much, showing my desire, bringing it out, is a kind of humiliation when it is spurned.  And as someone who has never really gone for humiliation, this is why it hurts.  There has to be a pathology here.

Is everyone cursed to love that which is wrong for them.  And it makes me want to ask some of my friends who have been through this with me.  But I don’t really want to know why they spurned me.  I don’t really want to know why a deep friendship is not a gateway to intimate love.  They seem to be different tracks altogether.

I have another date with The Companion coming soon.  I will have to apologize to her.  I am afraid of it though.  Mostly because I am afraid to cry.  I am afraid that I will cry if I start telling her how I feel.  This is the reality of ADD so close to the surface.  I can navigate my way through it by tamping down my emotions so deeply that I will come across as a cold fish.  That was my life as a man.  Not daring to let emotion anywhere near the surface for fear of losing control.  But that is so much harder to do now that I am not a man anymore.  I am a hot mess.  And keeping things under control like that just doesn’t feel right anymore.  But what the hell?  I mean we hardly know each other.  What on earth will she do with someone like me who cries?

In my head I say, ‘I’m sorry for kissing you.  But I had to know.  And it seemed like the easiest to find out.  And I hope it didn’t offend you.  And it won’t happen again.’  But how do I be honest with myself, knowing that I wish it wasn’t so.  Why do I surround myself with people who I pine for?  Why do all of my women friends seem to thrive on this energy with me?  Why do I do it?  Is this bad for me?  I have therapy today.  Boy, do I feel I need it.  I think I am just going to cry.

The Companion and I are attending a two-day shibari workshop together.  I don’t know whether we should be paired anymore.  It is time for me to learn to tie.  I am 100% bunny, but I know who I am willing to be tied by—the Queen and people she sanctions.  I am not willing to be tied by a man, even in a workshop setting.  By a woman yes.  I am willing to tie both men and women.  I intend to be a great student.  But I want The Companion to tie me anymore, because given all of the above, I don’t think it is healthy for us to explore that dynamic.  Or at least, I don’t think it is healthy for me to want it.

By planting a kiss I have put the ball in her court.  You can see that this is problematic to even think that way.  There should be no ball, no court.  But in my heart, I can’t help but keep the flame alive.  This is true of all of my female friends.  Some part of me somewhere hopes that someday she might change her mind.  Whichever one she is.  And weirdly, this applies to the ones who I know I am not suited to.  Why?  Why do I want something which I know wouldn’t be healthy for me?  Why would I want something which would potentially cost me the most beautiful friendships in my life?

And you know what?  Every single one of my close female friends dominates me a little bit.  Not a lot.  Not in ways that I think are unhealthy or are even teasing, in the tease and denial sense.  But in a playful and friendly way.  And while I find this naturally fulfilling, I also think that it is part of what draws them to me as a person…that having this freedom with someone who at least used to be a man, is somehow empowering in addition to being flirty and fun.  And being flirty with friends, at least for me, has always been fun.

The Companion has also invited me to join her at a kink party.  I have every intention of being dominant at that party, and working with men, should there be men in that setting who decide that a ballerina giraffe is what fits their ideal as a dominatrix.  Given that “transgender” is the 5^th most popular search term on PornHub for 2023 and given my direct knowledge of how Italians in particular have a weird and deep sexual thing for trannies, chicks with dicks, and trans women, I don’t think I will have a shortage of volunteers.  And this could just be my entrée into the world of public domming.  

Lord knows I’ve been whipped enough to know what to do.

P.S. What does all of this mean?  I am not scared of her.  I am scared of me.  But why did I also get turned on by being “rejected” by her.  And why do I want to hold a flame inside of me for the “might happen someday” when deep down I should know it will never happen.  And not only will it never happen, but thinking it might, may also not be the healthiest thing on the planet.

P.P.S. And what else?  I had also imagined that she might kiss me.  Particularly once she knew that I was submissive.  But I found myself thinking that if she did, I wouldn’t want her anymore.  Isn’t that fucked up?  And I know that women are very often taught about how important it is to be hard to get.  That this is core to the way that society tells us women should experience desire.  And that goes back to what I referenced with Helene Cixous.  Oh, the mysteries!