To be trusted is the foundation of community, and is the most delicious treat in the world

Love is dangerous; trust is delicious.

I was once asked to envision my life, my goals, what I was seeking.  The answer lay in community with women.  There is no greater validation.  That matters.  But what matters more is service.  They are flipsides of the same coin.  Validation comes from being allowed to serve, to be welcome in service, to be appreciated for service.  

Service itself is a transference of value from one to another.  A big caveat here.  In the world of kink, and I speak mainly of hetero-normative kink, “acts of service” by a submissive man are very often stealthy ways for him to have his needs met, even if, or especially if, he is submissive.  True service is an act of giving.  Giving only works when the gift is about the recipient, not about the giver.  There is a really important implication here.  To give true value, one must have intimacy, one must have knowledge, there has to be a relationship of trust.

[As an aside, the importance of the gift list for a provider is that this is a way of providing an elegant workaround to the conundrum posed by the need to create intimacy and trust balanced against the need for privacy and safety—ie, not providing real intimacy.  Gifts such as lingerie, which are so intimate, emphasise this elegant contradiction—what object provides such an illusion of intimacy?]

Trust is therefore the prerequisite for true service.  Service and validation are two sides of the same coin, and the coin is the Trust coin…Trust = Intimacy / Risk.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately.  In my personal life, I feel trusted in ways that I never felt before.  There is a massive flourishing of female friendships—both new and old…that my transition is bringing closer to so many women, including women I did not yet know.  And while a big part of me feels that I am still the same me, that I was always trustworthy in this sense, I am happy that the “superficial” aspects of my transition seem to be bringing about this desired outcome.

By superficial I mean that I look more female.  And I dress that way all the time.  I’d hate to say that women are responding to my performative femininity, and won’t, because that isn’t what it feels like.  I wonder, however, if there is some element of the Merciful quality of the divine feminine in operation, that taking hormones, growing breasts, rendering myself infertile and inoperative as a man, triggers a sense of indulgence, amusement, softness, tenderness, and comfort in the women I meet.  Or is it my energy?  It is hard to know, and in part, it doesn’t matter.

As a man, not once in my life did I “put the moves” on a woman.  My refusal to do so was a quasi-religious view that if I had to be a man, I wouldn’t act like one.  Please don’t misunderstand, my desire was just as great.  Not being able to communicate my desire was tough, but I couldn’t survive any other way.  Only twice in my life did I ask if I might kiss her.  Both times the answer was ‘yes’.  The result was a woman I loved so deeply and who I simply wasn’t ready for, and the other I married.  All other women who came into my life were predators in a positive sense.  They claimed me.

Being claimed remains how I best respond in a sexual situation.  I am not a primal in the kink sense, but in a way, I probably am.  I like a woman who literally overpowers me.  And I would tell boy me that this was just as well, even if it meant that dry spells were by necessity somewhat longer as such women are more scarce than those who are not predators.

The other day I found myself with a group of women in conversation about intimate things.  Half of the group were Sex Workers, and I had not met many of them before.  It was an honour to be sitting at the table with them.  It was an honour to be seen and heard by them.  And what is it?  More than anything else, it was Trust.  These beautiful people trusted me.

What happens then?  To be trusted and to feel that trust, is also to feel the desire to be the best person possible.  To live up to the trust.  To never betray it.  To understand what sits behind it and why?  It feels okay to not know and to just relish it.  That’s new to me.  So much of my energy has been spent on trying to understand, asking ‘why’ once too often.

And what did I do to deserve this trust?  Nothing.  What did I deserve to even be at the table?  Nothing.  At least nothing concrete.  I had simply been trusted, been invited in.  The only thing I can think of is to be pure in heart.  That is my most burning goal in life.  And perhaps they could feel it.

One of them remarked to me after she asked for my number, “you put out beautiful energy.  Mommy energy.  You feel like a Mommy.”  There is real irony there.  The therapist I fired would be proud, as the main thing we worked on together as to re-mother my inner child.  I guess its working.

So what does this all mean?  When we are clean and pure and without motive, just genuine in our joy with others, we are rewarded with their trust, and their love.  These two, in turn, increase our desire to be worthy of that trust, to rise, to grow.  Together they become a positive feedback loop.

We probably all think of ourselves as trustworthy.  But are we?  Are we safe?  Or do we want something.  I can’t help but feel that the essence of Western Society, particularly the late stage Capitalism that we living in now, is about utility value of other people.  We “network” to get ahead.  We schmooze for access and to get ahead.  We give to get.  The irony of this approach is that it is a form of shooting ourselves in the foot.  The person who really “receives” is the person who is not looking for anything.

What are you looking for?  Is it safe to say, ‘nothing’, and trust in the elegance of the universe to present itself to us, in all the ways good and bad that it does?  I think it is.  If we focus on how we live our lives, on how we conduct ourselves, then the people we encounter will feel that.  If the energy is right, the door will open.  And everything will just fall into place.  That is what seems to be the truth.