‘Trust’ is the sexiest word in the English language

Provoked by act of unexpected kindness, in the face of one of my own failings, I am reminded of just how beautiful it is to be trusted.  It is such an ineluctable feeling, and few things taste more juicy, alive, and holy, than to be lavished with someone’s trust.

Trust is the kind of word that many of us take for granted.  We come to assume that someone will trust us, just like that.  Trust can be built over a lifetime, but like time itself, it is one of the few things in existence which once lost, can never be regained.

From time to time I return to Trust, but mainly as a deficit.  What it feels like when we are not trusted.  I recounted the story of a woman I met on a dating app who I then met in a public place, for mutual safety, and then on a second date came to where I lived and we had a lovely day together…and then at the end of the day, as we were just a block from my house, agreed to come over, but on the way there, revealed that she would not be coming in.

I respect her decision and need for certainty.  But I was hurt by it.  And I shouldn’t be.  It had nothing do with me, everything to do with her.  It was weird, though.  She came to my front door and peered in, commented on things she could see while I stood at a respectful distance.

My own thought on this topic is possibly biased by the worlds I move in, both vanilla and kink, where reading people is a core skill.  I am also an energy worker, and with some people, and in the right frame of reference, I can see their auras, get glimpses of their spirit form.

In other words, I feel people, and I can “see” them as they are very quickly.  I find that my impressions are not often wrong, though a cynic might say that it is a form of perceiver’s bias.  Being judgmental.  My riposte, never spoken, but always felt, is that I don’t have a judgmental bone in my body, confirmed by every personality test I’ve ever taken.  Instead I will just smile.

In other words, after the time we had spent together, I felt that I could trust this person.  I was alarmed that after our time together she could not trust me.

Miraculously we had a third date.  Over dinner I teased her a bit, bad girl, by saying, “there are plenty of ways you couldn’t trust me, but not that one.”  She noted that the trust issue lay with her.  After dinner she got into my car without photographing me, it, or the license,  which she had said she always does.  I guess I was flattered.

I mention this because Trust is a powerful state.  It changes us.  To be trusted has an enormous power.  It inspires.  It is a force strong enough to change us.

I have written too much about the Domme I lost, and my feeling that at the root of our dynamic was a mistrust.  It started with her worldview of the pro-client relationship as it applied to her, but then became a function of me probing why this trust wasn’t there.  Of course, it also had to do with intimacy.  This brings up the Trust Equation, a function of intimacy and risk.

In the world of Sex Work, intimacy takes on a different shade than the intimacy envisaged by the Trust Equation.  It is as much a function of privacy.  Because of the very intimate nature of sex work, and I think almost all of it has this in common, it would be impossible to be that way with so many different people and still retain a sense of self.

When I think of what is happening to me as I explore Sex Work as a profession, I discover an aspirational version of myself.  It is possible that the “she” I am creating, is changing me, but she is also a person I wish to be more like.  She is more forward, confident, self-possessed, boundaried, and assertive of her right to exist and be than I have ever been.  I admire her.  Would I want my clients to know the real me?  I don’t think so.  That’s not part of the service offering.

But do they need to?  Generally, the answer must be ‘no’, but there are occasions where it is impractical for it to remain so.  A good example is when you travel together.  Whether intentionally or inadvertently, it can be difficult to keep things under wraps when hotels or flights are involved.  There may be others which relate to the intensity and depth of the dynamic.  But it makes sense that private means private.  And anyway, the separation of the worlds is what makes it possible for a Sex Worker to work their magic.  

It is much easier to perform for perfect strangers than it is for people you are intimate with.

When I was in school, I developed a very close relationship with one of my teachers.  He was a mentor to me.  A father-figure.  And I needed the presence of a strong, ethical and kind man in my life.

He taught a class on ethics, which particularly resonated with me as he was not a religious teacher, or ordained minister, whereas most teachers were, as it was a profoundly Christian boys’ school.  I loved that class.  He was also the head of an extreme Sports Programme, which I won’t mention as it is simply too specific, and I was an Olympic hopeful—for them, not for me.

I mention it more because I think it is easier to understand how a bond can become very deep between coach and sporty person when the sport itself requires extreme levels of endurance, overcoming pain, and great physical danger.  The mental discipline that comes with it, and how one performs for the coach, accepts to be driven by them, pushed, by letting them into our pysches, our inner workings, is profound.

In one incident, he most certainly “saved my life”…perhaps not, but it felt that way.  I think that I have related my primordial fear of being immobilized, totally confined, bound and unable to move. We were a group of friends exploring a cave system. [as one does, for fun, and was an outing which had nothing to do with our sport].  I crawled off with a friend down some passageway until it angled down and got too small and I realized I couldn’t get out, that there was no way through.  I told my friend who freaked, but managed to extricate himself and promised me he would get help.  My light died.  I was stuck, gravity pushing me further into the hole, and I had very little to hang on to.

I can still feel how terrified I was in my body.  I can still remember how triggering it was to my unique form of abuse that my mother resorted to once she figured out it was the way she could break my spirit.

My coach arrived and soon established that tying rope around my feet and pulling wasn’t going to work.  In the end, what did work was to breathe myself smaller, whilst being held by the rope so as not to slip in deeper.  Can you imagine to actually will yourself to a form of flexibility and size that sees you taking up less space?  When I had gotten myself into a better position, they were able to pull me out with the rope, but it took about an hour.  And it was his calm voice that spoke to me.

He had a hat that he wore everywhere.  It was a beat up cowboy hat.  One summer he let me wear it when we and a group of people were canoeing across a series of lakes.  From time to time we had to portage….carry our stuff (not inconsiderable, as it was a two week trip) quite a distance.  On one particularly long portage, one of more than mile, somewhere along the line I lost his hat.  It fell off my head when I put the canoe down for a rest.  I think I was so exhausted that I just didn’t notice.

When we arrived at the put-in point, he said, “where’s my hat?” and I knew…when and where.  It was a long way back.

“I’ll go back and get it,” I said.

“No time, it’ll be dark soon.”

“I’ll run,” and ran I did.  I got it, brought it back.  At the end of the trip, he gave it to me.  I still have it.

I mention these things as they became foundations for a relationship based on Trust, and that Trust acted as an inspiration to me, in how I conducted myself, what I strove for, how I carried myself, how hard I pushed myself.  So, when he caught me and two friends smoking pot, his disappointment was palpable.  I felt it so heavy.  So, so heavy.  It was an arch conservative Christian school.   It was personal betrayal.  It was a betrayal of our work together, undermining my own performance.

He didn’t say much, and in a way, that made it worse.  A bit later I went to him, and I apologized.  I said, “I’m sorry for letting you down.  I won’t do it again.”  A month or so later he related to me that I was the only one who had approached him about the incident.

Later, I asked him to write my core recommendation for my university application for my first-choice school.  I agreed to never consult the record, giving him the freedom to know that he could the truth.  I didn’t really have the best grades in the world.  Not because of sports, but because I was just not such a great student—just not as smart as my classmates, and not as hard-working.

My school college admissions counsellor told me I shouldn’t waste my time applying to the school in question, which at the time was the hardest university to get into in the US.  My scholastic scores were at the minimum level for acceptance.  You will guess the outcome.

I remain convinced that it was the content of his recommendation which saw me into that school, and a transformation in my life.

He was aware of my troubled home life.  He was aware of the foundation of sorrow that ran through me even if he didn’t know or understand the root cause.  I believe that what he saw in me was a character of Trust.  Trustworthiness.  Trustability.

What I discovered at that point in my life, is that we have the power to shape our own characters.  To step away from a broken home, to step away from dysfunction, and towards the light.

I’ve been doing that ever since.  I remain naïve.  I remain innocent.

When I applied for an MBA, a similarly competitive programme, one of the questions was, “what contribution will you bring to our community that is unique about you.”

My response was objectively cringeworthy.  I said I was ‘nice’.  That word is the ultimate red flag.  I am certainly capable, or have been, of being not nice.  In a way, my statement was not nice.  I was saying that business school students are not nice.  That they are greedy, cut-throat, capitalistic bastards.  I guess that is probably how I felt at the time.

Perhaps despite or because of that statement, I did manage to get in.  I was often reminded of it, however, as one of my closest friends on the programme had a wife who had taken a job as an admissions assistant.

“I’m nice,” she teased me at the bar one day.  “Are you now,” she continued.

“Whatever do you mean?” I asked.

“I read your application.  I’ve read everyone’s application.  Want to see who are the bull-shitters.”

“Oh.”

“I’m nice,” she repeated.

“What?” I asked, “I am.”  She raised her eyebrows.

We became great friends.

Let’s stick with ‘nice’ for a minute.  What does that mean?  It doesn’t mean obsequious or submissive.  It doesn’t mean ‘being a doormat’, one of my bugbears.  What does it mean?  It means to not be cruel.  I see it as more stark, nice is not a general quality or a state of being for me, it is a conscious reigning in of our worst impulses.  It is the character of “Mercy”.  I think of Mercy as the quintessential female attribute.  What is the Divine Feminine if not merciful.

When I find myself in the studio of my Queen, beaten, in tears, wordless, I am touching and access this emotion…that she forgives me, not for what I have done, or even really for who I am, but for who and what I am not.  And you might ask how it is that I experience that character of Mercy when I am not beaten as punishment, but as a way to reach a state of gratitude, of bliss.  Perhaps the beating is a metaphorical manifestation of the mother’s disappointment, of her lack of Mercy, but in the arms of the Queen, it is found again.

This by way of saying that Mercy and forgiveness are bedfellows of Trust.  So, too, is consent.  The violation of consent, for example, will forever kill trust.

The purpose of all of this?  That Trust is an emotional state, a spiritual calling, as much as anything else.  It is also a guiding light for our own conduct, an excuse to remake ourselves in a better image.  And while it may come from our character, that part of us which governs how we are, Trust is one of those unique things which is cultivated by the relationships with those we surround ourselves with.

Better than looking in the mirror, the Trust of others is mutable, growing, metamorphosing in its interplay with us.  What am I saying?  Consciously surround yourself with people who trust you; ditch those who don’t; and invest in yourself in all the ways that it takes to be worthy of the trust that they bestow on you.  For no gift on earth is greater than the gift of trust.