Kink vs. Self-Harm
Trigger warning: self-harm, with photo.
I just got out of the shower. While I was toweling off, I looked at my arm for longer than usual and, in the assaultive California light pouring through our hilariously 1950’s-pink-tiled bathroom, I noticed the faint scars there. And for the first time in a long time, I vividly remembered the moment that I gave myself those scars. This isn’t the kink part; there was nothing hot about what led up to these criss-crossing marks on my arm that, these days, you can probably only see if you’re trying to.
The scars are not from blades, they’re from myself. For a six-month period when I was 22, I was in the grip of a depression so extreme and monumental I thought there was no way out of it. My mother also worried there would be no way out of it, and unfortunately, in the style of a kind of person there’s a very distinct and being-much-talked-of category for, it starts with an N, she bellowed, in her helpless despair, “I’M GOING TO START CUTTING MYSELF TOO. YOU’RE MAKING ME LIKE YOU.” That was fun for everyone. I flash back to this moment so much more than is convenient for living life, but I’ve never told anyone about it except Ian. Now you know.
When that depression lifted, during a dizzying 3 months before my father died, I thought I was done with self-harm. I wasn’t. Not because I didn’t want to be but because several more stretches in my life would arise when I felt hopeless and trapped enough that I wanted to claw out of my own skin. Twice, at different times, it got so bad that I did it in public. The second time, I was in Boston, and wearing a beautiful black formal-ish dress. Walking down the street after that disastrous day, my arms were actively bleeding. As I walked, a tall elegant-looking woman said hi and asked me how I was doing. I don’t remember what I said, but she responded, in a voice that was serious but warm, “That is a beautiful dress, and you are a beautiful young girl. God bless you.”
It’s probably a little dramatic to say that that woman saved my life. But she deserves credit, for sure. I walked out into traffic that day on purpose and a miraculous thing happened — all the drivers, BOSTON DRIVERS, slowed to a silent, creek-free, harmonious stop. Have you ever been on the road in Boston? Everyone behind the wheel is a maniac, they’re nationally notorious for this. But they all kept me safe that afternoon, as though they’d made a collective agreement. That’s the thing about the East Coast: the surface culture may read as “aggressive” to those who want a certain squishiness, but if you’re in an actual bad way, those motherfuckers have got your back. My experience with being in a bad way on the West Coast is that your not-trying-to-put-an-image-on-it instability makes everyone very, very uncomfortable and they all back away slowly and leave your disquieting self to your own devices so that they can go back to sedately almost-laughing about being SUCH VIRGOS and making plans for their Karaoke nights. Do I sound ready to get out of here? I’ll miss the redwoods and the Golden Gate Bridge. A little.
But that’s not what I came here to talk about. I might be avoiding the topic, which, considering I’m writing this under the orders of precisely no one anywhere, is a little absurd. I’m avoiding the scars I gave myself in Berkeley not long before I checked myself into a mental institution. It was clear by then that Ian’s love was not the kind of healing medicine that could make a dent in my brain’s determination to leech my will to live and therefore my sense of agency and therefore my ability to react reasonably to anything at all in word or deed. Once again, these scars are not from blades, they’re from myself. My fingernails. Self-hate, for me, looked like this:
I have no idea why I chose to photograph the aftermath of that episode. I think I was morbidly impressed that I could do so much damage to my own damn leg without even thinking. Ian came into the room just now while I was transferring that image, actually, and said, “Um, is that what I think it is?” No one knows better than he does, unfortunately. But it was a relief to say, “That was a long time ago,” and weird to say out loud, “I have no idea why I took that picture.”
I have mixed feelings about deep psychobabble where kink is concerned. Sometimes, it’s important, because the last thing anyone wants is for sanctioned consensual “deviant” practices to serve as an escapist replacement for necessary therapy. But there’s also something to be said for enjoying your weirdness, right? Ideally, we can do both: recognize the pathological root of a certain impulse while also recognizing that for some of us, not all of us, physical reclaimation as a means of healing trauma is a very real thing.
When my first boyfriend and I were weird teenagers hiding in a remote forest preserve with his sterilized switchblade, I had never done myself any physical harm. But I did have four scars that I got when I was nine years old that I could only tacitly consent to. When my goth best friend complimented their symmetrical nature I said, “Well, they’re professionally administered.” I don’t have half-moon scars under my breasts like I was hoping I would at the time, but I remember smiling to myself when it occurred to me after we were back in our seperate homes that those cuts would be there for several days. Strange to think that at that time in my life, that componant of my relationship to kink was such an open and accepted part of my identity that it made easy conversation among my friends. My most flamboyantly gay male friend (a title that was saying something in my circles) asked if he could see them, the half-moon cuts, and I didn’t hesitate, because I was—I wasn’t proud of them, it wasn’t a matter of pride. Knowing they were there felt fulfilling in a way I can’t explain and having someone else confirm that yes, this was part of my body, at least for a few days, that was fulfilling too.
That same friend, a bit later, was walking around the Coralville Mall with me when he was struck by a random nosebleed. Luckily, it was nothing; a pile of tissues were immediately procured and nothing got worse or more dramatic. At one point, he stared at the deep scarlet on the tissues and remarked, in that charmingly oblivious tone that indicated he wasn’t even consciously aware I was the right person to say this to, “Blood is so pretty.” Then he added, characteristically, “I mean I guess it’s not all that pretty when it’s coming out of your nose, but you know what I mean.”
I wish I didn’t. In our hyperaccepting porn-saturated sex-work-is-real-work modern world I’ve gotta have the one thing that’s not okay. And I should probably add here that I get it, especially in these pandemic times. I hate to admit that there was anything Damian and I didn’t consider when we sterilized that blade with the flick of a flame like the responsible lovers we were, but no amount of making sure that blade is spic-and-span will do a damn thing about bacteria in your mouth. And putting that under your skin? Gross! Don’t…don’t risk that. I mean life is a risk but that’s definitely not the point, disgusting!
I hope I sounded convincing. I do get that angle, I do. I keep coming back to this mad practice because body-acceptance has done some unexpected things to my mind: everything I thought I had to grow up and deem the crazy follies of youth is starting to seem natural again. Natural to the extent that, while I accept that the majority of people don’t have the relationship to some of my more out-there inclinations that I do, I genuinely don’t know why. I’m so much weirder than I thought I was, which is another realization I didn’t think body-acceptance would bring out. I think it was comfortable to believe that my unconventional gait and the metal sticks I walk with put me on the margins of mainstream thought and assumption, but I’m gradually starting to realize that it’s not that. There are a lot of physically diabled basic bitches out there, actually! And a lot of them were born with it, like me! I mean no shade to them either, I really don’t: they’re bubbly and adorable and damn are they good at doing makeup, and at everything else they prioritize that’s the polar opposite of how I live. They are quintessential uber-hetero sorority girls who just happen to be amputees or not-born-as-predicted.
My point is, being disabled does not make you weird anymore than being gay makes you actually-queer. The year is closing out and I can finally exhale and say “My dudes, I don’t know why the hell I’m like this.”
I don’t hurt myself over any of it anymore though, so that’s a plus. Kinda sucks that consensual sharpness these days has to cost so much in terms of tattoos and piercings, but that’s not exactly a legitimate complaint. I got lucky with my first 3 piercings: the apprentice needed well-supervised practice on female anatomy so that I didn’t actually pay for the procedure, just the jewelry, and of course I tipped 20% of what would have been the cost of everything, because Frank at Pierced Hearts in Seattle kinda changed my life in the manner of my personal trainer, just in a different weirder way that it’s a lot more generally-uncouth to discuss than is how much you lifted this week. Isn’t it arbituary that some things we get professionals to do to help us feel more ourselves in our bodies are totally okay casual conversations and others are oh-my-god-TMI, even though they’re for compatible purposes? The unwritten rule that says “don’t talk about your piercings if we can’t see them when we look at your face” is one of the stupidest unwritten rules, to my mind. You should hear the way professional piercers talk about it: clinical as fuck, nothing more eyebrow-raising about one part of the body than another. The skin is a limitless poke-landscape. Though the skin really is limitless, in a lot of ways, regardless of what you’re into or not into.
I keep thinking about a quote from a new and delightful friend, the extraordinarily talented and supernaturally eloquent model Chloe Juniper. She said, “Horror is the only limitless genre,” and I’ve been thinking on and off about how that’s true, that, for example, no one who dies in a rom-com is going to be permitted the operatic gore-fest that so often makes horror what it is, and absolutely anyone can turn out to be a villian, and there are no limits to what a character can decide to do. That’s what makes it scary, and I think a similar mindset applies when people think about kink and blood. Intensity is fine, flat-out “this would be terrifying or even horrific if it were happening for real rather than happening in a safe consensual enviornment wherein it’s been trustingly agreed upon that we can stop the game instantly at any time” is fine (exhale), and “oh my god I can’t believe you find this hot” is fine. But blood is not fine. Blood is too close to horror, which then puts it too close to, “If we do this, there’s no telling what doors we can open.”
And yeah, I still don’t get it. I was going to say, “I accept it, though,” but that’s not entirely true.
