Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
It's
past midnight, in the late seventies. I'm sitting around the kitchen
table with my boyfriend and my housemate. We're all extremely stoned,
a not-uncommon state back in those days, and we're descending into a
labyrinthine discussion of life, death, probability, fate and time.
It feels as though we're getting somewhere, untangling these primal
issues. It always feels that way when we're stoned.
J
is talking about how, in some future, he'll be master of the
universe. All he has to do is open the right doors. I'm listening in
admiration, thrilled by the notion, ready to believe.
"But
what do you mean by right?" I ask. "How will you know?
Every instant you make choices, and every choice spawns a new
universe." I struggle to wrap my pot-laced mind around the
notion of infinite parallel universes. Then I have a vision.
Choices
give rise to new strands of reality. Maybe, though, the divergent
paths rejoin. After a while, parallel universes collide and collapse
into a single reality. It's like chicken wire, I see clearly, a mesh
of realities that split and merge, a web of possible futures - all
existing simultaneously. There's always a route, though perhaps a
long one, from any decision point that spawns a new world to any
other. There's no such thing as an irrevocable choice.
It's
a revelation. I try to explain the chicken wire theory of reality to
J. and M., who nod sagely. It makes sense to them. Wild notions often
do when you're stoned.
***
Fast
forward to a few years later. My master is crying. Early in our
relationship he made me promise that if I met someone else, someone
serious, I'd come see him first. He brashly vowed he'd convince me
otherwise. I was pretty sure the guy I'd fallen for was my soul mate.
(It turned out I was very wrong.) Still, I wanted to keep my end of
the bargain. I'd shelled out for a plane ticket and flown 500 miles
to give my master the chance to change my mind.
I'd
expected him to bind me, to whip me, to fuck me until I screamed for
mercy—until I realized and admitted that I would always belong to
him and no one else. Instead he huddles on his couch, tears in his
eyes, and barely speaks to me for two days. I'm angry he makes no
effort to get me back. I suffer because of the pain I'm obviously
causing him. I'm relieved that I am apparently free to go back to my
new lover.
I'm
very confused.
In
later years, I've always identified that weekend as one of those
inflection points that give rise to parallel worlds. If he had
claimed me then, the way he promised... if he had come right out and
told me he didn't just want me, but also loved me ... if he'd brought
up the question of marriage or cohabitation... I might well be with
him now, instead of half a world away and married to someone else.
And maybe in some other strand of reality, I am his wife and
lover, perhaps even mother to his children.
On
the other hand, if I were in that reality, what would I have missed?
Would I have traveled? My husband has had travel fever since his
teens. My master doesn't even have a passport. Would I be living
overseas now, every day an adventure? Speaking of adventures, would I
have had the chance to explore the delights of ménage and polyamory,
the way I have in my present universe? He's both possessive and
surprisingly shy, for a sex maniac Dom.
Still—I
dream about a life of complementary fantasies, where my desire to
submit perfectly matches his need to command. It's been decades since
anyone tied me up or spanked me. I still remember the intensity of
those times, the overwhelming sense of being in the now, the glow of
devotion and the knowledge that I'm cherished for my surrender. I
miss those feelings. I miss him, with an ache that's mellowed a bit
over time but has never disappeared.
It
occurs to me, though, that Lisabet Sarai, spinner of lascivious
tales, would never have been born if he'd grabbed me that weekend,
thrown me onto the couch, flipped up my skirt and buried himself in
my ass, the way I imagined he might. If I were living the life of a
submissive, I might never have been moved to write about it. It was
my frustrated longing for him and his magical mind that led me to pen
my first erotic tales and send them to him - to bridge the gap
between our bifurcated lives. Raw Silk was a compendium of all
my favorite D/s fantasies. It was a thought-experiment, a tentative
stroll into that alternative world where he voiced his true feelings
(as he has since, but perhaps too late) and changed our fates.
****
I
sit at my computer in a foreign country, a woman a few years over of
sixty, remembering the crossroads in my life and trying to recapture
my dope-induced image of the universe. Is it really true that all
possibilities continue to exist, beyond the point of decision? Or is
the universe like Schrödinger's cat, multiple potential outcomes
collapsing into a single state as soon as one chooses to open the
box? I'd like to believe that there's some way to get back to that
point in time where my master and I took separate emotional paths,
and strike off in a different direction. I'm not sure that I'd
actually choose to return and walk that road not taken. Still, I'd
like there to be, somehow, a chance.
