Closer

Music has been such a focal point in my emotional life, it's hard really to pinpoint a particular moment when it played a bigger role than in any other.

That, and...because my memory is less than stellar, it's also difficult to remember the musical specifics of any given event.

One that I can remember is receiving a "mixed tape" from a college boyfriend (I was still in high school - and he was several hundred miles away).  I put the tape on the main house stereo, naively allowing my parents access to the metaphorical depths of the songs he'd chosen.  All was fine and dandy until Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" came on.  I'd never heard the song before, and, well...I about came out of my clothes rushing to turn the damned thing off before it continued to its second bar of "I want to fuck you like an animal..."

Praise the gods above, my parents pretended to not be paying attention (la, la, la....head in sand....our daughter is an innocent flower of purity...la, la, la).

I listened to that tape on my walkman day and night for weeks, until he came home.  Eventually the shock from that first listen (I'm pretty sure I blushed crimson for the rest of the evening) wore off, and I began to dissect and over think (like every adolescent girl) the lyrics.  Somehow, I made it our anthem.

And, on the floor of his parent's basement, on a blanket he'd laid out for the purpose...with dozens of pillows...we fucked to that song.

Unfortunately, his younger sister (with the gigantic "tell the entire world everything and then some" mouth) walked in on us.  Though I must commend myself at not succumbing to the instant turn-off of "coitus interruptus".  When she left, we went right back to it.

"Closer" would eventually come to represent the lens the rest of the world had on my sex life - a reminder that nothing is really ever secret for long and that the things we believe to be private rarely ever are.  It also had an openly violent sentiment.

You let me violate you
You let me desecrate you
You let me penetrate you
You let me complicate you
(Help me...)
I broke apart my insides
(Help me...)
I've got no soul to sell
(Help me...)
The only thing that works for me
Help me get away from myself,

I wanna fuck you like an animal
I wanna feel you from the inside
I wanna fuck you like an animal
My whole existence is flawed
You get me closer to God

You can have my isolation
You can have the hate that it brings
You can have my absence of faith
You can have my everything

(Help me...)
You tear down my reason
(Help me...)
It's your sex I can smell
(Help me...)
You make me perfect
Help me become somebody else

I wanna fuck you like an animal
I wanna feel you from the inside
I wanna fuck you like an animal
My whole existence is flawed
You get me closer to God

Through every forest
Above the trees
Within my stomach
Scraped off my knees
I drink the honey, inside your hive...
You are the reason I stay alive...

Interestingly, he was really the first to introduce me to pain (and to the pleasure I acquired from it).  I guess I hadn't made the connection until now, that sending me this song was really probably his attempt at letting me know about his proclivity toward domination.  He was anything but overbearing in daily life. In fact, he was tall and sort of skinny, had shoulder length hair, rather feminine facial features, and defined himself as an artist and musician.  Pretty much the antithesis of "masculine". And I really hadn't thought about this as a possible starting point for my own submissive tendencies, until now.

So, there you have it - an epiphany.

"Closer" was, for all intents and purposes, the theme song for my (not so?) subtle introduction into BDSM...my teenage lover's fingernails digging into the flesh of my back and thighs.  The harder he pushed the more turned on I became.  His teeth in my neck, leaving marks...bruises that would need to be covered by high-necked shirts and scarves.  Scratches that lasted for days.

I had forgotten how much I liked that.  How aroused it made me...and how freaked  out.  I remember feeling a little afraid of the power his touch had over my body and over my psyche.  It wasn't just sexual.  It was mental and emotional.  He indeed violated my own vision of myself (tore down my reason...helped me become somebody else), desecrated my thin wall of innocence, penetrated my body, and complicated my thoughts of sex, and pain, and power.  And to whatever extent a god exists, he certainly got me closer to it.




 This has been a Wicked Wednesday post.  Check out the site to see who else is being Wicked.