I'm Not Drowning: Finding Sexual Confidence after the Catastrophe

Mama, Aunt Marianna, other family members and more sensitive friends who don’t want to read stuff with a sexual theme — you are not to read this story. I have some family-oriented writing coming next week!

I’m serious. Do not read, mom.

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January 7, 2016.

A Twitter direct message arrives:

“My friend just started sleeping with a professor of hers. She’s excited and nervous. I was wondering if you had any advice for her? “

It’s from Ashley, who took the second-to-last women’s history class I ever taught, in fall 2012. Ashley was a quiet but excellent student. For her term paper, she interviewed her eighty-something grandmother who had come out as lesbian in her late sixties. It was a moving, riveting story.

Ashley was also very pretty, with short blonde hair and an easy, shy grin. She was 20 when she took my class. She is 23 now.

I answer her with words of caution and encouragement. She replies instantly, and within three exchanges, it’s clear that this isn’t really about her friend at all. Ashley’s had a fantasy for a while, and she’s decided she wants to make it happen in real life.

As I read her words, my heart starts to race. I’m turned on, I’m blushing, and I’m frightened.

I lost my job because I willfully and foolishly slept with students like Ashley over and over and over again. In my early teaching career in the 1990s, I slept with a few dozen. After getting sober and onto the right meds, I swore off crossing that line, and held to it for 10 years. In 2008, on nothing more than rash impulse, I went back to the old pattern with ever more cavalier recklessness.

I was only found out when I confessed. As self-destructive I was, I always chose the ones who had chosen me first. There were never any complaints.

And now it is 2016, and I’m on the umpteenth iteration of what is supposed to be a redemption story. To that end, starting in the summer of 2013, I spent more than two years completely celibate, uncaressed and unkissed.  I did not trust my sexuality any more.  It had cost me far too much and brought too much pain. I thought I might never sleep with anyone again, man or woman – and for the first two years, that thought did not trouble me.  I’d had more than my share, I figured, and perhaps it was best for all if I devoted my life to my children.  My chastity would be a living amends.

Mom, if you’re still reading, this is your last warning!

Eventually, loneliness got the better of me.  In October 2015, an old friend from the 1990s came out to California for a visit, and brought my season of self-denial to a close.  A woman I briefly dated in the late ‘80s drops in for a night a month later.  Both experiences are a mix of the awkward and familiar. Above all, they are comforting.

I haven’t gone off the deep end.  This is hardly the promiscuity of the old days. I’ve slept with two women in three months, gone out on dates with a few others, all my age or just a little younger. I haven’t downloaded the dating apps. I haven’t gone out looking for anything. I haven’t been stirring up intrigue hither and yon. So far, this has been a slow, gentle re-entry into life as a sexual person.

Ashley is blunt as can be. After a dozen direct message exchanges, she asks “When might you be available for a visit?”

“Monday,” I tell her, “I’d love to have you over.”

“Can we role-play?” she asks.

If this is a test, dear Lord, I have every intention of failing it.

Over the following weekend, I wrestle with whether to cancel Ashley’s visit. The first voice warns me of all that this might mean.  She’s less than half your age, I tell myself. She was a student. This is the encapsulation of all the old behavior that got you into trouble.

Another voice offers a counterpoint: Ashley’s a grown woman who knows what she wants. She has no illusions about who you are. She hasn’t been your student in more than three years; she’s finishing her degree at Long Beach State now. She just broke up with a boyfriend, so you aren’t enabling cheating. This is her fantasy.  It will help you too. 

Give yourself a break and do what you know how to do.

The second voice wins.

On Sunday, Ashley messages again. “I just want you to know I’m submissive. I like to be hurt. If we can make that happen, that would be hot.”

 “That won’t be a problem,” I tell Ashley.  I feel relief.  I do not generally like BDSM of any kind.  I can play at it when needed, but it always strikes me as more theatrical than erotic.  I want to play at romance, not power exchanges.  Dominating Ashley might make it easier, I realize – it will make this feel less like an illicit affair with someone too young, and more like a performance.  Maybe, given the power differential that once lay between us, it’s just more honest to do it this way.

Monday after work, I go to Walgreens for supplies, and clean up my tiny place. Just before Ashley’s due to arrive, I stand still in the center of my room, flexing my hands.

Dominating someone takes focus. You have to read so many cues. I look at my fingers, practice cupping my hand. I will the muscle memory for pulling and slapping to return. It has been a very long time.

Ashley and I exchanged all of 20 words face to face when she was my student. She never came to office hours, rarely spoke in class, but wrote thoughtful questions by email. As her car pulls up at 8:30PM, I realize I’ve never been within ten feet of her.

I wave the Mazda to its designated parking space. Ashley steps out; she is wearing a little black dress, stockings, heels. Her hair is much longer than it was in 2012, now curling below her shoulders. She’s grown into her looks, and though I sense she’s a little scared, I’m more than a little awed by her confidence and the beauty she’s grown into since I’d seen her last. Ashley has a bag slung over her shoulder. Either she’s bringing a lot of toys, or she’s planning on spending the night.

The nerves hit me so hard my knees nearly buckle. I’m not scared of going to bed with Ashley, I’m not scared of topping her, even though it’s not my favorite thing to do. I’m scared that once we do this, I will have crossed the Rubicon, returning irrevocably to an old, dark life I worked hard to leave behind.  What if this starts something I can’t stop?  I have no teaching job to lose, but what if this launches me back into some sort of compulsion that takes me away from the children?  In the first three seconds after she steps out of the car, I’m tempted to ask her to leave.  It’s too much to risk.

I want this, though.  And she certainly seems to want me. Even if I’m just a prop in a rather mundane fantasy, it is so nice to still be craved, if only for a fleeting appearance.

Inside my place, we give each other a shy hug. Ashley and I sit on my bed, make small talk about her drive across town; chat about the handful of books on my little shelf. She is trembling a little, and I ask her if she’s okay. “Just a little nervous!” she replies.

I inhale her scent, and not just because I really like her perfume. I’m checking for alcohol or weed. I look at her eyes. I’ve promised myself that if she’s loaded, I’ll call this off. As best I can tell, Ashley’s only high on adrenaline.

We talk a little about role-play; I try to find out what she’s done with others. After 20 minutes of increasingly explicit talk, I lean over and kiss her gently. Ashley tastes like root beer, but also, well-disguised, a cigarette. I remind myself to ask her for one. After.

“Do you have a safe word?” I ask.

“Milton,” she says.

“As in John?”

“As in my cat.”

“Okay,” I tell her, “see you on the other side.”

The scenario we choose is perhaps the most tried and hackneyed one of all, but no less compelling for its familiarity.

I get up, sit at my desk, smile at Ashley. And then my smile fades.

“Scene,” I say.

I pick up a sheaf of papers, a prop I laid out for the occasion.

My voice drops. “What a remarkable piece of work this paper is, Ashley.”

“Thank you, Dr. Schwyzer.”

“And what a pity that none of it is yours. All of it exists online. You plagiarized everything but your name.”

I throw the papers in her face. Ashley starts to tear up. (I’m impressed. She came to play.)

You know the scene from here. Ashley pleads; I am firm, determined to fail her. She begs for an alternate assignment; I accept the offer but warn the conditions will be far harsher than she imagines.

“I’ll do anything,” she says.

“You have no idea what that means with me. None.”

A few moments later, she is pressed against the wall, her hair wrapped in my fist, my hand at her throat. We hold character. It is rough. Her transition into trust and surrender is a wonder. I remember vaguely that it is almost always so.

She never says, “Milton.”

Ninety minutes later, Ashley lies on her stomach, naked on my bed. I sit naked and cross-legged beside her.

I stroke her gently. One of the supplies from the store was a jar of calendula cream, and I anoint her where her skin is reddened. I kiss her shoulders, glide my hands reverently across her body. After all these years, I haven’t forgotten that this is by far my favorite part of topping someone: the playful, kind aftercare where the dom worships and thanks the flesh of the submissive.

“Oh my God, I cannot believe we did that!” Ashley is giddy, flushed, and can’t stop laughing. I laugh too. I’ve safely crossed back into this old world without apparent consequence. I feel electrified, relieved, and fully alive.

I think I know why she’s laughing, but don’t want to presume. I ask. “I’m laughing because my friends thought I’d bail on this. I wasn’t sure I could do it. I’m so proud!”

The only seemly thing to do is give her a high-five.

Ashley looks at me. “You haven’t come yet,” she says.

“I don’t need to.” I’m rather enjoying the high that comes from holding back.

She raises herself up. “Well, that’s not fair. What if I need you to?” I grin, and she pushes me onto my back, straddles me. “Are we switching?” I ask.

“Maaaaybe.” Her voice is warm, dark, guttural. She teases me with her body until I close my eyes, and she keeps teasing until I give her what she wants: I beg.

Much later, we fall asleep.

At 5:00AM, Ashley has a nightmare. I wake up confused; who is this woman whimpering in my bed? I hold her, whispering that it’s okay. She wakes up and tells me that she dreamt I was drowning in the ocean, and that she didn’t know how to swim to help me.

I hold her for the next two hours until I have to get up for work.

Two weeks later, Ashley visits again. She doesn’t want to role-play or bottom. She wants something sweet, kind and vanilla. And sweet, kind, and vanilla is what we do. It is even better than the first time, and far more comforting. For a moment, I let myself wonder, as she falls asleep in my arms, if she and I might have a future.

When I walk her to her car the next morning, Ashley throws cold water on that reverie.  She tells me she’s planning on getting back together with her ex. “We’ve both done a lot of growing,” she says. “We’re different now. I’m ready to try again.”

I wish her the best of luck.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she says, “but I worry about you a little bit.”

“I’m not drowning, Ash,” I protest with a grin.

“I know. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I wanted you to top me, but then I figured out that’s not who you are. And you did it anyway because I wanted it. You don’t tell people what you want, you won’t get what you want.”

I laugh. “Jesus, Ashley.”

“I want to be a teacher too,” she says.

She kisses my cheek and drives off.  Though we will stay friends on social media, I haven’t seen Ashley since.

I realize I am ready to put myself back out there again. I am not broken. I am not the sum of my past.  I deserve to give myself a chance to look for love, again.

An earlier, shorter version of this story ran on Medium in 2016.