Darker

Life Paths

Meeting and becoming involved with Ariel Simmons was life-changing on many different levels. But let’s be straight with each other from the start: I am nobody’s idea of an innocent, nor am I a shrinking violet. Ariel lay down a cleverly hidden path for me to pursue until her dark world enveloped and subjugated mine. For the greater part of that journey, I was a more than willing supplicant before belatedly finding myself trapped in her morass too deeply and unable or unwilling to claw my way out. Ariel was twenty-seven when we first met, and I was, unlike her, a mere novice on the LGBT scene in our sleepy dorm town. At twenty and after being raised by deeply religious parents, I was still trying to come to terms with my innate sexual identity.

On the one hand, I had my parents disapproving religious overtones stuck in my head while my other hand was feverishly stroking my ever more needy clit. In Both my masturbation and my increasing infatuation for Ariel, I felt overwhelmed and out of control, but nobody has ever called me faint-hearted or a quitter. And as my dear mother, Anna, often reminded me, you, Patrice Collingham, come from a family of fighters and winners. This little sermon would always be rounded off with a strong belief in God, and pre-ordained fate always goes a long way towards ensuring success or failure in one’s time during our earthbound years. My father, Benjamin, or old Ben, as I called him, for my mother had married a much older man than herself, would back up his wife’s words by proclaiming our prime earthly duty is to prepare ourselves for entry to our Lord’s heavenly kingdom. My parents had the whole religious dogma thing bad. Sadly, this fact left me on my own to try and figure out my Raison d’etre and life path.

Who, at twenty years of age, knows anything about these matters? At that age, we are babes in the woods, tossed to and fro by our everyday needs and immediate life events. We might rise above that natural state now and again and catch a glimpse of our older, wiser selves before, once again, being consumed by the immediacy of the here and now. In my hour of greatest need, I found myself alone, lonely and without any trusted council to guide me. All of the voices inside my head were widely differing and ever-changing. Welcome to my freak life, dear reader. We will journey these tortured paths together.

I had only met Ariel four months before while strolling by the river that slowly meanders past the western edge of my home town of Colwood. I remember that brief meeting vividly. It was a warm, dry, sunny May evening, and Mother Nature was at her iridescent peak. Ariel had the sun at her back as she walked towards me, framed by the soft evening sunlight. It was infatuation for me there and then. Ariel was five-feet-four, had a medium build, flat-chested, sported closely cropped, ultra-short, fair hair. She wore no make-up and was dressed in skinny jeans, Doc Martin boots and an old, out-sized short-sleeved Iron Maiden tee-shirt. Her bare arms were covered in tattoos. This fact made me wonder where else she might have more private tattoos. Her voice belied her butch appearance and soothed like honey with its slow, light rhythms. I, on the other hand, am much more of a fem, curved and smaller by three inches. I am also a redhead, freckled and prone to impulsive and erratic decision-making. We were opposites, most certainly, but the adage that opposites attract is certainly merited in this instance.

While I was unattached, Ariel was in a relationship. However, she downplayed the relationship’s importance when the subject surfaced at our next meeting, set up by me at a local coffee shop, several days later. Two hours later, when we parted, it was confirmed: I had fallen big time for Ariel Simmons, and when I fell, it was all or nothing. This most positive occurrence had sown the seed for my blind, spectacular leap into a passionate sexual lifestyle. I was not virginal by any stretch of the imagination, but all of that sexuality had been decidedly on the vanilla spectrum. Ariel was about to unlock the door to my wilder, darker instincts, which until then had remained dormant and unknown even to me. At first, it was all one joyous, crazy roller-coaster ride, both literally and figuratively, and l loved every second of it. But after a couple of months, things started to get darker on the sexual side. Ariel began by suggesting we include other people in our bedroom games. She wasn’t overly insistent about it and gave me time to get used to it. Eventually, I hesitantly agreed, and we decided Ariel should contact some of her close friends she knew would be into the idea. From this, I gathered that it was not Ariel’s first indulgence in this behaviour. That fact rang some cautionary alarm bells for me, but I went along, not wanting to appear uncool in Ariel’s eyes. That first night, with four of her lesbian friends, was a real eye-opener for little old vanilla me. I witnessed and was involved in many combinations and positions I had never imagined. This was greatly increased by the fact that the women who joined were into bondage, sadomasochism and other dark arts. From there, events quickly spiralled darkly downwards.

Ariel suddenly dropped all pretence of loving me, stating I was too nice a girl and too straight for her tastes. That was when I should have ended the relationship, but I was too in love with her and couldn’t imagine my life without her. In love, not really. It was much more of an obsession in reality. Ariel quickly became openly domineering and demeaning towards me. Insisting some of her friends were always involved in our sex games. These games became ever darker, involving increasing pleasure/pain and domination themes. I became their sex toy, and I was expected to meekly go along with whatever scenarios they came up with. I was tied up, ball-gagged and penetrated anally, orally and vaginally by hands, dildos and anything that readily came to hand at any given time. By this time, I was completely submissive and thoroughly miserable. Strangely, though, a small part of me was enjoying the domination and humiliation and even started to look forward to it secretly. I couldn’t tell them this, as they enjoyed my discomfort too much. When we went to nightclubs, they made me available to any woman who wanted me. This is how life went on for the next year, with me being used and degraded more and more. I tried to sever my association with them many times but always returned for more. I would become a strung-out junkie needing my next fix, and they found my neediness a huge turn-on.

Finally, it was old Ben who came to my rescue. He had become concerned by the changes he had noticed in my personality and behaviour and found the courage to sit me down for a badly needed father-daughter talk. He chose a day when my mother visited her sister in Liverpool and would be gone overnight. This talk was very halting and strained at first. I had never discussed my sexual orientation with my parents, mostly out of fear of rejection. Or perhaps seeing disgust in their eyes. But Ben’s continual affirmation of his deep and abiding love for me and his desire to see me happy and fulfilled in my life finally won me over, and it came tumbling out in between many floods of tears. It turned out that Ben wasn’t the religious old stick in the mud I had unthinkingly imagined him to be. Underneath the slightly distant and somewhat cold religious exterior lay a much softer, warmer and enlightened persona of a kind, loving father who was deeply concerned for his only child’s welfare. I sobbed, and he cried until neither of us could shed any more tears. Later that evening, Ben cradled me safely in his arms as I fell asleep with exhaustion from all of the stress of unburdening myself and the fits of crying. Once he was assured I was asleep, he freed himself gently from my grasp, covered me in my favourite blanket, got a pillow for behind my head, and left me to sleep on the big, comfortable couch in our front room.

The next morning, I awoke late, feeling better about myself than any time during the last eighteen months. I also felt deep inside that with my parent’s love and support; I could deal with my obsessions and start getting my life back on track once more.