Les voix qui parlent dedans

Reflection on Professional Domination

It was a time when I wasn't yet showing my face. I wanted to associate myself with his idea, to post a photo with the sign
"Someone I love is a se x worker
on International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Sex Workers (December 17).

I scribbled the text on a corner of the table, grabbed a gag, my phone, opened the red curtains, looked for the right light.
I hid for a while.
Even back then, I wanted to bear witness to what Professional Domination was like, as seen from my little window.
Even back then, I burned to be big, grounded and flamboyant, to explain and tell, to bear witness and be indignant, too.
At the time, I didn't dare. I was afraid of being misunderstood, judged for the wrong reasons, recognized, insulted, harassed.
At the time a mister nobody called me a "whore" on Insta, adding that "whore" meant I should shut up instead of playing the intellectual. I laughed. I'm still laughing.
At the time, many friends posted the same sign. It was strong and sweet, an expression of gratitude.

Time has passed. I don't know if I'm great and flamboyant - always less, no doubt, than the great-flamboyant-Woman who lives in my head, when she doesn't live in me altogether.
The difference?
Now I'm showing my face and speaking my mind, and I don't regret a thing. Oh, it's not easy: I'm one of those perfectionists, one of those obsessive people who weigh, ponder, ruminate, replay ALL their answers over and over again, preferably at night, and get stuck on a detail.
An adjective error? A passport to insomnia.

Then underneath my skull, it tends to chatter constantly, on several melodic lines, in several voices, with funny associations of ideas, words, textures, colors. My brain fuses in continuous streams, sees the obvious answer to a question, then its implications, then the sub-answers, the pros, the cons, the nuances, the analogies, the analogies of analogies, etc. etc.
It's not ONE answer I've got, it's a whole ocean I'm trying to navigate to stay understandable.
Sometimes I get lost, or I go too far, or I miss the obvious, or I give the final answer by skipping the intermediate steps.
"Lunar", "offbeat", "weird", "hard to follow", I've heard it all before.

I find pleasure and even peace in unison. Then the dissonances, splinters and triple bottoms disappear. There's only one curve, that of what I'm doing or creating, an alignment in my inner spaces.
I often reach this point of balance during sessions. It's one of the reasons why I like to dominate so much.
And now I'm saying it, bare face.