One night, back when I was Batman, I came very close to drowning in piss in a trailer park outside of Tampa.
Catwoman had me chained to the crooked floor with my head at a decline. My mouth was stuffed with a ball gag. The thick rubber Batman cowl pulled my nostrils open wide while she stood over me. The director/cameraman told her to squirt on my face, but something else came out? Something so disturbing to Catwoman that she ran out of the room crying. The cameraman chased after her, leaving me alone still chained to the floor. My nose and throat was full of piss and something chunky. I couldn’t breathe.
After a couple minutes, my Gay Pagan Gods granted me access to a kind of serenity that’s only available close to death. Panic wasn’t possible. The stillness and peace created a vacuum that filled with one final idea. I snorted. I snorted as hard as I could, and swallowed enough piss and discharge to clear a thin passage for air in one nostril. For the next 20 minutes I survived breathing shallow, praying my nostril wouldn’t close again.
Eventually Catwoman and the director came back to unchain me. I shook it off and we finished the movie with Catwoman fucking my ass. The cheap Astroglide failed to lubricate so I drive home bleeding out of my asshole.
I slept easy that night, knowing I’d always be okay no matter how alone I am with my Gods protecting me. That video remained a top seller on Clips4Sale for over 6 months. That was a new record. I’d become the most dangerous artist I knew in. The more I got hurt, the better I performed. This became my identity. I’d never had that kind of win before. I clung to it.
The first time Kendra assaulted me I was tied to a St Andrews cross with my legs spread in a moldy garage just outside of Ft Meyers. I told her my limits with cock and ball torture. She laughed and the cameraman called action. Kendra blew right past my hard limits. I wasn’t gagged this time but I also didn’t have a safe word to stop her. I stared in her eyes telling her to stop and tried calling out to the cameraman to cut. She went harder, rupturing blood vessels in my balls. I could tell, because this was the third time I’d had internal bleeding in my balls. You can feel the dripping blood fill your scrotum, turning it into some kind of necrotic black grapefruit for the next couple weeks.
The Florida Man in me shook it off. That scene was also a top seller and the exposure got the attention of Kink.com, where my career skyrocketed and I made many lifelong friends in the gang showers of the Armory. They were dangerous artists too. They knew how to use their pain and we could truly see each other.
Arena raped me in my own bed. That’s trauma with an asterisk. I had to sleep on a futon for weeks so I could close my eyes with out flashbacks. She took so much from me, I was not going to let her take my art. We were booked the next morning for a sensual love-fuck scene. I showed up. I wrote, directed, and lit the scene. I dressed both our wardrobes. I gave a beautiful performance with the camera’s viewfinder in my mind’s eye, displacing my contempt for Arena. It was like the pain she caused me was a magnetic pole pushing my performance. That short film won two awards, hit global distribution on cable and made me over $25,000.
I won’t take much space to write about the hundreds of times I asked my female scene partners not to slap me in the dick, because I had a recurring injury from being slapped in the dick, but they did it anyway. Most of them told me how important consent is to them right after. None were accountable because they were all very pretty. I will say that this never stopped me from showing up to another shoot or winning awards despite being a blacklisted crossover performer.
Some time before I turned into a woman, I lost my way. I tossed out my entire identity just because I didn’t want to be a man anymore. Forgetting that sketchy BDSM porn in trailer parks and garages made me who I am, I obsessed for comfort and prestige. This spooled up an entropy that made me weaker, arrogant and selfish. Forgetting how to be alone, I obsessed with being loved while I let fantasies of self pity loop in my mind.
I blew all my money just to feel something. I wanted to present in some kind of established way that would make people think I’m not filthy. I forgot the trashy Florida Man in my heart that fortifies my bones. I forgot my Gods who nurture and protect me when I’m all alone. I buried my submissive kinks out of fear of getting hurt again. I thought I had to be safe from pain to be creative, so my art turned stale.
Years passed and I was finally a woman, but still didn’t know who I was. I just knew I wasn’t a man anymore. It was acutely lonely. I craved a companion, but could only love in immature ways that were incomplete. I fell in love with beautiful clown dominatrix, but I failed her when she needed me the most. I wasn’t strong when she was weak. When I lost her, I lost my mind and had a terrifying schizophrenic episode that lasted months.
Eventually my weakness attracted a new kind of predator in the form of a lover that I didn’t know how to handle. In my quiet desperation I insecurely attached to them, because that’s who was around to cling to. I clung to their art because I’d stopped making my own. I still didn’t know who I was and I thought being “theirs” was at least somebody.
I’d forgotten the power in danger that used to drive me and only remembered the trauma it caused. I started taking 4am hooker gigs far below my rate just to have someone to talk to. I drank whisky to numb when my new lover hurt me. Pretty soon I couldn’t stand being sober around them at all. I had to smoke a lot of weed to let them touch me so the bright light of physical sensations would glare over their bullying and trans misogyny. I shook visibly all the time. When they were done using me for whatever it was, maybe instagram clout and attention, they dumped me with a text and blocked me on everything. I was freed from that cycle of abuse, but it was also the only thing I had to lean on.
I ran for safety, still thinking I needed pain free spaces to be vulnerable, to make art again. Maybe if I could create again, I’d find out who I was. I found a safe space, a writing group full of queers which rekindled the passion for poetry I had as a teenager. The passion that drove me to get a bachelors in creative writing that I’d never used. I cherished that space until my abuser found it too. They’re taller and prettier than me so I was gaslit out of there. They don’t even write. We met outside. They drove half an hour every other week to sit in the biting cold for two hours just to ruin something I loved. Safe spaces got unsafe. I was alone again and empty of any faith to protect me.
My apartment at the time wasn’t any good for dying. The knives were all dull. Nothing sturdy to hang from. It was only a two story building and my bathroom didn’t even have electrical outlets. I stood in the cold at dirty Myrtle-Broadway staring at the third rail. I cried ugly. I surrendered.
That’s when that serenity came back. Remember? The kind that only shows up in death’s driveway? I remembered. The stillness and peace gave room for one final idea.
I dug my batsuit out of storage. This may seem silly but it was a symbol of a time when I was powerful. It fit. It fit better than ever. Spandex looks good on big tits and hips. Batgirl doesn’t need a safe space to make art, or a whole queer polycule just to be okay. She’s okay being alone. The Florida Man in my heart barks insane methy gibberish the face of despair, spraying saliva, walking with a strut. I remembered. I remembered my Gay Pagan Gods and I don’t need whiskey anymore.
They can all do their worst. I’ve won dozens of awards and made millions performing my art nose to nose with my abusers. They granted me armor weaved bulletproof from scar tissue. I’m not hiding behind survival anymore. I’m creating art that punches when I vibrate, and I’m a force of calm when I’m still. My art is dangerous again. Dangerous in the sense that my weakness should be scared of it. Dangerous to prestige and comfort because it’s authentic.
I’ve attracted people who don’t need me to love them and I don’t need their love to be okay. We love because we inspire each other to.
I let a nice lady chain me to a cross and torture my balls for the first time since I was a man. I did this as Lucy, my self, for the first time. A couple people who see that kind of thing all the time watched in awe. I came all over the floor. Not for a movie or an award. For me and for her. It was peaceful and it gave me ownership that I didn’t know I’d lost. Now I can make torture porn again, but I don’t have to.
I don’t need to get hurt to create anymore either. There’s much more power in offering sanctuary to other hurt artists. So I made a little space in a dungeon for other people like me to create. We don’t make porn there, we write stories and poems that tell our truth. It’s incredibly powerful to sit in their presence. The pieces they share punch hard. No one gets hurt in at least the two hours we meet, probably because our specific wounds are the thing we have in common.
When they nurture each other’s creativity it stokes negentropy in me. This is the opposite of trauma and it’s a threat to the complacency that’s given us scars. We don’t give trigger warnings or shield each other’s pains from our pasts either. We’re there because we don’t have any shame in what we’ve endured. We know what to do with it, we know who we are, and that makes us dangerous.
