Empathic Metamorph: Then and Now

I only have the urge to write in times of great upheaval in my life. When my first marriage was drawing to a close, I wrote two stories: one that would convince anyone sane that we should be break up immediately, and one that would convince anyone sane that we should be together forever. Both stories were absolutely true. 

The happy romantic story was, essentially, my sexual history. I've started drafting this blog entry three times now, but can't describe the Empathic Metamorph more clearly than I did for that story, so I'm going to excerpt it instead. The narrative voice is purposefully a little disorganized and flighty and young-sounding. Here it is: 

The Empathic Metamorph was a single-episode Star Trek: The Next Generation character ("The Perfect Mate"), born once every seven generations to this alien race. She was highly desired as a mate because she adapted completely and perfectly to the desires of every male she came in contact with, as if she had an internal radio tuned to their desire alone. If he was a Klingon and craved danger, she sensed it and growled at him. If he was the Captain who craved a smart woman, she discussed the finer points of philosophy and literature while calmly playing her lute. 

So there I was watching TV in my living room my senior year of college, surrounded by my best friends, my current lover and a couple of exes. And I realized that I was the freaking Empathic Metamorph. And that nobody in that living room had any idea that we were all watching me, because I was so damn good at looking like I enjoyed playing the lute. It depressed the hell out of me.

Later, I described for my therapist how, even when I barely knew my lovers or didn't like them much, I could still feel them -- their desires, their needs, but I could never feel myself. Maybe my blood rushed to the right places, and maybe my juices rose at the right times, but I was so focused on what they wanted, on what they felt, that I just didn't notice my body enough to tell whether or not it gave me pleasure.

The story goes on to describe how I finally learned to get in touch with what I enjoy enough to masturbate, and then have a deeply sexually satisfying wedding night, both of which are true.


I used to be depressed that I resembled the Empathic Metamorph, but now it seems like a source of power. The difference is control. I used to feel assaulted by the desires of others, bandied about on waves of lust I could feel rolling in to me. Since I didn't know what I wanted, I didn't know how to use that energy to feed any pleasure of mine.

Oh, the difference a couple of decades makes. Thank goodness.

Now that I know what I like (my "lust landscape", as I like to call it), I can use my empathic metamorph tendencies to identify where the desires of a lover intersect my desires, and then lose myself for a while, fully inhabiting the playground built on the overlapping lands.

The clearest, happiest example was with "Well Traveled", who explained that he liked to take smart girls and, in his words, "Barbie-ify" them so they become mindless fuck bunnies for his pleasure alone. My initial impulse was amusement at the term Barbie-ify, of course, but also confusion: how could I get to that place? We discussed the concept of the playground built at the intersection of lust landscapes, and he agreed it was the right idea.

So he suggested a hypno role play where I walked down stairs to shed years of world-weary concerns, then walked back up a different staircase to add worry-free years back on. He created a lust playground indeed with his words: rolling meadows and babbling streams, an idyllic, worry-free, frolic-aholic's dream. By the time we arrived there, my voice was higher and bouncier, my heart was lighter, my breath was shallower, my eyes were wider, and I felt awesome. The resulting play was a relaxing delight to both of us.

I'm not a bimbo. I'm not a Barbie. I'm not a ditz. But apparently, given a stream of focused desire at just the right dingbat frequency, I can get there. Or, as it turns out, I can get to dozens of other places upon request as well.

The difference 20 years makes? Now, I enjoy the transformations. I understand them. I choose to participate in them. I don't feel powerless or out of control; in fact, I feel the exact opposite. Now I feel like a bit like a goddess, creating and moving between worlds and characters and dreamscapes, gathering energy and gaining strength as I go. Far from feeling depleted or assaulted, now I feel celebrated and exalted instead.

P.S.: And now and forever, I would absolutely do anything that Famke Janssen ever wanted of me. Perfect Mate indeed!