Had a very interesting conversation last night with one of my cousins. We felt kind of silly, not having anything to do Friday night, so we went out to dinner, just she and I, like we’ll usually do every once in a while to just bitch about the semester.

I always feel relatively uncomfortable discussing certain topics with her, because despite her eagerness and overall curiosity, I fall under the assumption that she’s just like our other cousin, who’s pretty much a repressed saint of a girl who more than likely has never had an impure thought in her little virgin mind.

Good god, just that look she gives either of us whenever we slip up. This ‘higher than though’ look of sheer judgment and disappointment.

Since the whole family is essentially that way, I never talk from personal experience, only in terms of studies and theoretics.

Still, while we were eating out, it became rather obvious that she had picked up on something that triggered her curiosity, and demanded I ‘spill it’. As usual, there was the whole denial, denial, denial—deflect, deflect, deflect routine.

Then it turned into a sort of Hannibal Lecter/ Agent Starling Quid pro Quo conversation.

She was actually very clever. She began to really open up to make me more comfortable, to stress ‘it’s ok, I have skeletons in the closet too’.

So I opened up a little bit, but once her gates opened up, this flood of information came out, and I realized something.

We seriously are different sides from the same coin. We were discussing fantasies, habits, sexual histories and experiences, and all I was picking up from everything she said was— you might not want to own up to it, but you’re one kinky little nymphet as well.

All her fantasies had an element of consensual non consent (being forced to submit despite her reluctance), bondage, D/s etc.

I was very amused.

We have the same issues and tendencies, the same turn-ons (sans the SM, Bi thing I have going on), but essentially, it was all there.

It was also adorable how she was saying all these things, feeling like some sort of freak about them, and all I could do, really was go ‘Oh honey. You have no idea how normal that is.’

It made her feel better, I hope.

It was mostly Catholic guilt I got over years ago, that she’s still dealing with now.

And the bottom line, was that while I stopped caring, and now pursue things in a relatively liberal manner, with that underlying paranoia and overall concern for health issues and whatever, she finds it more practical to keep herself on a leash until she gets married, out of fear of disappointing her family or fucking up somehow.

Which is perfectly valid, and essentially very practical.

I stopped caring about that when I did the whole ‘reject the world, before it rejects you’ thing, though I still fall into it from time to time, just for the sake of avoiding conflict (like the bi thing, or the poly thing).

Still, I love listening to people’s fantasies, especially when they’re not the lovey-dovey romantic ones with the sweet boy and the roses and the dimmed lights and the romantic dinner and whatever.

And it’s so amusing, the subtext one can find in fantasies; the underlying themes. It’s not so much the people involved or what they do. She kept saying she didn’t understand why she fantasized about ‘x’ or ‘y’ person, but it ended up being that it wasn’t about the person, so much as what they did, or the sensations they triggered.

The person, just as with an artist’s model, is not so much the focus, as it is the accident through which the painting, or the fantasy happens.

…And I put in practice all that crap I’ve been learning in my interview class, so it was fun. Then I triggered in her an existential crisis over the effects of insomnia, and it was wonderful, but then she got over it, so it’s ok.

I kind of like these conversations. I miss having a confidant I can have tête-à-têtes with over dinner, or just generally a partner in crime right there with me, rather than all the way in freaking Canada, because she’s a mean person (… just kidding, I love you).