Parallel Worlds

By Lisabet Sarai

It's past midnight, in the late seventies. I'm sitting around the kitchen table with my boyfriend and my housemate. We're all extremely stoned, a not-uncommon state back in those days, and we're descending into a labyrinthine discussion of life, death, probability, fate and time. It feels as though we're getting somewhere, untangling these primal issues. It always feels that way when we're stoned.

J is talking about how, in some future, he'll be master of the universe. All he has to do is open the right doors. I'm listening in admiration, thrilled by the notion, ready to believe.

"But what do you mean by right?" I ask. "How will you know? Every instant you make choices, and every choice spawns a new universe." I struggle to wrap my pot-laced mind around the notion of infinite parallel universes. Then I have a vision.

Choices give rise to new strands of reality. Maybe, though, the divergent paths rejoin. After a while, parallel universes collide and collapse into a single reality. It's like chicken wire, I see clearly, a mesh of realities that split and merge, a web of possible futures--all existing simultaneously. There's always a route, though perhaps a long one, from any decision point that spawns a new world to any other. There's no such thing as an irrevocable choice.

It's a revelation. I try to explain the chicken wire theory of reality to J. and M., who nod sagely. It makes sense to them. Wild notions often do when you're stoned.

***

Fast forward to a few years later. My master is crying. Early in our relationship he made me promise that if I met someone else, someone serious, I'd come see him first. He brashly vowed he'd convince me otherwise. I was pretty sure the guy I'd fallen for was my soul mate. (It turned out I was very wrong.) Still, I wanted to keep my end of the bargain. I'd shelled out for a plane ticket and flown 500 miles to give my master the chance to change my mind.

I'd expected him to bind me, to whip me, to fuck me until I screamed for mercy—until I realized and admitted that I would always belong to him and no one else. Instead he huddles on his couch, tears in his eyes, and barely speaks to me for two days. I'm angry he makes no effort to get me back. I suffer because of the pain I'm obviously causing him. I'm relieved that I am apparently free to go back to my new lover.

I'm very confused.

In later years, I've always identified that weekend as one of those inflection points that give rise to parallel worlds. If he had claimed me then, the way he promised... if he had come right out and told me he didn't just want me, but also loved me ... if he'd brought up the question of marriage or cohabitation... I might well be with him now, instead of half a world away and married to someone else. And maybe in some other strand of reality, I am his wife and lover, perhaps even mother to his children.

On the other hand, if I were in that reality, what would I have missed? Would I have traveled? My husband has had travel fever since his teens. My master doesn't even have a passport. Would I be living overseas now, every day an adventure? Speaking of adventures, would I have had the chance to explore the delights of ménage and polyamory, the way I have in my present universe? He's both possessive and surprisingly shy, for a sex maniac Dom.

Still—I dream about a life of complementary fantasies, where my desire to submit perfectly matches his need to command. It's been decades since anyone tied me up or spanked me. I still remember the intensity of those times, the overwhelming sense of being in the now, the glow of devotion and the knowledge that I'm cherished for my surrender. I miss those feelings. I miss him, with an ache that's mellowed a bit over time but has never disappeared.

It occurs to me, though, that Lisabet Sarai, spinner of lascivious tales, would never have been born if he'd grabbed me that weekend, thrown me onto the couch, flipped up my skirt and buried himself in my ass, the way I imagined he might. If I were living the life of a submissive, I might never have been moved to write about it. It was my frustrated longing for him and his magical mind that led me to pen my first erotic tales and send them to him--to bridge the gap between our bifurcated lives. Raw Silk was a compendium of all my favorite D/s fantasies. It was a thought-experiment, a tentative stroll into that alternative world where he voiced his true feelings (as he has since, but perhaps too late) and changed our fates.

****

I sit at my computer in a foreign country, a woman a few years over of sixty, remembering the crossroads in my life and trying to recapture my dope-induced image of the universe. Is it really true that all possibilities continue to exist, beyond the point of decision? Or is the universe like Schrödinger's cat, multiple potential outcomes collapsing into a single state as soon as one chooses to open the box? I'd like to believe that there's some way to get back to that point in time where my master and I took separate emotional paths, and strike off in a different direction. I'm not sure that I'd actually choose to return and walk that road not taken. Still, I'd like there to be, somehow, a chance.

To My Imaginary Daughter

By Lisabet Sarai



Dear Anne,

Today is Mother's Day, as well as my own mother's birthday. She would have been eighty three today, if she hadn't died of leukemia at age fifty two. Our relationship had its difficulties (what mother-daughter relationship doesn't?), but I do miss her, more than thirty years later. I wish she could have lived to see her kids settled and more or less successful, at least partially as the result of her diligent and principled parenting. I suspect she would have been proud. I wish I could call her and wish her a happy day, send her a card or a gift.

As for me, I guess I'll never be a mother, except in my imagination. Your birth is the closest I'll ever get.

I created you perhaps two decades ago, in a fantasy story I wrote for your father. The tale was rather archly entitled "Labor of Love". It turned on the notion that suffering through the agonies of giving birth could be another act of devoted submission, akin to enduring the whip or the cane.

When your father and I were together, I never dreamed he wanted children (or marriage for that matter). I thought our connection, intense as it was, was mostly about sex. I believed that he was still in love with his former flame, your namesake. Only later, after we'd parted (though never definitively), after I'd married someone else, did I learn how much he desired a legacy, how much he regretted being the last shoot in his family tree. I started to play with the thought of my bearing him a child. What would it be like, if we were a long term couple? What would you be like?

Intelligent, obviously. I'm smart and he's practically a genius. Highly sexed, most likely, and probably very verbal. Aside from that, you're hard to visualize. What would be the result of our melding our disparate genetics? Would you be tall like him, or tiny like me? Would your hair be straight or curly, black or blonde? I suppose at this point, I could choose, couldn't I?

I wonder if he remembers you.

I'll be honest; I was always ambivalent about having kids. My own mom was so over-protective. I worried that I'd continue her neuroses. Heck, I nearly have heart attacks watching other people's children do dangerous things! If I had a daughter of my own, I might never let her out of my sight.

Still - I find children fascinating, partly because I recall the wonders of my own childhood so vividly. I could relive those magic times with my child. I think I'd know how to raise a daughter (though a son would be totally baffling). With my help, she'd grow up believing in herself, open to the world, eager to try new things. She'd know how to enjoy her own sexuality while still acting responsibly. I think about all the milestones: her first words, her first steps, her first day of school, her first period, her first kiss.

I never went through those things with you, but I can imagine them.

I like to think that you do actually exist, in some other strand of reality. If your father and I had done as good a job communicating out of bed as we did in it, you might have been the result. Perhaps that happened in some parallel world, created by different choices. By this time, you've graduated college. Perhaps you're in grad school, or even well launched in your career. Perhaps you're married yourself, with children of your own.

I never would have guessed it then, but I know now your dad would love being a grandfather.

You showed up recently, in a story I wrote called "Like Riding a Bicycle", which will be published in an anthology about kinky couples later this year. The story was a thought experiment. If your father and I had married, would we still be engaged in D/s, decades later? If not, what would it take to start again? Of course, the characters aren't really me and your dad. They never are. But the germ of that story, like so many of my tales, lies in the mysterious heart of the connection he and I shared. Anyway, the narrator (the male of the couple) mentions the disruptive effect of children on his kinky relationship with his spouse. He refers to you by name.

Anne.

It's fun to picture you coming to visit me - to visit us - on Mother's Day, perhaps with your lover, husband or children in tow. I'd cook dinner, because that's what I like to do, and we'd sit around the table afterward, drinking wine and reminiscing about your past, and perhaps mine. Your dad would be playing with your kids, I suspect. You wouldn't go home till late, because we enjoyed each other's company so much. And later still, in bed, your father and I would compliment each other on how well you turned out.

Wherever you are, I hope that your world has given you the gifts you deserve. I hope you'll forgive me, too, for not having the insight or the courage to bring you physically into my world. We can't change the past, and I don't know if I would do so, even if it were possible. I do somewhat regret, though, denying you the chance to exist.

On Mother's Day, I hope you'll think kindly of your poor, confused old mom.

Love,
Lisabet