Maxie has a fantasy. In this fantasy, she finds herself in close proximity to a line of cops. Maybe they’re waiting to use the restroom. One of them sees her and recognizes the opportunity she represents. He signals to his buddies, and one by one, they fuck her violently, with little or no regard for her personhood. This all happens in a stairwell, in a relatively busy setting, but in a quiet, private stairwell.
During the proceedings, Maxie might bonk her head on the concrete floor. The cops don’t notice. They’re indifferent.
I have lots of questions about this fantasy. Questions like, does it matter if this is how the cops are spending their day, if she’s one among many victims, or does she have to be the only one?
Questions like, what happens after they’re done with her? Where do they go? What do they do? How do they interact with one another, with her?
What is she wearing in this fantasy? Does it matter? Who comes, and where? Does she come? I assume, but don’t know, that the answer to this question is, “It doesn’t matter one bit, but probably not.”
We discussed the answers to at least some of these questions, and others. She said she doesn’t like the idea of them spending their whole day doing this. She wants to be both special and insignificant. [I resonate to the idea of feeling special; insignificance, to me, feels like death.]
Maxie’s hunger for insignificance reveals itself in the indifference, the disregard with which she’s greeted, the violence with which her head is bonked against the concrete, their seeming obliviousness to her humanity. On the other hand, this is a line of cops she’s contemplating. A lot of people, all of whom find her so powerfully desirable that they rape her, that they fuck her against her will, and in so doing, at least implicitly, jeopardize not just their livelihood, but, presumably, their freedom.
There’s something interesting also, though I can’t quite put my finger on it, on the setting. This all happens on a busy day, in a busy place, but off to the side, in a private, quiet stairwell. What’s going on here? I suspect there’s something about the danger of discovery, about the exponentially increased indifference to her, to her plight, represented by the nearby crowds.
I’m also curious about the edges of this fantasy, about elements which seem either central or insignificant. What is it about a stairwell? What if it were somewhere else? A hallway? An elevator? How would that affect the fantasy?
And the line of cops, how long is it? And over what period does this unfold?
And… they’re cops. Maxie told me that, in her mind, cops are bad boys. But what if they were some other kind of bad boys? Thugs. Gang members. How would that affect the fantasy?
She has the first cop noticing her, perceiving an opportunity. Does this happenstance start matter? What if it were planned, premeditated, orchestrated? What would that do?
And then, of course, there are all the headier questions with which I typically preoccupy myself when engaging with my own fantasies. If the purpose of sexual fantasy is, as I often think, to create zones of psychic safety in which we can relax into sexual pleasure and triumphantly rework deep-seated anxieties and fears, what’s going on in this one?
How does this scenario – one in which Maxie is so dehumanized, in which her desires are so irrelevant, and yet in which she is herself so desirable – how does that work? What does that do for her? What does it protect her from? What does it grant her?
On the most superficial level, like so many women’s fantasies, it allows her to be ravished without her taking responsibility for the desire. She’s not a slut or a whore: she’s simply a passive object of desire. Maybe a victim.
What’s up with the head-bonking? Is that punishment? Somehow clearing space for her to enjoy the fantasy?
I don’t know much about Maxie’s backstory. I know a little, but not much.
I can speculate, though. I have a hunch that there was in Maxie, in her childhood, a conflict between what it would mean to have been special and what it might have meant to be completely disregarded, unimportant.
I can think of several ways this might have come to be. For example, imagine Maxie had a sister. Imagine one of the two was the target of repeated sexual abuse within view of the other, who was somehow spared. It’s not hard to see how a scenario like that might give rise to a tortured, conflictual relationship between being desired on the one hand and being invisible or irrelevant on the other.
That’s just one possibility. I can think of several others. But I’m curious….