Vanilla: an essay by writer Darci Flatley
When I had my first conversation with Darci Flatley during what became our weekly after class adventures to some dive bars on Haight Street with our MFA classmates, I had an intense moment of recognition: I saw so many pieces of my own experience within hers.
Both of us raised in conservative environments yet both of us finding ourselves drawn towards sex, we were trying to navigate relationships with cis men. We were both trying to find safety and our own agency within these relationships. We were attempting to access and reclaim pleasure in a world that didn’t fully support that.
Over the years, each of us has been on our own journeys of healing. I am very excited because in this essay, Darci shares some of that journey — including the surprising revelation she had about what kind of sex she actually likes.
This piece grapples with so many questions: how do we know what we like in bed? What happens when we realize that the things that we have been doing sexually have been influenced by the trauma that we’ve experienced? How do we know whether the sex we are having is helping us navigate that trauma or whether it is something that is further deepening it? How can we have the courage to not only see what we are deeply wanting in our sex lives, but also to ask for it — especially when the trauma living in our bodies tells us that it’s not safe to do so? What role can our sexual partners play in our healing journey?
So excited to share this piece and the conversation we had about it with you all!
Vanilla
an essay by Darci Flatley
TW: Abuse, Assault, Sex
The best sex of my life wasn’t what I’d imagined it to be. It was soft, gentle, sensual, and very, very vanilla. There was not a single moment that I didn’t feel Enzo’s hands running up and down my body, searching for new places to hold onto. If he wasn’t kissing my mouth, he was kissing my neck, tracing his tongue up to my ear. I shivered. “Wrap your legs around me,” he directed. I immediately obeyed, drawing him closer to me, deeper inside of me. It felt like the entire world disappeared. It was just us, desperately entwined, gasping for more air, shaking with pleasure.
I grew up in a sex positive household. My mother talked openly with me about sex and pleasure, the biggest emphasis being on sexual health and consent. When I decided it was time to lose my virginity at 19, I began to research. I like to know what to expect with new things I’ve never done before. It makes me feel more prepared and that makes me feel more confident. So, I not only researched the best kinds of protection, but how to ensure it would be pleasurable for me too and not only my boyfriend. I’d heard horror stories of girls bleeding, painful friction, and wanting it to just be over. I wanted candles, R&B music, and slow, gentle, love-making for my first time. I visited my OBGYN to start taking birth control and instructed my boyfriend to not only buy condoms, but to get lube as well. I learned that most girls are so nervous, they don’t self-lubricate enough.
My boyfriend took me out to dinner and when we came home, he set up candles and put on R&B. We were both nervous. It was both of our first times. My mom was the first person I talked to about it. “Are you okay?” she asked me. “Did it feel good?” I spared her the details, revealing only that it had been exactly how I hoped I’d lose my virginity.
When I returned to undergrad for the fall semester, I was relentlessly slut-shamed. I spent my summer in Florida with my boyfriend, and when I returned in the fall for my sophomore year, I revealed that I had lost my virginity to two people. I’m not sure how the word got around so quickly. I attended a Bible College in small-town Arkansas. Premarital sex was a sin and I was a sinner. I could feel eyes on me when I walked past, hearing the groups of students whisper to each other. “Yea, I heard she’ll give head to whoever asks,” one girl said.
“What a whore,” another guy replied.
In order to cope with the shame I was feeling, I joked with friends that I was the campus Jezebel, despite only having slept with two people by that time.
After graduating and moving to San Francisco, I felt liberated. Tinder was no longer a taboo app. I merrily swiped left and right throughout the day. The men I fucked after moving to San Francisco were referred to by nicknames because they were out of my life as quickly as they were allowed inside. I’d spill all the details to my friends:
Big Dick Sam had the biggest cock I’d ever seen. My hand couldn’t completely close around it.
Butt plug Chad would send me videos of him stroking himself, lifting his package up so I could see the red crystal base of the sex toy in his ass.
Jewish Jordan liked to wear a vibrating cock ring which when riding him, would make me squirt.
I had convinced myself that the more people I slept with, and the kinkier the sex was, the less ashamed of being sexually active I felt. These ideas piqued an interest into the BDSM community. The idea of kinky sex excited me because it somehow felt like even more of a rebellion against the shame I internalized.
But the BDSM community was new to me and I wanted to know what to expect. Pornography showed that men were dominant and women were subservient. Women were told what to do, punished by a slap to the face, or pull of the hair. Doms in porn would choke their subs as punishment until they said yes.
The men I fucked were definitely more dominant. They liked to pull my hair, choke me, slap me while pounding into me. They would do it and then ask me if I liked that. I would nod my head and wait to hear them call me a whore.
I would tell my friends about how I had been treated with pride, believing that the kinkier the sex I was having, the more sexually liberated I was.
A friend later invited me to a BDSM event. “You were talking earlier about doms and sex and I was wondering if you’d maybe like to go with me to a sex dungeon this weekend?”
“I’ll try anything once!” I was nervous. This was something new so I’d read their website online and learned that the dungeon we were attending would include both exhibitionism and voyeurism.
“What should I wear?” I asked the night of.
“You don’t have to participate,” my friend assured me. “I just like to walk around and look hot.”
We got there early for the safety demos as this was my first time and it gave me insight into what to expect. I was a bit surprised at the rules. You weren’t allowed alcohol or drugs. They would ask patrons to leave, no questions asked, if you felt uncomfortable in any way. I learned about aftercare. Ensuring that your partner continually consents to each act you are about to inflict on them by checking in first. Respecting that no means no and anyone who does not adhere to that will be immediately kicked out.
But everything made so much sense as I thought about it. You couldn’t enthusiastically consent if you were under the influence. Sex should never make you feel uncomfortable. Your partner should ensure you are okay afterward.
Despite this, I hadn’t really dealt with the internalized misogyny I had for myself. So instead of having safe kinky sex, I just asked for more degrading sex from men. I was ashamed of having sex with multiple people although I would never admit it. I believed that I was rebelling against slut-shaming.
I met my ex on tinder during this time. While we were dating, he blamed every problem in our relationship on me and would gaslight me into agreeing with him. He would call me lazy and continually point out all the parts of my body he felt needed to be smaller. I needed to apologize when I was too loud or too much.
Hearing this emotional abuse daily over the first few months of our relationship made me believe he was right. I needed to be more agreeable, palatable, quieter, smaller, less. He made me believe that because I was too loud, too fat, and too much, I was lucky to even be with him. He made me believe that if we broke up, I wouldn’t find anyone else to love me.
After he found out that I had previously been to a sex dungeon, he had insisted I bring him to the next event there. I agreed on the conditions that we go early for the rules and boundaries, and that we would only watch. Before heading over, he insisted that we drink a bit to ease our nerves. I reminded him that we needed to arrive early, but he assured me that I could give him the rundown of rules on the way there. We missed the introduction session and I had missed that he had been drinking before me. He was a bit tipsy.
I led him over to an open spot to watch a scene that was happening on a bed. I glanced over to see how he was enjoying it and he had his phone out. I grabbed it from him and reminded him that he shouldn’t have it out for any reason to protect others’ safety and identities. I left to put the phone in the lockers at the front.
When I came back, he began telling me how much he wanted to play.
“I told you I didn’t feel comfortable with that yet,” I reminded him.
He walked away.
I tried to talk to him about disrespecting the boundaries of the dungeon, but reflecting on this now, I was trying to make him understand how badly he had been disrespecting my boundaries.
“You need to lighten up, no one cares,” he said.
“You were lucky no one saw you with your phone out. You would’ve had us kicked out,” I reminded him.
“It doesn’t matter now,” he said.
“I also felt really pressured by you to have sex and I told you before that I wasn’t comfortable doing that yet,” I said.
“I didn’t pressure you to do anything. I just told you I wanted to play, not that we should play,” he retorted.
I know now that he was gaslighting me, making me feel like I was the problem. This sort of behavior at the beginning of our relationship made it easier for him to continue overstepping my boundaries later on.
After about four months into our relationship, he suggested we move in together. I wasn’t ready to live together, but he said that meant I didn’t love him enough.
I didn’t want him to leave me, so I agreed. The abuse became physical a few times after we moved in together. After it happened, he would cry and apologize to me. He would tell me it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t pushed him. I believed that if I was more agreeable with him, he wouldn’t have been mad enough to put his hands on me.
A few months after we eventually broke up, I began therapy to try to move on. I told my therapist of my fears about dating again. I was worried I would be too much. I was worried if something went wrong, it was because of me. It was hard to admit I had been abused emotionally. It was even harder to admit I had been abused physically.
“Were his hands around your neck?” my therapist asked me.
“Yes.”
“Were you scared for your safety at that moment?”
“Yes, but we were arguing.”
“Do you pin people to the wall and put your hands around their neck when you argue?”
“No.”
“There is never a reason for someone to strangle you.”
My therapist frequently told me that I didn’t realize how abused I had been. I would tell her about the trauma inflicted onto me, and she would re-read the list of types of abuse and give specific examples of those abuses that I had told her had happened to me. We discussed safety–how it isn’t just physical safety that can be harmed, but emotional and mental safety as well. How once the feeling of safety is taken, it is extremely difficult to recover it. My friend called it the point of no return and encouraged me to ask my therapist about it.
“Sometimes I would say yes to sex with him because it was easier than the fighting that would’ve happened if I’d said no. My friend said that’s assault, but I consented,” I admitted.
“You wanted to say no?” she clarified.
“Yea, but if I did, he would get mad at me and I didn’t want to cause a fight.”
“So, you didn’t feel safe saying no?”
“I guess not.”
“So you couldn’t say no?” she asked slowly.
It was difficult to start dating again. I’d agree to a date and cancel it last minute out of fear and insecurity. I somehow mustered up the courage to go on a date and he ended up being such a nice guy. He didn’t kiss me until the third date. I was reminded that gentle and kind men exist. My confidence was slowly growing, and I was more attuned with my body and feelings than I had been in years. It took a few dates for me to realize I wasn’t nervous to have sex with someone new, but that I simply did not want to have sex with him. It felt liberating to end the relationship and more importantly, I felt safe to do so.
As I dated more people and continued to heal from the abusive relationship, I found it easier and more natural to listen to what my body was telling me. What I was originally mistaking for feeling nervous after a date, was my body’s way of telling me they didn’t make me feel secure. Because I promised myself I would never allow someone to hurt me the way my abuser had, it was easy to listen to my body and end relationships simply because I hadn’t felt safe.
“Can I kiss you?” Enzo asked me after our first date.
We were back in my bedroom after having a few drinks together. I giggled from the butterflies fluttering around my stomach. “Yes, please.”
“Do you have a condom?” I asked him in between kisses. We couldn’t keep our hands from wandering over each other’s body, exploring the new terrain.
“I do. Do you want to have sex?” he asked.
He kissed me and I kissed him back. He took off my shirt, dragged his fingers down the length of my back, and took a second to take my body in before he began kissing my chest.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
I nodded, and pulled his shirt off. He moved on top of me. His fingertips felt electric as they moved down to my hips. He pulled my nipple into his mouth, sucking on it as his hand moved in between my legs, stroking me slowly. I struggled to take his belt off and we laughed while he took his pants off. I moved my hand down his torso until I could feel his cock throbbing in my hand. He moved his mouth down my body, licking my stomach, kissing the inside of my thigh, his thumb rubbing my clit.
“Can I take your underwear off?” Enzo asked.
I couldn’t get them off fast enough. He came up to kiss me one more time, hard, his tongue desperately moving with mine. He slowly pushed his fingers inside of me while moving his face back in between my legs and lapping me up with his tongue. His hands grasped my hips and he didn’t take his mouth off of me until I begged him to please fuck me.
Enzo grinned. “Is that okay with you?” he asked me, waiting for me to say yes before sliding his dick inside of me. I gasped. He continued to hold me as he thrust in and out. I rolled over onto my stomach and he entered me again, slowly so I felt every inch. His hands groped at my chest. He buried his face into my neck, the sound of his heavy breathing and panting making me wetter.
“Spank me,” I whispered.
Enzo stopped for a moment. “No, I won’t do that to you,” he said before turning me back over to face him. His arms were wrapped around my torso, his nails digging into my back, his cock moving slowly in and back out. Our breathing was heavy, our bodies slick with sweat. “Wrap your legs around me,” he directed. I moved my hips in time with his. My face felt hot, my legs began to tremble, I could feel my pussy tightening around his dick, begging for it to go deeper.
Once we were fully dressed again, Enzo apologized for not spanking me. “I’m pretty vanilla,” he said.
“That’s okay,” I said, pulling my shirt on over my head. “I liked it.”
Over the next few days, I couldn’t stop fantasizing about sex with Enzo. Just the thought of his hands on my body turned me on. I’d find goosebumps on my arms thinking about his tongue moving up my neck to my ear. But it was so much more than the physical.
Enzo was gentle with me. He treated my body like it mattered simply because it does. He not only looked for and listened to verbal signs of consent, but physical ones too. I kept hearing him say, “no, I won’t do that to you.” I began to understand the weight of those words. Of course someone who respects me isn’t going to want to physically harm me.
The slut-shaming I experienced throughout undergrad undid the sex positivity my mother had instilled in me. The messaging I was receiving from outside sources became so loud, it was all I was able to hear.
Unable to recognize the change in my perspective and understanding of sex led me to treating my body without respect. The roughness from men and the abuse from my ex didn't feel disrespectful at the time because I believed myself to be a whore, a slut, a dirty girl. Instead of reflecting on why that was, I leaned into it. I thought more about what I looked like performing for men than I did about my own body and pleasure. I thought that by allowing men to have their way with me–choking me, slapping my face, pushing my head down until I couldn’t breathe was what BDSM sex should look like and I thought I preferred that because it meant I wasn’t ashamed of the harmful sex I was having.
It began to sink in the amount of power my abuser had held over me. I had been in a vulnerable place when I met him. I was having reckless sex as a way of coping with the internalized misogyny I was dealing with as a result of the slut-shaming. It was easy for him to reinforce that hatred through abusing me.
The next time Enzo and I hooked up, he hesitantly moved his hand just below my neck. I appreciated him trying to be a bit rougher after I asked for it, but I moved his hand away. I kissed him, closed my eyes, and enjoyed the feeling of his body moving in time with mine.
For the first time since losing my virginity, I felt like someone was having sex with me as a person, not just with my body. I felt safe.
1. Something that stuck out to me about this piece is how you highlight that for those of us who are socialized as women, we often equate sexual liberation with having wild, rough sex. Why do you think that we have defined liberated sex in this way?
I think the easy answer here is pornography, but I think it goes so much deeper than that. I had been exploring pornography before being slut shamed, and never really paid much attention to the more rough sex. It wasn’t until I was receiving messaging from an Evangelical source that I started to equate sex with shame. After that, it was an easy downhill fall into filling that role. Almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was supposed to be ashamed for being a sexual person, so I sought out sex that involved shame, which was easy to find in BDSM. Alongside this, our media is full of that sort of liberated sex. We don’t really see a lot of slow, soft sex in movies or tv shows or in music because media is built on being exciting and enthralling. Wild, rough sex is more sensationalized and attention-grabbing, much in the same way that we can’t seem to look away from a car wreck.
2. In the piece, you write about how difficult it was to recognize that you had been abused in your previous relationship and how the conversation with your therapist helped you to be able to recognize what had been happening. Were there any other things that supported you during this recognition and healing process?
I give so much credit to my healing to my support system. I kept so much of what was happening to me hidden from people around me because I was ashamed. I also felt like I was failing in my relationship and didn’t want others to think the same thing (even though they definitely already were). Having people to listen as I verbalized the abuse and to reassure me that it was abuse was so helpful. In the moment, I knew I was being mistreated, but I was also being gaslighted to the point that I couldn’t tell if I made up what had happened or if it had actually happened.
3. If you could share anything to help folks who have experienced slut shaming, what would it be?
This is such a hard question because slut shaming is so personally tailored to an individual’s experience. Personally, I like to remind myself that if a slut is someone who has and enjoys sex, then absolutely I am a slut. There is something so powerful about reclaiming language that is used against you. I’d also just like to say that as cliche as it is, it gets better. Find a supportive community and like-minded people to reinforce sex positivity. Drown out the noise.
Meet Darci (she/her)
Darci is an essayist and editor. Originally from Florida, now living in California, her work considers how place affects identity, navigating feminism in the modern world, mother/daughter relationships, and sex and pleasure. Her work can be found in Broke Ass Stuart magazine and Signs of Life Anthology.
You can find more of her work at https://www.darciflatley.com
I am so honored to have the opportunity to have been able to share Darci'’s work on here. A big part of why I’ve created this newsletter is to help us all feel a little less alone in the world when it comes to sexuality, and I think seeing and hearing stories that resonate with our own life experiences in some way can go a long way in relieving the shame we might feel about this part of ourselves.
Some newsletter housekeeping: June was really difficult for me, and I didn’t have the time or emotional energy to create these newsletters — hence the only posting once! Because of that, I’ll be continuing June’s exploration of performativity into this month. Thank you to my paid subscribers for hanging in there — I’ve extended your subscription until October, which means that you’ll still be getting access to the paid posts, but won’t be billed during that time. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.
A big thank you to everyone for reading! It means a lot that you’re here. If you liked this piece, please click the ❤️(it helps more readers find the work), leave a comment, or even share it/restack it here on Notes.
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