Each day I stand in front of the mirror, and I see two very different people in the reflection before me. The image doesn’t represent the inner turmoil of self-doubt and pain that it once did, but it’s troubling nonetheless. There are times that the stress of managing my dual personalities crashes down on me, and I end up feeling a bit like Sybil. But with better shoes. Even though the two sides of me are respectful of the other and they co-exist peacefully, for the most part anyway, determining the appropriate times to allow each one into the spotlight can be quite challenging. It can also be exhausting.
I want to scream “I am Nikki Blue of Vagina Antics!” at the top of my lungs to anyone who will listen, but I can’t. It would be a selfish move that carries the possibility of ending badly. I have children to think about whose emotional and social well-being are my first priority. Revealing myself could affect them negatively and I would lay down my life before I would let any harm come to them. I also have an ex-husband who has the tendency to lean hard towards bat-shit crazy. To such a degree that the night he threatened to take my babies from me concluded with a S.W.A.T. stand-off and an ambulance ride to a mental health facility for the next seventy-two hours.
I’ve worked hard to shield our children from his erratic behavior, but he’s not capable of showing me the same respect. I realized that the night he tried to rip my heart to shreds in front of them. He would love nothing more than to gather ammunition to paint me as a bad mother with loose morals and questionable judgment. I live with the fear every day that he will somehow stumble across Vagina Antics and put two and two together. I know deep down the odds of it happening are slim, especially since the man can barely manage to send an email on his own. But the thought of it still wakes me up in a cold sweat.
I’m a single mother trying to set a good example for both of my kids. It’s important to me that they see me stand on my own. I’m going back to college, I’m building a business, and I write what I want, how I want. I’m also a woman with needs, and keeping my kinky lifestyle separate from my children isn’t always easy, but I do my best. I have a long-time partner who doesn’t exist as far as they are concerned. I love my toys and keep them in a bag on the top shelf in my closet. I confess that I forget to put one of them away from time to time, leaving it on the bathroom counter for my kid or some sort of repair man to notice. You would think I’d learn, but I don’t. And while the embarrassment is easy to conceal as I tell my young son that the purple butt plug is a stress reliever, the chuckle from the repair man makes me want to die.
I make sure I keep the lines of communication open with my teenage daughter. I want her to know that she can talk to me about anything, and I won’t judge her. I see a lot of me in her, and it scares the shit out of me. She’s strong-willed, sarcastic, and independant. She’s also a people watcher. She watches everything I do, and she hears everything I say which makes for some pretty creative cover-ups at times. I don’t like keeping secrets from her, and I don’t do it because I think the things I do are wrong. I do it to protect her, because she’s too young for that kind of exposure. She is now the reason I delete the history every time I use the desktop computer for anything Vagina Antics related, and the reason I periodically change the password on my laptop. I’m also very protective of my phone because the extensive library of incredibly intimate photographs and videos I keep would be enough to traumatize her for life.
It’s a continual tightrope act to keep the two sides of me from colliding into each other, producing a scandalous uproar. I have to be conscious of which address I send emails from, what tabs are displayed on my computer screen when my daughter is behind me, and which Facebook account I post Instagram pictures to. The same Instagram account that I recently spent twenty minutes convincing the teen I don’t have, by the way. And when she swore she would find it if I had one, I swallowed hard and wished her the best of luck.
One day I’ll tell the teen how important it is that she is true to herself sexually, that she should never be ashamed of her desires, whatever they may be. One day I’ll tell her and everyone else that I am Nikki Blue, co-writer and shenanigans maker at Vagina Antics. But not today. She’s not ready for it. And neither am I.
