I’m flipping through the pages of a photo album, family photos of holidays passed and vacations abroad. I look at this girl, dressed in a polka-dotted dress lined with crinoline and perfectly polished heels. Hair, embarrassingly reticent of the mid-1980’s, complete with thick, dark kohl smudged under my eyes. As I turn the pages, I remember my mother telling me what a pretty girl I am, what a beautiful woman I would someday become.

A page is turned and there lies an image of me from years earlier, posed on my brother’s Rosignal BMX bike as it balances on the peak of a ramp I’d seen him jump so many times, dirt smudged on my cheeks, hair pushed under a borrowed ball cap. I look at this girl, so unlike the others in this book and I smile. It was the first sign of me, emerging from the expectations laid upon me.

It would be many years before I kicked the door open to the closet where I’d been sleeping. I was in my early twenties and new to a big city. My friends were sexual adventurists, perverts and queers. I was so green, yet so excited to finally be where I could express myself in ways I’d never I’d never imagined possible.

My desires led me to butch dykes and leather daddies. My well-versed femininity led me to becoming their girl, their femme sidekick. I was intoxicated by this newfound sexuality, by the soft curves of their bodies and their strong hands, black leather boots and the bulge, which exemplified the contradictions of their singularity.

Over time, I found myself emulating them. The wallet in my back pocket, my hair shorn ever shorter, my gait growing ever stronger. This freedom to experiment, to step on the path of an identity I could not yet understand, was exhilarating. Yet I found myself becoming lonelier as the women I loved rejected my emerging avenue of expression.

It was explained to me that I was femme, I was a girl and perhaps even a tomboy, but not to misunderstand self-expression with self-identity. The hot sting of being slapped with marginalization burned my cheeks. I retreated to the known, the understood and the accepted.

Black tank boots lived beside four-inch platform come-fuck-me-shoes in my closet. Red lace thongs cuddled against my BVDs. I was careful to know where and with whom I could continue my investigations and when they needed to be hidden for a less-painful journey. Still my mother would tell me what a beautiful woman I once was, what a beautiful woman I could still be. Her definition of beauty hinged on the femininity I found myself fighting against.

Pat Califia and Carol Queen introduced me to braver people breaking boundaries in gender. Gray areas between masculinity and femininity, male and female, came into focus. The path I had been so carefully walking was suddenly lit with the bright light of self-discovery.

Soon after, I met a strong butch dyke, who lusted for my "CFM" red lips and understood my need not to wear them often. She presented me with a symbol of eternal commitment as we snuggled together in a humid apartment in New Orleans. She called me her girly-boi and her acceptance of me for who I am, not for whom she needed me to be was solidified.

Ask me who I am today and I’m likely to stutter for a moment, listing and re-listing in my mind, the adjectives in order of current importance. This matter of self-identity is ever-morphing, never static, never completely understood. This isn’t to say there are paths more clearly marked, just that there are paths leading to destinations less clearly understood, not only by those you encounter along the way, but to those who travel them.

Are you one of those unmistakable "daddy" types? You know what I mean: the kind of girl who invariably became the "daddy" whenever the "house" game was mentioned.

At least that was what happened to me. The "husband" was part and parcel to my persona growing up on my block – when I played with the girls. My summer days were spent pretending to go to work (sometimes I’d even get a hold of my father’s ties), coming home to have a pretend dinner in front of me (sometimes it was dandelion stew), and then go to bed with my "wife"(which usually involved the both of us taking our shirts off). All this was typically done in the same house that my mother was in. She was always so blissfully unaware of what her daughter and her friends were doing while she chatted away with her girlfriends over coffee, or watched General Hospital on T.V. That pretty much left me to explore the wonders of anatomy with all of a child’s imagination at my disposal. House wasn’t the only game played on my block. War was always happening outside as well. You see, on my street, there were three large families of boys and girls: the girls all played domestic games (which I would eventually get bored with), and the boys would fight and lock each other up in briar-patch prisons. Let me expand upon that….

You see, when the boys weren’t fighting with each other, they would create new and more interesting ways to do battle with each other when they were "fighting". One particular game that I remember fancying was a sort of twisted game of capture the flag. Two opposing forces would go into the woods and "choose their weapons". These guns were fashioned out of sticks we would find there, and broken or cut down to "gun" size. At the head of the barrel we would anchor one nail, and at the back of the gun, just above the handle, we would anchor another nail. Then, we would spend about 1/2 hour in our respective houses searching for and stealing all the rubber bands in the house (the tighter, the better) and would string them across the two nails for ammo.

This is where the real fun starts, kiddies! We would go back out to the woods and build our prisoners camp. This was the most fascinating thing to watch because kids don’t typically carry around a pair of heavy yard-work gloves with them to handle the damned briars! The team I was on would throw me into the middle of the briar-patch to "make room" for any caught prisoners, as I was the smallest and could maneuver around a tiny cramped painful place all by myself. This was the start of my interest in the effects of pain….

The game would begin and the "flags" were set up (usually t-shirts) and both teams would try desperately to get the others flag. Needless to say, because I was the smallest (and the weakest at the time) I would always get caught by the opposing team and thrown in their "jail". (They were always lot less conscientious about "making room" in their prison.) I would get thrown in, literally, and spend the first 5 minutes trying to get my hair untangled from the thorns. This was around the time I started to realize long hair was not really an advantage in my little world … neither was being small (or being a girl!)

The game would continue on with boys pelting the opposing team with rubber bands of all lengths. The game wouldn’t end until there was someone hurt bad enough to call for first aid or the sun went down. I would get back to my house by the end of the day and take off my clothes for a shower, and examine my marks. Thin red lines of dried up blood covered my arms and legs. Tears streaked my face in little skin-toned lines from getting thrown face first into the mossy briar-patch prison. Red welts had formed and subsided enough to make an interesting pattern on the rest of my exposed skin. All this to be treated like an equal … like a boy.

So it wasn’t always easy being accepted as one of the boys even though I was expected to play one – with the other girls at least. What gets me sometimes is, did they see something in me that I didn’t, even back then? It doesn’t make much difference now, after 20 years of self discovery, I’ve come to terms with my masculine nature. Often, my wanting to play the part of "Master" (exploring that pain in which I developed an early interest), gets mingled with my wanting to treat ladies the way a true gentleman, a true "gentlebutch" (the "husband") would.

I’ve had to set up very distinct walls between the two aspects of my personality, and only let small aspects of my Domme self out at a time, especially if I’m with someone new, for fear that I might cross a boundary unknown to me at that time. The games can be so different. As a butch, I escort my femme like I’m helping her step on clouds over the world. She is the delicate goddess who should be pampered and treated like a lady – and I am the "guy" who fixes things, holds doors, and enjoys being devoted to her care. But as "Master," the roles are suddenly switched. The girl who I helped step over a puddle now carries my "play bag" filled with implements of torture, and struggles to hold open the door for me while holding the heavy bag, my jacket, and the end of her leash in her mouth. In one scenario, if I don’t help her I’m a ill-mannered brute, and in the other, if I do help her, I show I am not in "The Master."

It’s not easy wearing the pants in the family! I am no old-style "patriarch" who has a life-or-death rule over the women in my life. All these ladies are strong, independent women, even when they play at being my submissive – and outside of role-play games, are to be treated accordingly. (Yes, I know they can open their own doors. Yes, I know they are not really "mine,", etc.) My two instincts, one to be the caring butch, the other the cruel Master, are often at war with one another. But it all comes round, in the end, to being "Daddy" – always Daddy! In that role, I can somewhat merge and mingle my two incompatible personas, because as Daddy I can pamper or punish my "little girl" as I see fit. I can spank her until she cries – and then carry her into the bathroom and bathe her tears away, and carry her to my bed.

That is why being the "Daddy" works for me. From childhood games to adult games, looking back, the path was clear (to everyone but me!) that would lead me to a mingling of styles/personas that would end with me finding a way to both indulge and torment my girls. They say "all is fair in love and war [games]" but I say in both you need to figure out the rules before you play!