The Garter Belt Gospel

I was raised on a gospel of performance.

Not church. Not scripture.
But a code…etched into the silence between my parents’ expectations.

Be good.
Be quiet.
Be useful.
Don’t need too much.
Don’t embarrass her.
Don’t make him feel anything.

There were no hugs.
No I love yous.
No softness.
Just the constant low hum of:
“If you behave, you belong.”

That’s where I learned it…
that love is earned.
That safety is conditional.
That being chosen is always a transaction.

And my body listened.
She memorized it.
Every cell became fluent in the unspoken rule:

“To be kept, you must offer something they can’t walk away from.”

When I grew breasts, I weaponized them.
Not for pleasure.
For power.

When I entered boardrooms, I dressed the part.
Tight skirt. Sharpened intellect.
Garter belt just peeking…
not because I wanted to be taken,
but because I wanted to be remembered.

The skirt was the funnel.
The garter belt was the conversion strategy.
The offer was me.

And I played it well.

I knew how to give just enough suggestion to keep the door open.
How to say the right thing, wear the right thing, be the right thing.

But underneath it all?
I was still that little girl.
The one who feared disappearing the moment she stopped performing.
The one who mistook transaction for intimacy,
and discomfort for proof.

Even in love, I kept the code.

On the weekends when I bled,
I offered something else.
A workaround. A compromise.
Just please don’t send me home untouched.

I didn’t know how to ask for presence without giving something in return.

I still don’t, sometimes.

Even now…when I talk dirty outside of sex…
it’s not about arousal.
It’s a reach. A tether.
A whispered:
“Can you still feel me?”
“Are we still inside something?”

It’s the echo of the same gospel:
“If I give enough, I won’t be left.”

This is the garter belt gospel.
Not a story about lingerie.
A story about survival.
A woman who learned to dress her pain in power.
To sell her ache before anyone could call it needy.

This isn’t about shame.
It’s about truth.
The kind that doesn’t ask for pity…
but for permission
to stop offering yourself in pieces just to stay inside the room.

I don’t wear garters anymore.
But I can still feel the code wrapped around my thighs.

And now?
I’m unbuckling it.

Not to be freer.
To be truer.

Because the gospel I’m preaching now isn’t about performance.
It’s about proximity.
To self.
To truth.
To a love that doesn’t need to be purchased.

This is my garter belt gospel.

And I’m not selling access to my ache anymore.

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