The Gatekeeper

Part I The Temptress Chapter 2

2

HER COMPLEX PERSONA resulted from a symbiotic assembly of several distinct, but dynamic personality dimensions, or alters. In the world of the psychologically distressed, multiple personalities develop as a survival mechanism in response to trauma too terrible to bear inside the framework of one autonomous conscious mind. For Savannah, childhood scars had sliced up her mind like a Canadian ham on Christmas. 

She didn’t grow up with the loving parental care and nurturing that most children take for granted. Her mother suffered with a debilitating bipolar disorder. Her father was distant and cold—the result of ongoing anger and bitterness that sucked the soul from his marriage after only a few good years before she was born. Savannah can’t remember being touched, much less loved by her father in any meaningful way. He was an alcoholic who didn’t believe she was his. Her mother was slowly going insane and lashed out at Savannah for no real reason whenever she felt like it.

Savannah replaced her emotionally missing parents with a fantasy world fueled by a fertile mind that conjured up an endless series of imaginary friends and some bittersweet, some happy, like the sad unmarried princess with a wart on her nose, and the beautiful mermaid with a whole intact family that lived happily under the sea. 

Her only source of comfort and companionship, she gradually internalized her imaginary friends who morphed into her collection of personality alters each with a unique name and personal history.

Veronica, typically pleasant and accommodating, is Angelica’s mother; a selfless caregiver. She always has a kind word and is understanding, polite, and patient. Veronica has a way with people. She is a charmer. If there is something Veronica wants from you, she can make you want to give it to her. Then, there’s Brittany.

She loves to party. It’s Brittany who enjoys the action during one of her exotic all-nude private shows and who looks forward to the adventures to be had by going out to clubs and concerts, or being mangled in mosh pits at rave gatherings. Brittany is not at all timid about meeting and mingling with the most unusual, potentially dangerous strangers she encounters during her all-night search-and-destroy missions. Nicole has an important function in the keyboard of Savannah’s many personality characters.

She is the businesswoman who conducts her economic affairs profitably. She is rational, intelligent, and driven. She knows how to separate business from her personal life. She is able to keep her clients from crossing the line and complicating her private world. And then, there is Mistress Montaine.

She allows Savannah to function as a dominatrix during her lucrative S&M sessions, but more, it is Mistress Montaine that allows her to push past the normal limits of human experience into alien realm where unknowns that would scare most of us, tantalize, mesmerize, and stimulate her. 

Her one core trait, she cannot tolerate boredom. The only antidote is fresh, new, cutting edge, often dangerous adventure. Together, these and other distinct members of Savannah’s composite personality allow her to navigate through the treacherous waters of her high-risk world. 

The dominating alters most often drive her actions, however, over one memorable summer Veronica was allowed to remain in control to nurture a calm, stable, loving, supportive familial, monogamous relationship with one man.

WAS I READY FOR a more complete union with this exotic, mysterious, and complicated creature? I knew that a relationship with Savannah would be demanding, yet I was not only ready and willing, but stimulated to invest whatever was necessary, take any risk, to build on the promise of the fulfillment I saw unfolding before me.