Why had I worried? I knew my parents had striven to give me an independent, rational, feminist outlook. Self-esteem and integrity. I was so lucky, I understood as my father said nothing but, "All right.” It was a blinding realization: my father might have judged me with all the worst things I thought of myself -- but instead, he trusted me to do my best. When I called my mother (long separated from my dad), too many of my flatmates were around for a private conversation indoors. I banished myself into a warm summer storm, cradling my cell phone away from the rain. There was a pause after I said the fateful words -- then she said, "Have you talked to your father about this?” "Yes," I said hesitantly. "Why?" "Well, I think it was an issue in our marriage that I was more into that stuff than he was." Fat droplets soaked my hair. The tight knot in my chest -- familiar for nearly a year -- loosened as I caught my breath. I turned my face up to the sky and let the tilted world resettle around me; my mother's faraway voice helped me through a hundred things that had torn my heart. "You aren't giving up your liberation," she reminded me, and emphasized my continuing right to a partner who respects me. She even noted mildly that she'd "wondered" about me when I was a child. I'd feared that I was damaged, that there was something deeply broken in me. I'd wildly guessed that I'd suffered trauma and repressed the memories. But if my mother -- one of the most independent, feminist women I've ever met -- could reconcile BDSM, then I knew I could. And if she was into BDSM herself, then rather than viewing my proclivities as damage, I could see them as something intrinsic we shared. Over the next hour, my mother told me I could retain rationality, self-esteem and integrity. For the first time, I found myself believing it. My therapist laughed when I told him. "I swear," he cried, "it's genetic!" ok There was one loose end to a conclusion that felt like a fairy tale. Though we had