The Devil You Know (14 page)

I washed Troy's feet in a basin beside the couch while he watched
Family
Guy
(a program more punishing to my sensibilities than any spanking) and then dried them with my hair. He's asked that I stop cutting it. I have gained three pounds this week, and now, when he comes over, one of our foreplay activities is my “weigh-in.” I don't feel any particular erotic charge from my increasing size, but anything that I know will lead to sex is exciting enough. I feel rather glamorous about it all, like some kind of showgirl in reverse. And my slacks are no longer falling off my hips.

My face is pressed so deeply into the pillow that I struggle to get any air at all. I arch against the strain of the cuffs, my arms bound behind my back and shackled to my ankles, my legs folded beneath me. There comes a point where fear takes over, leading to panic and more thrashing, and the tenor turns abruptly away from sex. One loses control over responses or emotions when the prevailing thought becomes “please don't let me die.” And yet, underneath it all still is this strange and won derful undercurrent of desire, this yearning and throbbing sensation throughout the body that is so much life in the midst of possible death.

Just as I am convinced I'm going to lose consciousness, Troy yanks my head up from the pillow by my ponytail and I draw a delicious cool and shuddering breath. It is, I imagine, what nearly drowning feels like, to get one's bearings back and kick towards the light until finally breaking the surface of the water. As I'm still gasping, Troy pulls out of me, rolls me onto my side and drags me towards the edge of the bed, where he fucks my open mouth and I pant and puff through my nose. I taste my own cunt before he takes his cock in his hand and, groaning, directs his semen over my face, thoughtfully avoiding my eyes, since I like to watch.

This is sex as true union, I have discovered. I think back to all of my previous sexual experiences, of boredom and faked orgasms. Certainly, having a new partner was entertaining and novel, and that often provided a kind of thrill, but it was a thrill borne solely of anxiety, not of trust. The times I lay there imagining a former experience or some fantasy image, instead of feeling a true union with my lover. Everything was built around the idea of achieving orgasm, which, while not an unworthy goal, does miss the point somewhat. What a joy it is to discover orgasm as an inevitable part of the journey, a glorious destination created in trust and in letting go. The sex act offers the promise of union, but I had seldom felt anything akin to true oneness before Troy. The ridiculous notion that a woman's vagina was some kind of physical portal to romantic ecstasy, an opening to a spectral plane—how outmoded and patriarchal, I reasoned, especially when I had taken lovers into this supposedly intimate place and still was able to contemplate my to-do list, or craft clever stories to tell about the experience later.

But pain! Pain is unifying. Pain leaves no room for to-do lists or anything else. When my face is in the pillow and my limbs are tightly bound, there's precious little room for thought. There is only feeling, and a kind of prayer that I will be rescued from this bondage, this prison of my own making. It is then that I am at one with Troy, that I give over, quite literally, my life to him. This is the ecstasy; this is that spectral plane. I am alone still, perhaps, but alive. Aware. Present.

I have trouble with some of the terminology in “the scene” and wonder how much of it is necessary. Master and slave make me cringe, for obvious reasons. Dominant and submissive are more accurate, but clinical. Top and bottom seem to be the exclusive province of the gay community. Some women call their partners “Sir.” That, at least, strikes me as elegant. Troy's nickname for me is D.W. It stands for Dirty Whore, which amuses.

Although my work skirts still fit, I've taken to exclusively wearing long sleeves and slacks to the office. Despite our best efforts to be cautious, sometimes bruises find their way onto my arms and legs and neck. A couple of my coworkers have asked if I'm all right. I seem distracted, they say, or sad, and they don't want to pry, but they are worried about me. It's a peculiar thing, because I feel more energized and elated than ever before. I suppose to the outside observer, I might seem quieter, even sullen, but that is simply the result of having stripped away the lies and the falsehoods from my life. Now that I understand what love really is, I don't have a lot to say unless it's important. There was a time when these people, these strangers, really, had so much influence over my life. I wanted them to like me, to respect me. Now I discover I don't care what they think of me or my life, and so I suppose I have been gradually writing them out. I spend more and more time on the forums with the women who understand what I'm experiencing right now, and who live the life that I long to live, as many of them are lucky enough to be married to their Sirs.

Electrical tape created a bold contrast with my pale flesh. Each tightly tape-encircled breast first turned red, then purple. My weight gain has made my breasts larger, which pleases Troy. He beat them with the flat side of my hairbrush until my left nipple began to bleed. At first I felt the pain, then realized I was too numb to feel it at all. It's interesting how so much of what one interprets as pain is simply a reaction to the visual feedback of injury. Troy licked the blood away, then pushed me into a kneeling position on the floor. He stood and, gathering my hair in one hand and lifting my face to him, smacked me over and over across the face with his erection. I shifted my weight enough to grind my clitoris against my right heel, as we came together, me against my foot and Troy on my bruised and bleeding breasts. It was marvelous.

I want to disappear into this world. I want to belong to him utterly, to be lost in him and serve his every desire. I long to feel the freedom of giving in completely, to the complete sublimation of my own needs. I assume this is the draw of the cult, the fervor of the religious fanatic. My god is sex and pain and all I want to do is pray.

Troy cornered me in the entranceway and checked to make sure I wasn't wearing any panties. I was nervous, with it being such a stupidly short skirt, but I didn't dare disobey him. In the restaurant, he took his steak knife under the table and ran the tip along my thigh. I tried to look at ease as I gulped back red wine. On the way home, we cut through the park, and he led me over to a bench. Troy finger-fucked me while some old drunk watched us from the other side of the baseball diamond. On the walk home, my exposed thighs gleamed wet under the streetlights.

Troy and I had casually discussed the possibility of inviting another woman for a threesome, but when Troy texted me that he'd found someone and they were both on their way over, I felt more than a little panicked. I wished I'd had more time to clean, as one does, but tried not to fret. I suppose some of my anxiety about tidiness was more about my having sex with a woman, something I'd never done. I turned down the lights, lit some candles, and threw the laundry in the closet. I had approximately forty minutes. Grand Marnier was the only liquor in the cupboard, so I had a couple quick swallows. I didn't want to look as though I was trying too hard, but I did change into my cream silk nightgown and pulled my hair back. I also put on my faux pearl choker, thinking Troy might like to drag it through our labia later.

The woman, Sherry, was beautiful—certainly prettier than me. She was an excellent guest, arriving with a bottle of Shiraz, which I promptly uncorked. I have never been so grateful for a glass of wine. We worked our way through the bottle quickly, making awkward small talk. Troy took our empty glasses from us and we walked into the bedroom and sat on the bed. Sherry and I began kissing. I was amazed at how soft she was; her skin was like velvet and she smelled of baby-powder-scented antiperspirant and hairspray, but in the most pleasant way. Her mouth was full and soft on me. I understood how men could drive themselves mad over such softness, such tastes and smells. It was easily the most vanilla intercourse Troy and I had had in a very long time, but there was no shortage of novelty that night, thanks to Sherry's presence.

Although I enjoyed myself, I'm not sure I'd want to repeat the performance. There was a single moment that night that keeps playing in my memory. Troy was directing traffic, as it were, and when he was asking Sherry to move over to the other side of the bed, he said tenderly, “C'mere, babe.” I know I shouldn't dwell on it, and that it probably means nothing, but it stung worse than any slap. I'm having extraordinary difficulty letting it go.

Sometimes I am troubled by what I read online. My new acquaintances in the BDSM community are, for the most part, articulate, well rounded, and intelligent. I don't always agree with them, but I appreciate their candor. But occasionally I read about some woman's journey into this lifestyle and wonder if what she's doing is simply being complicit in her own oppression. Sometimes I have felt as though I want to turn my entire life over to Troy, but then I discover that some women have done exactly that. Their partners make all the decisions about their lives, and the woman works and raises the children and is then expected to have her master-created list of chores completed before he returns home, or risk real punishment. Sometimes the power and pain is restricted to the bedroom, while others are collared and shackled, or have to sit on the floor, even for meals. I try not to judge their choices, but I can't help but contemplate the line between submission and victimization. Is there a difference between being dominated and being abused? And where does all of this leave me?

In my spare time, I've taken to writing all these confused and jumbled feelings down. I spend so much time online and I've posted some of my ramblings in the BDSM forums. I put in some line breaks, and I know that these “poems” are just dreadful, but they help me organize the chaos in my mind. The response from readers has been tremendously encouraging, which is kind.

“Make it New”

To make it new means what?

To begin again, to be born again?

To be redeemed and

clean at last?

Pain is my redeemer

pain is my meditation

pain is emptiness and reception.

I am the vessel through

which the divine can be glimpsed.

There is a place where it is new

it is a place beyond sex

but you have to go through sex to get there.

I post this as I'm waiting for Troy to send me a message. I want to believe what I've written, but it rings false. I even extracted a line that was about being stripped of one's worries and one's consciousness. That was too much of a lie, even for me. My bruises, even as I sit nursing them with arnica ointment and cool compresses, are just a distraction. My worries and my consciousness are still very much present. It could be argued that I have just as many problems in my life as I did before I met Troy, and I've merely gotten better at ignoring them. In fact, if the last few days are any indication, I have even more to be concerned about. Here I am, battered and bruised, waiting for some man to instant-message me. I hardly see anyone outside this relationship, the relationship itself is an affair, my co-workers are worried about my sanity, I sneak around my own city going to strange restaurants so we won't be caught, and my body looks like I've been pushed down a flight of stairs. I don't feel free of anything.

When I think about Troy, I realize that I know very little about him beyond what I've experienced of him directly. His expressions of love and fidelity are meaningless, really. Who's to say he doesn't go home to his wife and make love to her after seeing me, or any other number of women? I was so flattered by his attentions, by my own pampered vanity, that I ignored his guarded nature. I was only interested in how he saw me, and the potential to become a new person in his eyes. The further we go in this relationship, the more I see that this…thing that we have, cannot solely sustain me. It's as though I barely know him outside the bedroom. When I try to think of us talking, or walking together, I can't quite picture him. If Troy's not hitting me or fucking me, then what is he? He becomes formless, ghostly.

The wife went out of town to visit relatives and Troy invited me back to his apartment after dinner. I eagerly accepted, thinking only of how much I would learn about him there, how I would finally see where he spent his time away from me. On the trip over, however, I began to have doubts. There were certain to be things there that I didn't want to see, symbols and souvenirs of a couple who'd spent more than ten years together. It also occurred to me that Troy would most likely want to have sex there. My initial excitement turned to dread, my chest tight with anxiety.

Once inside his condo, my eyes ran wild, scanning the rooms and taking in as much information as I could. Gathering clues, I suppose. The apartment was generic in style, the usual assortment of furnishings from low-priced chain stores; an enormous flat-screen television dominated the living room. It was clean and relatively tidy, save for an assortment of magazines and DVDs scattered on the coffee table. In the kitchen, a single pot sat soaking in the sink. A water glass on the kitchen counter. On a bookshelf, a photograph of Troy and a woman on top of a mountain somewhere. He was considerably thinner and smiling. She was blonde and chesty, but in an outdoorsy rather than a glamorous way. She had large, even teeth.

We sat on the leather sofa together and I feigned interest in a travel magazine. Troy asked if I wanted to watch a movie and I agreed, relieved to have something else to think about.

“I hope you like it,” he said, grinning back at me. He slid a VHS cassette into a VCR on the bottom shelf of the entertainment unit.

“You still have a VCR?” I asked, incredulous and laughing. “What on earth are we watching?”

After a few moments of grey fuzz, a grainy image flickered to life on the screen. An Asian woman stood before the camera in a white bra and underwear. She said something I couldn't make out, and then laughed. She bent down and removed her panties, her long dark hair hanging in front of her face. She took off her bra, and spun around with her arms overhead. I heard a man's voice in the background. It was Troy. Then I realized I recognized the setting; they were in his living room.