#aaanyway

Courageous Variety

This girl was fierce. Alive in all the right ways, coming out of the left field and not stopping until she’d streaked well past what was right and proper, left laughing and winded on the other side of the pitch. She was kinky, of course she was kinky. She smoked, but I didn’t really mind that. The bite of the tobacco in the back of my throat after we kissed tickled that tiniest of masochistic urges that dwells inside.

We were at a party one night, near Christmas, and she went out for a cigarette. It was cold, my jacket was warm, so I tagged along. It would be nice to get her alone, as I’d been undressing her visually all evening, and my hand was starting to itch, fingers drumming out a tattoo against my thigh as I half paid attention to conversation. I wanted to feel the beat of her heart through my thumb as I squeezed against her windpipe. I wanted to feel the tobacco scratch against my throat. 

“You know you can slap me if you want to, right?” She’d just exhaled, and the heat from the smoke as it hung in the air seemed almost comfortable in the cold of the night. I couldn’t help but smirk.

“If you want to ask, just ask.” She just shrugged.

“Can you slap me?” So I did. 

I’ve got big hands, and her face turned with the impact. It wasn’t even a heavy blow, just a fast one, the sting hanging around longer than the fingers ever had. The way her eyes stayed closed, her mouth hanging ever so gently open, made me want to kiss her. But instead I just smiled.

“Again?” She nodded. Yes, she’d liked that. So I slapped her again.

She was unafraid. Kink wasn’t anything secret to her, and I admired that about her. But when we finally got to the bedroom, she winced when she saw the pale light of the computer monitor, the soft glow of the bedroom lamp. 

“Can you turn them off?” I was confused. I stated as much.

“I’ve just got.. issues.” It didn’t matter to me. The darkness wouldn’t take her away from me any more than the light, and I wasn’t planning on getting out the rope. Besides, my fingers knew the knots well enough to tie them without the help of my eyes, anyway. 

What struck me was the contradiction of it all. She was so brave in so many ways, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t afraid in a few others. This isn’t some passport to universal courage, a way to escape all the things that make you anxious, afraid, alone. It’s not going to instantly make you gloriously happy with yourself, or remove your self esteem issues. It’s just its own thing, and you can’t expect it to be more than that.

The beauty, then, is in how it nudges you along all those paths, opens the doors, and lets you walk through them. It takes away some of the glare of the light, so you can look at yourself with a less critical eye.