#fetish

Nipples pls

“I like the idea of feeling in control of losing control.”

I could hear the sense of relief in her voice, and I tried not to smile too much. 

It’s rare to hear a concept boiled down so succinctly into a single sentence. To have so much of the good present, of the why and the how of it right there, in between each word, practically beaming with pride and satisfaction. For it to come from the mouth of someone who hasn’t even done anything yet, who’s interest is only fledgling at best. 

Consent, even when freely surrendered, hangs over a scene like a referee, waiting to flag a foul and pull out the red flag to stop play. Without it there’s no game, there’s no scene, there’s no kinky fuckery or fun depravity. The moment something is not ok is the moment that something stops happening, should stop happening, must stop happening. It’s where the trust comes in, to enable you to feel in control, even when you’re losing your grip on it. It’s handed from one person to another, and you have to know that they’re going to act as you would, given that power. 

I don’t want to be a monster, as much as I might don the mask of one. To cast away hyperbole, I don’t even want to be of questionable moral fibre. I want to be reliable, trust worthy, and good, even as I do things that require hours of context to be deemed as such. And so there’s a duty to cultivate awareness, both of me and of you, and adhere to that. To know when enough is enough, and to know when it isn’t. Best interests and all that. 

The thing to bear in mind is that this is all temporary. There is no such thing as a permanent surrender, to ever truly, wholly give yourself over to another person, transfer possession of your power across to me. As seductive as such an idea might be, it’s fantasy. Instead it’s only ever power lent, control borrowed. Taken back at a moment’s notice, a word burst from your lips that removes your consent from the scene, and expects that to be acknowledged and reacted to. 

Because anything less than that would be abuse. Anything less than that would be morally reprehensible, even if the idea of being utterly at the whim of another seems like an enjoyable fantasy. 

We put checks and balances in place when we are of sound mind, to protect ourselves from the times when we are not. And we owe it to ourselves to then follow our better judgement, for that very quality of being better than we are now. 

There’s no shame in that. A moment’s awkwardness saving you from a lifetime of regret. 

The thing about denial is that it’s mutual. 

And as much as you give me those eyes, that’s the part I think you’re a little too distracted to ever quite understand. That I want to give the release as much as you want to feel it, but I’m hanging on by the whites of my knuckles because I know that each second of frustration will be paid back tenfold. So I push, and I wait, until frustration tumbles into desperation, and you stop looking at me because you can’t really control where you look any more. You’re just balled fists and an undulating body that is rolling to a brand new time signature. 

Except you can disregard that sentiment, at least in part. Because we’re not really in this together, as much as I might romanticise the idea. Yes, I’m as turned on as you are. Yes, I want to see you spill over into ecstasy almost as much as you do, and yes, I’m pushing you until you start to creak and crack because it’s worth it, all that, because of what happens afterwards. But the secret (not so secret), is that I get to enjoy you the whole time. 

It’s its own little climax, seeing you like this. A reduction of a person, blown way out of proportion. You, seen through the reverse end of a binocular, filling up the landscape with the beautiful swell of your personality, expressed without vocabulary beyond four letter words and solitary vowels, and all the body language required to create a whole new dictionary filled with slowly sliding arms, arched backs and shuddering hips. 

I can drink it all in, every drop, swallow an ocean of you, from the moment I start until the moment I let you fall, be consumed by yourself, drowned in it. It feels like I can get a handle on you, as a human being, and all that that entails, in that stretched, escalating yawn of time. Not necessarily know you, in the sense that anyone can known anyone else, but more get the sensation. Feel your personality brush against my palm, so that I could almost grasp it. 

We all have our own little distractions.

It wasn’t long before he started to colour outside of the lines. 

In fairness, they hadn’t lain them down particularly clearly. And in fairness, it wasn’t as though this was ever going to be a particularly clean exercise. It’s messy, something rocking the bottom of the bucket. Things slosh, they spill over. What is designed for the bedroom bleeds through the walls, saturates them until they make it out, into the home, then further still, until they venture outside and smell that sweet smog. 

The start was innocent enough, as starts tend to be. He sent her a text, a distraction from work, an idle question that contained just a tiny hint of flirtation. It was a confluence of sorts, that conversation, a spark that he threw out being fanned by her, and before long they had a conflagration on their hands. 

Opportunity surged forward, and he had to consider it, at least in passing. He could take this moment, transplant it from flirtation to actuality, and what would be lost? Perhaps a little innocence, perhaps a little cleanliness in terms of compartmentalisation, But really it was just an extension of what they were already doing, albeit in a different context. 

The text he composed was innocent enough, a question posed without a question mark, so that it looked just a little bit like an order. So that his intent and desire was clear, but there was still space for her to refuse. His thumb hovered over the send button, enjoying the twin possibilities, while they still existed. Wondering which he might be snuffing out, whether it was irreversible. 

He didn’t get a reply immediately. In a way he enjoyed that, as it allowed his imagination to meander its way over to her, think about all the things she was thinking at the moment, how she might feel, what her body might be saying. Whether her cubicle had suddenly become humid, the temperature elevating imperceptibly, enough that she couldn’t sit still. Whether her cheeks might blush. 

The phone buzzed with a lazy pleasure, and he rolled it in his palm before he checked. She was supplicant, awaiting instruction. He thought about her trepidation, how much she’d have hesitated on engaging him like this, allowing him to transgress his way into her work life, when previously he’d just been a private affair. 

And so he smiled, and put her to work. Had her find her own privacy, recreate the depravity of their bedroom in the restroom stalls. The reply took longer this time, minutes turning into tens, and then his mind wandered away from her, back to his work, if a touch more distracted than before. 

It meant the buzz of his phone was a surprise, the next time. It meant that when he saw that little affirmation that she’d done as he’d said, he saw a lot more in those three words than he had in entire novels. An entire scene, unfolding in his head, 

He didn’t finish the paragraph he’d been working on til after lunch. 

The blades of the fan make a whomp whomp whompeach time they complete a rotation. It’s violence, that sound, razor sharp indifference spinning by, happy in oblivion. It makes me shiver, ever so slightly, to think about how happy it is to keep on spinning. About how imminent the bloody mess could be. 

About how, any moment now, I’m going to actually throw my hand between those blades, try and seize an opportunity and come out unscathed. 

It’s a curious thing. There’s definitely something of exposure to it, leaving myself a vulnerable while the other person processes the information, makes a judgement, and decides whether they’re going to eviscerate me or let it stand. I feel like I’m pulling a pin on a grenade and I’m just finding out whether the other person is as much of an explosives enthusiast as I am. 

A year ago, I think things would be different. Twelve months can be a long time to the twenty-something bracket, and this particular twelve seems to have been something of a sea change, something bubbling to the surface of the collective subconscious and floating happily there, bobbing with the waves. It would seem, in parts, that this whole thing has slipped from deterrent to curiosity. 

I’d say it’s proving my own personal theories, of the prevalence of the D/s dynamic in vanilla relationships, where you could take any one of them, snapshot it, and be able to assign one side or the other to either person involved. I’d say that people are just realising that control is another word for fun, that experimenting is a thrill, but I think it’s more to do with a popularising of the notion than anything else. 

More to the point, it’s forcing me to verbalise my interest in a way that isn’t steeped in technical terms, soaked in awareness and marinaded in a general understanding of the lifestyle. Layman’s terms to put it lightly, more often I’m finding myself grasping for analogy and abstracts, casting shadows against a wall and declaring ‘Don’t you see? Can’t you see? It’s right there, in between the light and dark.’ They smile. Sometimes I think it’s genuine. 

There’s a joy in that, too, in the sharing of it. Broadening someone’s horizons, introducing them to something new, and maybe taking the first few steps along the road together, seeing all of these things that have been normalised to me, rendered the everyday, for the novelty of them, vicarious experience through the eyes of a newcomer, all fascination, fear and excitement. To see her face the first time I tie her down. To shape it like a sculpture, with a little of my own image thrown in. 

I might revel in the teaching, but I’ve got my own little narcissist pruning in the corner.