Acceptance

The moon had turned its back to the night. The black sheet of the Hudson rose and fell in gentle undulations. I walked along the newly built esplanade where cracked cement and sandy weeds used to breed.

With longing I remembered the place it once had been when it was an old unguarded, undeveloped stretch of waterfront. It had been punctuated with a scattering of warn-down, ramshackle, wooden art nouveau style warehouses. They looked to be from the late nineteenth century, like ghostly structures dotting the Thames, with an amber glow flaring through gridded windows, moody inside a dark novel by Dickens. They covered patchy piers where no imports were unloaded anymore. Men, desperate and hopeful, swarmed inside looking for the love they were afraid to find and afraid they would not find. I was looking for the love I had already lost.

I found a path out of there, away from the promenade, too bright now with street lamps and police scooters and puffing joggers, and railings that held you back from the water, and I made my way up Christopher Street, passed where the trucks used to be -- so many, I had not thought death had undone so many -- crossed Bleecker, and stopped on the corner of Seventh Avenue at Sheridan Square and stared at nothing, at the emptiness of the night, at the emptiness of my own life, which had passed, it seemed, without me, and was, nevertheless, still waiting for me. Perhaps to take its hand and help it across the street?

What was it I wanted? What was I looking for? Waiting for? Nothing. It seemed to me, now, nothing. Once...once, it had been something I was waiting for, something -- I had commandeered Rilke's words -- something to make my small life grow. I thought that was someone with beauty in his eyes, grace in his physique, and something commanding in his spirit that could subdue me and arouse me and draw me out. But so many nights I had made love to nothing, to only the darkness, only to my own longing.

I still stared into the emptiness as if I were staring into his eyes, and I still felt the night's resonances, really the reverberation of my own longing coming back to me as if it were someone else's spirit joining with mine. Only now I was not waiting. I was not expecting. I inhabited hopeless days without desire, no longer believing in the possibility of desire.

• • • Using his thumb and middle finger as a vise, my father had put just enough pressure on the back of my neck as we were entering the haberdasher's. I immediately understood that I had better behave in the way my father expected me to behave.

Understood is perhaps the wrong word. It suggests an intellectual process. The electric current, however, beginning as a sharp, surprising pain and continuing as an involuntary charge grating on my muscles and scratching my bones, did not rely on the intellect for its effect.

Ah, Mr. Walters. Jennifer told me you had called, Mr. Lincoln said as he approached us with his tape measure draping his shoulders like a scarf. All his teeth showed in a bizarre smile that combined sophisticated salesmanship with aggressive servility and an unconquerable narcissism.

He wore his charcoal gray, three-button suit, a television blue, oxford shirt, a narrow magenta tie, ivy league trousers that showed his flat belly to advantage, and brown wing-tips with assurance. Only the graying temples hinted that he was no longer a young man.

I was fourteen, intensely self-conscious, plagued enough by an unrelenting awareness of my own shortcomings to know there was something disturbing in this frighteningly attractive man who was going to be showing me clothing, surveying me, running his hands all over my body where nobody else ever touched me to make sure everything fit right.

With the half-life of my father's grip lingering on the back of my neck and still pulsing through me, my body maintained the stance the shock had produced. I stood at attention and extended my hand and forced myself to make eye contact with Mr. Lincoln as we shook hands, as Mr. Lincoln said almost crooning the word you, You must be Cameron.

It was difficult to overcome my instinctive reluctance to make that eye contact my father demanded. I always felt ungainly. And in circumstances like these I felt awkwardly stiff. Failing to appear casual and debonair, as I wished I could, I knew how much of a failure I was in everything.

As best I could, nevertheless, I shook the salesman's extended hand and said in a voice I was ashamed of when I heard it, Hello, Sir.

My father commandingly took Lincoln's hand, then, inside his own large paw without quite shaking it, and throwing his other arm around the salesman's shoulder and drawing him to himself said, I want you to take care of my boy today, Harry.

Of course, Sir, Lincoln replied with a slight bow. What are we looking for?

Are you waiting for someone? he said approaching me.

Not really, I said.

Have a cup of coffee with me, then.

Sure, I said.

In there, he said pointing to a café across Seventh Avenue.

We ordered our coffees and he winked at me but did not say anything.

I was not going to tell him how lonely I was and how much I wanted somebody to give myself to, somebody who would end my turbulence and fill me up with life, who could make my small life grow. It would seem ridiculous in a grown man, off-putting, and unattractively needy. I was not going to empty the phrases that filled up my mind, when I took long walks, when there was nothing there, in front of him. It would be like dumping a bag of dirty underwear on the table. So I remained quiet and uneasy as we sipped our coffees.

I've never been here before, I said, finally, in order to say something, trying to wriggle out from under the gaze he was fixing on me and which I did not understand.

I'm sure there are many places you have never been, he said.

I looked at him without being able to think of a response.

Maybe, I said.

That's alright, he said. I like it.

I smiled weakly, really uncomfortable, desperately searching for something to say, but my mind had gone dead. It was locked, barren, empty. What did he like?

He smiled and extended his hand across the table and covered mine with it.

It's ok, he said. I don't need you to say anything. Relax.

I did, automatically letting out a great wave of breath.

He smiled warmly now.

Good, he said. You don't have to speak. You don't have to figure anything out. You don't have to try to control what happens. I'll take care of everything.

I smiled a puzzled smile.

You like it that way anyhow. Don't you?

Maybe, I said. I wasn't being coy, just afraid and guarded.

Maybe? he repeated. You do. Admit it. I won't bite.

I guess you're right. I hesitated, but he did not say anything. Ok, I said, Yeah, I do.

I thought so.

But it scares me, too, I said.

Of course, he said. Desire is nothing if it isn't frightening. But it's ok. So just be quiet now and leave everything to me, he said, and taking a last swallow from his cup, he indicated I also ought to and signaled for the check.

I moved to get my wallet.

No, no, he said. I'm paying. From now on. Do you know why?

No, I said.

The one who pays is in command. The one he pays for is his dependent. That's the way it is with us. I'm in control. I want you to be entirely dependent on me. I like to be in control of another man. I want to own a man. The feeling of power excites me. I put it bluntly. I know you like it when another man controls you. You want to be told what to do.

Wow, I said.

Yes, wow, he said with a laugh. Come.

I did not ask where, but rose from the table and followed him out of the café.

The dark sky pressed against the skylight above the study in which we sat.

It makes you uncomfortable to admit you're a submissive, doesn't it.

Yes, I said.

But it also excites you.

Yes, I said.

Very much, he said.

Yes, I said.

Good, he said.

Good? I said

It's the sand in the oyster, he said.

I'm not sure I understand, I said.

Being uncomfortable helps you to realize your submissive nature. It's a pressure always pushing you to please me because you know that everything depends on whether or not I am pleased with you. Everything depends on whether or not I am pleased with you.

That is a very frightening thing, I said.

Yes, it is, he said. But it is also the truth. Your truth.

I understand, I said.

Look at me, he said.

I did.

Who am I? he said.

The man who owns me, I said.

The man I serve, I said.

My master, I said.

When I had imagined this sort of thing happening, I said, kicking the rusty leaves in Washington Square Park late the next morning, his arm around my shoulders, and speaking with more ease and openness that was usual for me, I only imagined up to this point. I'd meet someone, be possessed, experience sexual rapture in submission, and then, I did not know where I could go with it.

Sit down, he said guiding me to a bench where there were no other people.

This is serious, he said, and not a pretend game. It's not just exciting words. You have to decide if you are willing to give yourself to me. Once you do, it will have nothing to do with gratifying your fantasy and you won't need to worry about where it's going or about anything else except being completely obedient to me and pleasing me.

You mean that, I said.

I only say what I mean.

Because I have tricked with lots of guys and gone into some very intimate spaces and then a few days later, they don't want to know me.

If you agree to what I'm saying, you'll be bound to me and completely subject to my domination...for the rest of your life. I will take good care of you, but I will own you.

What about my life now, my job, my apartment?

They are in the past, the forgotten past. You will give everything up, including your memory, and become my property. You will be completely dependent on me. I will determine everything. You have no choice about anything. And you will not want to. Your life will shaped by a set of rituals and dedicated to serving and worshipping me.

But I don't know you or anything about you.

Then why did you spend the night in my bed and let me fuck you, and why are you sitting with me here afterwards talking about whether you're going to become my property?

I don't know, I said. How do I know I can trust you?

You don't.

I'm very confused, I said.

Once you surrender to me, you won't be. You know that's true.

But do I? I said wanting it to be so.

Yes, he said.

Yes, I echoed.

How does it feel?

Unreal, I said. Life is not like this. I have a job, an apartment, people I know, books I read, a habitual way of passing my days. I have an identity. I have a past. You can't just lose all that.

No? he said.

No, I said.

He pressed his middle finger gently against the center of my forehead. My head dropped, my eyes closed. I felt his voice leading me down a steep path through a dark forest to a silver pond. I stood on the flowering verge of this mirroring pool. As if from outside I saw myself as a reflection, upright and inverted. I was as I had never been before, proud, naked, muscular, glassy-eyed, bound in a harness of leather bands and silver chains, dissolving into a concentricity of ripples.

======================================================

[When you write, please put the story name in the subject slot. Thanks.]