The snow had been falling heavily for several hours. The branches of the trees, which lined the street, were crowned with easy and delicate layers of snow.
Inside, in our apartment, it was hot enough to go without clothes, and we had to open the window a crack from time to time.
Max was sitting by the fireplace, with a copy of Paradise Lost and a notepad, going over the poem. He had not taught it for several years, and now, with Taylor on sabbatical, he was going to.
My wrists were fastened above my head, spread-eagle, to the chinning bar suspended in the casement of the doorway that gave from one sitting room onto another. I was stripped of clothing, except for a cock-ring, a black leather thong, and a tight leather collar. Each nipple was clamped by a sharp, silver clip shaped like a tiny lion's claw. My toes just touched the floor. My body was as taut as a solid hard on.
The pain, what can I say about the pain that would make you understand what it was doing to me? I might say that it was almost intolerable in order to give you a sense of its intensity. But that would not do, because it is clear enough that I was tolerating it. But tolerating is entirely the wrong word. I was worshiping it, surrendering to it. I had become one with it. I was a piece of steel that felt what it was like to be tempered. Pain defined me. It stretched me out to my fullest and made me feel my outlines, my boundaries, the contact points between me and everything. It illuminated me. But it was pain. It was pain, not pleasure.
How had I become a person who chose, who pursued the thing, the feelings which most people tried to avoid? How was it that I was an alien to pleasure, or, perhaps, more exactly, that pleasure was alien to me?
How is pain different from pleasure? We say of someone, he takes pleasure in pain. But it is a bad way of speaking. It regards pain from the perspective of pleasure and grants pleasure the advantage. But pain is pure in itself and as alluring to the sensations as pleasure. It mobilizes the same intensity of excitement and emotion. Yet pain hurts and signifies loss.
Cries which are cries of pleasure break forth. Cries which are cries of pain are the same cries but they remain inside uncried and become crippled power and pride.
It is a pain I am talking about that is not connected to sadness. It takes on suffering, enduring, bearing -- with gladness.
You are not here, Max says, smilingly, pressing the clips into my nipples. Without a sound or moving a muscle I draw in a wisp of breath.
You are tripping, Max says.
I had not noticed him put his book down or heard him approach.
Here I am, sir, I respond, entirely unable to remember what I was thinking about.
He fills my field of vision. He is shirtless and wonderful to look at. He shows his man's chest with a boy's pride. He is the focal point of my desire.
He releases me.
I kneel before him and slowly unbuckle his belt and open his jeans.
I swim to him and wrap my lithe wet body around him and feel him place me under him.
I feel him enter me and claw me with his nails and devour me with his teeth, and I can do nothing but that to him, also. I dig my nails into his back as he charges himself into me and recoils. I bite at his nipples, nipping at his chest like a dog.
I envelop him like a whirlpool.
Inside, he storms and thunders, the foundations shake, and he shudders. But outside, the Grecian façade of his marble body tightens and tightens, until within breaks out and turns us both inside out.
We are soaked with sweat and push our bodies softly into each other and kiss tenderly, and I pull a single sheet over us in order to cover our naked bodies.
He told me to meet him outside the jeweler's Tuesday afternoon because he wanted to buy real nipple rings to replace the ones Gary had inserted, which are only supposed to stay in me while the piercings heal.
I waited from one-thirty, the time he ought to have been there until quarter to three when he called to say we would have to do it tomorrow or the next day because he could not make it now.
I ought not to have said anything, not even thank him for calling. I simply ought to have said, Yes, sir.
But I was stupid. I let down my guard. I was hurt. I wanted tenderness. I was not strong enough or disciplined enough or^ÅI don't know what^Åto say nothing.
I wish you had called earlier or answered your phone, I said quietly, in the most unaggressive voice I could manage.
Do you think you are all I've got to think about? Max laughed.
No, I said, and stifled a but that was banging on the gates of my teeth to get out.
Right, he said, be good, laughing, and he slapped his cell shut, wherever he was.
Where ever he was, I would have liked to have been there and felt his warm attention powering and overpowering me. But it was just as likely that he would have ignored me, frowned on me and shined his light on someone else who was also there. And I would have fallen into a pit of despair and jealousy.
I was uneasy and petulant all afternoon. It was an effort to prepare dinner and to set the table with candles and flowers as he liked it.
He did not apologize. He never does. But when he got home I could see he was not angry with me for complaining.
He took me in his arms when I opened the door and kissed me like he owned me, which he does. I let my breath out and went limp. My body yielded without thought. Everything evaporated into a cloud of bliss. He held me in his arms and I forgot I had been angry with him.
He laughed.
I looked at him.
Yes, he said. I am. I am laughing at you. There is something absurd about you, trying to be a mindless, selfless slave when everything about you shouts out me. Even the perfection of your body shows how hooked you are on yourself. Tell me about you.
I'm hopelessly in love with you.
That's too bad.
I know.
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