He Thought He Would Never.

The first time it happened, I hadn't been expecting it at all. The reason I hadn't been expecting it was because when we first discussed it, the idea seemed to shock him. He said it seemed too aggressive somehow to pick up a shoe and hit someone in the face with it. He wasn't sure if he would ever be comfortable doing something like that. Of course, this discussion happened a couple of years before he actually did it, and in that time our relationship underwent massive changes. I'm not even sure how they happened. When we first got together, we were madly and loudly in love, and that's not the thing that changed but it was what governed the dynamic in our relationship back then. I was freshly out of a complicated relationship that had left literal landmines all over my body, and he was going through a nasty divorce. I wasn't ready to lose all my power in a relationship again, willingly or unwillingly, and he wasn't sure how much of his sexuality he could freely express around me and himself. Both of us, individually, were going through major life changes. Even though we were already together, I still didn't know who I was going to be in my next relationship.

I think that showed in the truly random and wild expression of my sexuality back then. Even if by some standards it is atypical, my sexuality is predictable, especially to me, and has been for a long time. I know exactly what I'm about. It's long-lasting multi-faceted pain that ultimately redefines me, slowly and deliberately, like a slow-poisoning. That covers everything, it's a complete definition of what I want out of my sexuality. Back then, though, I was suddenly unsure, and confused. Our sex life was amazing, but a little bit nuts for me. I wanted, and needed to get beaten, because honestly it's like orgasms to me. A sexual necessity. A sexual right, even. I still needed that, but I also needed it paired with something parental, if somewhat incestuous, and indulgent (<- does it show that I'm just trying to avoid saying the word daddy?). I also needed it to not be..owned. Here's the thing, and it's a horrible thing (which feels very good), we all play this ownership game, right? We all love the idea of our body being owned by someone. Even though I'm using the word "all" generously in this scenario, it is a sentiment to which people relate. The idea of being *owned* is hot. It's a great game.

The problem with this game, though, is that because it feels so good to play, you underestimate its potential for any impact on you. Even the most innocuous-seeming things sometimes (and this isn't even that) can have a lasting impact, and playing with the ownership of your body is like a cat you've been playfully swatting just a little too long. The experience of its reaction may still be pleasurable because the cat is cute, but it will have drawn blood from you. For me, ownership of my body is complex. My early sex-life was governed by a total lack of choice, I had no say in the matter of when sex would be had with me (<- does it show that I am trying to avoid saying rape?). My longest relationship, though in some ways was about me recognising and allowing myself to experience the reality of my sexuality, it was also one that stripped me of agency. That's how real the game can become. I know we all love to talk about how kink is so deep and meaningful and cerebral, and who knows maybe it is, it's also very physical (which is not necessarily sexual). The physical experience of not having control over your physical self for a prolonged period of time, even when perfectly consensual, is not impact-free.

For instance, I don't remember the last time in my life when I was able to make a decision about when I would have an orgasm. It's been over a decade. Not sightly over a decade, either. That's hot in some ways, and deeply erotic in others (which is my real trouble), but it's a real, physical thing too. It's a lack of control so basic to me that I doesn't even occur to me to touch myself at any point, ever. It alienates that part of my body from me in a way. I just don't make decisions for it (which does not mean I don't make medical, aesthetic or hygiene based decisions for it). My cunt doesn't really *feel* like mine. That's how I think about it, as something I keep for someone else. I have conceptual ownership, of course, in the sense that if I sell it, I earned that and I have the right to it money, but who gets to keep it depends on the agreement I had with the people involved. My point, from which I seem to have deviated ages ago, is that the feeling of giving up ownership to any part of myself when I had just gotten out of my previous relationship was terrifying.

Of course, I couldn't say that, I had to be a tough guy. I don't have emotions and wounds, I only have weird sex and overly complex sentences that could be twelve-words shorter. I couldn't say that I wasn't feeling entirely like myself, sexually. So, I flip flopped. *Beat me up a lot, but I may yell randomly. Hurt me tremendously, but I may respond by choking you. Fuck me till I cry, but I will also scratch you and resist, until you cry too. Tell me what to do, and then watch me elaborately and creatively disobey.* Sex with me back then was like fighting with someone who desperately wishes someone could convince them it was okay to keep losing. It had its charm, I did always lose eventually, and when I do, I apologise a lot, which to sadists is like deep-throating. Retrospectively, I realise a lot of our early sex-life was uncharacteristic of me in its execution, and too chaotic for someone like me. I may seem chaotic but that's because I channel all of my obsessive behaviour into my sexuality so as to avoid becoming literally any of the women in my family who have to even the spaces in the curtains every night before they can go to bed. Early on, with him, he had no control. I had no control. It was just chaotic, insane energy that had to have each other. It was great, but it was repressed because I wasn't back to myself. He wasn't entirely himself. I was scared of what going down the paths I had sexually gone down earlier would lead. When I suggested hitting me in the face with the shoe at that time, we were not the right people to do that.

Somehow the weird, all over the place, loving and intensely paternal relationship he had with me, gave me exactly what I needed to recover and heal. Something I have him enabled him to feel in control in relationships again as well. Four years ago, we had a conversation that I think was the beginning of things changing between us, and of course it wasn't, and I couldn't possibly actually say that with accuracy, but let's say for the sake of making the story sound more magical, it was. He asked me to do something and I didn't do it because my day was ridiculously full. It was not humanely possible to get it done. I told him that.

"It's okay," he said, "You didn't have the time to do it."

"That doesn't have to mean it's okay," I told him.

I explained what I meant. I meant that just because something you ask of someone you own is unreasonable and undoable, doesn't mean it has to be okay with you. You don't have to accept the physical limitations of someone you can control as an excuse if you don't want to. It's nice and considerate, and fair, to do it, but you don't have to do it. In a situation where that's agreed-upon, they'd just have to take it. I like to be in relationships where I just have to take it. He was deeply moved, and also disturbed by my explanation, but then he fucked me like he wanted me to die. Later, he brought it up himself, and we talked about it for a long time. He kept asking me if I understood what I was saying. I do. I did. That's the point of the game to me. It's not how to be the best master you can be. That's not the game. It's not the one I am playing. The one I am playing is how to be the most cruel you can be. In the most organised, well-defined and carefully discussed way possible. The point of "ownership" is not about doing to me things that that I want and that alone, no, it's about giving the option of doing things to me that I don't want at all. At all. No one wants to be held responsible for things over which they had no control, it literally makes me cry every time he chides me for having a reaction I could not control. It's horrible, but I want horrible. I want him to have the option of not accepting my limitations as an excuse. Not even me need to breathe. Which doesn't mean I don't need to breathe, it just means that if that annoys him, he is perfectly at liberty to punch me for it. That I know that he won't use that it the wrong way or moment, is about the fact that I trust him, and even that doesn't mean he won't ever screw up. It's just the kind of relationship I want to be in, and the kind that he does, but it wasn't possible until we have worked each other, and ourselves out.

When it became possible, magically after that conversation, things changed between us a lot. How we feel about each other didn't change, but sexual-power shifted. I could no longer dictate or control our sexual interactions, or how I could act in them. I didn't even want to. When I think back to that person I was for the first year or so, I cannot identify at all. I had so much fight in me, I have none whatsoever anymore. He has so much more inside me that was suppressed because of the lack of control. Still, when he first hit me in the face with his shoe, I was surprised. I had just forgotten about it as a possibility, much less one I had suggested years ago. I was taken aback, but I didn't yell, choke or act out in any way. It just felt like the shoe was coming home. So dramatic. But it did. It just felt like I was actually experiencing a lack of control over my body again, and I wasn't terrified. It wasn't making me panic. It wasn't terrifying anymore. Whatever temporary damage had been done, was healing. So even though my face took a few days to heal after that, it was amazing that he did something he thought he never would, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world to him, and it was amazing that I felt something I had experienced hundreds of times before, and it seemed completely new.

.......