Toys.

It might have been a cold, winter evening. I really don't remember what time of year it was but for literary value let's say it was a cold, winter evening and the frost was staring to form on the pine trees that definitely did not exist in the city we lived in then. I just like to think there are pine trees everywhere and when there aren't I insert them into my memories instead. It's kind of like mental photoshop, I often add rain as well. On this winter evening, when it was most surely raining as well, the man I love came damn close to breaking my nose. I am not sure how it happened, but I am sure it involved a poetic display of violence. I've said this before and I will say it again, either my face is titanium or it's all going to come crashing without warning one day as a result of all the abuse and I will be the lady without a face. If my face were to be treated as an individual person, it has faced enough trauma between my mother, my ex and the my current partner to have them charged with murder. Yet it had remained largely indestructible. You know those masochists whose asses you keep swatting and nothing ever happens? That's my face.

As a result of that, I am sort of cocky about my face. I've known for a long time that I could defeat any fist with my face. You can put even a tiny dick in me and utterly destroy me. You can kick the left side of my hip and I'll wish I could call the cops. You can literally pinch my nipples in the slightest and I will be in real-ass pain but there is literally nothing that one can do to my face that makes any kind of impact. The next day, I'll just be back for more. Which is why on that cold, rainy, pine-scented winter evening, it came as a great surprise to me when he made an actual impact. I believe it's the size of his hands that is the problem. Two faces of mine could fit in his hands and there might still be some hand leftover. The target is too small for the weapon. In the past I had only been hit by people whose hands were human-sized and while human-hands can inflict a tremendous amount of pain, they have nothing on my titanium face. His hands, however, they are too big, and I know, I am supposed to say that every sadist must always hit exactly what they are aiming for and if they do it wrong it's abuse, so let me just include that right here. I've decided to lean into it and just call it abuse. Let me also include that it's strange how deluded we will allow ourselves to be about how exact a target one can get each time they launch a fist or whip, like only marksmen have ever beat up a bitch well.

So on this cold, rainy, winter evening as the scent of pines wafted through my nose, my abusive lover whacked me in my wriggling face with the back of his hand from the tip of my nose to the bottom of my chin and the *saw* pain. I actually saw what I was experiencing as source code broken down by millisecond per cell and I was completely fucking sure my nose was broken. He said it wasn't, I am still not convinced. I was even less convinced the next day when it *still hurt*. This does not happen to my face. It can be a little sore and a little bruised and quite swollen but never does it *hurt* the morning after. My cunt will hurt on Friday from being fucking on Monday but that's my weak ass bitch. It fucking hurt though. I couldn't touch my nose, or really breathe, without hurting and my tooth and chin felt like they had heartbeats. Opening my mouth required a crowbar and because I am who I am I attempted to give a blowjob and I realised what the true cost of sexually-expressed self-loathing really is.

It hurt and I was fucking scared of the pain.

On that cold, winter evening amidst the pine-forest, my abusive lover almost broke my nose and made me terrified of doing something I have loved my whole life.

Over the years it's actually definitely gotten worse. Each time I see his palm coming at my face now, I feel genuine fear. Terror. I feel the swoop of adrenaline in my chest and close my eyes so tight you'd think I'd learnt to apparate. I flinch now. I move my face away from the thing that is about to hit me. I breakdown each time he hits my nose. Yet the terror is so delicious, it reminds me why I like strange men who break only to mend. With one blow I lost all the indestructible hubris I had for my face. It was always naive but there's something so satisfying about having your delusion crushed by the obliteration of your naivety. Like crushing a worm, but you are the worm and no innocent creature dies.

Nothing still happens to my face. It's as indestructible as ever. He beats and kicks and shoves shoes in there, and the next morning, it's good as ever. But I am scared now. When he beats into my mouth, I sometimes pee my pants a little. When strikes too close to my nose, my insides melt and I become the lady without a body. I'm scared now.  

I'm playing a flush.

Yet I'm fucking terrified.

I still win, but it's the kind of victory you have to mentally photoshop into memory. It's hotter on the other side. The idea of fear, like the idea of winter evenings, has more artistic value in retrospect.