A Penitent Season: Day 12

Note: This is a series of 14-days of erotic penance written in real-time available exclusively to my patrons. It's our observation of a real fucked up version of Lent. You can access the entire series at this tag.

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Day 12

I keep finding cuts and bruises on my body, ones I forgot and ones I never took note of, I can't tell if they are healing or forming. I don't care though. When I decided that I would capture a part of this journey visually, I was concerned about my ability to actually do it. It's not really that I am a bad photographer, I'm strongly okay, especially since I've had the benefit of some professional instruction (which didn't actually take, it was a struggle for me to pass that class and apparently you don't get extra points for essays as captions). I have a very poor visual imagination, I actually think I may have aphantasia, because when I do think, it's never imagery that passes through my mind, it's descriptions. When I think about people in my life, I don't see their faces, I remember their scents, the things they said to me, how they made me feel and what we did together. My dreams are rarely vivid or visual, they're mostly conversational and emotional, I don't remember seeing much at all, but I remember information being fed to me as descriptions and how it made me feel. When I watch things, I mostly listen or read the subtitles. 

I remember the first time I had the — Do you think in words or images? — conversation with someone. It was my roommate Suzanne. We were sitting on the roof of our house, legs dangling over the side of the ledge, she was holding her blue guitar and talking, as always, about aliens. Somehow the conversation meandered to the point where she discovered that I wasn't seeing images in my head and I discovered that she was, we were both so surprised by one another's brains, I could not believe she had a picture book in her head and she could not believe I had a notebook. 

"Our experience of the world will always be so different," she said to me, "You will never be able to think as me and I couldn't think as you, do you ever worry that you cannot feel what it's like to be other people?" 

She gave me chills because I did worry about that. Well, maybe not worry, but I have thought about it with varying degrees of concern my entire life. I must have been around six or seven when I first started to panic about the fact that I couldn't embody the life experience of other people, when I attempted to ask my mother how it could be done, I realised the sentiment that was bothering me was very difficult to convey. She told me about empathy and maybe empathy was part of the answer, but my question and its origin was deeper than that, I didn't want to be able to understand other people, I wanted to be them. I didn't want to experience what happened to them, I wanted to *feel as them*. As a child, I really thought this was going to be one of the primary emotional and mental conflicts of my adulthood. As an adult, I realised this is why I write. Writing allows me to live a thousand lives, it comes naturally because the desire to *occupy* the life of another person preceded the expert instruction on the use of language, so the curiosity to discover was already in place. The obsession with self-awareness and the dissection of my own experience is to enable the granular comprehension of being human, so I may know what to look for, when I attempt to plagiarise the mind, pain and life experience of another. 

It's not the same with pictures. 

I take them because other people take them. I don't even take them actually, I have told my partners they can, so long as I cannot see the camera in action and I am not distracted from what I am doing and the space I am in. The camera is a disruptive medium to me. I understand that there are people who thrive in that environment, it is not an inherently disruptive medium, but when I see a camera, not just in a sexual scenario but even in a social one, I no longer want to do what I am doing. I no longer want to be there. I feel like I need to perform the moment. Any picture I do take myself, I take them after the fact when there is nothing left to ruin (not even me), but even then I do not enjoy it. I've said this openly before and I will happily say it again, I take pictures for the attention and the traffic so that people will see them and then go read more of my writing and subscribe. I barely did pictures before I decided to monetize my content here. I don't mind doing them for this reason, as a reason this makes sense to me, even though I don't like it but since it doesn't impact, change or hamper my writing in any way, I don't mind doing a slightly tedious task. I could just leave it be but I'd like to make more money because I'd like to make more money. If it hampered my writing or shifted my focus, I would stop. 

As I set out to perform this two week journey into my own madness, I decided I would do a picture a day. I don't know why, it wasn't about the business aspect of this decision, I wanted to know what kind of picture I would take, if I didn't use the formula. In general, I use the formula: If you go to a mountain, take a picture of a sunrise, if you get a beating, take a picture of a bruise, if you stick a needle in your face, take a picture of the needle. That seems easy enough and even I can do it. It brings me no joy or thrill to share these pictures. However, in the past few months I have taken a few pictures that weren't formulaic, they were conceptual but most importantly, they were attempting to capture and convey an emotion. It was thrilling to share those pictures.  I realised what I was seeking from making pornographic videos (in which porn is defined as sadomasochistic play) and I expected to hate it, but I didn't. I loved it. The thing I loved about it, aside from the fact that you can set up the camera and forget about it therefore taking away its disruptive power, was that it conveyed something I want to convey — Emotion, spontaneous interaction, vulnerability and humanity. There are no perfect angles in video, you kinda have to get them all. You can edit and direct, for sure, but let's say we are choosing not to. In video I didn't have to curate or choose which parts of me I want to show and which ones I want to hide, in many ways it was very similar to how I feel about exposing myself through writing. 

I write for a lot, lot more than exhibitionism, but there is an element of exhibitionism to my writing that I find sexually thrilling. It's the exposition of my dissected, vulnerable and emotional self. I don't actually want anyone to see me as a sexual goddess, I don't care to be found attractive, I enjoy the appreciation of a well-crafted sentence but that's a thrill for the trade, not my cunt. My cunt is thrilled to be exposed in pain and suffering. To my mind, the exposure of strength and beauty is recreational vanity (which is a perfectly fine hobby for anyone who enjoys it) and the exposure of weakness and ugliness is emotional pornography (which is my main hobby). When I am read, the parts of the exposure that entice me aren't the bits about my body, nor what is happening to me, but what I feel. Not my cunt, but my shame. Not my blood, but my terror. Not my tits, but my tears. Not my bruises, but my suffering. Not my screams, but my failure. Writing is the perfect medium for this form of exhibitionism, you can do so much with it and its primary component, words, are made entirely of history and sentiment. This may be a table but in my description of it, I can make you feel seven generations of my familial pain. In a picture of a table, that's much harder for me to do. 

I suppose it is much easier for genuinely talented photographers and people who are adept at the visual medium, but for me, I couldn't relate to the expressionism of pictures for two reasons. The first is that the medium is too judicious, you give me to little to work with, when I have so much to convey and the symbols and metaphors that would be laden with meaning if I wrote them, are mere objects in photos. The second reason is that I never realised why I hated photography as a means of exhibitionism, it's clear to me now, it's because I didn't know what it is that really seek to exhibit. The very simple answer is my pain, but pictures of bruises and cuts aren't appealing to me and as I set out to find the exact nature of the kind of photo exhibition I would create, I found I wasn't interested in that at all. Not in costume, not in purple skin, not in staging. Not in any of the things I took pictures of earlier. 

I found that I was looking to capture, as always, emotion. 

I am not sure how successful I have been or will be at this, but if success is measured by whether I felt the erotic thrill of exhibitionism, I have succeeded a few times in the past eleven days. There were some pictures, not of sticks and blood, but tears and grimaces, that made me feel the same vulnerability and exposure I experience when I write or share videos. They made me want to hide my face and hold out my shame. They made me stare even though I wanted to look away. They made me feel like I had put my pain and suffering on the exact type of display that makes me yearn. Exhibitionism is so vast and so easily discounted as a sexual thrill. Exhibitionism may be half my sexuality, yet I prattle on about pain and suffering and nauseum, while form a corner, it watches, waiting its turn. 

It's your turn. 

I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, but you were harder to understand than you let on. 

...

He held my mouth closed. He never does that. It is for the same reason as why he rarely ties me up, he doesn't want to force my silence or my stillness, he wants to compel it. Sometimes while he is beating me, he tells me to hold my breath, that's what gets him off, the fact that I will do it, it wouldn't be hard for him to choke me, but he would much rather see the display of my compliance. When he held my mouth closed, it felt like an affront. I hadn't screamed, I wasn't groaning, all I did was whimper in response to his teeth on my neck and he slapped his hand onto my mouth so hard, my tongue stud hit my teeth. 

"Enough," be growled, as if all these days of having to hear my pain had broken something in him. 

He bit my neck harder, it felt like being consumed. It's strange for him to put his mouth on me as well. He never does that. I've seen him go down on other women, I've seen him passionately kiss other women, I've seen his deliver sensual nibbles and suck on nipples, but he has almost never done that to me. All my life, I have hated all of those things, I couldn't stand a single one of them, but his fervent denial of it to me has exalted the acts in my head. They went from being things I didn't enjoy to things I feel I am too broken to enjoy; they used to be undesirable acts, but his belligerent refusal to be willing to do them *to me and me alone* has made me long for them at times. He distorts my desire, like a catalogue that places a yellow couch so expertly inside a space, you think it would look just as good in your home even though you cannot stand the colour yellow. 

A few months ago, in a moment of confusion and weakness, I asked if he would nibble on my nipples. He laughed at my audacity and then beat me for it. 

"There is only one scenario in which I would put my mouth on your filthy body," he said to me as he whacked my face. 

"Wh..at?" I asked, still harbouring vain hope, I suppose. 

"To hurt you, obviously," he said. 

It rarely comes to that. He has so many ways of hurting me, he rarely has to sully his mouth to do it. However this morning, maybe because he has already beaten me so much and so pervasively, there's room for other kinds of torture, so he bit my neck. He bit it over and over again until all of the skin started to burn, wear and rip. He held my mouth shut throughout the process, I beat my legs against the bed. My protest had more to do with the forcing of my quietude than anything else, it was like he was telling me I couldn't be trusted to adhere to his conditions anymore so he had no choice but to take action that circumvented my inevitable disobedience. When he stopped, he slid halway down the bed while I rubbed my neck to relieve some of the ache. 

"I'm not about to find a wet cunt, right?" He asked, as he pulled my pants off me. 

Even before his fingers had put their way to the mouth of my tired and abused hole, I was rambling from petrification. I feel constantly cramped, terribly sore and completely raw on my insides. I cannot take it anymore. I know I seem to say that every day, but I mean it every day, it seems to fall on a deaf heart and a dead soul. As he started to fuck me with his fingers, I struggled and closed my legs. These reactions are no longer in my control, I cannot even feign them by talking myself into it anymore. I have to hold my abdomen, like hugging a dusty teddy-bear after a fire, just to get through every single genital assault. I kept screaming the word no and he kept forcing his fingers in deeper, he is so crass with it, he could make it so much easier on me, I know that, because I have felt his fingers bring me so much pleasure as well. 

"What the fuck do you keep saying?" He asked, coming to to me and holding my throat in his fist, "Are you fucking saying no to me, you brave fucking cunt?" 

"Please," I begged, panicked by the lapse of my tongue, "Please." 

"That's a better word, isn't it?" He asked, slapping my face, "That's a better word for you." 

He lies. He would have done the same thing if I had said please as well. He just enjoys changing the rules and confusing me. Somedays it's okay to say no but not please. Somedays it's okay to call for mercy but not to cry. Somedays he wants me to cry but not say no. He doesn't tell me which day is which, I don't think he knows either. He does tell me I am an idiot because I seem unable to learn that it doesn't matter what I do or say, there is no right or wrong, only his whim. Every reason and none is good enough for him to hurt me. 

How will I ever be good then? I cannot. I suspect he doesn't want me to be either. He needs a bad slave because repentance makes him harder than reward. He wouldn't know what to do with me, if I stopped being sorry. 

...

I found an old section of electrical wires in an old handbag, so he beat me with it. I told him a few days ago that I am worried it will be really strange to me when we go back to our regular schedules on Monday. When 11 AM rolls around will I crave my morning beating? How will I readjust to a reality where he isn't being horrible to me every minute of every day?

"You know what I love most about you?" He said in response, "Your Stockholm Syndrome is so, so easily activated." 

It's not really Stockholm Syndrome, not really, because this relationship did not begin with a kidnapping or a confinement but there are elements of trauma bonding and the romance of hostility that make it seem like Stockholm Syndrome. 

That doesn't make electric wires easier to bear on your legs. Nothing does. 

...

By the time we got in bed, I was completely out of it. He lay beside me, on his side, and I lay on my back, holding my hands against my chest and fighting the stupor in my eyes. He was stroking my head and holding my hand, but every single time he moved even a little bit, I would shake and flinch as if he was about to beat me again. I cannot help it, the fear is bone-deep, I cannot stand it anymore. I've started to dread this bed and being in it with him. I've started to revile the night. I just want to sleep. For a few hours or days, I just want to sleep. 

Before we got in bed he beat me like a savage. He slapped and punched my face until my lip busted open and started to spew blood all over the place. When he started it felt like a sexual interaction, like he was beating me, but it wasn't as destructive or cruel as the beatings that have come before this moment, but then he smacked me in the mouth with the back of his hand so hard, I lost comprehension of the world for a few minutes. I stared at him, eyes beseeching, begging for compassion, only to watch him come back to my face with his fists over and over again. The right side of my lip became so swollen that when he punched it, blood squirted into my mouth like a fruit gusher. His knuckles became drenched in my blood and in one moment, he pulled back and kissed it. He licked a drop off his knuckles and kissed it. It was the most romantic thing he has done in the last two weeks. For one split second, it felt like he still loved me. 

I was telling him earlier that, sexually, he is the most disapproving man I have ever been with. I can do no right with him at all. He absolutely never calls me a good slave, a good girl, a good anything and I mostly appreciate it, but sometimes, when I realise that despite every effort I make to please him, he still tells me I am useless, it hurts so much. All these days I have suffered for him so dutifully and every day he tells me that I am useless and disappointing. I could sculpt my body with a knife and he would still punish me for the single hair out of place. It's who he is. It's who we are. But sometimes, a moment of reassuring, like kissing my blood, goes a long way. Three second after he stopped beating me I started to thank him when he started slapping me again for not thanking him. 

"You don't even wait a second," I said, starting to cry at the unrelenting criticism, "I was about to say it." 

"I shouldn't have to wait a fucking second," he said, pulling me by the collar, "You will fucking thank me before you start to breathe again, you will fucking thank me before you pass out, I don't care what state you are in, you'll thank me first before you die."

Damn it. 

When we lay in bed later, my face still swollen and my lip still busted, I yearned for him. He was being tender and gentle, but quiet. 

"Are you being nice to me deliberately?" I asked him. 

"What is deliberately?" He asked, running his fingers over my mouth. 

"When you..recognise that is what I need and you give it to me because I need it," I explained. 

"Oh," he said, "Then, no. I'm being nice to you because I feel like it..right now."

I don't know why I asked questions that are bound to hurt, I could just accept the delusion and the momentary respite but I go looking for his cruelty instead. I wanted, so desperately for him to make love to me but I couldn't bear to be fucked the way he has been doing it. Maybe even for years. I just wanted to feel his warm body on top of mine, I wanted to feel his cock inside me, not ripping me apart and punching my cunt, but reaching for my insides in intimate passion. 

"I want to feel you inside me," I started to tell him, but as he tried to pull off the covers I panicked and cried, "But please, no, please, don't fuck me I cannot take it." 

He put my hand on his cock and I began to shake and cry. I begged and begged for him to not make me prepare the weapons for my murder, and he relented. That time I didn't ask whether the kindness was deliberate or not, I'll take the charity, if it means a few hours of safety. I'll take the alms of his pity. It's all I deserve. 

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