It's All About The Little Things.

Her face was cut off in the picture but I could see her tits quite clearly. She was holding them in her hands and her  finger-nails dug into the skin, just a little bit. As I scrolled through the shots, I noticed him come into the frame. First his hands, grabbing her breasts, then his teeth, biting her neck and finally, a gallery of pictures of her nipples in his mouth. A pang of longing shot down my chest, followed quickly by a wave of disappointment in myself. I should have known, nothing is inviolate with him. Every bit of information I present will be used as a shiv and you'd think I would be more careful with the information I reveal to him, but I'm not, it's almost as if I am goading him to stab me. Perhaps, nothing is inviolate with me either.

I stared at the pictures of him sucking her tits as my hands gravitated towards my own breasts. I leaned back in my chair and started to squeeze them with both hands. It had only been four days since he had been gone, since he had touched me, but it felt like a lifetime. As the screen went dark before my eyes, I began to think about the dream I had shared with him. I have never had an interest in getting my tits sucked, in fact, I don't want anyone's mouth on my body at all, that is not what this meat-sack is for but, maybe it was a combination of being alone, untouched and ravenously aroused that caused me to dream of us such things. I dreamt that I was sitting with my back against the headboard of our bed, my knees bent and spread apart, feet placed beside my hips, my hands were up above my head and tied to the back-frame. He sat in front of me, teasing my cunt with his left hand and squeezing my breasts with the right, if there were words spoken between us, I do not remember them, some things don't make it out of the realm of slumber.

I remember moaning, I remember with my body, and even though I was asleep through it, I can see myself alone in our bed, clutching a pillow and moaning into the darkness as a figment of my imagination played with my body. In the final moments of the dream, before I woke up, he leaned over and sucked my nipples. In real life, my response wouldn't have been what it was in my sleep. In real life, he never would have done that in the first place, but in the dream it felt so good. In the dream no prior constructs of engagement seemed to exist between us, nothing but bodies, completely free of the labyrinth of a power-based sexual dynamic. In the dream, I wasn't so bothered by feeling like it was okay for him to put his mouth on my dirty body. When entirely in my mind, I was somehow able to entirely be my body.  The next day, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I told him about the dream and after sheepishly dancing around it for a while I finally made the request I didn't think I ever would.

"So will you?" I asked, "Will you suck..on my nipples?"

He watched me with surprise, in his pixelated eyes I could see his vacillation as he considered my request.

"I'll think about it," he said.

I hate when they do that. I hate when they take the most acerbic of tones to tell you absolutely nothing. For the rest of our conversation the ghost of my pathetic request haunted our interaction. It was a pathetic request, my dreams are so small and somehow still deniable, I cannot explain exactly how that feels, but Dickens probably could. I used to ask lovers to orchestrate kidnappings and orgies of brutality, they'd make me beg but they always came through. He doesn't make me beg for pain or violence, that is always freely given, he makes me beg for the little things. The things I never thought I would want. He won't fuck me on my back, he won't let me come on his dick, he won't wipe my tears and he won't put his mouth on me. I was always the one telling people not to do those things to me and now, he makes me long for things I once placed on a list of hard limits so absolute, it was set in stone. I always believed I was responsible for fucking up my own mind, but he fucked it beyond recognition and now I must live in as much fear of my own desire, as I do of his.

We didn't communicate again until later that night when the pictures of his mouth on another woman's nipples came pouring into my phone. I had been trying to forget about it, reminding myself of why I had disliked this act so much all these years but seeing those pictures made me ache for it. Even as the billious disapproval of my own desire coursed through my veins, I couldn't help but think about it and touch my own breasts. I was distracted by the familiar beep of his messages on my phone and I opened my eyes to read them.

"Is this what you want?" It read, following another picture of his mouth on a woman who will forever remain a set of nipples to me.

"Yes, please," I responded.

He didn't write back.

The next day, he got back home, late in the afternoon. We spent the evening wailing about the nights we had spent apart. I know you're not supposed to say that you cannot spend four days apart from the person you love but I do not care about what I am supposed to say or not, the way I see it, the way I have always seen it, is that we get to exist for a finite, unknowable period of time, no amount of self-actualised moralising is worth spending any more of that time apart than we have to. I don't need him, maybe he doesn't even need me, but that is how much we want each other. Tell me to hold my own, tell me to love myself, tell me even to be violently independent, I can and do that, but don't tell me not to be mad with want in love, I don't see the point of loving like that. I don't see the point of calculated, measured restraint when time is always running out. I sat in his lap and complained, for hours, about having to walk the dog and how she tried to rip my shoulder out of the socket every single time. He told me he was sorry for leaving me to do that. We made dinner together and took long breaks to hug and kiss. Each time he touched me, the sepulchral promise of dusk returned to haunt my body, I longed to take his hand off my back and nudge it towards my chest. He could see it in my eyes, I am sure, in between those moments of tender domestic affection, I could see flashes of terrible promises in his eyes.

As night fell, I found myself dragging my feet in an attempt to delay the night. The hornbill had long gone away and the owls howled into the night, but something in me wanted to pretend it was still light outside. I knew he wouldn't let me pretend forever.

"Come on, it's time," he said as the clock struck nine, "Let's go to bed."

The change in his manner was so capricious I couldn't help but be startled by the awareness that I love two men housed inside one body. I followed him into our room, my bare feet freezing against the cold floor, as I wondered what it was that scared me so. Was I afraid that he wouldn't give me what I wanted or was I afraid that he would? He answered my question the moment I locked the door behind me. He pulled me by the hair and threw me onto the floor, I landed right beside the table.  

"How dare you!" He exclaimed, "How dare you ask me for something that is not yours to have?"

He stepped back from me and opened the closet beside the door. I hate that closet. I love everything inside it, of course, it's filled with weapons and restraints, but I hate the creak of it being opened. It hurts a specific point in my neck every time I hear it. I hate that it is green. Every Sunday I resolve to paint it black and every Monday morning I promise myself I will do it next week. I don't know why I just won't do it. I must love looking at things I hate. He came back towards me with a little whip in his hands, he bent down and pulled my shirt off over my head, I backed into the wall, leaning backward just a little bit. I hadn't even found my bearings when he began to whip my breasts.

"You want me to suck your nipples?" He asked, whipping at my chest with an unrestrained fervour, "You actually think I would put my mouth on your filthy body? You're lucky I touch you at all."

Why did I think that? Did I actually think that or did I know this is exactly what was going to happen? I didn't know. I still don't know. It is alarming enough that he makes me want strange things, but it's untenable that I never know what he is going to do. I wondered if I should apologise but he kept hitting me at a pace so fast that if I had opened my mouth, I would have screamed forever.

"I'm sorry," I finally mustered within a momentary break as he grabbed my breasts in his cold hand, pinching my nipples.

He grip around my tits tightened as I uttered my apology. He pulled back and began whipping them again.

"It's not that I hate sucking nipples, I enjoy it," he explained, talking so slowly I could have strangled each word, "I just cannot imagine doing that to you, how could you even think you deserve that?"

That was meaner than he needed to be, I think. I would have cried if I wasn't in such shock over the way the evening was going. He aimed the whip right at my nipples, striking them alternatingly as I gripped the marble with flooring and bit my lip to keep from talking. With each strike he seemed more resolved to make me feel terrible and when he stopped he flung the whip onto the floor with a force reminiscent of anger. He knelt down on the floor and put his hands on my breasts again. He leaned over me, his fingers wrapped around my nipples, pinching them as I moaned over his shoulder.

"I will suck the nipples of every last person on earth before I suck yours," he said, sniggering directly into my ear,  "I will never, in my life, suck your nipples, because you are a disgusting, pathetic creature. Do you understand?"

There is something especially heinous about denying people the smallest, most inconsequential things. In his tone, I could tell he knew exactly what he was doing, abusing his power over me and flaunting it. I nodded my head, as my lips turned downward in the most blatant and comical display of sadness one has ever seen.

"What do you understand?" He said, "Tell me, say it out loud."

"You will never suck my nipples because I am a disgusting pathetic creature," I mumbled as he pulled away from me and watched my face.

"Never," he said, laughing as he stood up and walked away.

It's all about the little things to him.

It's all about denying them.