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Love Bites: An S&M Coming-Out Story
IN STITCHES No, this is not a photo of our new blogger, Clarisse
Read more from Clarisse at TOC's Love Bites blog.
I was very drunk. My perceptions had a frame-by-frame quality, and the evening didn't seem immediate: pieces of it were foreign, disconnected as a dream. I was being bitten very hard on the arm. It would leave marks the next day.
I was so muddled by assorted things that even now I can't sort out how I felt at that moment. When Richard's nails scored my skin I gasped, but I didn't ask him to stop. I flinched away, but he kept a firm grip on me. "Beg for mercy," he said softly.
Frame. Skip. I discovered that a mutual friend of ours had seen us, stopped, and was sitting on the grass across from Richard. "Hey," he said. "You shouldn't do that."
"It's okay," Richard said, "she likes it," and pulled my hair hard enough to force me to bow my head. I do? I managed to think, before thought vanished back into the blur of alcohol and pain. Our friend's face loomed over me, concern sketched vividly on his features.
I closed my eyes.
"Mercy," I whispered.
Later, Richard reminded me of something I said that night: "I wish I'd met you years ago." Thinking hard, I could only recall the evening in broad strokes. We'd gotten drunk at an outdoor party; he'd hurt me a bit; I'd said that; and then I'd staggered off to help clean up.
"A lot of crap comes out when you do this stuff," he now said. A few weeks had passed. I was lying on my stomach across the foot of his bed. Sitting perpendicular to me, he leaned back and propped his feet on the small of my back. Thin and pale, he tended to wear black and had intense dark eyes. It was summer in 2005. I was 20 years old.
He'd asked me why I wanted to be hurt. I couldn't work out an answer—wasn't certain the question was valid—so I asked him why he liked to hurt people. He'd half-laughed, with a tone that I couldn't evaluate. Ruefully? "That's a long, dark road," he'd said.
"How do you know?" I asked, irritated by his presumption, nervously curious. I wasn't sure I was what he thought I was—wasn't sure what had been going on that night, beyond alcohol dulling my reactions and feelings. But I knew I hadn't been abused or violated. I hadn't asked him to stop, and I wanted to figure out why. "How did you know about me?"
"I can tell," he said, and grinned. "With you, it was obvious." He paused, added quietly, "You were begging for it."
A couple of hours later, we remained fully clothed, my face was buried in his pillow, and I was crying. He'd pinned me down so I couldn't move and was raking his nails across what was exposed of my tank-topped back. When Richard first spotted the tears, he'd asked if I wanted a break. I'd said that it was okay, that he should continue, that I was fine.
I felt myself fragmenting, desperation and terror and pain pouring through me in an unbearable, necessary torrent. I told myself over and over that it didn't hurt that much, but I couldn't stop myself from tensing, crying out. After a while, I found myself saying, "No."
I felt him check himself, shifting his weight from my back. "Can we clarify something?" he asked gently. "Do you really want me to stop when you say no?"
No, I realized, I don't, and something vital in my psyche seemed to snap. The tears overwhelmed me. I couldn't get an answer out through my sobs, but even if I could have, I haven't the faintest idea what I might have said.
"We should take a break," he decided, and moved away. I'll never forget the relief—and desolation—I felt as he did.
It was a long time later that I remembered: I had met someone like Richard, years before. It had been in spring 2003; the guy was thin and pale, dressing mainly in black. I hadn't once thought of him in a romantic light.
I'd counted him a friend, but had only been alone with him once. We were in his living room, seated next to each other on dun-colored carpet. I couldn't recall how it started—we'd been sitting playing video games? had he tickled me as I shouted invectives at the screen?—but it ended with him holding my wrists, me lying back on the floor and wondering how to get him off me.
I'd thought he might kiss me, so I turned my head away. Instead, he bit my neck. "No," I said aloud, more in startlement than anything else, and he gave me a searching look—as if he wasn't sure I was serious. "Please let me up," I said, and he asked, "Why?"
I didn't feel panicked, but strangely at a loss: He didn't seem to take my objection seriously. Yet he wasn't particularly threatening me, and I wasn't afraid. I explained that I was in a committed, monogamous relationship I didn't want to disrupt; I carefully didn't react when he bit me again, although it hurt.
I didn't say I wasn't getting anything out of my powerlessness or his apparent desire to hurt me, that it left me cold. Maybe I wasn't sure it would register: He hadn't appeared to believe me when I first told him to let me up. And maybe something in me agreed that such a response was incorrect.
Eventually, I got away. Stupidly, confused, I mentioned the incident to my boyfriend. Of course he was furious; I had to calm him. For my part, it hadn't occurred to me to be mad. That didn't feel as bizarre as it sounds—on some level, I felt that the whole incident was reasonable, even if it hadn't turned out to be what I wanted.
Not then. Not with him.
After I cried my heart out in his bed, Richard was very kind. He brought me a glass of water and listened as I said a lot of bewildered things. When I finally ran down, it was late; he invited me to sleep over, but didn't put the moves on me. The next morning, he told me he had work to do. Straightforwardly, I asked when I could see him again. He smiled, said to e-mail him, that we'd work something out.
The next few days—weeks—time, I don't know; however long it was, it felt like being put through a shredder. I couldn't think about anything but that night and how, through my turmoil and tears, I'd found a kind of exultation. I had been sober, prepared and clear-headed. I couldn't find a way around the brutal, uncompromising revelation that apparently, I wanted nothing more than to be subordinated, used, hurt. I actually wanted to be a victim.
I wanted to talk to someone, but wasn't sure how to frame my words. I was positive it would help to talk to Richard, but he was busy, and busy, and busy. I had a number of friends who I suspected were into hardcore BDSM; I could have called any of them. But it was one thing to be fine with other people doing it, and quite another to discover such a desire in myself. In another situation, I would have thoroughly deconstructed my obvious double standard—but just then, it was a minor irrationality on top of one big chunk of insanity.
I considered asking my loving, liberal parents for advice and tried to imagine how it would go.
Mom. Dad. I love you, and I'm so sorry. I know you've tried to give me an independent, rational, feminist outlook, as well as self-esteem and integrity. Sadly, none of this appears to have taken; I guess I'm a broken mockery of everything you tried to instill. I don't want you to worry, or blame yourselves, but have you any advice on where to go from here?
No.
