On June 21, 8:24 am–almost exactly a week before I received the phone call from his father telling me he’d passed away–my girlfriend/boytoy sent me an email titled “I am a sappy little creature.”
Hello love,
This began life as an attempt to write a pegging short story, but quickly dissolved into a transparently fictional love letter to my favorite dom. I don’t know that it could ever have a life in any publication, but it helped me to get back into the habit of writing in my free time instead of taking long sunburny walks and moping, so it has a special place in my heart.
Not unlike my dom.
Love,
J
It’s indeed the kind of story that might be tricky to publish–not enough full-frontal-sex to be erotica; a bit too much sexual honesty for the mainstream (to say nothing of the kink and gender discussion)–but it is, and I don’t think it’s just my bias that makes me say this, worth reading, not least for people who are like us or who wonder what it’s like to be people like us. Which is part of why I’m sharing it now.
And because I’d like to share what our love was like and I’m not sure I could say it any better than my boytoy/girlfriend himself.
He’d recently moved back to his parents’ place for a rent-free, centrally located (as he’d say, “Indiana: Gateway to everywhere else”) base of operations while he applied to graduate schools, got set up for a freelance career in audio narration, and wrote. I was planning to visit him there soon and we texted every day. The tone of those texts can be predicted from the tone of his email. My girlfriend and I were That Couple. That Couple who also happened to be into some kinky shit.
He’d talked to me about drafting a story about pegging–possibly inspired by my own thoughts about a pegging anthology, and oh yes, he would have been one happy volunteer submissions reader. According to his submission notes (story submission notes, that is) he’d originally planned to title the piece “So Long Ago, So Clear.” The file name on the attachment he emailed to me was “out on the inside.”
I’d told him, pretty early on, that part of why I was so into the idea of penetrating him was because “It’s a way for me to love you from the inside out.”
This story is, so far as I can tell, almost entirely nonfictional. Everything in it really happened, though sometimes in slightly different ways or at different times (for instance, much of the dialogue was actually written between us as text messages or conversations on the dating website where we met). I’ve done very minimal editing for grammar. He’d expect that–I am after all a copyeditor.
And yes, it’s a love story.
OUT ON THE INSIDE
Everyone is a committee, a stir of voices and half-remembered sound bytes. We have our intentions and opinions, but those voices still speak, sometimes drowning out what we know or believe. It doesn’t matter if we give creedence to them, if they’re even reasonable; these persistent ghosts linger within us, repeating their slogans like clockwork automata.
I have neither love nor respect for the people I encountered in high school. Being raised male, I spent more than my fair share of time around, for want of a better word, guys. This, I hasten to add, in an era that viewed itself as enlightened – don’t they all? – compared to its predecessors. To be gay would have been no big deal, or so they said. But the idea that someone, some ‘guy’, would enjoy being penetrated by ‘his’ girlfriend. That was just, like, weird, man.
Why do we give these voices such power?
Growing up, the internet was no help. Femdom scenes portrayed pegging as a punishment, something degrading and humiliating.
Degrading. Humiliating.
These words have power.
I tell you this, my love, not to indulge in some kind of pity-party for my own self-consciousness, but to explain. A sheltered, bookish, gender-uncertain young person like myself would log on to the internet, search for something, anything, in the realm of femdom that seemed loving, and enjoyable, and meaningful, and find the most tasteless garbage imaginable.
I knew, back then, that I must really be a submissive, if that wasn’t enough to put me off.
I knew, back then, that I must really be interested in being penetrated, if that wasn’t enough to put me off.
But oh, the voices it left in my head. Look too long at something, and it will imprint itself on your mind like an exposed Polaroid. You can paint over those grim images, those sketches of pain or uncertainty, but it takes time. It takes work.
It takes someone like you, my love.
I met you online, first. In between my coursework, I’d got in the habit of scrolling through profiles, not out of any intent to pursue or hope to be pursued, but simply to enjoy what people did with language, and how they thought of themselves. Everyone is a universe, a shape built out of the myriad experiences, thoughts, ideas, and desires that swirl around inside the sphere of their sensation. I said this, or something like it, to my college roommate once.
His response: “No wonder you don’t go on any dates.”
At the risk of being pedantic, I wonder what exactly he meant. That I didn’t go on dates because I was too busy gleaming the cube in our grotty little dorm to be bothered? Or that I didn’t go on dates because no one in their right mind would stand still for such nonsense?
I never thought to ask him if he went on dates.
So there I was, reading what other people had to say for themselves instead of finishing my paper on Liutprand of Cremona, bathed in the monitor’s pale radiation. I read a profile. I clicked on the next suggestion. I read a profile. I clicked on the next suggestion.
Intelligence and forthrightness looked back at me from the screen. A reader, a philosophy graduate, a- oh, a voracious reader, consuming upwards of two hundred books a year. A writer, both of SF and erotica. A lucid thinker, able to explain her perspective and describe her approach to life with both economy and wit.
For the first time in a long while, I shifted out of read-only mode and thought: It might be interesting to have a conversation with this person.
I was already keen to know you, even before I reached the part of your profile where you described yourself as Very Dominant and Very Kinky.
A short digression, if I may, to swat a hornet’s nest by making a sweeping and unfounded claim. It’s been said that there is no difference between so-called “natural-born, instinctive” Doms and subs and everyone else who explore power exchange, that to assert a difference is to imply a kind of elitism, a created heirarchy.
And yet, there is a difference.
You’re the first one I ever encountered. The first natural. I could tell before ever I met you. I could tell just from the way you wrote.
So I reached out. I said hello.
Not about any of the dreams that danced behind my eyes at the idea of submitting to you. I messaged you about books, about writing and creativity. I knew that no matter what happened, I wanted to know you. I wanted to be your friend.
I went on with my life.
A week later, I opened the app, and my breath caught in my throat.
You answered me.
We wrote back and forth. We wrote about SF, about creativity and stories. And I didn’t dare ask, but you did it for me. You asked if I’d like to meet.
“When you mention submission,” you wrote. “My breath catches in my throat.”
Kismet.
We met in the library, which I suppose says everything about the kind of people we are. You were small, neat, magnetising. We sat and talked of Roko’s Basilisk, Radu the Beautiful, the Byzantine Empire, everything. I was mesmerised by the intelligence behind your eyes. There really is a difference. Take it from a natural-born submissive.
“Would you like to come back to my apartment and talk for a bit?” you asked me.
Yes.
Your apartment was as neat and orderly as you, though short on space.
“I’m afraid I only have the one loveseat,” you said. You smiled. “I don’t suppose you’d mind kneeling on the floor?”
“I’d love to kneel,” I said, and paused. I didn’t dare.
And once again, all my dreams came true.
“I’d like you to try that sentence again,” you said, smiling.
“I’d love to kneel on the floor…Ma’am.”
“Much better. Take a seat.” You sat down on the loveseat, and I knelt before you.
You took a good look at my eyes, then gently lowered your feet onto my thighs. You didn’t say anything, but I looked into your eyes, and I knew.
I took your boots off, with great care, and set them beside the loveseat. I rubbed your feet, feeling a rush of gratitude as you made pleased noises of relaxation. You placed your feet back on my thighs.
“Let’s talk,” you said.
“I don’t like protocol,” you said. “Titles and formal dialogue and all that.”
“Me neither,” I said. “It doesn’t feel like any fun.”
But it was more than that, and we both knew it. Protocol was a way of saying “We are being in power exchange mode now.”
We didn’t need that, you and I. We knew who we were, and I like to imagine we knew who we were for each other, even then.
“I want to say something inappropriate,” I said. “And I’m probably out of line for doing it. But I have to say something, because I’ve never met anyone like you before.”
“With a preamble like that,” you said, warming my heart with your casual use of the word ‘preamble,’ “I think I have to insist that you say it.”
“I’m not supposed to bring this up,” I said. “But…” And here I took the plunge. “I would be honored to wear your collar.”
The submissive is never supposed to ask to be collared. It is presumptuous in the extreme, bad form, crass. If I were inclined to split hairs, I could have argued that I had not asked to be collared, only expressed my feelings about wearing yours. Actually, I had not done even that. I wanted so badly to be yours, a feeling that arose from the very center of me, from deep in the heart where the mysteries emerge. But I wasn’t going to say that, because come on.
You paused. It probably wasn’t a long pause. It felt like an eternity.
I thought: Oh no. I’ve fucked it up. It’s all over.
You said: “Okay.”
Later, much later, I apologized for my presumption.
You said: “I appreciated it. It was good to know you wanted it as much as I did.”
We talked about sex and sexuality. “I’m not much interested in PIV,” you said. “It never held much attraction to me.”
Deep breath again. The moment of truth.
A thousand voices, mocking voices from my past, arose inside me. Would this be the moment where it all fell apart, as you realized what a weirdo you had allowed to sidle into your life?
And I leapt into the dark.
“The truth is,” I said. I cleared my throat. “The truth is, when it comes down to it, I’d rather be penetrated than do the penetrating. I’m…I’m not much interested in PIV either.”
I waited for the world to end.
You paused, considering.
The future hesitated, waiting its cue to happen.
“That sounds all right by me,” you said.
And then we spent the evening talking about Stephen King novels (disappointing) and Samuel Delaney (awesome).
A few weeks later, you tied me up. Yes, I know this was me talking about pegging, but that’s the point, really: Everything is interconnected.
I thought I was always dreaming about someone who would take me with their strap-on. Turns out, I was dreaming of somebody, a person I could connect with, and share thoughts and feelings and dreams with, and feel comfortable with, and give myself to, in every way.
So that when we picked out a strap-on together, and did our homework about how best to go about it, it felt natural and comfortable.
We gazed into each others’ eyes.
“How are you feeling right now?” you asked me.
“Good,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” you said. “Turn over.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
And I got to grow closer with you.
And suddenly I wasn’t thinking of what anyone had ever said, or my own fears about whether my interests were valid, or real, or just some masturbatory fantasy.
I wasn’t thinking about anything.
I was being. I was present in the moment, together with you.
And don’t get me wrong, it was hot as shit.
It was hot as shit for precisely all of those reasons.
Honesty and trust and communication and comfort and understanding and love.
All the rest is just applied mechanics.
You were inside me before ever we broke out the Astroglide, grew closer to one another, and discovered how much we both liked it this way.
Would you like to go again, my love?
First, “Beyond Words” in 
ology of cosmic, uncanny, and macabre erotic romance short stories.
From what I recall from my years of working in a library, Dewey Decimal 808.8 includes anthologies, rhetorical analysis, writing advice, etc. The Sexy Librarian also classifies “Not Quite an Antidote” as being about Venom, Boundaries, and Intoxicating Desire. All true, and have I mentioned the pegging?
They are still available until the end of May through online bookstores.