A Thousand Cuts (Underworld Kings)

His eyes flared, and his finger slowly moved out.

“I like to be humiliated,” I whispered. “I like being blindfolded. Gagged. I like it when you come all over me. I love it when men bruise me. When they use me. Fuck my ass and use something else on my pussy. I like to be degraded. Told what to do. I like to be dominated.”

I said all of this with a rough rasp, quickly, with a faux kind of confidence that I hoped was convincing. I’d never said it all at once before. With the men I’d met through the club, it was already agreed upon. I was insulated by the shadows of the community. There was no need for conversation, we’d already checked all the necessary boxes, been paired together by experts who had signed NDAs.

In the real world, in the sunlight, the words, the needs … they shriveled into something ugly and wrong. Something at odds with the persona I presented.

The needs didn’t go away, though. Even after I’d left the club and that part of my life behind. I was hungry, starving for it. I’d tried with Pete, gently mentioning what I liked, starting with what was most palatable. He’d liked it at first. It was every guy’s dream to find out his girlfriend liked to be tied up and fucked in the ass. But then when it got more real, a fuck of a lot less vanilla, he balked.

He pretended it didn’t bother him at first because he was guarding his masculinity. A man who should’ve been delighted at my kinks. He liked to think of himself as adventurous, sexually and otherwise. Certainly, the man was supposed to be willing to do a lot more than the woman wanted ... in conventional relationships, at least.

But that was all just for show. Most men wanted to talk to their buddies about all the things they’d like to do to their wives or girlfriends, but the second those women offered it up, they ran scared.

And a fearful man quickly became dangerous, combative, desperate to lay the blame and shame on the women who presented them with evidence of how flimsy their manhood was.

Pete gave me a glimpse of that. Through snide comments, subtle suggestions that I might need to go to therapy. I’d pursed my lips, resisted the urge to scream about what a disappointing, cowardly narcissist he was, and smiled tightly. I didn’t ask for anything in bed again, and we both pretended I never asked for anything in the first place.

With him, this man I didn’t know the name of, I didn’t have to ask. He gave it all to me. Took it from me.

Though I sensed I may not be safe with him in other ways, I knew my darkest secrets were safe here.

He was silent after I spoke, waiting. For more. For the root of all of this. Because no one normal, no one right wanted the things I wanted. This man was making it known he didn’t just want my body. He’d taken that. Owned it. And it was clear to me he wasn’t going to stop with my body. I could’ve stayed silent. Could’ve guarded my secrets as I had for decades. Could’ve left. I wasn’t tied to the bed. Not yet.

But instead of doing all of that, I spoke.

“I lost my virginity to my mother’s boyfriend,” I confessed, forcing the words out slowly so I could taste them, hear how they sounded in the air.

I’d been to therapy many times, and I had chosen to omit certain events in my past and my sexual proclivities because I knew therapists would have a fucking field day with that information. I’d told myself it was because I had it under control. Because I’d left everything in the past and was now living a normal, healthy, boring life.

I’d also told myself I was ashamed to discuss this out loud.

But in reality, I wasn’t ashamed. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want any therapist to try to fix me. Try to turn my experiences into trauma. I wanted to keep it all inside me, growing, rotting, clinging to my insides.

So I kept it all in, thinking if I went on with the façade of normal then it would stay there forever.

But the truth was out now.

His body hardened ever so slightly, but he still didn’t speak. Didn’t betray any kind of disgust or anger at what I said.

I licked my lips, suddenly eager to continue.

“I was sixteen,” I said. “He was in his late thirties.”

More silence.

“And it wasn’t rape, I wanted it. Wanted him,” I continued, no longer whispering.

My mind went backward, thinking of that afternoon.

I’d just gotten home from school, still in my cheerleading uniform. Mom had pushed for me to get in to cheerleading, maybe because she thought I’d be less likely to get in to drugs, to fall in with the wrong crowd like she did. As if the shiny, spoiled blondes with rich parents were the right crowd. They did more drugs and had more sex than any of the ‘deviants’ from our trailer park. That was how I stomached hanging out with them, because I liked the parties, liked lying to my mom and telling her we were at study group when we were drinking some fancy ass booze at Heather’s mansion while her parents were away.