Empty Streets & a Full Heart

May 02, 2020

It's been a beautiful day in Manhattan, which is such a strange thing to say during a pandemic, but it's true. The sun was out and my street was quiet and still as it is almost every day now. I decided upon waking that I'd take the long walk I'd had in mind all week. I've been going for walks and runs every day, trying to kill the boredom and loneliness of quarantine, but today I wanted to push myself further.

I don't run because I love running or even really for exercise, I do it almost compulsively to satisfy my need to move and not feel stuck inside. I cover more and more miles every week and use this restlessness to see the city, strange as it might be in its nearly empty state. My body is getting leaner and harder for the wear.

I also use my runs as a way to quell the fact that I deeply miss my slave, Elle. She's thousands of miles away and I haven't seen her since the beginning of the pandemic. It helps me kill time until our nightly video calls and gives me a feeling of progress that I need these days. My favorite part of the day is the end, when I get to see her smililng face on my screen and these runs bring me closer to that.

Today I picked a route that would take me through Central Park. I run to the mouth of it at Columbus Circle nearly every day and then turn back, knowing that as a halfway point it'll mean I've covered a little more than 6 miles by the time that I'm home. Central Park is huge and a good run in and of itself and making my way through it would nearly double my run length.

The miles getting to the park were easy and I walked them quickly, finding myself at 59th street before I'd even properly warmed up. I picked a path and headed into the park, not sure where my run would take me based on that first choice.

The park paths are labyrinthian and your chances of finding most things are remote without the help of a map or a guide. Part of what I love about Central Park is stumbling across one of the landmarks I've been looking for by making a series of almost random choices in forks in the paths.

Most people have a notion of Central Park from movies or television, but that doesn't really prepare you for experiencing it in person. There are lakes and ponds, statues, a zoo, and miles and miles of winding paths, all in the middle of one of the densest cities on the planet. If you get deep enough inside of it, you don't hear the cars or the noise of the streets anymore and you feel so far removed from the bustling energy that's just a few minutes walk away.

I found my way onto the path along the Kennedy reservoir and realized that I was alone. I'd paced myself for so long, but with no one on the path in front of me, I ran hard. The sun was beating down on my face and the wind rustled in my ears as it forced the trees and flowers into a bow in front of me that seemed to be showing me the way. I was running faster than I knew that I could and the thumping in my chest made me think of the quote from Sylvia Plath "I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am."

I felt the tapping on my wrist as notifications came in from Elle and seeing her name brought a smile to my face. She was a few time zones behind and just waking up. We've been seeing each other since the beginning of the year and at the beginning of this outbreak, we'd spent the better part of a week together, watching it all unfold.

She'd had a trip planned to visit family before all of this started and though she pushed it back a little to consider the implications of traveling during the pandemic, eventually she decided that going to be be with them was something she needed to do and I couldn't blame her, sad as I was to see her go. While she was away I oscillated between wishing she was with me and feeling grateful that she was far away from the dangers of New York.

I saw the little preview of the message she'd sent on my watch and It was then that I realized the battery life on my phone was under 10% and falling; I'd failed to put the phone on the charger the night before, falling asleep with my phone on my chest after rereading our text messages from that day.

I was less than halfway to the end of my run and I decided to spare my battery life, so I put my phone into low power mode and picked my pace up again. I thought about how many miles I'd run that day alone and how significant the meaning and measurement of distance had become for me in different ways: how far away Elle was, how long it might be until I saw her again and how close we'd become.

We met because she'd written to me after reading my Fetlife profile and to be honest, I almost deleted the message thinking it and the account it was from seemed a little too good to be true and probably was. Instead, I sat on it for a day, rereading it and her profile before deciding to fire off a response.

Her message said that she was looking for a dominant partner and thought that my profile made her think perhaps we had some overlap. She asked me to have a look at her profile and if I agreed that we did, to message her. I poured over her words, which were thorough and dark and full of self-awareness. They expressed desire in such a forthright way, that it caught me off guard; it's uncommon for a submissive to be so direct. She had five carefully selected pictures on her profile that showed a beautiful woman in her twenties with dark hair and eyes that were most often hidden behind sunglasses. It was hard to reconcile her warm smile in those photos with the words about wanting to be owned, degraded, objectified, humiliated, and enslaved.

We messaged back and forth while she was out of town over the Christmas holiday, getting to know each other a bit. She was easy to talk to and the conversation was interesting, but I was still uncertain that she would turn out to be who she said she was. We agreed to meet when she came back to New York and I looked forward to that date with an almost morbid curiosity, wondering if she would show, if she would be who she was in her pictures and how we would feel about each other when we were face to face.

I've identified as dominant almost my entire sexual life and while I've had plenty of partners who were willing to experiment with submission, most of them were submitting to the things they wanted to happen to them rather than the offering true submission. I'm not a service top and dominating a submissive exclusively the way they want to be dominated in fantasy fulfillment isn't something that can hold my attention. I want there to be honesty in submission, truth in it, and that only comes from someone who understands it and can really let go. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with whatever level of kink anyone is interested in, even if it's none at all, but I know myself well enough to say that I'm only interested in partners who have a deep desire to really dive into power exchange with me. On paper, Elle was exactly that.

We met for the first time at the beginning of January, having one drink together in a dimly lit restaurant in the Bowery in the middle of the week. I was seated at the table having arrived early and I noticed her as soon as she walked in. She was more vibrant in person than I expected, with a bright smile and engaging eyes. Her dark hair was cut beneath her chin and I could feel the cold night air drifting off of her as she slid into the booth. I was more prepared for her to not be who she claimed than I was for her to be exactly who she'd said, but here she was sitting across from me; true to the photos, true to the words.

I asked her question after question and enjoyed the conversation, which was brief and left me full of want for the next time. We said goodbye on the street corner with a hug and I felt her angles and curves beneath her winter layers. I turned back to get one last look at her and watched her purposeful gait as she disappeared up Delancey street and into the night.

A week later we met again for drinks and I heard her real name for the first time when the woman at the door said it aloud. Elle gave her phone number so we could be called when a table was available and she'd been there before, so they had her name on file. She hadn't given it to me herself though and I wouldn't use it until she did. This is part of the game; the purposeful release of personal information to someone that you've met via the internet.

That night we talked about consent and previous relationships as well. We talked about the other people we were seeing and what we wanted for ourselves and at the end of the night, I had a better feel for who she was and what her submission would look like and I was starting to want it. My interest in dominance and submission isn't casual and it's hard to catch my attention, so beginning to see what it would feel like to dominate her was exceedingly rare and worth noting.

The next time that we met, she laid on my couch and I went through the extensive consent and interest checklist that I have compiled over the years. I read aloud various acts of submission and she rated her interest in them, one by one. The darker interests that normally scare people, she rated 5/5. The more intimate things that most people enjoyed she scored exceedingly low.

Bathroom use control, breath control, bondage, cages, cells/closet, chains, chastity belt, choking, humiliation, all of the things that scare a casual player were high on her list. Elle was not a casual player nor was she an inexperienced submissive; she had a deeper darkness in her than almost any woman I'd ever tangled with. She's beautiful and intelligent and her darkest desires are to have those things stripped from her, as though they don't matter.

"If you push slowly, you'll never find a bottom," she said to me and I was starting to believe her.

The first few times we played I was easy on her. I'd heard plenty of people make the claim before that they were intense, but it's more common for people to overestimate their ability then underestimate it.

We would text the day after playing about how we rated things in terms of intensity and her rating those things low helped assure me that I could dive deeper. It encouraged me to push toward more intense play and when I finally began to trust her ability to take things and plotted for a darker scene the following week.

When she arrived that night, I bound her with metal shackles on her wrists and ankles, chain running between them so she was hobbled. I put a hook in her nose and gagged her, dragging her to the basement of the building that I lived in. I took photographs of her dirty and exposed and then dragged her back inside to give her a proper strapping. She's said to me once over text 'more is more' and every time I approached the point where she would cry, I would repeat that back to her, taunting her with her own words.

By the time that I fucked her that night, her ass was already showing the bruising. Deep purple straps from here the leather strap has fallen marked her skin. I pulled her arms straight behind her and held them tightly while I fucked her hard. I came the closest I'd been in ages to be able to let go and really embrace the deep darkness that was in me and that was when Elle and I finally truly connected.

A few days later we ventured out and I locked the slender metal wrist cuffs onto her wrists and put a bluetooth toy deep inside of her. I controlled the intensity of the toy from an app on my phone and we walked slowly as she tried to focus with such an intense and invasive distraction.

"It's making me feel crazy," she whispered into my neck as she clung to my arm.

When we came to rest in Madison Square Park, we picked a bench and she curled up and put her head in my lap. I tormented her with ups and downs of the toy and we watched the world around us, which was changing because of the pandemic, which was in its early stages still. I could see what life with Elle would be like and I wanted it, fiercely. I wanted every bit of the conflict and contrast, I wanted her multitudes and juxtapositions.

COVID had other plans for the momentum we were building though and after deciding we would have a closed circle consisting of just the two of us for the time being, she broke it to me that she was going to go stay with her family out west. Her trip would be a minimum of a month and possibly longer, depending on if the curve improved or got worse. We had a week before she would go and we spent so much of that time together.

She sat on my couch during a weekend we'd set aside to explore longer service and with tears in her eyes, told me she was going to go and she didn't know for how long. She told me she wasn't sure if I would even want to keep speaking to her and I assured her that I absolutely did.

"It's too early for you to see me cry," she said, but that moment of vulnerability had only heartened me.

"I want to keep this going so we will do whatever it takes to make that happen," I said to her, and I meant it.

I knew it would be hard being separated from her, but I also knew how exceedingly rare it was to enjoy someone as a person and have so much overlap in kink interest. I wasn't ready to let that go, even if it meant waiting for months for her. I wanted it too badly and I wasn't going to let time apart ruin anything.

We made the most of the few days that we had left together and when I took her back to her apartment to drop her off, she did something that she'd never done before; she kissed me. Kissing was a soft limit of hers and it wasn't something she liked to do outside of a kink context, so when I slipped into my car and pulled away from her, I could feel the meaning of it acutely on my lips.

My days alone were harder than I realized they would be. I was facing the emptiness of New York City, a pandemic, and the uncertainty of the future, alone. It felt like the end of the world and the person I'd just connected with so strongly was a few time zones away with her family. I did my best to be strong for everyone I knew, including Elle, but I had moments of doubt and dealt with them mostly on my own. Would this be forever? Was it the new normal? I hoped It wouldn't be and used that hope to power through the surreal landscape of my city, abandoned.

I hit Central Park North, head west, and then double back toward lower Manhattan, walking through times square, which is now empty, with the exception of a few police officers and a handful of people. The normally congested streets are still lit up brightly, advertising plays that no longer run and movies that won't be seen in theaters. Restaurants and billboards glow for no one. I walk down Broadway and see bits of graffiti thanking first responders and telling New York to stay strong.

I'm pulling air through my mask as I breathe heavily, crossing the eight-mile mark with still a ways to go. My phone has died, so there isn't any music playing through the headphones, which are still keeping what little noise there is to be heard in the city at bay. There aren't any more messages coming in, there's just the sound of my breathing and the thumping of my footsteps as I pick my pace up and push myself hard for the rest of the run home. I'm clearing empty city block faster than I ever have and I feel like I'm outrunning an existential dread as I get closer, closer, closer to home.

I plug my phone in and hop in the shower, listening to the pinging of Elle's text messages as it comes back to life and a smile grows on my face, as I picture her on my couch, picture her curling up in my lap in Madison Square Park, picture her in my bed. I scrub the sweat and city air that's clinging to me, scouring every inch of my body as I imagine what it's going to be like to have her back.

That night we talk about cages and chastity and we play a little via facetime. I make her put on the hood and collar and put the mouth and nose hooks in. She sees herself in the camera and I tell her to look carefully because Elle is gone and the creature that's in front of her is the slave she wants to be. This is the objectification that she craves and you can palpably feel the transformation from my Elle, into my creature. She makes inhuman noises as I make her slap her own cunt and when she grinds on the vibrating wand to make herself cum, she shakes, convulses, and sucks in breath hard as she doubles into herself. I give her time to slowly return from subspace and one by one, I make her remove the hooks, the hood, the collar. She takes everything but the small metal locking cuffs which I sent her west because those she will sleep in.

We have a ritual of me telling her what to do as she gets ready for bed. I go through this nightly routine and it's a combination of controlling and caring. After she has brushed her teeth, taken her meds, set her alarm, and taken out her contacts I tell her to put in her mouth guard and I watch the combination of embarrassment and comfort wash over her. This is a ritual of control and care; I tell her what to do, but it all stemmed from her asking me to remind her to do some of those things and into how we say goodnight, every single day.

"It's time for you to rest. Close your eyes and go to sleep, slave." I said and she did as she was told, burrowing into the covers, she lays still and opens her eyes once to peek at me before she closing them again to sleep.

Before long she is sleeping soundly. The faint purple glow of the screen illuminates her face and I listen for the change in her breathing that tells me she has drifted off. I feel a protectiveness and possessiveness for her all at once. I feel a fierce need to have my hands on her, to be rough with her, and then gentle afterward. I want the smell of her hair and the feeling of my hand on her throat. I want to feel the weight of her as her knees buckle and she falls into my arms. I want to watch the color rise to the surface of her skin as I take the strap to her and I want to see her push through the pain for me, for her, for us, and when it's all done I want to gather her up in my arms. I want those moments of smallness that she feels after being used hard and I want the feeling of her unfolding as she slowly comes back to herself.

I want her, all of her, every dark secret that lives beneath her beautiful smile, every strange truth, ever fucked up fantasy. I want to open her up and look inside of her. I want to break her down and build her up, over and over again. I want her strength, I want her submission, I want all of it. I watch her in the faint purple glow on my screen and I feel so many things for this woman and I know that things aren't happening in the normal order, because of the pandemic, because of the sudden separation, because of the very moment in which we met. It's so soon for the things that I'm feeling, but all of those late nights talking have rocketed my feelings forward and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I know clearly what I want, and it's Elle.

Outside the sun is ready to rise and I've stayed up later than I should have. I can hear the birds chirping. Elle is still asleep and I've been watching her out of the corner of my eye for an hour. I'm filled with want and need for her and I've come to a realization that I know is too soon to tell her about.

I open up my laptop and start writing this day down because I want to remember it. It's been so many days all in one and in the jotting of it down I can feel the significance of so many moments that I've had today. I steal a glance at Elle from time to time as I write, and I can feel a closeness to her, even from this distance. I mute my microphone so I don't wake her with the tapping of my fingers on the keys. This is the day that something changed for me and in watching her, my slave, as the sun rises I steep in the awareness of it: this is the day that I realized that I am in love with Elle.