That day in the woods not far from his place where he wanted to spend some time, Magnus wore his army fatigues and Gortex boots, the fatigues bunched up around the ankle in the style of soldiers. He also wore a green bomber jacket because the day was cool, and packed a wet towel and water in his sack. His boots were clean, having recently been polished.
One section of the trail dipped and was still muddy. Tree roots snaked just above the sodden soil, and a shagbark hickory leaned so far over the path that I thought it would soon uproot itself and collapse. Instead of going around the mud hole, Magnus stepped right into it. I was surprised by the action. Magnus paused for a few moments and then stepped out, his boots covered with mud. He had a severe look on his face as he stared at me, as if he was thinking of something he needed to do. I suddenly grew nervous, but avoided the mud.
He fixed me in his gaze, as if to force me to look away. He pointed to his Gortex boots, black and covered with mud the consistency of clay. I looked down. How much time had he spent polishing them? I listened, waiting for him to speak. The atmosphere was charged with an approaching storm, unspoken words and intimations. Except for the leaves rustling in the breeze, or a small animal scuttling along the forest floor, or the thud of a nut falling from a nearby tree, there was silence. I looked behind me. We had been walking for about 20 minutes and had turned into a curve. I saw no one else, nor did I expect to see anyone.
Every several hundred metres or so, a bench had been installed along the path. One appeared just around a bend in the path. Magnus sat down. Again, he pointed at his boots. He wasn't inviting me to sit beside him. My boots are dirty, he said. In an attempt to inject some humor into what was becoming more and more intense, I responded, "Not surprising, since you chose to step in the mud. Nice going, fella." He didn't chuckle. The look on his face remained tight, severe, his eyes so piercing that I averted mine and looked up again up to the branches of the trees or scanned the forest, which was getting eerily sombre as the sky darkened. I thought to myself: I could be murdered here. Magnus was capable of great violence, I knew, given his stories about his military service and his occasional threats directed at me, and my legs became unsteady.
Soldiers were trained to kill, kill, kill, and he told me about the powerful rush of energy and brutal joy in the action of combat, defensive and offensive. Off the battlefield in whatever form it takes, where does that training go, that energy, that masculine joy in violent physical action? Magnus easily entered a state of frustration and rage. He didn't hesitate to fight. Yes, I thought, he could kill me in the forest. Sometimes he carried a Swiss army knife on his person. Would he stab me over and over? Would I fall screaming on my knees to the mud, blood spurting out of my neck? Or would he strangle me?
Magnus was a strong man with magnificent biceps, and I'd go black and blue, gasping beneath the power of his grip until I passed out. Or, because he hit me now and then because I was asking for it, and my acceptance of it because I knew I needed discipline and correction, maybe the soldier, a brute muscular alpha stud if there ever was one, an alpha stud I worshipped and craved and wanted to crawl towards, would beat me to death on the forest path. I was paralyzed on the spot like a rabbit before a cobra, and despite the adrenaline surging through my heart, I could not flee.
After what seemed like an endless silence, although in reality it couldn't have been more than five minutes, Magnus spoke sharply. "Touch my boots, bitch." Startled by the command, I nervously laughed. "What do you mean touch your boots? Why would I touch your muddy boots and get mud all over my hands?" He didn't repeat the order but remained on the bench, his legs stretched out so his boots almost touched my own shoes, the fatigues still bunched around the ankle. The air became charged, either through electricity of an approaching thunderstorm, or the bristling along my own nerves, or the weakening of my sense of self in that strange forest, facing a man whose penetrating stare seemed to strip me of defences, as if he could see right to the very heart of my secret self.
"This is what I want you to do, bitch, isn't it?. This is what you need. Kneel and take a boot in your hand and show me how much you need and respect your master. Then take the other boot and cherish it. That's what you're lusting for, isn't it, motherfucker? You want to be my private fag and boot bitch?
He wasn't wrong. I often found myself staring at his boots and was aware of a strange kind of yearning in me that I didn't understand, focused on the idea of the military and other boots. I grew more and more conscious of them the longer I spent with Magnus. The boots became associated with my feelings for him: entangled, blended, inextricable from them, as if the boot somehow contained the man. More than once I had remarked upon his collection of military boots (several pairs). Something began turning in my mind, a kind of wheel rotated not by rationality or morality, but by an incoherent and paradoxical feeling of disgust, humiliation, and love. My cheeks flushed because I understood in my blood and bones what he meant when he said that I wanted to kneel and take his boots in my hands and show a form of devotion to them. No, correction: more accurately, devotion to Magnus, to his profound nature as a soldier and, to be brutally honest, the need to submit to a powerful dominant alpha, a full-blooded recognition that I was in his hands, possibly imperilled, because he could kill me. He could fuck me to death, oh, please, please, please, I secretly begged, fuck me.
Of course, faux outrage moved me to speak, an attempt to avoid the inevitable, to escape self-recognition and yes, shame and embarrassment before my soldier friend. I say faux outrage because I was scrabbling after a fleeting sense of dignity and self-worth and because I was fighting against my own recognition that he was right. "Are you crazy?" I blurted out. "Kneel and get mud over my clothes?" He didn't budge off the stump nor move his legs. "Soldiers get dirty all the time, you pathetic cunt; mud on our uniforms happens. What's more important, fuckhole? Your clothes or my boots? You need to choose." Magnus didn't raise his voice, just spoke as if stating the obvious, his entire demeanour evincing an incredible confidence in what he was saying, an unshakeable belief in what he could make of me.
Then it occurred to me: the wet towel and bottles of water. He had brought them to clean his boots, having planned this scenario all along. I noticed his sack resting against the tree stump. "Okay," I said, "I'll clean them with the towel." He replied. "No," he answered, "I want you to get on your fucking knees, cunt, and respect the boots!" His voice rose higher this time and I could see anger coloring his cheeks. Would he now commit violence against my person? Again, I imagined my death at his hands: grabbed by the collar, my face pounded by his fist, knocked down in the mud and kicked over and over as I rolled and screamed and begged him to stop. No, despite my paralyzing fascination, I knew he wasn't about the beat the shit out of me, at least not then and there. He clenched his fists, though, and I understood that he meant business.
"Down on your fucking knees, cocksucker, and start licking my boots, you pathetic piece of faggot shit."
