Obsession

All week I had been ignoring the gnat-like insistence of Julian's phone calls. It was difficult to process in the moment, but I knew things had become irreparably warped between us. He lost control, and I wasn't sure how much of it I could have prevented. I couldn't recall whether I had asked him to stop. I thought I had, but he had never ignored our safe word before. He had always stressed that he wouldn't take anything I didn't want to give. I couldn't help but wonder-- Did I antagonize him?

May 15th was a week after the art show. I had a feeling I wouldn't see him again after the wedding, and I wasn't entirely sure if I wanted to see him again before that. I was still sorting out the inner turmoil, and what I was willing to give up in order to justify the rewards.

Left on the floor forgotten, was the large rechargeable vibrator that Julian had used to bring me to rapid, forced orgasms. The last night I saw him I washed it and left it on the counter next to my keys, as though it were a casserole dish that needed returning. If I thought of it as a temporarily displaced item in my space, I could compartmentalize the rush I felt thinking about the power it held. I had seen similar tools in videos before, but until I felt the vibrations for myself, I couldn't fathom its intensity. I contemplated seeing him again to return it, but it seemed beside the point. If not on Sara, would he use a tool like that on another woman? Had he already? I grabbed the vibrator, plugged it in next to my bed and turned it on.

Playing with the controls, I found it had four settings. I couldn't tell which he had used on me. I absently cupped my hand over the smooth dome and watched my fingertips blur as the motor whirred softly. Three settings high, my hand was nearly shaking with the intense vibrations that traveled up my forearm.

I slipped the large wand between my legs, easing it up against the front of my shorts. I immediately closed my legs around the sensation, reveling in the muted intensity. Shifting, my hips quickly found a rhythm as I sat, grinding against it in my bed. Any trace of guilt vanished as I worked the silicone dome against the thin layers of cotton, teasing myself with just enough sensation to feel ravenous.

Eyes closed, I could see Julian at the foot of the bed, gently berating me for the lascivious scene I had become. He'd set me on my knees, pillows propped between my spread legs and the vibrator perched beneath me. At his command, I'd grind against its head and moan into the otherwise still room. Self-conscious ideations would fall away as he'd paint me with his special blend of humiliation and praise. That was the heart of our game, I realized. I was a furtive thrill and his most selfish pleasure. He could take exactly what he wanted from me, and delight in the knowledge that it was what I wanted most. We both had what the other needed.

I knew how this scene would progress. Per his instructions, I'd be edged to a pleading, dripping mess before him. He'd coo cruelly in his unbothered way, his own dignity intact, and his cock straining hard against the confines of his slacks. Grinding against the relentless vibrations, I'd lift my chin to watch him as his fingers would run down my jaw, his thumb parting my lips. He liked to reduce me to a possession, pairing something awfully lurid and unquestionably sexual like the stern orgasm denial with his fingers penetrating my lips, invading my mouth.

"Please," I would garble through the intrusion, wanting for something bigger.

His cock in my mouth seemed a great relief, a peal of satisfaction would simmer from the back of his throat and force the head of his member deep into me. I'd hum my need to him, frantic. Distraction would have him a substantially less organized sadist, and he'd order me to cum with his cock stuffed deep into my throat.

Eyes closed, accepting more cock than air, there's this bliss of pure carnal escapism. The pinnacle of desirability, scratching an itch he can't reach himself. I'd cum, but it's second in satisfaction to feeling him need me urgently. Needing me more than he cares to admit. He'd hurt me to prove that I was just as powerless as he was.

In fragments, the intense feelings of helplessness traveled back to me from the night I had orgasm after orgasm wrenched from my body. I recalled the wall of him behind me, his hardness pressed against me as I writhed and begged. I thought of the swell of emotion in my chest when I saw him, and bit my lip against the pain that seemed to accompany his memory. Overcome, the force of the vibrations up against my clit, the swell of emotion and a flood of release—I came, sudden, and hard. After, alone, the sense of emptiness sharpened and I could do nothing but lay in a disoriented puddle of self-revulsion. I didn't want him anymore. Not after his manic episode. He wasn't an option. Even in fantasy, it was torture.

Time passed, and I struggled to pull myself out of the slump of depression I had spiraled into. My apartment was in shambles; I couldn't recall accumulating the sheer magnitude of mugs that littered the floor of my bedroom. Since I had absolutely no desire to paint after our last exchange, I lacked the motivation to get out of bed.

My phone buzzed less and less frequently. Jacques surprised me with his persistence in checking in. He wasn't expecting me back for some time, still. I would respond at first in monosyllabic replies, and his tone grew from patient to annoyed and then uneasy. I was tired of his pep talks and mostly let his calls go unanswered.

It amazed me how much time absolute aimlessness consumed. I lost days subsisting off of fumes, relying on hot tea to warm me as I grew increasingly cold under my covers. I ruminated over my stupidity in breaking up with Ethan, for engaging with Julian to begin with, and at the same time, missed him fiercely. I came using the vibrator, I hated myself for it, and time passed whether I left my bed or not.

It was early afternoon when my phone made an unfamiliar chirping sound. Squinting against the brightness to contrast with the dark of my bedroom, I found a reminder: Art Showcase tonight, 8:00 PM. I was trying to turn off the notification when I accidentally accepted a phone call. Fuck. I felt a powerful urge to hang up.

"So you ARE alive!" Jacques sounded particularly cheery.

I cleared my throat, suddenly aware I hadn't used my voice in days. "Hi."

"I was about to send in search dogs."

"Great. Look, I have to-" I sat up in bed.

"So what time are we meeting up?" A blender whirred in the background.

"Oh, right." Damn it.

I had made plans with him to go to the showcase. He had always talked animatedly on the topic, having attended annually and donated pounds of coffee to their reception. I had meant to cancel on him previously. I was a perennially bad friend, and he was immune to my flakiness.

"Jacques, I can't."

"Spare me." I heard him acknowledge someone in the breakroom.

"I mean it. Ever since we broke up. . ." I walked into my bathroom and fanned my hair out, scrutinizing my reflection.

"You said he wrote something for you, right? Think of it as closure. The end of an era. Then you can get out of bed and stop moping."

"I don't know if it's a good idea." I protested.

"Of course it is. We're meeting at the bookstore right off Main. I'll see you at seven thirty." He wasn't asking.

It felt bizarre to be dressed and around swarms of excited strangers. I studied faces as they filtered past me, wondering who else was acting the part of a Normal Functional Adult. As I waited for Jacques inside of the tiny bookshop, I suffered in the air conditioning. I felt instant regret for not wearing a sweater and distracted myself skimming the best sellers of last season, growing increasingly discounted with their waning relevance.

When Jacques pulled me into a hug, he held me at arms' length moments after.

"You okay?" He looked me up and down. "You almost punctured me with you ribcage."

"I'm fine." I tried to keep the agitation out of my voice.

"Good to see you're among the living." He linked his arm in mine, and we walked out to the crosswalk. As we made our way toward the gallery, the jovial mood outside was infectious. The air was fragrant with spring, vendors were out on the sidewalks with colorful trinkets, and live music seemed to follow us, though I couldn't see from where.

We made our way into the lobby of the art gallery, which were connected by a set of stairs that lead to the theatre where the music performances would take place.

"This is nice." I remarked. "A lot less pretentious than I remember." I grabbed a program and leafed through the glossy pages. Julian's piece would start in about half an hour. I began to feel a nauseous excitement at the thought of seeing him and only heard part of the composition during the rehearsal, after all. I allowed myself to embrace the butterflies I felt and tried to enjoy it.

We agreed to meet back at the staircase and broke off to look at the paintings displayed and a few of the sculptures on exhibition. The room had begun to filter out as one of the first musical performances of the night took place, leaving a wide berth for Jacques and me to meander the wide open space. I recognized the distinctive style of an artist that I had attended a lecture for once. She painted hyper realistic nudes with elements of impressionism. She had given a lecture about censorship that I remembered as inspirational. I was squinting at the tiny font of the inscription next to an eerie faceless sculpture made entirely out of discarded objects when Jacques approached me.

"You didn't tell me you submitted a piece." He nodded his approval.

"I didn't." I stared back uncomprehending.

"Another Cadence Rogers, then?"

I followed him into a far corner of the gallery. There stood, on display: Sara's painting.

"It's amazing." He draped his arm around me, pulling me to his side.

"Thanks." I murmured, leaning in to read my bio. It read simply that I was raised in the south and had studied portraiture at the university, my alma mater. It listed some of the artists I emulated.

"Does that count as a romantic gesture? I wouldn't have expected as much after meeting him. What do you think?" Jacques squeezed my arm in solidarity.

I didn't know what to think. It felt equal parts apology and aubade.

The theatre was packed to capacity. We came in at the tail end of a jazz group bathed in blue stage lights. A female vocalist in a floor-length gown crooned onstage. After struggling to find two seats together, we decided to stand in the back.

"Look, she even has gardenias in her hair. What a cliché." Jacques whispered as the song concluded. The band took their bows and were whisked off of the stage.

A buzz came over the theatre as stage hands went to work, quickly wheeling in a podium. The orchestra filtered into their seats. I realized I was holding my breath as the musicians tuned. I was surprised that the chatter didn't stop as the general cacophony of strings and noodling died down.

An older man dressed in a suit took to the stage, introducing Julian as the adjunct professor working with the orchestra for the semester, the composer and conductor of the piece. I glanced nervously at Jacques. He caught my eye and cocked a brow.

Julian's humble demeanor was jarring to observe. I stared at his frame, formidable in his dark navy suit. He accepted the microphone and the general chatter seemed to cease.

"It's been an incredible semester working with some of the finest young musicians I've had the pleasure of knowing in my career. You all have so much to be proud of." There was a thick stillness in the room. I wondered what the strange atmosphere could have been.

Jacques squeezed my hand in solidarity. I couldn't tear my eyes off of the stage.

"This piece, Serenade for Strings, is in five movements, a love letter." He smiled, bashful, his hand resting on his chest. "To my beautiful fiancée, Sara. My soon-to-be bride. My muse." He gestured to her figure seated close to the stage, his adoring eyes locked on her. It occurred to me that it was the first time I had seen them together. I could feel their energies vibrating and comingle from where I stood in the shadows, secreted next to the exit. I felt a current between them and for the rest of his speech could only hear my own pulse in my ears.

Jacques squeezed my hand again, leaning then into my ear, his whisper was deafening. "We don't have to stay for this."

In the ambiance of an audience settling in perfect acoustics, Julian turned to shake hands with the soloist. A moment of gravid silence, where I imagined a private moment between him and his orchestra ensued; an encouraging word, or perhaps a parting smile. His arms raised, poised, and with facile ministrations of his baton, the orchestra came to life.

Jacques left me at the entrance to the parking garage, having walked to the college from his apartment. We walked in solemn silence from the auditorium as flash photography went off with Julian standing before the symphony looking pleased and comely as ever. I felt his hand on my back. I couldn't tell if he was trying to make sure I didn't collapse or if he was worried we would be separated from the crowd as the halls flooded for intermission.

"You seem so calm." He seemed to cringe at the words as they escaped his lips. He released me from the third hug he had pulled me into since we left the building. "Are you sure you're okay to drive?"

I dismissed his concerns and thanked him. I could feel the impatience bubbling under my skin. I itched to separate from the crowds. I was almost grateful to be alone in the parking garage, and could have passed out with relief once I closed the car door behind me.

I felt hyper aware of my senses, as though time had been paused and I felt a stinging oneness. The sound of my pulse seemed amplified, the clicking of my turn signal, the buildings rolling past as I drove. The drive to my apartment seemed ludicrously long. Driving past a gas station, I swore I could taste the heady, nauseating smell of the petrol. Gripping the steering wheel, I failed to take inventory of my feelings. My chest was tight. Slowing my breath, I tried to recall the symptoms of a heart attack. I remembered hearing you could die from a broken heart, and wondered what that might feel like.

Back in my apartment I could breathe easily. My tiny apartment ponged of turpentine. I realized that I had never capped off the jar I was working with from the last night I saw Julian and had grown accustomed to the scent. I felt the insane compulsion to drink it and shook the thought off.

Julian had taken Sara's painting, but had left the one I had worked on with him propped against the wall next to portraits, strangers I had met and photographed. Some of them regulars at the café. Others I had met online and received permission to reproduce their image. I felt a great and horrible disdain for the countless canvases, almost all of them dry and the meager approximations of those I had tried to replicate.

My style looked, all at once, cartoonish. I realized I had seen my own work with fresh-enough eyes to know: it was all a terrible joke. I had tried and failed to submit artwork to the showcase years ago, a lifetime ago. Julian's influence had bought me space in the gallery. I burned from the inside out, replete with humiliation. Strangers would pass and look over a poorly rendered Sara and shrug. They would skim the hours of work I had poured into, my best efforts, and rest assured that they could paint something so rudimentary, too, given the supplies and the gall to embarrass themselves so thoroughly.

Stacks of canvas on walls, on easels, and drying racks. Hours of work, years of personal bests, sleepless nights, the smell of turpentine and ruined clothes, smeared in pigments that would never wash out. They were all tangible proof of a failure I had never accepted. I possessed an unstoppable force as I gripped the cheap wooden handle of a nearby palette knife and drove the dull blade through the first painting I saw before me.

Taut canvas tore in a dreadfully satisfying way, unfurling in tatters, heavy with layers of paint. I could hear Julian's Serenade, adulation incarnate, that was never meant for me. I tore through the studies of bodies, of self-portraits, of angry-looking abstracts. I could feel his hand, clamped over my mouth as he forced an orgasm from my aching body. Another painting, a study in shadows: destroyed. My need to cling too soon, my body too angular, or too abundant, mind too active, never resting: Each canvas the ugly truths of self-loathing that it pained me to look at. I didn't realize I had been sobbing until I heard an urgent rapping on my door. I stayed perfectly still, looking around at the insanity that I had indulged in.

"Cadence?" That familiar accent called out through the ineffectually thin wall.

"Hold on." I called out. Looking around at the full scale of my senselessness, quickly realizing with the time I had, there was no chance to make the sight look measurably less psychotic.

Jacques stepped gingerly through the door frame, surveying the scene. He did little to hide his look of horror and I regretted letting him in.

"So." He calmly cleared off a couch cushion before reclining casually. "You've been busy."

For the first time, I talked through the full scope of my relationship with Julian. The intoxicating attraction I felt to him while we were together, and the unbearable self-doubt when we were apart, the possible drug dependence he had, to the last night he had been in my apartment. I told him everything.

"Well, now I can understand why you've had a meltdown. Cadence, what he did was rape."

I shook my head. "I don't think so." I had begun impulsively tidying the confetti of my crushed ambitions off of the industrial-grade carpet. "I mean, D/s is complicated." I pulled apart the wooden framed that stretched the canvas of an acrylic portrait I had done of Ethan to fit it into the garbage. I hadn't especially liked the proportions anyway.

"Consent is not that complicated. You said your safe word was 'stop' for fucks sake." He pulled a painting of an older woman out of the garbage bag I had almost filled. She had lived in Ethan's building and was always inviting me over for tea. "Not this one. It can be salvaged." He protested, rolling it up as we spoke and stashing it out of my reach.

I sunk into an arm chair, facing him. "I'm no victim here, I even enjoyed some of it. I pushed him when he was already stressed, and with the kind of dynamic we have . . ."

Jacques shook his head. "Look, you're not the only person who's had a D/s relationship. I understand the dynamics."

"Jacques, no! Really?" I couldn't see him ordering anyone else around.

He rolled his eyes. "Yes."

"Really?" I squinted.

"Oh my god. Yes! Really! The point is, even if you liked it, he's a bastard for leading you on and cheating on his wife."

"Fiancée." I corrected.

"Does it matter?"

"I'm not any better than he is." I challenged.

"Sure, you made a huge mistake with Ethan, but I wouldn't call what you did unforgivable. Don't use your self-pity as an excuse to be self-destructive." He got up off the couch, taking the garbage bag filled with my destroyed paintings from me. "I'm sorry. I should get home. I want you to be very careful around him."

"I doubt he even wants to see me anymore." A lame attempt to delay his departure.

"I wouldn't be so sure. Are you sure you're going to be okay?"

"I will be." I followed him to the door, heavy with dread at the thought of being left alone again.

He stopped after a moment and seemed to soften, "It's like we said: it's an end of an era."