1
September. We see each other again after far too many months apart. On our way toward the Badlands, before we leave town, we go shopping. We have to make several stops among the many sex shops on 82nd Street before we find everything we're looking for.
We talk in the car, but mainly there's just a car full of tension, and quiet anticipation. It's too much to take, and we stop hours before we were planning to, for the night. Motel 6, room 214.
We check in to our room. I've barely put down my guitar when you're on your knees, unzipping my pants as usual when we enter a hotel room. You stop after a while and look up, shivering. You stand up, and tug a bit at your belt.
"I have to pee."
This requires my participation, since your belt is locked closed, and only I have the key to it. I kiss you deeply on your mouth, in your mouth, on your face, enjoying your anticipation. After a couple minutes, I take the key out of my pocket, and hold it in between us.
"I figured something out while we were apart," I begin.
Whatever it is I've figured out, you like the sound of it. It has something to do with keys and locks and your submission to me.
"Tell me," you say, sounding short of breath.
"It's not enough for your jeans to be locked up when we're out in the world. You need to be locked up the rest of the time, too," I explain.
I unlock your belt. "Go pee."
By the time you come back from the toilet, I have gotten out a long, adjustable strap that we picked up, and I've put it around the bed. It goes under the bed, across the middle, and both ends of the strap come up from each side of the bed. Near the middle of the bed, the two looped ends of the strap nearly touch.
"Take off your clothes," I instruct. You comply.
"Lay down on the bed." You do.
I take your belt, put it underneath you, and loop each end of the strap through the belt. Then I lock it. You're lying in the middle of the bed. The belt is loose enough that you can turn over or lie on your side. You can even sit up if you want. What you can't do is remove the belt, or get off the bed.
"I knew I needed to do this to you before, but what annoyed me was the thought that by tying one of your limbs to the bed, you wouldn't have freedom of movement of your limbs. I like to move your limbs into different positions, so that gets in the way. This way I can put you into whatever position I want you in, but you still can't get off of the bed."
You lay there contentedly. This was clearly what you needed, too. We both already felt safer and more secure, now that you were chained to the bed.
"If you want to get up to have a smoke or pee or something, just ask."
But we both already knew how rarely that would be happening. Even when you're not chained to the bed, unless I'm making you get up to go outside and do something in the world, the only times you get up are to smoke, pee, eat now and then, and, mostly, to sit on my lap and distract me from the computer, on the relatively rare occasions that I stop paying attention to your naked body long enough to answer some email or something.
But now, if I wanted to do something on the computer, you'd have to just look at me, naked, while chained to the bed, waiting for me to decide it's time to do something with you, aside from making you wait.
2
There's a chair a couple feet from one side of the bed which gives me a gorgeous view of your naked body, prone on the bed. You're looking at me expectently. You try to roll in my direction, but you don't get very far before the ropes stop you.
We haven't been together in months. We've both been waiting for this day for so long. You said in some emails you were afraid that when we saw each other you'd suddenly not be interested in sex anymore, but it's obvious that that fear has not been realized, as you undulate your hips, up and down, up and down. You really want me to fuck you.
The feeling is very mutual. I pretty much always want to fuck you. You're the closest thing to a flesh and blood embodiment of my biggest sexual fantasies that I've ever met. Just the idea that you exist drives me completely wild, let alone the reality of being near you physically -- alone in a hotel room at that, which is always an especially sexually-charged environment for me, for us.
But me fucking you for hours every day is not something your bladder is able to handle, and since our last time together, I've been thinking about how to modify these practices. We've been discussing it by email and such. We both concluded that as long as long as I'm depriving you of something, I'll enjoy it.
We both know how much I love depriving you of orgasms. Which is something that, bizarrely, and beyond my wildest imaginings (perhaps my imagination is limited), you have grown to love, deeply internalizing a fondness for being in a state of utter desperation, because that's how I like you to be.
By the same token, even though I fuck you too deeply and it hurts sometimes, and even though I fuck you for too long and irritate your innards overly much after a while, you always want me to fuck you more, because you know that that's what I want to do. You really do. Though you don't want to be in pain, your desire to do what I want to do generally supersedes that, somehow.
And the idea that I would fuck you less in order to avoid giving you a bladder infection or something is an idea you can barely think about without exhibiting an obvious revulsion for the very notion. But then, when you know that I know that you really, really want to fuck me long and hard, regardless of why that is the case, then me depriving you of that satisfaction is a sufficiently cruel fate for you, such that I can then enjoy it.
So, the logic can get very circuitous. But I had managed to convince you, or so I hoped, that if I fucked you less or for shorter periods of time, this would be something I'd be doing because I wanted to deprive you. (Deprive you, that is, of doing something that you wanted to do because I wanted you to do it. But it's real. It doesn't matter why at a certain point.)
I had also convinced you that varying our activities by adhering to the arbitrary authority of a coin toss was something I really wanted to do. You were skeptical. You wanted to do whatever I wanted to do, and here I was talking about not only fucking you less, but using a random number – that is, a number not chosen by me directly – to determine how often we fuck, and for how long. This was something else that seemed to you to be taking more authority away from me, which wasn't something you wanted.
The thing is, if I want it, you tend to want it, so I figure if I can convince you of the fact that I want it, you'll come around to the idea. As I sit on the chair facing you lying naked, I feel oddly like some kind of therapist trying to convince his patient of something important before proceeding.
"You don't get to fuck me every day on this trip," I began.
You immediately look disappointed. Now you're no longer undulating – it's more somewhere in between undulating and writhing. And you're already starting to go nonverbal.
"Please," is all you say. Please what? Please fuck me I imagine is how you'd finish that sentence, but I know if I asked you to clarify that, you'd just repeat the one word, so I don't bother.
I take a coin from my pocket. "And this coin is going to determine how often and for how long we can fuck on a given day." I handed it to you. "You flip it." You have to flip it because I want your active consent.
You look at the coin, then at me, then back at the coin, then back at me. "But," is all you manage to say. But I just want to do what you want me to do is how I imagine you'd finish that sentence if you had the wherewithall to do so.
"I really want you to do this," I say. "Can you do this?"
"I don't know," you respond, honestly, it seems.
I'm not sure how to proceed. I don't want to do something you can't or don't want to do. But you want to do what I want to do, don't you? And I really want to do this. Is it so hard? Yes, of course I want to fuck you right now for hours. But I also want to deprive you of that pleasure and that pain. And I want to impose unpredictable, arbitrary authority on you in the form of this coin, and the little game I've devised to go with it. I decide to persevere.
"There are several flips involved, depending on the results of each flip as we go," I explain. "First, toss the coin to see whether we fuck today. Heads is yes, tails is no."
Sometimes I think I have you figured out, other times I have no idea what all the criteria is that goes into whether you can do something I want you to do, depending on what it is, and where you're at at the time.
You look at the coin sitting on the bed for a long thirty seconds or so before picking it up in your left hand, as you lie on your side, facing me, propped up on your right elbow. Then a wonderful look crosses your face, one that seems to say, I'm ready to accept my fate.
You drop the coin onto the bed from a couple feet up. Tails. Suddenly the look on your face changes. Your lips turn downward on the edges, forming a slight frown, and your eyes look plaintive.
I continue talking in what I hope sounds like a stern voice. "Now flip it again to see if you should come today. Heads is yes, tails is no."
"I don't want to come," you say, somewhat convincingly. I'm never sure exactly what's going on in your mind when you say that. I always try to read your tone of voice when you say that, and I'm never sure. Maybe I can't tell what's going on because every time you say that, it drives me wild and I can't think straight.
You hold the coin hostage, as if to say, if I don't flip it, I don't have to come. "Please don't make me come." You know how much I like that phrase, too. And then because I like it so much, you do, too. And you might even mean it. But I'm not having any of this rebelliousness.
"Flip it," I command, commandingly.
You dutifully drop the coin on the bed. Tails again. You smile. There's something else behind your smile, but I can't tell what it is. I take the coin and put it back in my pocket.
3