1.
It's always hard to relax after work.
I strip off my clothes like I'm mad at them, and my bra like it's pissed me off twice, and I flop down on the bed in my underwear to glare at the internet for a while.
But then I start to wonder if you're up. It's late where you are, but you might be. My mind rushes out to you, eagerly, like a puppy, and to calm it I start taking slow, deep breaths.
I hated the relaxing exercises when you taught them to me.
It was our first night together after three months of texts and sexts and long, long calls. I was so anxious to please you that I'd thrown up at dinner. You asked me to carry your toybag up the stairs, and when I blurted out "yes sir" and you laughed I felt dizzy. At two in the morning I was bruised, overstimulated, too tired to fuck, too tired to sleep, somehow too tired even to stop thinking, desperately in love and pacing around in my own brain like a zoo animal.
And you curled up around me from behind, wrapped your arms around me, held me tight, and taught me what to do. Deep breath, hold it, let it out. Deep breath, hold it, let it out.
I loved your arms around me, and I loved your voice in my ear, and as I felt the stress start to ebb out of me, I thought "God, I'm so mad that this works." It seemed too basic, too insultingly simple, the sort of thing you'd teach to a tantrumy kindergartener. Deep breath, hold it, let it out. Now clench your toes reeeeeaaaallllll tight, squeeze them, and let them go loose. Deep breath again. Now your whole feet: squeeeeeze, and let go.
It worked, but I hated it, found it silly and juvenile.
You even said it in teacher voice when you taught them to me: reeeeealllll tight, squeeeeeeze now, deep breath, that's my good girl. An especially calm teacher, to be fair: no cooing and squealing, still calm, still confident. Just... encouraging. I did like the encouragement. I liked being a good girl, and I was desperate to be yours. Once, when you were about to cum, you took the word "little" that had always been there silently between "good" and "girl" and slipped up and said it out loud. It wasn't quite my kink, but I liked that too. It matched the teacher's-pet longing you stirred up in me, the frantic urge to make you prouder than anyone else.
So okay, they were juvenile. They made me feel small and silly and uncomfortable. ("You just hate being out of control," you told me, and you weren't wrong.) But somehow I loved doing them anyway. I kept doing them every night after the visit was over.
And I'm doing them for you now, thinking about your body against mine, thinking about belonging to you. My mind wanders. My body tenses. I start again. Deep breath, toes. Deep breath, feet. Deep breath, legs.
2.
You taught me another game besides the breathing one. It's called the limp noodle test.
When we'd been together about a year, and you'd been my real, official, we-exchanged-vows-and-everything owner for exactly two days, you picked up my arm by the wrist, and told me to let it go limp. I thought I'd done it, but then you opened your hand and dropped it and it stayed right where it was. Oops.
"A limp noodle arm drops right away when someone lets go." Nice level teacher voice again, still calm, still patient, and I still wasn't admitting how nice that felt.
A limp noodle arm goes where you put it. I wasn't supposed to anticipate, second-guess where you want it, tense up and rush to get there first.
I wanted to anticipate, the same way I'd fantasized all month about ways I could serve you preemptively when you got here, the same way I strained forward to kiss you when you grabbed me by the hair and pulled my face close. "No," you said. "Again."
We practiced until I could do it--until I could stop trying to move my arm at all, let you take my wrist in your hand, and let you steer. Then you did kiss me, and told me you were proud.
Then you told me to go sit on the floor. Sulking a bit, I did it, climbed down and sat, my pussy hair feeling unromantically weird and scratchy on the bad carpet.
"Okay. Eyes shut. Limp noodle arm," you said.
I shut my eyes, relaxed my arm, and from across the room, without touching me, somehow you made my arm raise straight up out of my lap. Like I'd raised it myself, like it had been my own idea--you made me move it and it moved.
My eyes shot open, I tensed up right away, and right away my arm stopped moving.
I wanted to burst into tears. Someone had done magic to me--actual, real, live magic--and I broke it.
"You can do it," you said. No consoling, no jumping up to fix things, just... confident. Like it was the most ordinary thing in the world we were doing. Encouraging.
I tried to feel encouraged. I wanted to be good. Eyes shut. Deep breath. I squeeeeeeezed my hand and relaxed. Deep breath, squeeeeeezed my arm and relaxed. Deep breath, squeeeeeezed my shoulders and relaxed, and my arm moved up into the air again.
You said we were going to practice until you could move me like a puppet.
You raised my arm and it went up where you wanted it. You waved my hand, and it waved how you wanted it. You put your hand on my head, I *tensed up and second-guessed and kept waving because I was sure that was what you wanted, and fought back tears*, and we started again from "squeeze your hand and relax."
But by the end of the weekend, you could waltz me around the room.
You could also make me fall to my knees--not like a strings-cut puppet in freefall, but like a normally-careful human climbing down, too distracted, too overeager, as fast as she could. Like I would have anyway, like I'd been wanting too since we started. And I could have done it as soon as I wanted to, under my own stubborn power. Or I could have stopped when you made me, tensed up, stood stock still, walked away.
Instead I relaxed, and you put me where you wanted me, and I was yours.
So yeah, now I like the relaxation exercises. Grudgingly.
