We'd been talking online for two months until I finally lured him to my house the first time. At least that's the way it felt.
He wanted me, and I him. We'd had phone sex a dozen times—he had such a good voice. Smart, grammatical, and not a hint of danger signs, even when he was—as we established very quickly we both wanted—describing, in great detail, the ways he wanted to rape me.
Yes, rape. (I believe in calling things what they are. So did he.) We both had an element of apology in our stated desires. And then we said them. Again and again, our voices cracking as we came, our shared aural narratives of violation ringing in each others' heads.
When he finally came to me—he balked. Not that he didn't fuck me. He did. Four times during the sleepless night. Or that he didn't tie me up at various times, spank me, or place his hot hand over my mouth, usually at the end, when he was coming (and I usually was as well.) It's just that I couldn't draw him out of his polite, civilized shell. Not all the way. When he left in the morning, it was with averted eyes, and a promise to write me. He did—and it was a mess.
He rambled, he waffled. It was clear he was afraid—afraid of letting himself go because then we'd have made a connection that he feared he'd have to follow up on in reality. Or, I thought, the sight of me, the reality of me, scared him because I wasn't what he thought. My mind—as much of a mess as his—thought about my weight, my performance. Maybe just who I was.
We licked our wounds for a few weeks. Then he wrote this. No warning— just black words on a white background of my email, left for me on my laptop like an intruder, lying in wait: