Out of the Shadows

Waiting to see me.

What could be difficult, after this?

I get closer. My Nai can sense it. Whenever I lose the way, I concentrate on the burning sparkles from the spanking in my ass.

‘Now,’ he says, ‘say: “I am such a slut.”’

Interesting. This isn’t even a very powerful word for me. The world of sluts and, what would be the other side? Good girls? Moral women? Whatever it is, it doesn’t carry much of an erotic charge.

But when he tells me to say it, out loud, I feel its connections to other, wilder, more humiliating words.

I have to say, out loud, in front of another person, who I am, deep inside, in the dreams that nobody knows. I have to bring my darkest identity out and show it. Show it to him.

Something that I have been hiding. From the outside world, from the accusations of evil, from the insinuations of deviance, from the suspicions and the attempts to change me, or cure me, or push me out of society. From myself, even, for a long time. If he only knew, my Nai would tell me to say some other words, words that are far more loaded for me, loaded so deeply that, for a long time, I couldn’t say them, not even to myself, not even to my therapist. And that was when I finally decided to talk to a therapist just about that, my sexuality. I couldn’t say the words any more. It was as if a big iron door, too long unused, had rusted and settled into its closed and shuttered state, so that the only way to open it would be to push it until it collapsed. Or to explode it or melt it down. Or to laser it away with the newest technology. Or for the earth to open up and eat it all.

If he knew he would tell me to say: ‘I want to be spanked. I deserve to be beaten. I need the belt. Please, Nai, I need the belt.’

These would be the words of power.

For a long time, I would never say them. For a long time before that, I wouldn’t even write them, form them in my mind. When somebody else said them, with apparent ease, either because they said them so often they had become desensitised or because the mere saying of words didn’t have, for them, the same power, I got a charge from them, like an electrical shock. I thought it must have been visible to the speakers of the words, but maybe not. Maybe not if they don’t feel it themselves. Maybe not if they didn’t watch me closely enough. Like my Nai.

I came closer to coming, opening up from a lot deeper inside now.

‘Say it, say it now. I am such a slut.’

I opened my mouth. I ran my fingers over my clitoris. I formed the words in my mind, but they didn’t come out.

Say it.

‘I … I … I …’

‘Say it, slut.’

So I have to say it. Now. I dive deep down.

My Nai holds my hand. Literally. He holds my hand away from my clitoris. He holds it hard. No way to wiggle. No way to escape. No danger of escape.

‘Say it, slut, now.’

I open my mouth again but nothing comes out, not even a sigh or a syllable.

My Nai gives me a sensuous soft stroke, with his hand and with my own hand. My arms and shoulders and neck melt away with softness. He touches my breasts very tenderly with his other hand, almost flying over them, lingering over the bruises, making them feel hot and releasing more memories.

‘Now,’ he says. ‘Don’t stop. In a moment I’ll let you come. Are you ready to come?’

‘Yes, yes. Yes, my Nai.’

My Nai reaches into the slim triangle that I have opened up at the top of my vulva. His fingers join my fingers.

‘Hmm, nice. Nice and wet,’ he says.

It’s taken me a lifetime to understand what a man means when he says that something is ‘nice’. I would probably translate it into ‘wild’, ‘exciting’, ‘makes me go crazy’. But for a man, it’s ‘nice’. So, now, here, in the presence of the tiger who is dragging open the long-closed doors of my heart with its bare teeth, I, the sexual being, am ‘nice’.

His fingers push much harder than mine, and, at this stage in our relationship, a little too hard for me, and a bit too fast. No inkling of the clit fests to come. When I was contorted on the floor with continuous orgasms, one pushing the other, pushing the other, until my stomach muscles cramped, until I felt I was going to throw up.

‘Now,’ says my Nai, his mouth very close to my ear so that I could feel his breath, ‘open your eyes.’

I open my eyes and I can see his face so close to me. He looks into my eyes, and he whispers: ‘Say it. Say it. Say it to me.’

‘I don’t know,’ I say, my body shivering because in all this time he hadn’t stopped rubbing my clit and I hadn’t stopped running my fingers around my labia either.

‘I don’t know if – if I can. I’ve never said this. I’ve always kept my eyes shut.’

‘Ah,’ he says. ‘Yes, if you keep your eyes shut you can always pretend it isn’t you. Look at me.’

Actually, I think, it’s not so much that it isn’t me when I keep my eyes shut. It’s more me, even. It’s that I don’t have to bring it out to you. Show my insides, my deepest secret insides, to you.

‘Yes, Nai,’ I say, and I do.

I look at him. He looks back into me.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘Now say it.’

I want to have some peace, to collect myself. I want to meditate on it, make the private, secret core of me rise from the depths, slowly, as slow as it needs to be, and then I want to take a good long time to think about it, and hold it in my heart, and head, and then, maybe then – maybe –

Maybe then the doors will still be rusted. Rusted shut from all that time in the rain.

Maybe then it will be perfect. Maybe then it will come out in a full, mature, perfect shape. Completing the circle.

But that’s not how it is. That’s not how it’s going to be. No peaceful retreat. No thoughts. No maybe tomorrows.

My body trembles with different rhythms. I’m already catapulted into speaking. I feel my Nai’s body along mine, all along the length of it, the silky skin touch, the muscles that held me down, with such determination, the bones underneath.

I look into him, I go cold with fear, I feel faint, I feel disoriented, I don’t know any more what is up and what is down, the room is slanted, it stands on its side, pierced on fear.

I want to run away and hide, outside with the spiders and snakes. I want to stay here, close to my Nai, and just give up and crumble into a ball and cry and be held by him.

I want to jump and rush and slide down the stream while I scream, loudly, the words, so that they can be part of the wind.

I look into my Nai’s eyes and I can feel the shame creeping up my neck and cheeks, and for the first time I see in his eyes the satisfaction he feels at calling up the shame, and making me show it to him, to him alone, the owner. I feel his body press hard and his penis grow harder.

Tears streaming out of my eyes, I never look away. I say the words.

‘I am such a slut.’

A strange jungle sound follows them. It must be that all the animals, crowding the darkness beyond the hut, stopped for a moment in their business of killing and eating and fucking and running and fighting. The sound comes from my throat. Something ripped out of me. Something is pushing through the rusted doors.

‘I am such a slut,’ I say again. It’s a little easier now but my burning cheeks are only beginning to bloom. I can see how it pleases my Nai.

‘I am such a slut, I am such a slut.’

He rubs and clamps and tears at my clit.

‘I am such a slut, I am such a slut.’

The words are just sounds now, they mean nothing in themselves, they mean I am yours Nai, you are my Nai, I am showing myself, you tore this out of me, and you receive it. You receive the full power of my anguished soul and the full triumph of me going up in flames. I shout at you, I hack at you, I overwhelm you with the force of my finally freed being.

You take it and you better be strong.

You take it and you better be able to take it in, and hold it, and make it part of yourself, because it is no longer just part of me.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, I come.

Yes, I come with you.

And see such a smile on the face of my Nai.

In the sea

Over lunch, I talked to him about having sex in the sea.

It is strange, now, looking back, that all this time he hadn’t even had a full orgasm yet inside me. He had given me some great orgasms that morning, and he was happy about that and he was proud.

Proudly playing with me in the sea, showing off his catch.

But still, I was a little worried for him. For me. I was worried that if he didn’t have a full orgasm inside me soon he would give up on the whole affair.

He sat there, not eating much, telling me a story. We had just tried again and when he didn’t stay erect he had turned it into some other play.

I looked around for inspiration. I told him that I’d never had sex in the sea, and that was true. He told me about his diving life. I could see he was feeling a little more relaxed.

He seemed so laid back, almost fatalistic, that it was hard to judge how much he was affected by his impotence.

I had loved sleeping in the same bed with him. My skin brushed by his skin. My scent wrapped up in his. I could have lain there forever. Sleeping with him for a night, a whole night, the first whole night! I never wanted it to be morning.

In the morning he had smiled and counted my orgasms, and made me say (with much blushing) ‘Spank me, my Nai’. He was proud of my orgasms like a boy of treasures he found on the beach. He wasn’t hard to read then, he was very happy.

And I was a little less anxious, since I had managed to become his proud possession.

But still – he didn’t mention his own missing orgasm, and he didn’t really attempt it any more.

Except to say, occasionally, that he was growing old and that I should have known him ten years ago.

So I sat under the thatched roof of the seaside restaurant with him, having lunch by ourselves at I don’t know what time, except that it was not lunchtime for anyone else, and talked to him about having sex in the sea.

We didn’t look into each other’s eyes.

We looked at the table and the water and we talked, very indirectly. Diving in the big waterholes when he was a dive master. Feeling the water around you. How people had looked at my breasts, this morning, when he ripped my top off in the water. How my breasts were developing sunburn. How I’d never had sunburn on my breasts.

For me, with my strong feelings and my aroused body, it was difficult to extract from his nonchalant stories how important it was for him to manage to fuck me.

But I did find out when he suddenly stood up, took my hand, pushed my head down just enough so that I couldn’t see where we were going, only the ground and his feet, and led me to the quiet cove, next to ours, where the water was deeper and the hotel was hidden by a big flank of a hill, populated only by the jungle.

I let myself be led, it was such a heady delight to be led, not knowing where we were going, not having to know, not having to find out. I was no longer the navigator.

It was just a walk by the beach, but for me it was a walk into the unknown realm of submitting to him, of following the creature that had risen from the sea.

This cove was much deeper, and there weren’t so many corals to cut your knees on. He started to run, to draw me in, and we put our flippers on and swam properly. He showed me how to spiral round and round and I lost my goggles and we had to look for them under the sea, and then, suddenly, he found them on some rocks, high enough for us to stand on without drowning, between the hill and a small dragonback island and faraway from the beach. He kissed my shoulders and rubbed my newly sunburnt breasts in the salt water and then, suddenly and very roughly, he pulled my swimsuit down all the way. I tried to hold on and I tried to let go and then he dived down and grabbed me and pulled it off my legs. He squeezed it under his armband, very professionally, and pulled his own swim pants off. He took his time with the preparations and held me in an unforgiving grip. I realised that it was going to happen now, I was going to be fucked in the sea, and it was going to happen whether I liked it or not. He slapped me a few times in the face and ordered me to grab him round the waist.

‘I’m going to take you, slut,’ he said and his face was flushing dark red.

I felt his penis. It was there, it was hard and, maybe one reason that explained his problems, apart from the long solo tours, it was very large. I couldn’t see it in the bottle-green water, he wouldn’t let me look down, only into his face, into his eyes, that had a savage look in them that I had not seen before. I felt a matching savage lust.

His penis rubbed against me under the water, and I tried to catch it with my thighs, and squeeze myself onto it.

He slapped me again and again, not cruelly, but hard and well practised (he knew how to slap with authority but also without causing injury) and his breathing changed.

I just wanted to be taken by the monster from the sea. Legend had it that such monsters lived under the rocks that rose ragged and spiky out of the island waters. One day they would rise up and pierce us with their dragon claws.

I was looking into his eyes and smarting from my last slap when he suddenly rammed himself into me. All the way.

I could see his fierceness and his delight when I screamed. His penis rubbed salt into my vagina, and I could feel my secret skin inside rise up with thousands of tiny scratches. It made me feel his whole length, and alerted me to every nuance of his movements.

I was being subjected, mastered, used and hurt for his pleasure. It made me crazy with lust, and with submission. And I still had to look into his eyes, open and naked and no defence and no retreat.

He thrust in deeper, and I felt him open me up.

I just wanted to throw myself back and splash my arms and legs and I didn’t care who saw me and heard me and if my head went under the water and I joined the fish.

His penis slipped out.

I looked at him, I wriggled close, still aroused, but now I was also anxious.

I didn’t want to lose my lust, but even more I wanted him to come, to come inside me, take me with his penis, now. Now or never.

He pushed it back in, and I screamed again, new salt water biting the old marks.

‘Push yourself against me.’

I held and I pushed and I squeezed and I shouted and felt and felt him, and his body was so hot, the hottest spot in the entire South China Sea, visible from space, there must be alerts on the satellites.

He held me up in the water and his face and neck and chest were dark red, suffused with hot, purple blood, just under his skin, a scratch away, and he breathed and breathed and breathed, and I moved against him and with him as much as I could, without anything to hold onto but his body.

All the time I was crazy with arousal, and dizzy from the sun and being taken, naked, in the sea, the way he liked it and the way he wanted it. I was delighted that he could take me the way he wanted it and I was feverish with hoping that he would, the whole way.

Because underneath my delight and my animal lust and my special submissive arousal at being taken while my vagina burned, and slapped in the face and made to move the way he told me, I was dancing a delicate dance, trying to encourage his penis to stay hard and stay in, squeezing my vagina muscles enough but not too much, finding the right angle to push, not to be persuaded away by the slow current of the tide, coaxing this hard, big, exquisite, unexpected huge penis to stay in the dance and feel me and push me and pierce me and not fall back, shrink, slip out, but stay and grow and be as wild as its master. And my master.

I felt how my Nai worked, his legs trembled where he stood, his whole slim body generating desperate energy, wanting to let go, just like me, wanting to dissolve into the sea, but not too soon, wanting to feel his erection and enjoy it and be proud, and feel me around it and hammer me and fuck me and blast me and master me and subject me in penetration as he was subjecting my mind and body in so many other ways.

He wanted to, so much, and yet he was wary of just giving himself to it, let it flow, in case it stopped again, in case his body let him down as he had felt it had let him down before.

I remembered how quickly he had pulled out and given up, that night in Ayuthaya, not given himself a chance to start up again, and I was glad I hadn’t tried to, either, just lain there with him, resting my head on his chest, caressing and licking his body, not his penis, softly, tenderly, talking.

Only now, exploding with heat in the sun, fucking hard in the sea, yes, yes, because that’s what we were, fucking hard in the sea, I realised how much he had wanted this, and how fragile everything still was, in spite of the wild movements, in spite of his reassuring continued size, in spite of the dominant thrusting and ramming himself into me.

I felt the wave of my own orgasm building up. Every movement of his penis made me contract, and the point behind my cervix where the tension collects before it opens out and swallows sea water until it drowns, happily, was gaping its hungry mouth.

I wanted so much to come, my body wanted to come, but, more than all that, I wanted him to come, to grow as hard and full as he could, and then come to orgasm, inside me.

I wasn’t sure.

I felt his heart beat, fast, so fast, I felt his breath, I looked into his eyes, I gave him my lust and my submission. I felt his penis but I didn’t know for sure, I couldn’t tell, and I tried to hold my own orgasm back, so that I wouldn’t squeeze too hard, didn’t disturb his rhythm, didn’t spoil it for him, he was so close, so close this time, to coming inside a woman, after seven years.

Finally, he threw his head back and held me so tight I sputtered for air.

Then he relaxed.

I had to look at him, I didn’t know. I saw it in his face, yes, he had come.

The peak for my own orgasm was past, but seeing him so happy made me dance with joy and I coaxed some of the contractions back, and he held me, tenderly, joyfully, trying to make sure I got my fill, and I came, a few times, as his penis sunk back, out of joy and release, and knowing that in the future, if there was a future, I would come and come and come, with that huge penis, and being fucked and opened up like that, my vagina still wasn’t closing herself again, as if in shock, or, maybe, gaping for more, until I, too, dropped back into the sea, and we both floated, hair and arms and legs drifting over the coral reefs, a pair of still hot satiated choice morsels for any passing shark, for the sun to shine onto, for the angry little fish to snip at, and for the locals to point to and photograph.

Until that moment I think I never fully realised how vital being able to fuck a woman with his penis and come inside her is for a man. I had had some limited experience of impotent men before but they always played it down, so I did too. I had heard advice on the radio and I had seen training videos for counsellors which all seemed to say that it wasn’t such a big deal.

I never really understood men until this moment in the sea with my Nai.

Until that moment with my Nai I didn’t know, not really, not intimately, not from my lover while he fucked, how much a man’s whole being is affected by the performance of his penis.

Only now the circle had closed for him, and only now was he really free to give himself to our play.

Because of this moment the relationship took on a whole different dynamic. He was wilder in his play, and I had found a very deep, intimate place in his affections. Because I was the woman who had been with him in this moment. Who had been with him through this moment. I was the manifestation of his rebirth as a sexual being.

While for me, he simply transformed my entire life.

So that was fair.

I could have reflected on all this that same evening, in our bed, when he was taking me into the deepest and most intimate humiliation I had ever known and always desired.

But by then I was again flying without a pilot, and so much immersed in the present that I didn’t even notice it.

The match

So what is it that I want so much?

So much that I travelled round the whole world and spent so many years looking?

I want to fulfil my deepest needs. And I want to find someone who has and knows his own deepest needs.

I want someone who matches my desires, so that I fulfil his and he fulfils mine, just and exactly by being who we are.

It sounds impossibly ambitious, and it is very simple.

On the most primal, biological level, it is not at all too much to ask.

On the contrary, it is the most common relationship dynamic in the world.

Animals have it, plants have it.

They have it with other animals, other plants who are genetically developed to match them. They also have it far beyond that – with the environment they live in, with the temperature, the moisture in the air, the chemical composition of the soil and the water. With their choice of planet. I don’t know if they feel fulfilled, but they are. They each have what they need and they give to their partners what those partners need.

On some level I claim the same rights as a duckweed or a one-cell amoeba swimming in a slimy pond. I want to be matched. And I can provide the right match.

But of course it’s not always so easy.

Particularly for humans whose needs appear to be so much more complex, although I don’t actually think mine are.

Still, the matching process doesn’t always work.

A dog in a city apartment, a flower on a windowsill, or a worm eating earth of the wrong kind of acidity will not find it.

I don’t know how much they suffer. I don’t know if they even know the cause of pain.

BDSM as I practise it is a very sophisticated concept, evolved and refined over thousands of years of human culture. It involves biological, mental and psychological aspects. As do romantic love, team sports and international politics.

But BDSM is also a primal need. For us, the BDSM people. It’s not something that we choose, it chooses us. It is who I am, just like the grass, just like the cricket that sings in it.

People say it is naïve to look for a perfect match in those complex mental and psychological constructions we carry in our evolved little heads, but I don’t think I am. I am quite happy to accept a rough match that leaves many areas of my life open to other relationships. But I do need someone who matches the core.

People shake their wise human heads and predict self-inflicted failure.

But I don’t accept that.

After all I only want what every plant and dog has.

If they are allowed to go out and find it.

If they are allowed to evolve in the environment they need.

If they can develop into their true nature.

That is all I ask.

I stayed

I didn’t realise until much later why he took the photographs.

He thought he would never see me again.

He wanted to be able to prove to himself, old and alone and masturbating to the internet again, that this had really happened.

So I stayed.

I left the jungle island and the dusty boom town, I left the lizard behind who guarded my door. I abandoned all other plans.

Our phone talks had changed.

Calmer, more matter-of-fact, discussing details of my coming to Bangkok.

Underneath, my body was expanding into the heat. My heart gave a steady joyous beat. Sometimes we stopped talking and just said are you there? Yes I am there for a few minutes.

Then he would say something outrageous and I felt very lonely with my unspanked bottom. So I had to tell him that. So then he came up with something even more outrageous until my skin tingled in the dusty heat.