Disconnect – Moments with Sir (sort of)

It’s Tuesday. Monday is somatic therapy night. Last week it was 6.5 hours of rolling flashbacks night. This week I came home armored with Ativan and Zyprexa prescriptions. My doctor is pulling out the big guns.

My Fitbit recorded a flashback a few weeks ago. I was taking my PTSD meds at the time. My heartrate still managed to go from 64 to 220 in minutes. With alpha-1-adenergic antagonist in my system. So, basically, a drug was actively suppressing my body’s ability to chemically create a fear response and I still managed to jack my heartrate over 300%. Go me!

So, I went to somatic therapy yesterday. I had a hella flasback in the middle of therapy. Dissociated and put on my, “I can be completely calm and collected within thirty seconds of being in a ball screaming… I consider this evidence that all my trauma is fake and I’m a liar,” face. Finished therapy, with a few little glitches in the façade.

I went to the pharmacy and picked up meds. Went home. And FUCKING WELL CONVINCED DJ TO REINSTATE OUR DYNAMIC.

I am the SHIT! I am so good…

I had set him up with a bullet-proof argument on Saturday morning, which he said he would, “Think about.”

Monday night I sealed the deal with, “Seriously, we’re pretty much rock bottom, how much damage can it do?”

Okay, so… that was not the convincincing part.

But, “I have drugs if anything goes wrong. Please don’t make me give up my entire identity, I’m already losing everything else (strategic tears),” worked.

He said, “Fine. Bedtime in an hour.”

Well, fuck. Why do I think I miss my dynamic? Why do I always fucking forget how FUCKING OBNOXIOUS IT IS!!!

“Oh, and give me your phone.”

FUCKFUCKFUCKINGFUCK… “Yes, Sir…” FUCKING FUCK!

So… I stole my phone back. Sir was silly and thought I was honorable or trustworthy or some other noble characteristic that I do not possess, and set it on the counter while he was talking to SB. I all casual-like slipped past and swiped it.

Sir took a break between the first and second sets of 20 swats with the wooden spoon to casually toss out, “I’m curious about what’s happening here? Are you using punishment as a surrogate for self-harm, hopelessly addicted to your phone, or pushing the boundaries to reassure yourself that our dynamic is truly back in place? Thoughts?”

Fuck you was clearly not going to be well received, and possibly forgetting to take my afternoon dose of Adderall at 12:30, and instead taking it at 4:30, saved me momentarily, because I didn’t say it out loud. Go me!

“I don’t have any thoughts,” I managed to force out of my mouth, but being that my entire face was, at that moment, buried in a pillow, Sir didn’t hear me and firmly encouraged me to make my response more clear.

I shrugged my shoulders.

The second and final set of 20 swats suddenly became the second and middle set of 20 swats. Fucking fuck I hate that stupid spoon! And my fucking brain!

It wasn’t bedtime, yet. So we went back downstairs to finish cleaning and packing up for the next day. Sir put my phone in his pocket. I contemplated trying to steal it again and cursed my dearth of pickpocketing prowess.

Instead, I went to the couch and flipped open my laptop.

Sir gave the 5-minutes to bedtime warning.

When I completely failed to respond, he generously reminded me that the 5-minute deadline was to be in bed, teeth brushed, pills taken, pajamas donned. Not to be jumping off the couch and making a mad dash for the stairs.

I made some vague, noncommittal, gesture of comprehension. Sir looked at me for a few seconds, then walked away.

A dark, pained part of me whispered in my head that he was sick of me, I was pushing him away, I have to earn his love, I have to be good because I have no worth of my own…

I noticed my leg bouncing wildly. Its my therapy homework to notice what my body does.

I noticed.

I’m practically cured. Go me!

I noticed my breath was faster, and my fingers moved more quickly over the keyboard, as if I was compelled to keep typing even as the guillotine descended.

I heard Sir go upstairs with SB. My eyes slid down to the corner of my screen, to the clock, pulled by an inexorable force. Bedtime was two minutes in the past. I felt my breath catch and I almost thought about closing my computer. Then I didn’t and went back to clicking through make-up tutorials and reaction videos and sketch comedy and the rest of the mindless hell that is Facebook videos. But somewhere deep, almost too far into the shadows for me to see it, something was churning.

I started to play a game, the timer keeping my mind and eyes fixed for minutes at a time. But after each round, inexorably, my eyes sought the clock, the minutes passed. The twitch in my leg became increasingly frantic, my breath, increasingly short, the thing in the darkness, pacing, turning, ever more anxious, so I clicked “Play Again”… again… escape… occupation.

It was 14 minutes past bedtime when I heard the bedroom door open and close. Heard footsteps in the hall, on the stairs. My heart was in my throat, but still I couldn’t stop, couldn’t close the computer, couldn’t exit the game, couldn’t look away to see him coming.

His foot hit the landing, then the floor. I was noticing the shit out of my body. My chest was jumping with each unsteady breath through my nose. My arms and fingers felt twitchy, as if overfilled with electric energy, arcing, jerking, seeking the ground. I pulled my fingers in to my palms, balling my hands against the wrist rest, then jerking them back as Sir grabbed my laptop, snapping it shut and setting it aside in a single, smooth motion.

Only then did I notice his body. His left hand. His fingers loosely wrapped around the broad, wooden handle of the oak paddle. The one for punishments. The one for real punishments. The one usually most intimately familiar with Sub Brother’s skin, not mine… My mistakes were usually the small ones, the little slips, the inattentions, the forgets… My mistakes were usually 20 swats (or double or triple) with the wooden spoon, fiercely stinging but quick to fade, a sharp reminder, all I needed.

Sub Brother doesn’t make small mistakes. He doesn’t slip, or inattend. He rarely forgets. He doesn’t need the sharp reminders. He goes days, weeks, sometimes months without mistakes, without need of the kind of attention I need so frequently.

But he does make mistakes. He makes them big. Not slips, defiance. Not forgets, arugments. Sir says that SB has a long fuse and it burns slowly, but it burns, and when it finally reaches the end of its length, the fallout is so much more dramatic.

Like mine.

Tonight.

“Have an answer yet?”

I looked at my knees, wrapped in denim. I wanted to cry, break down, feel defeat, surrender, allow the fear of punishment, the pain of correction, the guilt of my defiance break through the walls of unfeeling that were pressing against me. I looked for feelings. But they were thin, like echoes in the places where I knew they should be.

“No, Sir.”

I forced myself to look at the paddle, to remember the feel of its surface, to recall its bite, the sound of it, the sting of it. I found my inner voice and told myself I would be in pain… It would hurt… In minutes… For hours… But I felt nothing.

My body knew, however. My leg’s bouncing was now so pronounced it made my breathing choppy. My eyes couldn’t find a place to rest and twitched and jumped from one point to the next. Every other breath or so, a blade of ice surged up into my diaghram, letting me know my fear still lived, somewhere behind my walls.

Sir was angry with me… Disappointed in me… I was a failure. A bad sub. A bad partner. Worthless, a burden, a waste of Sir’s time, attention, affection… love…

Something stirred in the shadows of the walls, but no emotion showed its face.

I told myself I’m a disappointment. I told myself I lost Sir’s trust. I told myself I violated the sanctity of my contract, I failed my obligations…

A twinge… beyond my reach.

Sir didn’t say anything and finally my brain had exhausted the entertainment of staring at my knees, the weave of the carpet, the texture of the skin on the back of my hands, the pattern of scratches on the old coffee table… I slid my gaze sideways. Sir was still in his regular clothes, not yet changed for bed. My eyes found his belt, and I noticed the shudder in my body… divorced from my mind.

I tried to imagine the strike of his belt. He never uses it on me. It scares me too badly. Sometimes even the sound of it as he pulls it from his pants at night makes me twitch with anxiety. But tonight even conjuring the sound, the sensation, the imagined pain… didn’t penetrate my brain.

Finally, Sir tipped his head toward the stairs to the garage. “Let’s go.”

For a split second, it felt as if everything in me stopped, as if an icy fist had punched me in the center of my chest and frozen me to stillness.

Then my breath shuddered back into my lungs and I pushed myself, numbly, to my feet.

Sir waited at the top of the stairs, and motioned for me to precede him. I hate walking ahead of anyone. I hate leading, even if I know where I’m going. And this time I didn’t know. The laundry room? The garage? The car? The driveway?

I hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, hovering in the vestibule, hoping Sir would take back the lead. But when he joined me, he simply motioned me forward again. This finally had the effect the sight of the paddle couldn’t, anxiety seized my belly.

I edged forward, keeping my eyes cast back to catch any sign of his expectations. He didn’t stop me at the laundry room door, so I stepped inside and he followed, closing the door behind us.

I reminded myself to be nervous as I shed clothes and placed my palms on the seat of the chair. The smell of detergent and dryer sheets, the click and hum of the air conditioner, the sucking cold of the concrete floor…filled my mind, pushed out thoughts, filled the void where my fear should have been.

The first swat wasn’t light. The crack of it was shockingly loud, bouncing against the concrete floor and walls. The sting was sharp and bright and it chased the air from my lungs. I sucked more in to replace it, whistling slightly through my teeth.

Sir usually spaces paddle swats slowly, allowing them to build and crest, allowing me to feel them fully, trading speed for pain, and guarding against my panic. But the next swat fell quickly after the first, then a third, and another. I could feel the new pain of each, feel the lingering burn of the previous, hear the echoing crack, my own breath, my softly voiced reactions. I noticed my hands pressed against the cold seat. I noticed my left knee jerking involuntarily, lifting my foot from the floor, shifting my weight, squirming, returning to postion, again and again.

I noticed each swat, pain, reaction, movement, repositioning… then again… then again… each a distinct event. Separate. Unrelated. Unlike my usual experience, this punishment didn’t build up inside me, the pain, the helplessness, the fear, the anticipation… didn’t grow with each crack of the wood on my skin.

When Sir paused, when I stood still, in position, listening to my breathing, feeling the heat on my skin, I felt vaguely surprised at my lack of emotion. I felt no anticipation, no worry, no concern for the pain that would build in the next round. I felt, in the respite, almost no sense of pain, though I was aware of pain during the swats. Now, I could only feel heat – neither pleasant nor painful. I waited. Listening to my breath. Feeling empty.

The next set of swats came quickly again, one atop the next, my body responded of its own accord, twisting, whimpering, returning to position without reminder, the pain seemed greater, but also, oddly irrelevant, and settling back to a simple heat as soon as the next respite.

My breathing was rapid at first, but slowed quickly. I noticed tension in my shoulders and rolled them. Sir’s hand guided me upright, and I rolled my hands, listening to the creaking of my wrists.

“Are you OK?”

I nodded. He took my chin gently in his fingers. His eyes fixed on mine intently for several seconds, though it felt as if he were looking through me rather than at me. Peering through the windows to the grinding cogs of my brain.

“How are you feeling?”

“It burns.”

His expression changed but I couldn’t interpret it. That would usually bother me.

“Body scan.”

I looked at him and the awareness that my expression was edging dangerously toward incredulous. I tried to force my awareness inward, but it skittered across the surface of my body like dry ice in a hot skillet before dissipating to nothing.

“My ass burns,” I said, working hard to keep the hard edge of annoyance from my voice. Some part of me understood that he was asking for more than that answer, but I couldn’t give it, or didn’t care. I couldn’t, or didn’t care to, think about why.

He studied my face for another moment, then pointed to the chair. I sighed and lowered my hands back to its seat.

This time the swat wasn’t as loud, wasn’t as hard, but I yelped in pain and dismay. The stinging brand this time crossed the back of my right thigh. Another made the left match and I squeaked, pulling my leg forward, and barely keeping my hands on the chair. Another swat on my right thigh forced me to throw my weight onto my left foot again as my body jerked my right leg forward, leaving my left vulnerable to the next swat.

By the tenth swat, my strangled squeaks had risen in pitch until I was making myself cough. My breath continued to leave my throat in pained whimpers for nearly a minute after the last swat landed.

Not released from position, I finally allowed my weight to sink into my arms, and my chest and belly began to shake with silent sobbing, though no tears would come.

Sir dropped his hand to the back of my head and stroked my hair, then my back, as I shuddered and whimpered barely-voiced apologies to the seat of the chair.

“Did that work better?” he asked, his hand warm, resting at the small of my back.

I shook my head, then nodded, then sobbed. “I don’t know… I’m sorry… I’m sorry.”

“Have you had enough?”

He doesn’t usually ask that during punishments. And when he does, it doesn’t mean what you’d think it means.

I forced my attention inward again, feeling the pressure of resistance, but able to maintain it long enough to sense my resistance weakened, but still lurking.

My brain sputtered indignation inside my head even as I shook my head and Sir nodded and pointed once more to the chair.

I couldn’t quite find the part of me that wants to please him. I couldn’t find the core of integrity that anchors me through the pain of punishment, the sense of rightness, the security in surrender. But I could almost remember what they felt like, and I made that enough to press my hands to the hard, cold seat once more.

The last two sets blurred into a melange of pain and regret. My emotions still felt blunted, but as Sir released me finally and pulled me into a hug, I could feel the hardness and resistance that had invisibly pushed me to defiance and disobedience now melted. And though I still felt strangly empty, the emptiness felt wamer than before..

My physical senses also felt strange. Though unsure of the total number, I guessed the swats I’d taken to be over fifty. I knew from the sound alone that they were harder than I could usually take, especially at rapid pace. But, I’d taken them. Yet, my sensation of pain remained minimal as I climbed the stairs, readied myself for bed. The heat was intense, but pain was only a thin haze, barely present in my body.

I changed and sat down on the bed, and startled slightly at the sudden intrusion of hurt.

I muttered soft “ow”s and curses as I shifted my legs under the covers. I settled on my pillow, facing Sir, his gaze was again intensely fixed on my face.

“Body scan,” he murmured.

The drive to please him was still a memory, but the resistance was gone as well. I forced my attention inward once more.

“It hurts a little bit. It’s hot.”

“Anything else?”

“I don’t…” I struggled, sifting through my internal landscape, like searching for meaning in a blank page. “I don’t… feel like stealing my phone back from you right now…”

Sir’s expression shifted, and again I wasn’t sure how to interpret it, but it seemed vaguely safe.

“Okay,” he said softly, pulling the blanket up over my shoudler. “Good enough for now.”