The Two Men In My Bed.

When he came back into the room, I was sitting on the edge of the bed, keeled over, and clutching my abdomen. He walked past me, without a word, and pulled off the grey towel that was wrapped around his hips. I looked up at him as he hung it up. He looked harmless in that moment — clean, dry and flaccid — but he also looked beautiful. He is a beautiful man, and when I am not trying to keep my insides from falling out of me after he beats the fuck out of me, I can see why I am so attracted to him. The male body was always very function-oriented to me. I wanted feet big enough to cover my face, fingers long enough to hurt my insides, weight high enough to crush me, knuckles strong enough to punch me but the truth of that is almost any man could do that to me. The last one was short and his shoes fit me, but he managed just fine.

His body, though, is about more than function to me. I like looking at it, especially that bone that juts out of his shoulders. I like touching his skin, it pleasures my fingers to do so, and I didn't know, until him, that it could work that way. I like tracing the cut of jaw, it's almost harrowing how beautiful it is. I like smelling every part of his body, burying my face in all that man-hair on his chest, and pressing down my fingers on the hard muscles in his back. On top of that, he's so *big*. When I'm on the floor, he seems to extend forever, and that thrills me. Everything about him is big. His hands, his feet, his chest goes on forever and even his head seems to go up higher than it needs to. I didn't know that was something I would be into, I always thought my interest in physicality was limited to how it related to maximizing my pain but it would appear that I can be vain, or at least, appreciate what looks like vanity in another.

Still, what I love most about how *big* he is, is how much that enables him to hurt me when he fucks me. A big man, standing on his big feet, holding you still, while he fucks you, can do a lot of damage and while I don't think I can ever go back to having sex that is less damaging, I do still appreciate the little things about his bigness. His hugs feel like swimming in warm water. I can replace blankets and sweaters with him sometimes. His clothes are so comfortable, it's like wearing a sleeping bag.

I'm always surprised by the things I learn about myself because of him. Earlier that evening, we had been sitting in our room, talking, when I realised I urgently needed to eat a wrap. I asked if he wanted to go cook with me, and he said he would come along. I was wearing these loose harem pants and a tank top, and shivering because it's cold now and I refuse to acknowledge it. I refuse to alter my wardrobe just because the temperature wants to change, but my body doesn't care about my silly pride so much, it will shiver when it must.

"I think I am cold," I said to him, in shameful defeat.

He smiled at me, unzipped his sweatshirt, and then helped me put it on, and suddenly, I got it. All those movies in which men give cold women their coats had always baffled me, and when he gave me his, I got it. He was taking *care* of me, even if that meant that he would be cold, and it made me feel all tingly and warm inside. If I hadn't been so cold, maybe I would have vomited from the sickly sweetness of the moment, and if I hadn't been so shamelessly smitten maybe I would have punched myself in the face. I did neither, because I love that he takes care of me, not as much though, as I love that he also *doesn't*. The way I see it is that I can take care of myself, buy myself a jacket and put it on, but I can't fuck myself up. I can't destroy myself. I cannot slap myself until I cry. I cannot fuck myself. A couple of hours after we had dinner and came back to our bedroom, he pushed me onto the floor.

"My clothes are getting dirty on the floor with you," he remarked, as if that kind, chivalrous man from before had never been.

"But it's cold," I told him.

"I don't really care if you are cold," he said, pulling me up by the collar of his jacket, and unzipping me out of it, "I'm not stepping on my clothes, it's bad enough your stink is all over them now."

Sometimes the cruelty is so unnecessary, I don't even see it coming, and the adjustment that he requires of me is so quick, I can barely keep up. Yet I admire it. I admire how quickly he takes all semblance of control and safety away from me; I admire how these two people seem to live inside him simultaneously, never seemingly running into conflict with one another. He took all the clothes from me, not just his, and he told the truth, he didn't really care that I was freezing on that floor. He really didn't care that he stepped on my face so hard, it still hurts. He didn't care that he wasn't as much beating me with his belt, as he was with the buckle. He didn't even seem to care that the wetness underneath my face wasn't colourless pain, it was the kind of scarlet that would require an explanation. He didn't care that I could barely stand, as long as I could be held in place while he stood on his big feet, like a big man, and fucked me until everything inside was a little damaged.

It's alarming to me how he manages to be this person, and if there is one thing I will go to my grave still trying to figure out, it is this. How does he do it? How does he manage to be the person who always knows to take care of me, just enough, that I am able to be broken again, and do both things with such sincerity, it is impossible to say he's feigning either one. I don't know. I just know that after he was done he left me there, still bent over and crying, and went to take a shower because of all the filth I got on him. I got up eventually and sat on the edge of the bed, hugging myself because whatever that cramping was inside me was insidious and I cannot live without it. He came out of the shower and walked past me. Without a word.

I looked up at him, marvelling at how much he can make me feel, and crying because all of it feels like too much. He finally looked at me, and I must have been crying more than usual because while his face got a concerned look that is usually reserved for the moments after I hang up on my mother, his fists automatically, as if by divine intervention, balled up on his sides, and while the second-step might have been taken to check on me, that first step was definitely the reflex you learn with violence. It made me smile. Sometimes I can see how I am responsible for some of this, some of who he is, and what he does. The best and worst thing you can give a man like him is the the freedom to be violent, it helps them, but it also infects them, and I have never pretended I am not an infection. I like to play broken, and miserable, but it's misery that comes from the fumes of the noxious poison I brew. I know what I do, and while I look perfectly harmless and I seem nothing but pitiable, I am more than complicit, I may have even written the original rules to this game.

He stepped to me, and lifted my chin up to look at him, I couldn't really see, he was too high up, and my favourite lamp reflecting in the mirror behind him was blinding, but I could see his other hand, still on his side, and still balled up into a tight little fist. I know he can't stand it when I cry, to him it's like that moment when I put his cock deep inside my throat and just hold it there for one second, it makes him a little helpless and desperate to have something to rip. He says he loves aftercare, but it's only because aftercare is when you cry, and when you cry is when he becomes an animal.

"Why did you come here?" I asked him.

"To check on you," he said, putting his fingers in my hair and resisting the urge to pull so strongly I could feel it in his fingers. I couldn't resist the urge to laugh a little.

"You're going to hurt me again, aren't you?" I asked him.

I couldn't see his face, but really I could see it all too clearly. Maybe I can't figure it all out but I do know who he really is. He's the man who beats me when I cry. Sometimes, maybe, it's hard for him when I see it. He stepped on my feet, and even though it was me he was hurting, the resignation in that moment, was his.

"Sometimes I feel a little sorry for you," I told him in an moment of unnecessary honesty.

He laughed a little and pressed his wet slippers down on my feet a little harder.

"Why don't you enjoy that for just a moment?" He said, standing still, and quiet, as if he were me.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because when the moment's over, you will feel sorry for yourself again," he said.

The moment ended. His prophecy, as always, came true. There are two men in my bed, and they both make me feel sorry for myself.