The Fear of A Needle.

"I'm scared," I admitted, the moment the smell of rubbing alcohol started to waft through the air.

I find it is best to admit fear. When I was younger I used to think it makes me more interesting to be fearless, and often when I found myself in situations where I anticipated having my limits pushed, I pretended I wasn't scared at all. The first time I got a tattoo, I pretended it didn't scare me. The first time I got something weird pierced, I pretended I wouldn't even notice the pain. The first time I got on a wild roller-coaster, I didn't acknowledge the fear. The first time I got beaten by a stranger, I didn't say I was scared. The first time I got seriously whipped, the same. I felt the fear, but in those situations, and maybe also because I was young, I was worried that exploring my fear would be the reason I didn't go through with something, and so it was best to suppress it deep inside me.

However, after a while, when doing new things became a habit, I realised the fear can be an enjoyable part of the experience. It stopped being the feeling that could potentially deter me from doing something, and became a step in the process; articulating my fear became a part of the process that I began to relish and savouring my fear became vital to every experience. I'd never been more scared than I was in that moment, it was the kind of fear that had set up camp in my jaw and my speech wasn't as clear as usual, it gets like that when my face is swollen after being slapped a lot, but he hadn't touched my face at all.

"That's a reasonable response," he said to me, "You should be scared."

It wasn't a threat. Usually, when he says to me that I should be scared, the intention is to deny me the relief of reassurance, but in that moment, he wasn't doing that. He was at his most measured and considerate, and somehow that was worse. When he uses menace to terrify me further, it's just another tool of seduction he's applying even though there's no real reason for me to be scared, but when he admits that fear is reasonable, it's real. It's not a synthetic inebriant, it's a call that is coming from inside the house. I wasn't that scared until I saw the needle, the fact that it looked so different than what I had pictured really changed my perspective. I had pictured a round, fine suture needle, like the one he used for my lips, and this one, while it was a suture needle, looked very different. It was shaped like arc, it was much thicker than any needle he had used on me before and it was cutting edge (meaning there were three edges to the needle and it was sort of triangular). It was one of those things that petrifies you the moment you see it. He had asked me earlier in the day if I was completely sure about not using any kind of numbing agent, and I had told him very confidently that I didn't need that, but the moment I saw the needle, I wondered if he had known something I didn't.

I struggle with fearing pain. In many ways, I don't. The pain I will experience while doing something is often the reason I opt in as opposed to out of things, but masochism and humanness are sides of me that battle against one another every once in a while. Sometimes, the idea of oncoming pain, is terrifying, and I wonder if I am allowed to feel that. It is unsettling. When I thought about the needle piercing through my cunt, after having seen the needle, I began to fear the pain itself. Prior to that the fear had been about him. I was scared of what he would do to me once he had finished suturing it shut, I figured I would just lie there mentally doodling while he did the stitching. Sometimes I forget to think about the fact that I will physically experience the things I want done to me, I thought of it like sitting in a chair having my hair done for a performance that would begin later, but after seeing the needle it felt like I had misjudged which part of the evening was the performance.

I'm not scared of needles, I love them, they're a big part of hoe I discovered that I like pain, and they've continued to be a sensation I relish. I got into the stitching angle of things because of my husband and the necessary skills for the activity he brings to the table, I had fantasized, but I don't do medical things with people who aren't medical practitioners, and I may never have done it, if I hadn't met my husband. I may never have realised how good it could feel, but I also wouldn't have developed the notion that the real show comes after the stitching. Prior to this, it had always been that way, but this needle was different, and suddenly I was all to aware of the situation.

I was too aware of him sitting between my legs. Of the burn of sterilization on my cunt. The implements lying on the table beside me. Why he kept telling me over and over that I could not move at all. Suddenly, I felt all the fear I should have been feeling all along. And then he pushed the needle into my skin. Instantaneously all of the fear was released into a scream I have never screamed before. I have never been so reactive before. I have never made a sound so incredibly real, so utterly out of my own control, so resoundingly loud.

And then everything faded to incoherence.

Silence.