All I Said Was No.

My ex had a serious issue with the word no. I was fifteen when we started dating and the first thing he told me was that I could never, not ever, say no to him. I can't say I was an innocent, naive teenager, because the truth is that I wasn't, I was sexually-active before him, and when I went out of my way to sleep with men much, much older than myself it was a deliberate act, I went looking for them, they did not come looking for me; when I asked them to hit me or berate me, I knew what I was doing. I wasn't a confused young girl with raging hormones. That being said, there was a lack of awareness of the vast spectrum of the things I was engaging in, I was acting with limited information and a delusion that I would always have the upper-hand with men. He changed my perspective. Our relationship at that time was not physically abusive, not that he didn't beat me but it was consensual beating, but it would get there because he was always creating the conditions to make it so. When he told me I couldn't say no to him, I didn't think it through, and I focused only on what was erotic about that lack of control.

Late one night we were at my house, a lot of my friends were there too because my mother was out of the country, and we had just had sex in my room. Downstairs, in the living room, my friends were getting drunk and listening to the very specific brand of Punjabi music that glorifies cars and guns while demeaning women. After we had sex, I got dressed while he smoked beside the open balcony door. He didn't let me smoke around him until I was eighteen, it was bad for me apparently to smoke around a man who could technically be tried for rape each time he had sex with me for the next year and battery each time he had sex with me forever. I sat on the side of the bed, rubbing my jaw and waiting for him, when he started to talk.

"I want you to sleep with M," he said with a nonchalance I would come to deeply distrust over the years.

I was shocked. It's not that I hadn't fantasized about him asking me to sleep with other men before, it's not even that I hadn't shared that fantasy with him, but I truly never expected it to be something that we would actually do. I was fifteen, and I didn't know depravity like I know it now. I didn't know how much fantasy could actually come to be reality, especially since all of the violence and pain and control were already fantasies that 11-year old me had once been sure couldn't be real.

"You're kidding?" I asked him, a little scared, and maybe even a little excited, "I don't think I could do that."

"Don't argue with me," he said putting his cigarette out on the door-frame, "You will sleep with M if I tell you to sleep with him."

I really didn't understand. I know it seems disingenuous but I didn't know that I knew how to get men to sleep with me. It seemed like we were planning a bank robbery and I hadn't even shoplifted ever before.

"No," I told him, "You are crazy."

He looked at me with a deranged expression. His eyes were red with rage and retrospectively I cannot believe he didn't pound me to the ground right then. I certainly wouldn't have complained. He walked towards me very fast and stood in front of the bed.

"You're a fucking slut," he said through gritted teeth, "I told you never to say no to me, I'm done with you, I'm leaving."

He did that to me a lot. I spent so much time feeling insecure in that relationship that it took years for me to even consider that I may not have even wanted to be in that relationship. I was constantly trying to save it, even though I know now that he never would have walked out, I was too good a deal for him. Every time he said he would leave, I experienced a panic I cannot describe. It felt like someone was taking my life away from me by ripping out one limb at a time. He walked out of the room even as I ran behind him, begging him to stop. I grabbed his arm and he pushed me off him so hard, I fell on the floor, but he didn't even take notice of it. I grabbed his leg and pushed me off it like I was dirt. He started down the stairs and into the room where all my drunk friends were dancing and sitting around, I finally got him to stop long enough to look at me and I don't remember what it was that I said but I imagine I agreed to do what he said. His manner didn't soften at all, but at that moment it was enough that I had gotten him to stop walking away from me.

"Get on your knees and kiss my feet," he said loudly, "Kiss my feet and beg me not to go and I won't."

I wish I could say I didn't do it, but it didn't even occur to me not to do it. It didn't even occur to me until a year ago that no one around me stopped this. Everyone heard him, and everyone watched what happened, but no one said anything. Not then. Not later. Not ever. It should have been harder for me to do this, it should have been harder to debase myself and I cannot explain why it wasn't. I cannot say I was so desperate for his love I would have done anything nor can I say I so blinded by the eroticism of the sick power structure between us that I couldn't see reason or my own dignity, I don't know for sure that it was those things that made me do that. Perhaps I so fundamentally saw myself as lacking value that I had to keep what I thought was my only asset, his sick love was like a blood diamond upon which I intended to build my fortune.

I did it.

I also understood that day what it really meant when I agreed to never say no to him. It wasn't a sexy game, it was a terrifying game. It wasn't like truth-or-dare, it was like running across the tracks when you could hear a train coming to see if you would get run over or not. It was the dumbest, most thrilling game I ever played, and it was in this moment that I realised the stakes of the game. I don't subscribe to the concept of innocence, but if I had any left, that was the day I lost it. I lost it alongside all of my pride and dignity as I got on the ground and kissed his feet in front of people who saw me every day. That's how much he made me care about him, and that's how little I came to care about myself. A few weeks later when he brought up sleeping with M again, I did it. I no longer felt out of my depth either, I suddenly knew exactly how to get a man to sleep with me. I wouldn't say I never said no to him again, it happened and each time it came with an experience more harrowing than the last, but I learnt the terror of saying no and each time I said it after that day, I knew what I was getting into.

Which is why it should seem obvious that I would never let a man, or anyone, place that condition on me again. It doesn't make sense that I would allow that. Yet I do. It's not the same thing. An unpractised eye might look at my life through a very narrow lens and conclude that I have learnt nothing and my relationships now are a continuation of the destructive patterns I learnt when I was young. I climbed a mountain yet the salient features of where I stand appear the same. There is a man in my house who looks at me with the promise of consequence when I say no. A few days ago I woke up already annoyed, my guess is I was dreaming about my mother, and as I turned to the man sleeping beside me, he could see in my eyes that something was bothering me. He kissed me on the head and asked me what was wrong, and when I couldn't tell him, he covered me in the blanket on our bed and told me to sleep in a little while longer.

I couldn't.

When he got out of the shower I was scrolling through my phone, he sat beside me talking to me and within a few minutes, I felt better. The jarring feeling was gone from inside me and I was ready to get out of bed. He gave me the coffee he makes every morning and posed for me in his sexy pants as I watched. I love watching him get dressed in the morning because while I didn't know for most of my life that I am a slut for uniform, I am a slut for a uniform. As he got ready to leave, I got out of bed and stood in front of him. We don't discuss rituals so much, but we have then. They private little things that don't need to be talked about nor excavated for meaning, they just are. They give me something, and they give him something too. Every morning before he leaves the house I get on my knees and kiss his hands. I don't know how it started and I don't know why I kiss his hands, it just happened and it continues to happen. I look forward to it and it brings me the same joy as it does when he kisses me anytime I open a door for him. He stood in front of me expecting me to kneel and I stood in front of him expecting to do it. I don't know why I didn't, some resonant annoyance from earlier in the morning still lingered and perhaps turned to unnecessary defiance.

"Kneel," he said to me very calmly.

"No," I said equally calm.

I don't know why I said it. I never say it, and not because he ever told me I couldn't, it just happened. Back when we first got together he taught me to say no because I had such a deep-rooted inability to say the word, I don't think I ever would have learnt the right to refuse if it wasn't for him. I had grown so scared of the word by the time I was twenty-three, I just never used it. Not with anyone. Learning to say no was such a difficult part of my life, and when I first started doing it, each time I said it, I was angry. I didn't know I was angry, but I was. As the anger subsided I learnt that it was okay for me to not want to do some things, I learnt that I was allowed to have limits and preferences. They years passed and my relationship with the word no changed so drastically, I became capable of saying it, and then one day I chose not to say it to him ever again. I don't need to say it, he knows always what not to do, and he knows when we need to talk about things before doing them. He knows when to stop much better than I do, I don't know when to stop at all, and when I stopped saying no again, it wasn't out of fear, it was based purely on desire. I was never told not to say it, yet it came to be expected. He expects me not to say no and I expect not to say it. It doesn't need to be said.

Yet I said it.

Twice.

"Did you just say no?" He asked, pulling my hair.

The pain reminded me of what I was saying, I don't think I realised why I was saying it at all, I am still not sure, but I think the easiest explanation is that I am a human being and in my infinite flaws I saw the person in front of me as an adequate recipient for my annoyance. I got on my knees immediately, and it felt so comfortable, I couldn't fathom why I would refuse to put myself in that place of comfort. I couldn't fathom why I would refuse to put myself in a place we created together with love and pain.

"I'm sorry," I said immediately.

He stroked my head and I kissed his hand. It was warm and intimate, a quiet place only we can access and maybe even understand.

"Not yet," he said holding my face with his hand, "You'll be sorry though."

He promises violence and consequence, but never for who I am. He promises violence because of who I am. Waves of delight and fear washed through my body as he told me he would punish me.

"I love you," I told him, kissing his hand again.

"I love you too," he said pulling me up to my feet.

"Are you going to hurt me very much?" I asked him, mostly only because I wanted to hear the answer.

"So much," he said pulling me to his chest, "You're going to suffer endlessly for being so fucking stupid."

He promised to destroy me.

And he did.

He never threatened to stop loving me though, and he never did. Not even when I got on my knees and kissed his feet begging him to stop. He's never targetting my dignity nor my pride, only my heart, and that's a fair target. I started this game, after all.