The Nose-Ring On The Floor.

I know it's over when he moves away from me and starts looking for my nose ring on the floor. It's always the first thing he does when it's over, he refuses to look at me without jewellery in my nose, and that suits me well, I have a little bit of a fetish for nose jewellery, and the many rituals that go along with it. It started when I was a child and I read a very inappropriate book about prostitutes in Kamathipura. There was a ritual that was referenced in the book, a ritual of having your nose pierced when you had your first client (who took your virginity) and having him put in your first nose ring. I loved it, and I wanted to be that girl. There's a similar tradition back home amongst my people as well, it doesn't apply to prostitutes, but to all women. You don't pierce your nose until you get married, and I always believed what it meant was you don't do it until you've been fucked. I hate that, but I like the association of being a sexual plaything and having your nose pierced, there's something aesthetically pleasing about it to me. While I pierced my nose well over a decade before my wedding, I did do it shortly after I felt like a sexual commodity for the first time. It was own little marriage with my identity.

As he searches for the nose ring on the floor, I can see him recreating the angle of his own knuckles as they knocked it out of my face and onto the floor. I love that it means something when he does this, it means that he cares about me again, and he wants to see beauty in me again. I love how he sends me messages in retrieval missions, almost as much as I love that he sends me warnings in how he treats the apparel on his own body. When he comes into the bedroom at night, and he wants to tell me he's going to beat me, he takes off his watch. He doesn't say anything, he just looks at me, and holds my gaze as he snaps off the watch and puts it on charge on my side of the bed. The association has become so strong that just looking at his watch lying on my table now makes me wet and nervous. It never ceases to amaze me now much pleasure there is to be had in associative conditioning. He never told me to fear his watch, and I never knew that I could fear a watch, yet it the the most interesting aspect of ritualism amongst us. Just like the nose-ring signalling permission to accept relief and breathe.

I can see him struggle to find it through my hair, I have an itch in my right foot, but I am worried that if I move all the pain inside me will come rushing back. I read something recently about a doctor exploring the theory that women feel no pain in the cervix, and I really would like that man to take a good long fucking in his vagina and get back to me on that. It's the worst pain I have ever experienced, it's like getting your period in one isolated spot all at once, and for me the only relief is found in the foetal position. His thigh brushes against my outstretched fingers as he changes direction to look on the other side. I am not worried, and it's not because I have the world's most elaborate collection of nose-rings, it's because I have faith that he will find it. He's knocked them across rooms before and always managed to find it, and if he doesn't, it wasn't meant to be found. Generally though, he doesn't lose things, I do. I lose things all the time. On our wedding he gave me a nose ring (and for the purpose of guaranteed catharsis let me establish beforehand that he had commissioned a pair from the jeweller), and I sacrificed it to the ocean one week later on our honeymoon. Slipped out of my nose and through my fingers, and straight into the tide. I wonder sometimes if anyone ever found it, or whether they will. I felt less terrible about it than I should have, but somehow it felt fitting that I only lose my nose jewellery to two forces — The ocean, and him. Then if it isn't found, it has to be okay, those forces are bigger than me, and it is not for me to ponder their ways.

He finds my nose ring behind the shoe, and as he picks it I realise I have been looking at it for a long time. He picks it up and stands up straight, and he studies it much more closely than he normally does. A sense of dread begins to wash over me before I have any semblance of what it is about.

"Did you..change your nose ring?" He asks, lowering himself to my level.

Ritual.

Ritualism is the only thing I wish I wasn't ashamed of loving, for everything else the shame is the salted caramel on top of French Vanilla, but for ritualism it's a cancer. I wish I was able to admit to it as easily as I can to loving the taste of my own blood in my own.

"Did you change it?" He asks again, this time in a different tone.

I say I did but he doesn't hear me. I say it three times but the sounds will barely escape my throat, and he can say that I am speaking but he won't acknowledge it until he hears it out loud.

"I did," I finally muster as a defeaning blow of silence falls over the room.

I realise I shouldn't have. I have to ask before I do that. I don't remember exactly when we started to do that but it's been long enough that it should be second nature. He doesn't care about what I wear, or don't. What kind of shoes I wear. What fabrics I am partial to. He doesn't care about any of the things that don't matter to me, he doesn't want any control over them, but he cares about the two things I love. He cares about my nose-ring and he cares about my nails. He wants the things I love to follow his rules; he wants to own the things I love. I let him. I love to let him.

His fist clenches around the tiny little piece of silver before he tosses it back on the floor. A new message, but so easy to interpret.

"Can't I put it back on?" I ask, even though I know it won't happen.

He lives for these moments. They are his favorite. Moments where he gets to crush me at my most vulnerable; scare me when I feel safest. The moments where he gets to relish a lack of mercy, and being a human being that is completely unmoved by the trappings of love. He lives for these moments, I live in them. These are the moments in which I feel truly like myself, the only moments in which I don't have to explain how I feel to myself.

He lifts me up by the hair and I realise I am staring at the nose-ring on the floor again.

"There's no point," he says turning my neck up to him, "It's only going to end up back on the floor."

Sometimes I wish I could be the jewellery he knocks out of me. At least it gets to lay there, untouched and ignored, by his boot.