Two Tales Of Red Lace.

"What's that on your wrist?" He asked getting into the driver's seat and pointing at my hand, "Is that..garter?"

I laughed before I explained.

"No, not garter. It's the ripped out end of an old stocking," I said pulling it off my wrist and showing him, "Hmm.. I guess it does look like garter, doesn't it?"

It does. It's a scrap of red lace and it was too loose around my wrist so I slipped it off and put it around my ankle instead. I'd only ever put it around my wrist because it materialized while I was sorting through my underwear and I didn't have any category for it in the reorganised arrangement. I just put it on my wrist and forgot about it. Then I put it on my ankle and forgot about it. That's just like me, I think I wear no jewellery because I forget all of it that's already on me. I'm wearing 11 earrings right now and I think I'm wearing none.

The next day he noticed it around my ankle and asked about it again.

"So you're just going to keep wearing that fake garter thing now?" He asked, "Around your ankle?"

That made me laugh too. I'm not always happy with myself, I rarely approve of myself and sometimes I don't like myself, but I always amuse myself. That's why I laugh in strange, inappropriate situations or ones that are just mundane, because I'm viewing myself in them and it's amusing.

"Or I could give it to you?" I told him, twirling around in the howling wind, "For good luck? I could be really dramatic and kiss it and perfume it and you can have it when you when you play?"

The story would have been much better if he had been going to war with my frayed, pretty lace but he wasn't. He was going to play in a basketball match. The point of sports was to be a war-substitute for war energy though, right? I might be wrong about that and out of fear of being too callous on a subject I don't know well enough I won't speculate as to the point of sports. There is none, for me. Team sports, anyway. Though honestly I don't love playing of any kind: cards, board games, car games, singing games, games you play on festivals. I also don't like teams. That's something I would change about myself and maybe I will if I can figure out how. I can't just have fun and I can't stop competing that's why I can't be part of a team. It bugs me when 11 people win something together and it's not because I don't like awards. I just cannot get the fuck over myself.

But sometimes. In some moments. I do.

"Fine, give it to me," he said so sweetly, "I know just where to put it."

I knew just where he was going to put it too and my hunch was confirmed only a few seconds later as he pulled he stuffed it down his pants.

"You think I'll win my match now?" He asked.

We laughed and kissed with dramatic flair that I reserve only for my most whimsical days. Later that night, after winning his match he gave the sweaty wad of lace back to me and I put it back around my ankle. So I could leak more luck into it.

"It's wet," I told him as I put it around my foot.

"Yeah I can see that this is the beginning of a really gross tradition," he said.

It was.

It is a really gross tradition, but it's so over the top and adorable. I realized a for days ago for the 85th time that I love every bit of romance. I would pack a picnic basket and write a twelve page letter. I just don't care anymore about showing it. It feels great to be that couple that can't get over each other.

Even the gross parts.

.......

.......

.......

It feels gross when I think about it. It sounds absolutely disgusting to me that he returns to me a piece of lace soaked in the sweat from his balls and I...

...I rub my face on it.

Well, that day, he rubbed in on my face for me. I was tidying the bedroom when he walked in from having played. When he saw me his hand reached inside his pants and he pulled out my good luck charm and walked towards me with purpose.

"Here, take it back," he said holding it before my face.

When you know someone well, you can pick on those cues of body language that seem like a person's energy and his energy wasn't so loving. I don't feel so loving after I run, sweat, fight and win either so I can understand.

I reached up for it, tentatively. While my hand was still only halfway to it he rubbed it against my face instead. Lace is interesting. It feels soft and coarse at the same time. It's hard to feel assaulted by it because no matter what you do with it, no matter how disgusting you are being when you're using it, it still retains its own delicate grace. I often feel the prettier the lace, the more ill-suited it is for me. Or perhaps, that isn't the most appropriate description. The prettier it is the harder it is for it to lose its grace no matter what I subject it to whereas I, my grace is like rubbing alcohol, you expose it to the air and it's gone. Lace is does not become me, because I cannot become it.

You'd think it would when it's sweaty and dirty and being forced up against my face but it still doesn't. It doesn't lose its dignity, I do.

"Sniff it," he said, "Sniff it hard and long so you can spend all evening deducing how it's going to taste."

I am so attracted to sweat. Not in a conceptual way. In the way that sniffing an armpit makes me feel that thing you feel when you've had seven drinks but sans nausea. It makes me feel heady. Like I want to bite something and I want to be the thing that gets bitten too. So it drove me crazy when he wouldn't let me sniff it anymore. He just tossed it on the bed and wouldn't let me go near it while mocking me for wanting to do something so disgusting.

I wonder what this preoccupation is with wanting to do disgusting things but of late I find it intensifying. I suppose that's partly because of him. I used to think my sexuality is so, figured out. I realize now it's just that I was developing it with one primary partner for so long that even in its escalation it was always a finite intersection of our common sexual interests. It never meant I wouldn't want to do the same things differently, just that we had figured out our sexual dynamic as a couple. All of that knowledge of my sexuality was gone the second that relationship was gone too and it wasn't a bad thing at all. Applying my sexuality from there to here would have been like trying to wear the wrong dress size. Besides, I think we develop interests also based on what our partners respond to. It's not even a conscious thing. Sometimes neither one of us will know what we're interested in, but it will show. To each other.

And it shows that we're interested in me being an repulsive, disgusting vile creature. That's where we fit together, together.

I'm fascinated by things that fit together but more by things that are forced to fit, inside me. Like his fingers, later that night while I leaned against the wall, with my feet pressed together and my hands behind my back. The same position on a yoga mat would make me feel open, and there it made me feel so exposed. There is a difference, I think it's shame. His fingers held still inside me exactly like my breath, while his other arm flung the cane right at the sore spot between my left breast and my shoulder, and then his fingers moved again. Violently. As violently as my breath was released from inside me. His fingers screamed inside me.

The fire on my skin grew hotter and hotter until I was convinced that I couldn't go on living unless he kept on beating me. I have a problem. If you beat me today, you have to beat me tomorrow. It's like the rain; the likelihood of the occurrence is high on consecutive days. I find that nothing depresses me more than the sight of fading bruises and so if you keep making my wounds worse, I wouldn't ever have to watch them fade. Besides, I love the cruelty of a person who'll hurt me where I already hurt, and I love the principles of the person who won't take it any easier because of that. That's another place where we fit together. The more I hurt, the more often he'll want to hurt me. Maybe fading bruises depress him too.

It seemed that way as he caned me in exactly the spots where he had the night before; as he something about not feeling merciful that particular evening. I suppose it must be a rush, to be able to be horrible to another person; to be unreasonable without worrying about having to be empathetic and fair. I am always unsure as to what he gets out of being mean. Not sadistic, just mean. But it made him laugh to watch me whimper.

I, on the other hand, enjoy whimpering. I enjoy all the stages of pain with increasing magnitude. The assault on cold skin feels like ice. The warmth of the sear feels harsh. The silence of accepting it feels warm. The end of endurance seems cruel. And then there's the place after that. The place where my endurance is over but he isn't done. The place where I beg and he asks me to give him a reason to stop.

And I never have one.

I didn't.

"Why should I stop beating you?" He asked rubbing his fingers clean on the welts on my chest, "You're a useless careless animal."

And I had nothing to say except those horrifying words you say when you want mercy but really you'd settle for pity. He watched me for a while. A few long seconds. And then pulled out my sweaty good luck charm out off its place on bed. He dangled the red lace in front of my wet, swollen face.

"Open your mouth," he said.

In another moment I would have cared but there is place where you just don't do anything but comply. I just opened my mouth.

"I'm not going to stop, I'm going to hurt you so much," he said placing the fake-garter in my mouth, "Suck on my sweat for good luck."

After that it didn't matter that he wouldn't stop. I realized I would do anything for a man who stuffs red lace in my mouth.

Even if it's disgusting.