Covet

I let her pick the day, the time, and even the place, wanting her to be comfortable when we met face to face for the first time. It was a crisp day; the first real day of jacket weather and the streets of Chelsea were empty on that Saturday afternoon.

I walked the few blocks from my apartment to the café and considered how many times I'd wondered if we'd crossed paths without ever knowing it. She would tell me afterward when she'd passed through my neighborhood and it got me in the habit of scanning faces while I was out, wondering if any of them belonged to her. I'd never seen a photograph or even heard her describe herself, so she could have been almost anyone that I passed, and that mystery was part of the fun.

I'd been reading her words, written one or two lines at a time on Twitter because I was endlessly curious and infatuated with the complicated and filthy way that she wrote. It led us to private messages and confessions about complex and sometimes complicated cravings of the sexual sort. At first, it was abstract or pointed squarely at experiences from our respective pasts, but slowly and carefully, those wants took on the present tense and felt aimed at each other.

I started to wonder if we would ever come face to face and how good or bad of an idea that might be; I already wanted it to happen, regardless of which. One day I told her, after she mentioned passing by my street, that I hoped we'd cross paths sooner or later.

"All you have to do is ask," she said, which truth be told I had not expected.

"I'd like to see you some time. May I, please?" I typed into our DM thread and considered it carefully before sending the request.

"Yes. But can I ask why? All you know is that I'm 32, married, monogamous and that I spend a lot of time thinking about choke fucking," she said

"That's a very fair question. I don't entirely know why, other than I'm intrigued by you and feel like it would be interesting to have a conversation in person," I replied.

"May I ask why you, 32, married and monogamous, would entertain my request to meet you?" I asked, wanting to know.

"A few reasons," she replied.

"1. I think it's wildly complimentary that you want to meet me when you have no idea who I am, what I look like, etc.

2. I don't often get the opportunity to meet strangers who are down to wax theoretical on my particular breed of kink/mindfucking, and I welcome it. My life is really great, but maybe a little conservative.

3. I fucking love people. That's probably part of why I'm here. So why the fuck not? I don't only exist inside my phone."

Suddenly, there was an intention between us. We went from sharing music and banter to making a plan to look at each other in the face; I was intensely curious about what that experience would be like.

She was right; we both existed outside of the screens that we used to communicate with each other. We lived in the same city, we often walked the same streets, we'd eaten in the same restaurants, seen and tasted the same things in New York, and shared the love of them with each other. Somehow, though, it didn't seem real until that walk to meet her at the café.

She expressed complicated sentiments of sexuality in such a succinct way that she immediately became one of my favorite reads on Twitter the first time I read her words. She struck first with a DM after I'd retweeted something she'd posted about dominance that resonated with me. I'd mentioned that I'd never felt more seen in the tweet and then came the direct message notification.

"Same," she said, her name popping up on my phone screen.

We would both post words about sex and want, and dissect those desires together in private messages. She'd send me my own tweets and tell me to explain or challenge them or tell me how they went right through her.

When her tweets started echoing sentiments of things we'd discussed, I started to do the same. It was a game we were playing with each other, and it was often a mercurial one where sometimes we were vague and at other times we were blunt. Given how strong-willed both of us are, who controlled the tone was sometimes as much a part of the play as the subject itself was. We alternated between denying it existed and pushing it forward, but it felt to me like it was escalating.

"Hey - it goes without saying that if I meet you, you'll keep this anonymous," she messaged me beforehand, and I assured her it would be.

**

She was inside already when I arrived, having ordered her tea and texted me what she was wearing. When I saw her I didn't think at first it could be who I was there to meet. She seemed so wholesome compared to the perfectly filthy things that she said on Twitter about facefucking and wanting to be humiliated. Her hair was light brown ,and she wore a pale pink color on her lips. I had no idea what to expect when I asked her to meet me, but there she was in front of me; beautiful and complicated.

We took a seat in the back of the coffee shop, and I tried not to stare a hole right through her. She looked nervous and confident at the same time and everything about her made me want to reach inside and turn her inside out.

I don't know if I expected her to be someone else or thought she might decide at the last minute not to show up, but I found myself bracing for almost any situation other than her sitting down across the table from me and being exactly the person I'd been spellbound by.

"You are the first person that I've ever met from Twitter that I'm definitely not going to fuck," she said, and I laughed without being able to help myself because I wasn't sure who she was trying to make that clear to.

Sitting across the table from her, I felt dangerous and I spent a lot of the time holding myself back. In the moments of conversation when I felt her strength, I pushed and immediately felt like I was holding something in my hand that was delicate a little too tightly. She invoked the strangest conflict in me of wanting to pull her apart and also of wanting to protect her from myself.

I kept repeating '32, married, monogamous' in my head, but in truth, I wanted to take her back to my apartment and fuck the hesitation out of both of us.

She'd mentioned something once about being handed a marker and being made to write on herself all of the places she wanted to be used and how and I'd put one in the inside pocket of my jacket before I left the house. I considered, over and over again, pulling it out and sliding it across the table, just to see the look on her face, but I knew that would be playing with fire.

When it was time for her to go, I walked her to the lot where she'd parked her car. We said goodbye on the corner of Fifth Avenue, but I knew that wouldn't be the end; I already wanted to see her again, even if that was a bad idea.

I walked back to my apartment and considered what I would do to her if she were coming home with me. I felt for the pen in my breast pocket and pictured her writing on herself; thick black marks on her pale skin where she wanted to be used and how. I imagined her eyes defiant and needy at the same time and I pictured my fingers tracing the words 'choke' and 'slap' and 'bite' and finding their way to the 'use' she'd written on the inside of thighs with arrows pointing to a cunt that was wet and begging to be. I imagined her whispering 'be nice' when we both knew that she wanted anything but. I could feel my fingers on her throat and my hands between her legs; I could imagine making her saying out loud all of the filthy things that she'd written on herself as I did them to her, one by one.

The palm of my hand across her face, my mouth all over her skin; biting her, kissing her, worshipping at the altar of her depravity and taking from it. I could imagine fucking her hard and pictured her fucking right back. The taste of her skin and the smell of her hair and whispering to me to be nice, but wanting me to be anything but. I wanted to ruin her and save her and ruin her again.

"You are a complicated woman with very relatable desires," I'd said to her once and it was true, but what I was saying was, "My desire for you is complicated".

I took the long way home, walked a few blocks out of the way to Union Square because I wasn't ready to go back to my apartment because that somehow meant that moment of meeting her was over, and I wanted to hold on to it for a little while longer. I also wanted the distraction of noise and lights and people around me until I could get the need to fuck her under control; if that was even possible I knew I wouldn't find that at home.

I cut through the crowds, feeling the swirl of energy and heat from bodies gathered to watch street performers, and I walked fast, but not fast enough to outrun the things that I wanted to do to her.

Taste. Touch. Bite. Slap. Choke. Fuck. Humiliate. Worship. Desecrate. Fuck. Ruin. Save. Possess. Torment. Consume. Every inch of her tasted, touched, seen, felt, coveted.

These were my wants, my desires and she was married to someone else so even if she shared any of them she was, as I reminded myself; monogamous. It didn't feel that one-sided though and perhaps that's why I was tempted to provoke and to corrupt. She is full of contradictions and complexities, of peace and restlessness at the same time. She contains multitudes and I wanted to stare into the depths of them.

"Your fantasies are my favorite way to wake up," she said once after I'd shared one with (and of) her in the middle of the night. Even before meeting her face to face, she was working her way into all of them. But now I'd seen her, really seen her, and the want that I'd been holding back spilled out of my head and into my pounding heart.