Early Bird Dinner Pt. 01

[True Story]

Author's Note: This is the true story of my first-ever experience as a submissive. The full title was originally "Early Bird Dinner: Hyperrealism, Mundanity, and Sexual Taboo." It has a long exposition, but no detail was spared, and I promise it all pays off in the end ;). More to come in Part 2. I hope you enjoy!

//

I bat my eyelashes at the diner busboy in the hope that he'll give me a booth to myself. I forego a menu in favor coffee and smile as he roughly slides a lukewarm dark roast across the warped wooden tabletop. The walls are painted different shades of mustard yellow: Dijon, Honey, Grey Poupon. I sip my brown water and look out the window advertising "BreakFast ALL DAY!!!" to the tune of a tinny 80s playlist, the effeminate male singers sounding constantly on the brink of orgasm.

I reach to pull a curl behind my ear and catch the unmistakable scent of myself on my fingers. I smile, Eve straight out of the Garden, and wonder who can make out the snakes in my windswept hair. The stooped, scowling man and woman here for early bird dinner? The pierced teen threesome eating Belgian waffles? The busboy himself, watching me from the corner of his eye and busying himself re-folding the napkins, re-stacking the menus? Billie Jean comes on. I dream of splattering my sexuality across the canvas of this bleak, whitewashed town like a fistful of green fingerpaint.

I'll talk about sex over scrambled eggs, but I want the act of sex to be sacred. Pull my hair until I crick my neck, slap my ass and leave a deep red welt, but trace my face with the tip of your finger as if I were porcelain. And don't you dare call it role play. This is divine. The beast of prey inside of you howls at the wolfess inside of me. You split me from the inside out and dip your wet tongue inside my raw, pink places. You thrust between my soft red lips and fill my mouth with you.

Midday, when I'm hungry, I fold my body over my bureau and slip a finger inside of myself. I gaze empty-eyed at my delicate perfume bottles as I frantically stroke my g-spot. My face contorts, I arch my back and moan for you, "Oh god," "Please." Sometimes after I come, I imagine you wiping wet strands of hair from my sweat-streaked face and pulling them back in a firm fist, covering my panting mouth with your open lips. "Again," you growl, and force my eyes to meet yours as you roughly shove your fingers inside of my swollen pussy, loud and wet. My juices drip down your wrist.

The bartender coughs phlegm into a paper napkin as the TV news anchor warns against a batch of tainted vaccinations. "Superman, where are you now?" whines Genesis. The sun has gone down and I'm the only patron left. I order a Deluxe Egg and Cheese for $4.99. It arrives hot and dripping, strands of sautéed purple onion dangling over the sides like spider legs. I will eat this sandwich, wipe my oily fingers, pay in small bills, and shrug on my winter coat, exiting into the cold as an ambulance speeds by.

---

Submission is as intrinsic to me as being a woman, as being attracted to men. It's not a flavor of my sexuality; it's my total sexuality. Submission is all 24 tubs at Häagen-Dazs, not just the butter pecan. Every glance, every touch is a wave in this invisible tide. Ebb, surrender. Flow, possess.

But I've been swimming in shallow pools. I've given myself to men who can't receive me. Men who nudge me against bedroom walls and cough up commands that sound like questions. Men who shove themselves to the back of my throat but avoid my gaze as I choke for air. Men who spank my ass with limp wrists to test its buoyancy, not to remind me that I am theirs.

I'm not sure who these men are performing for. Me, in some desperate attempt to satisfy? More likely their own idea of who they ought to be - the looming shadow that polices their masculinity. I imagine a darkly lit auditorium, a hogtied woman spread center-stage, a hairy, naked man nervously stepping from the wings, sweating. "Well?" bellows the lone audience member, the tall shadow, tapping his gleaming black dress shoe on the linoleum floor. "You like this, don't you?"

Perhaps in the way women are quick to fake orgasm, men are quick to fake dominance. They believe it should come naturally to them. When it doesn't, they risk falling out of an unspoken natural order, an order that persists in spite of our attempts to revise cultural narrative over the past century. Behind closed doors, we still expect men to have a glint of unrestrained savagery in their eyes. And most women are still not prepared to hear: "Actually, dear, I was hoping you could handcuff me to the four-poster and call me a filthy slut."

So non-dominant men who find themselves in bed with submissive women narrow their eyes, inflate their chests, and experiment with dirty words, blushing all the while. But these performances are in vain. Dominance is a presence: it is either there, or it is not there, the way Susan is either in the room, or not in the room. There is no wondering. Dominance is a holistic way of being hinted at by language, movement, and the color behind one's eyes. The series of actions, the methods of touch - that's just the butter pecan.

I know this because the same is true of my submission. Girlish deference is my second skin. I tried to outrun her once, the hot tongues of feminism licking at my ankles, but she remains inseparable from me. I've come to enjoy her, this self who tilts her chin and volunteers the delicate skin of her neck to her lovers in the dark. She is deftly compliant. She is wickedly unrestrained.

Many forget that, in spite of our docility, submissives are pleasure seekers. Perhaps the hungriest of all. Our submission is misconstrued for passivity. In reality, surrender is actionable and opportunities for pleasure are boundless. When a lover's stare lingers on my body, I acquiesce to the power in his gaze. I'm wet before he lifts a finger. The simplest phrases, even when spoken benignly, electrify: "Come here." "Look at me."

There are infinite ways to be taken, so many more than there are ways to be touched. Impatiently, I wait for a man who understands the eroticism of subtle ownership - whose posture and gaze bind me as aggressively to him as nylon rope binds my wrists to wooden bedposts. I wait for a man who is unafraid of the sacred intimacy of utter surrender and control.

--

My body sinks into the living room couch, a soft vee from head to toe. I honored November's arrival by wearing oversized everything: woolen socks, argyle sweaters, men's sweatpants. I spend my evenings swimming in fabric. Four months single, I am haunted by the manic-depressive phantom that is my long-term partner's absence. As the nights grow colder and the pain of our separation hardens and shrinks in tightening concentric circles, I take comfort in these fabric silhouettes.

Cold rain streaks down the window. I dip a silver tablespoon into a jar of peanut butter and peer halfheartedly at the book sitting tent-folded on the table. Proud of my good intentions, I sit the spoon on my tongue and defer to my phone. I open a kinky dating app and peruse a parade of strangers' faces. Simultaneously intrigued and mindless, I meet Mr. Buttons (long-haired, snaggle-toothed teddy bear), Daddy Dom (bearded, tattooed weightlifter), and M&M (gothic couple with matching apathetic gazes). I'm quickly bored. Dating apps have proliferated so widely that not even the social experiment holds my attention anymore. Bored, feeling anonymous and emboldened, I send messages to two men. Their interests range from "rough sex" to "spanking, gagging, and orgasm control." I muster all of the sex positivity I can recall from Bitch Magazine and Advanced Gender Theory to form a protective shield against the jarring sensation of talking about sex with strangers online. Our conversations begin with pleasantries, comedy and anecdote serving as dry cobblestones between deep puddles of lust and craving. I spend a few hours this way, eating peanut butter by the tablespoonful and tiptoeing, then stomping, through puddles without galoshes. When I pull myself from the couch, my heart is beating and I am drenched in rainwater.

My pupils dilate and replace the glimmer of pixels with the dim outline of the couch, the windowsill. Disoriented, I turn off the light and make my way to bed.

---

The city bus wheezes down the street, the driver cursing fluently under his breath at rogue pedestrians. It's Monday afternoon and I'm on my way to a date. I peer at my translucent reflection in the bus window, self-conscious of my body, of the way I'm presenting my body to this stranger. Blue sweater and blue jeans veiling a living, hungry woman. I am a character in a movie called Social Convention. I am performing.

The cafe is crowded, overrun with bright-eyed academics and conventionally unconventional twenty-two year olds. To my right, two women lean forward in their high-top stools. They talk at a breakneck pace and gesture with manicured hands, aggressively inspired. Behind me, two male students argue unironically about the elitism of modern university education, spouting vocabulary words as if their professor were sitting idly by. I never knew sentences could contain so many clauses. Surrounded by Hamlet, Willy Loman, and Lady Macbeth, I am suddenly complacent in my role as an understudy.

Visibly bored, the pierced barista hands me an overpriced coffee in a mason jar. I weave through the herd of black coats, nondescript faces buried in their devices, impatiently waiting for their froth and foam. I promptly douse my drink in cream and sugar. One, two, three heaping teaspoons. As I reach for a stirrer, the man I recognize as my date comes in from the cold.

I'm flooded with observation. He is a person, and somehow this surprises and disappoints me. He is slightly taller than I am. Lively green eyes and expansive, curly hair that reaches from scalp to ceiling, a few grey hairs mixed casually with brown. He looks pleasantly electrocuted. I'm not used to men with this much hair. I imagine what it would feel like to have his beard between my legs.

I smile in greeting as we exchange a warm hug. His smile is unassuming and he smells vaguely of lavender. We sit and open our mouths to recite our scripts. To my surprise, he brings out a particular color in me; my script begins to feel less like a script and more like a blurry afterthought. I forget what character I'm playing. He is easy to talk with. Our conversation dances intelligently between topics, sewing tiny stitches of tentative connection between us.

He holds a Ginger Steamer loosely in his hand: ground ginger, sugar, hot water. I pull a curl behind my ear and watch his eyes follow my fingers. I watch his lips as he tells me about his travels to Turkey. He asks me how I take my coffee.

"Heavily creamed, heavily sugared," I reply, unabashed. I ask him how he takes his coffee.

"Black," he replies, unabashed.

We smile and look down at our drinks. I wonder, are we always having two conversations at once, all of us?

---

I try to quiet my mind before therapy but the minutes bend and morph defiantly. Every mundane distraction is tempting. The year-round air conditioner sits unplugged in the foggy window. Last month's faded issue of Time whispers my name from the chipped glass tabletop. I tap my feet impatiently on the carpet, battling my restlessness.

Patrice opens her office door and ushers me inside. Four feet and eleven inches, she is a powerful force, a no-bullshit woman. But Patrice stalks her prey. Every session begins with identical small talk: a comment on the weather followed by a short eulogy to the broken radiator. I wonder what we'll discuss when spring arrives. We sit.

"I went on a date today," I begin.

She is a falcon, feather to talon, and dips through the sky, biding her time.

"Really?" she asks, widening her eyes. This is news. I've been mourning my breakup dedicatedly for months. I kick my feet up on the scuffed grey ottoman and tell the tale, smiling. As often happens in therapy, my story resists the grasp of convention - a floundering fish - before landing squarely on my kinks. I reveal that this date represents a side of my sexuality I've been desperate to explore.

Patrice nods in an attempt to reserve judgment. Visually, anyway.

"So you're... submissive." She draws the words out slowly, testing their flavor. I nod.

"So what does that mean for you?" she asks, her eyes narrowing. "Do you like chains? Do you like to be whipped? Beaten up?"

As she edges closer to hyperbole, her tone reveals the movie reel flickering behind her eyes: crackly images of dirty basements, rusty handcuffs, meek women crying and men with bulging forehead veins.

I pause. Swallow. I attempt to provide a description using affirmative language, speaking conversationally as if to say, "I'm alright with this, and you should be, too." I'm a virgin to this world, I explain, but even virgins dream of sex. Our lizard brains know the ancient temptation of forbidden fruit. We know we will enjoy it before sucking the juice from its folds.

I can tell by her face that Patrice doesn't like this. She doesn't like that I want my hair pulled, my lips used, my surrender offered. She wants to talk about my meditation habit and the boundaries I've set this week.

She sighs. "Why do you think you enjoy this sort of thing?" she probes. "Most of my clients who are into submission have terrible self-esteem."

The space heater wheezes on. I point my toes, relax my toes. Cliche loves this conversation, devours it greedily, but arguing with a therapist is more complicated than arguing with the misogynistic comment section. Patrice sits silently, waiting to see whether I'll drop my golden token into "Daddy Issues" or "Codependency." Or perhaps, in a moment of profound insight, both.

Instead, I explain that my submission is intrinsic, simply a variety of sexuality. It's not a personality defect, I assert.

But I wonder.

"Well," she honks, "it sounds like you're asking to be raped." She throws her hands up with an unapologetic shrug and a heavy metal grate falls between us, landing certainly with a clatter and a thud. I peer at her from between the rusty slats. I wonder what she sees when she looks back at me.

---

10:30pm. A bitter wind whips against my shoulders as I stand beneath the awning of a busy Mass Ave bar. Sparkling in the thin air, the full moon looms wide above the street. I lean against the brick siding. Skateboarders speed by and pink-nosed couples pass, mittens holding mittens. In front of the bar entrance a group of hefty, bearded men in black hoodies pass a cigarette, barking laughter, their gravelly voices moistened with beer.

I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to face him. His hair is pulled thickly into a curly bun atop his forehead. In the bright light of the passing cars he is more attractive than I remember. His reflective green eyes are stunning, still.

"Hi," I say, smiling. We hug, plush coat to plush coat. I feel a calm, stirring anticipation as our shadows join and separate on the sidewalk. Our words are genuine but easy. They veil the busy work of our eyes, dancing over each other in the streetlight glow. We begin to walk, destination-less, down the sidewalk.

"Where to?" he asks. We scour the quieting street for a place to nest. A nearby creamery, five minutes from closing, catches our eye. The unspoken implication of a late-night date is gently postponed in favor of Brown Butter Brownie and Cardamom Vanilla. We place our orders to the tune of rags wiping plastic tables and chairs scraping across the linoleum floor.

We sit in the warm dark of his car spooning sweetness onto our tongues. To my surprise, my words make the journey from heart to mouth without interception. We exchange the details of our lives. He tells me his parents raised him in a cabin without television. I tell him that I used to work in politics, that sometimes my family feels like a constellation of disconnected satellites in space. We both separated from long-term lovers this past summer - him in June, me in August - and we trade stories of that brand of black pain reserved exclusively for heartbreak.

Mid-conversation, I imagine that I'm a spectator to our exchange. I realize that this moment is a precious moment: this initial sharing, this first discovery. These are the details of a person's life that, by repeated exposure, become your own, taken for granted over time. But upon first hearing, these details are golden groundwork - the continents on the maps of our lives. Later come the countries, states, and cities. But there is such pleasure in glimpsing that landscape for the first time.

An hour later finds us sitting in warm silence, our cups long empty and the dashboard flashing 12:03. The sidewalks are barren. Stoplights dance between green and red.

"Would you like to come over for tea?" he asks.

I feel my cheeks heat in the dark.

"I'd love to," I say. He turns to face me.

"I have no expectations about tonight," he offers, smiling. He shifts the car into gear and begins the short journey back to his house. Gingerly, we enter the front hall and climb the staircase to the second floor. When he opens the door to his room, I see a sprawling potted plant, a mahogany desk, a leather journal and a short stack of books, most of which I've read. Boxes of teas adorn the counter. A window beside the bed peers out onto the quiet residential street.

I take off my boots and climb enthusiastically onto the bed.

"Comfy," I say. He smiles and hangs our coats in the miniature closet.

"It is," he agrees. He faces the counter and prepares the electric kettle. Voyeuristically, I watch his shoulders tug his sweater as he reaches for a pair of mugs. Strong, lean, certain. His movements lack any trace of ego. My steady heartbeat echoes in my chest. Despite the unmistakable sexual tension, I feel at ease, like we could be old friends preparing for afternoon tea on the terrace. This space feels free, creative - like anything could happen here.

He hands me a mug boasting the scent of lavender and thick clouds of steam.

"For you," he says. We sit cross-legged on the beige duvet, kneecap to kneecap. Our conversation leapfrogs from the personal to the spiritual, the political to the sexual. An hour later we are lying upside down, our socked feet splayed messily over the pillows, our heads resting at the foot of the bed. Shoulder to shoulder, our curly hair frames our faces like Chinese fans. In a moment of silence, he lifts himself to rest on his elbow and looks into my eyes.

Instantaneously, the question is is asked and answered. He lowers his face to meet mine and our lips graze tentatively, then certainly. His mouth is warm and inviting, his presence embodied. We trace each other's upper and lower lips with our tongues, sucking softly, and when our mouths open and our tongues meet, I feel a fierce stirring in my stomach. Every sensation feels amplified in my awareness.

As his mouth covers mine, he reaches his hand into my head of curls, grasping tightly at the root, and pulls my hair firmly to the side. I moan softly, involuntarily, feeling a roiling cascade stampede through my stomach. The small act of dominance intoxicates me, a swift hit of pleasure to a first-time user. I'm momentarily lost in the sensation of certain arousal coursing through me.

He releases his grip and I exhale, returning to my body. He kisses me softly, and then suddenly tugs my hair again, exploring my reaction as I shut my eyes and wince, moaning. He leaves his hand grasping my hair as he runs his tongue along the delicate skin of my neck that has been exposed to him.

I am dripping.

---

Part II Coming Soon.