you – Not A Real Doctor

(Photos by dollygasm.)

We know each other well, and I’ve heard a lot of your secrets, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful for that. The problem is that deep honesty isn’t enough; even total honesty wouldn’t be enough. Everything you decide to tell me only stokes this hunger for more of who you are.

I want to know more than just the pretty parts of you, is the problem–and they are such pretty parts. But I want to know how you sweat and itch and bleed and get sick, how your eyes look with a fever. I don’t want you to cry, not really, but if you do I want to be there. I want to see the places where you hurt yourself.

I wish I could feel every nerve in your body when you stand or stretch or ache or masturbate; I wish I could know exactly what you felt when I touched the back of your neck. I want to know where you get dry skin and which patch you missed, shaving your legs. I want to know every permutation of your smile lines and watch you pluck gray hairs or stray eyebrows. I want to catch you biting your fingertip to the quick.

I want to know who you were five years ago, and ten, and fifteen. I want the boring data, all your school papers and instant messages and emails to friends and lovers and, fuck, people you were trying to get to hire you. I want to see you gain weight and drop it, chop your hair off and grow it out. I want to have been there when you didn’t feel comfortable in your own skin. I want to watch you get old. I want to watch you grow into who you are.

I want to know which questions you won’t ask and which you won’t answer. I want to know what you dislike, and what you’re ashamed of hating. I want the things that make you proud, and whatever it is that embarrasses you. I want your moments of genius. I want your mistakes. I want every feeling and impulse. I want every single word you think.

If anything about this is unflattering, it’s unflattering to me: this borders on obsession, at best, and it’s not something I’m proud of. But when my control slips and I let on about how hungry I am, you always tell me time that you get it. It intrigues you. And I think that maybe we’re even, and just as much as I want to know you, you want to be known.

This is kind of unusual and personal for me, but this is also the only identity where I really talk about kink, so. Pardon the digression.

I’m a pretty typical top in bed. I like control, I like getting a reaction, I like the illusion of power; aside from a couple very specific circumstances, I don’t have much of a submissive side, and I have always struggled to understand why anyone would want to receive pain as part of sex. I sort of got it abstractly: endorphins, adrenaline, heightened pleasure from sensory contrast. Not to imply the two are always connected, but I’ve dabbled lightly in self-harm in the past, so I know a little about the relief involved in externalization too. But emotionally… I couldn’t get there. I just figured I could respect other people’s kinks without needing to understand them, and hey, if my mild sadistic interests matched up with someone else’s masochism, great.

Until this weekend.

You and I are very close friends but we live a long way apart. This was one of the few times a year we get to see each other, and the flirting had turned up quite a bit, and when you drink you get tend to sock me in the arm and get a little bite-happy. This time you gave me one serious, deliberate punch, and then you bit me in the same spot. Hard. Hard enough to leave marks.

I laughed about it, but it made my heart kick. I wanted more.

It became a game. We’d be in a crowd, or at the bar, or just around the corner from a group of friends, and we’d catch each other’s eyes and you’d pinch me. Or punch me. Or, once in a while, find a soft place and bite down. The first time I was just excited to have your attention, but soon the harder you bit the better it felt. I got cold chills and goosebumps all over.

I have quite a bit of height on you, and you are sweet and kind, so we do not present the most obvious form for this dynamic. That’s part of my fascination with it. I never expected to be walking around with my public face on, cheerfully looming over you, thrumming with excitement inside and thinking fuck, I hope she hurts me again soon.

I’m not claiming this is the universal masochist experience or anything, but I get it now. I don’t bruise easily, and the marks on your favorite spot–just below the shoulder of my right arm–are already gone. But I can still feel the soreness when I push it. I want it to last. I want to be able to touch part of my body, and remember, and feel where you were.