You will want to have read previous episodes in this series to make the most of this.
As I hear him walking away, leaving the room, closing the door, the last thing in my head is ordered thought about the future; I’m fully occupied in handling my immediate condition, in not losing the plot — hanging on only through some instinctive refusal to collapse, even if collapse seems the only possible thing.
Because it’s impossible, already.
This position, the way he’s set me up, the bottle in my mouth, its dead weight, made insistent by the fact that I can’t keep still enough to stop it waggling itself in my throat, triggering automatic reactions again and again — to gag, to swallow, to retch; reactions I have to constantly resist, since all of them would only mean that the terrible thing — the thing that he has cemented in my imagination as a cruelly conceived artificial penis, dreadful in its cold hardness, the sharp edges of the metal foil, the wire cage cutting into the soft and delicate lining of my throat — that this terrible thing will work its way more deeply into me, making everything worse — all of this is impossible already, but that’s not the half of it.
Because of course there is nothing, nothing at all to stop me doing what my whole body demands I do — right now — which is to reach up with my hands, take the bottle and ease it up and out of my mouth, to straighten up (already my lower back is starting to complain about the stresses imposed by the position he’s put me into), and then, obviously, to get dressed, and then leave. Leave this madness. Escape.
And yet I won’t do it. More, I am demanding of myself that I deliver on my commitment to him by complying — not only dutifully, but soulfully, to his requirements, to his demands, even to the unspoken implications of these — not because I want to, not because I have decided anything, but because, deep down, I simply want to be permitted to stay here so badly, that I can allow nothing to stand in the way of that.
And so with any small capacity I have left after managing the horrible way the bottle threatens me with its cold, ceaseless attempts to kill me (for it seems as if to let it into my throat must be to allow it to suffocate me), I am also trying to pay attention to my knees (are they uncomfortably far apart? — by which I have understood that it is my pussy which is to be made vulnerable, presented, offered up), and to my hands (I haven’t yet realised quite what he wants of me here, quite what his point is, making the business of complying with his wishes even more difficult), and more generally, to what I can imagine about how I appear — certain that I must look completely ridiculous — and worse; stupid, pathetic, pitiful, and therefore flat out undesirable, a total sexual turn-off.
Certainty of failure, strong, existential fear, real pain accompanied by harsh discomfort; jolting, jarring automatic responses from my body, shame, guilt, humiliation, weakness, all grinding into me in their different ways, so that despair, hysteria and collapse take turns in posing the most urgent threat to my ability to service that deepest, most urgent need — to be allowed to stay here — which need is all that drives me to keep up the continual, desperate efforts necessary not to be taken down by simple, relentless, uncaring gravity.
Tears are continuous, and there is also a constant, heartbreaking whining (which must be me, too), which gets louder and louder, more and more broken up, as, gradually, the jerkiness, the continual small defeats as the bottle works its way deeper into my poor throat, making everything, every little aspect of the impossible awfulness of my existence worse (being here, like this, is already all I can conceive of — the past, the future all but collapsed), and a little worse again with each few passing seconds, then a little worse again — all without hope of rescue or relief — since it is me, and me alone who stands between myself and that rescue.
He is not doing this to me. I am doing it to myself.
It is that thought — that tiny flash of insight — a microsecond amongst the pain and fear and struggle, that turns the tide.
Nothing gets any better, nor any easier — but the whining peters out, and then I manage to tell myself that it must be some time now (I had no idea at all how long in reality — just that in experiential terms, it had been an aeon already) that I have been assuming that disaster will impose itself on me, make my defeat total, seal my despair — but that despite everything, I find myself still here; still in this awful situation, yes — but not completely defeated.
And with this comes a tiny spark of determination, of desire. I will; I will survive this; I can try — try, despite certainty of being found wanting, of being unworthy of him, unworthy of staying — too pathetic, too stupid, too ugly, sexually uninteresting — that despite all this, I can and will manage to try.
Tears begin to slow, then, and I have just a little more energy to spare for the positioning of my hands, of my knees, and then, at last, I begin to believe that I can achieve some terrible tolerance of the thing in my throat — not to be at ease with it, not at all — but to live with the constant threat of it, not to be thrown into near hysteria with every little advance it makes, not to let the increasing pain — and the almost worse discomfort — make me do stupid things that made it worse; to let the pain be, let it be real, let it be awful, and cruel — but not to fight it, not to resist it quite so much.
It is hurting me. He must have known that it would hurt me, frighten me, threaten me so — and yet he has ordained that I should be hurt and frightened like this. It’s a test, and I want to pass more than anything I can remember, and so I will have to take the pain as … as a good thing. Understand the pain as important to me, because it is ordained by him.
Although he cannot possibly understand how awful it is, how terrible it is! Surely … surely … But no. No, silly. Even if he did know how awful it is for you, he would still not relent. Not at all. And that’s why you’re here. Because you want that relentlessness, because, however weird it seems, it is reliable; dependable, steadfast, unwavering. And that makes you feel safe.
And this is it — I am doing as he wants me to; I am thinking about whether, about why, I want to stay — even in this terrible predicament — half naked, in a degrading pose, deliberately emphasising my degradation by spreading my knees brazenly wide — offering my sex; making that part of me I have been trained my whole life to consider precious, private, secret, deliberately making myself vulnerable there; vulnerable to a man I know to have perverse desires — and by holding my hands so strangely, too; feeling them flap about, helplessly, expressing my lack of agency, the self-imposed nature of my helplessness (realising as I thought this that I now understood what lay behind those instructions, and marvelling, swooning almost at their subtle cruelty and unsettling psychological implications).
And now, astonishingly, unlooked for, I feel my sex moistening, warming up, the nerve endings there asking, expectant, looking for sensation, wanting stimulation.
A momentary failure of attention lets a larger than usual convulsion in my throat offer an opportunity to the bottle, and it pushes a good half inch deeper, suddenly, triggering other reactions — my body attempting to have a choking fit which the rest of me is certain will kill me, and in an instant, panic returns, terror, hysteria, tears, wailing, new pain — a maelstrom which I only just survive.
Or do I? Perhaps in fact something dies in me at that awful moment — something that might have helped me since, helped me believe that I could escape the ever-more-intense vortex that has engulfed me — that I keep offering myself up to. That is taking me down. I will never know.
But at that moment, as I manage, by weak, desperately tiny steps manage to bring myself back into a position where I can do a little more than simply survive, I hear the door open, sense him approach.
It almost kills me.
The idea of him looking at me, seeing me thus, watching me, knowing that I have kept myself in this torture for no other reason than that he asked me to, that I am here, the champagne bottle deep, deep into my throat now, my body constantly in motion, dealing with the awful contradictions of instinct and intention, that I am holding my hands in this humiliating way, that my knees are spread unnaturally wide, so that any observer must notice, and then wonder why, with only one conclusion possible — that I am so nearly naked, that my body is glistening with both sweat and drool, that I can’t stop whining (for some reason the tears stopped the second I heard the door, but his nearness had triggered my vocal chords again), the fact that he is simply standing, watching, silent, that he is offering me no relief, no mercy; nothing — and, in the other direction, no encouragement, no appreciation, no recognition — all of this nearly kills me all over again.
I would have been grateful, at that moment, I think, if it had. If I could have been taken into nothingness, soft darkness, taken against my will, absolved of my responsibility to achieve his consent to keep me, it would have been a welcome release.
It doesn’t happen though, and at some point I find myself once again able to to think, to understand that he is still there, still behind me, still silent, still unknowable, and that I have no option but to keep trying. At this point, the need in me for him to find me sexually desirable becomes suddenly paramount, and whatever little I can spare from the management of the bottle is put into urgent, clumsy, desperate service of trying to move, to arrange myself so as to be as little ugly, as little awkward, as I can see a way to being.
My reaction, though, when I feel his hand, his cool, strong fingers, right at my sex, thoroughly investigating my pussy, gently but with swoon-inducing assertiveness, my reaction is not sexy, but as if I have been scalded, or shocked by an electrical surge, my whole body jerking wildly, triggering another advance of the bottle, deeper into my throat, and a consequent further cascade of fear and struggle, through which, it amazes and shames me to notice as I once again attain some temporary equilibrium, I continue to keep my knees well apart, not allowing myself to use my hands. Truly, he has made me understand just how pathetic I really am, how in thrall to him.
The knowledge that he will be finding me both warm and wet, down there, incontrovertible evidence that I have become sexually aroused in the midst of this bizarre and cruel treatment, also that my hips are helplessly moving for him, welcoming him, eagerly opening and offering my sex to him — that this is the first time he has touched me there, so that this will be my memory of his first touch, all this sears itself into me, but I cannot even manage to think about it, so little capacity do I have beyond the immediate.
His hand leaves me, as casually as it had arrived, and I sense him moving to my side — although, with my eyes perforce looking at the ceiling, I still cannot see anything of him.
“Very well;” his voice is calm, even, as if nothing interesting is happening; “I’ll remove the bottle now. Maintain your position until I ask you to move, please.”
Having him pull the bottle up, out of my throat, slowly, casually, is for some reason deeply humiliating and degrading. I come close to hating him then, and an urge, as the awful thing finally quits my mouth, comes upon me to scream at him — vile abuse, dread threats, the worst insults I imagine — my body’s need powerful in me, as it seeks to lay off onto him just some small fraction of the anguish he has caused me.
Except that I don’t. Because it was me. Me, all along, wasn’t it? Me that asked for this — me that imposed the anguish. And so instead I curse myself, inwardly, striking out at myself, seeking to hurt. It’s pointless, and now I feel hysteria threatening, yet again — tears wanting to overwhelm me — now drowning in self-pity, which also must be resisted, at great cost, my chest rising and falling, my whole body racked by shaking. Horrible that he can see this, can see just how weak, how devastated, how overrun I have been, how vulnerable I am, how weak, how pathetic, how needy — that he will always know this of me. Know how small I am, how little I value myself, how far I will let myself be taken to please him, how doing this to myself weakens me further. It is all here, all implicit in this moment.
I dare not turn from my position in the corner, arms weirdly flappy behind me; shamefully so, legs spread, facing now into the corner, mouth twisting in emotion.
He leaves me like this for a little, until this too, becomes a torment — simply to be standing, facing the corner, half-naked, posed so whorishly, watched, silently by him (or ignored, even) from the comfortable chair.
After some indeterminate time spent in this hell — equally of my own making, I make sure to tell myself, since there is nothing to stop me leaving the room and beginning to pack my bags, to leave this insane asylum, for both our sakes — he speaks, calm and relaxed as always, a simple and reliable rock of certainty, terribly, shockingly welcome.
“Good girl. Come, now, come here. Kneel, let me see your pretty face, and we’ll discover if, perhaps, you have managed to think of anything to say.”
