I want to talk about fucking up. Because I have, and I think it’s not talked about enough. We speak to each other about the things we’ve done, what we’ve learned, how we’ve succeeded, but it’s hard to talk about the times we’ve failed. So I’m starting a series. That’s right. I’m going to tell you about every single time I’ve fucked up a scene. Because in the end, I learn from my mistakes, and that almost - almost - makes the mistakes worth making.
I fucked up my very first scene.
We played without communication, and that was the problem. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I knew if I ran my nails down his back just so, over and over, he sighed and hiccoughed and moaned in a way that made my stomach knot and my labia quiver. So I made him moan, and then I made him moan again, again, again, until he dropped to the floor and said “Please, please stop.” And I did stop, but I admit, not right away. He had no safeword and was too submissive (and too in love) to stop me. I look back now and wince at how stupid we were.
Afterward he pulled a shirt gingerly over his shoulders and we went downstairs and sat on a picnic table. He smoked a pipe and told me, slowly, how scared he was of me. That he wasn’t sure if he could ever trust me again. I’m not sure he ever did trust me again, not totally, not the way he wanted to. All through the thread of our relationship, for the next entire year, this was one of our defining questions: Do you trust me?
I cried at the time, and I learned fast and hard. I became a rabid communicator. I learned everything I could about power dynamics and safewords. I apologized to him. We laughed together and talked about how hot that scene was, once we’d both come down from the peak. And I was horribly, scarringly guilty. I still am. I keep that scene on the rotation, and there’s a part of me that knows I shouldn’t, that finds such conflicts wrong.
And he forgave me. I wonder, sometimes when I’m a titch on the tipsy side (like now), what would I be like if he hadn’t?
