Ritual
I want to write about kneeling. About the time I was in a small, extra bedroom, upstairs, tucked away, in my own world, wearing ear buds and connected to my phone. About when a voice in my ear told me to shut the door, take off my clothes, and kneel at the foot of the big, stuffed chair that was in this room.
The air touched my skin as I disrobed. My top. My bottoms. Bra. Panties. Folding each one and setting in a pile.
I am not a woman who goes around the house naked. I don’t even sleep naked. I think I can count on one hand the times I walked from the from my bedroom to the laundry room, naked, because the clothes I wanted were in the dryer.
Exposed skin feels vulnerable to me. Nude photos of my breasts, my ass, my cunt, feel taboo, salacious, and graphically immoral. I don’t like taking them. I don’t like anyone seeing them. But I have sent them…in the thill of a command and the shame of obedience, I have sent them.
Because of his voice in my ear.
I remove my clothes and do what he says because we crossed a line weeks ago with my agreement. Although I wrestled with that line in sobs and shaking. It was a line of full surrender and it was terrifying.
Either I wanted to move forward or I didn’t, but to do so, I had to comply with his rules and expectations, things we had spent days discussing. I couldn’t waffle. I had to consent. I don’t know if he understood that I don’t give consent in inches, but instead use wide swaths and bold sweeps of everything-I-am and everything-I-have.
Maybe, in hindsight, that isn’t how a dominant is supposed to work. I don’t know, that is how he worked. And I liked the directness of it because without that, I would waver and over-analyze and never make a choice. Which, he knew.
When he tells me to disrobe, I do it, thankful, that he reminded me to close the door to the room first.
“Go and kneel at the chair. Imagine me sitting there,” he says.
I do. We aren’t on video. It’s his voice on the phone, directing me.
“Open your legs, hands behind your back. Legs wider. Chest out.” Every word is slow and deliberate, as if he is watching me follow each meticulous direction. The energy of his presence wraps around me in the small room.
“Good. Now take a deep breath. Watch me. Your eyes on mine.”
I breathe in and out.
“Fucking keep your eyes on mine.” His voice sharpens like a knifes edge and I shiver all over.
He always knows the moment my attention wanders. From a million miles away and in a different time zone, he knows.
“Look at you. You are wet already, aren’t you. That’s okay. We will get to that. For now, Breathe. You can feel me. My hand in your hair. Gentle. Sliding from the scalp, back. Keep your back arched, pet. Breasts up. Let me—let me just touch you.”
As he speaks, his voice touches me. All the details become real. He’s right, I am wet, I can feel the slide of the lips of my sex, the way the cool in the room hits that opening. The world passes away. All my troubles begin to slide off of my shoulders, my arms, my back, out of my belly, down my legs, dripping to the floor like rain off of a roof.
“Another breath. That’s right. So good. Perfect. I slide my hand through your hair. Down your neck. You know I have big hands. I wrap my palm around your throat. Cup your neck. My finger on your vein. I could just press, right there, and you would let me.” There is a burr in his tone, a rough, sandpaper scrape that touches me in slow, steady strokes.
He is such a powerful wall. Steady. Resilient. I feel him there with me, a will of hot, volcanic stone.
Trust
I am not a woman who leans. I am not a woman who depends. And to be honest, I am not a woman who trusts. Instead, I consciously blind myself by putting consequences into boxes where I don’t have to look at them and then I rush forward, as fast as I can, into whatever unknown thing lay ahead.
In this place that he created for us all my defenses melt away. I have no recourse. I trust fully and completely in ways I never thought I could or would. My consent granted him access past all my inhibitions with the truth of my whole self. Access he claimed. In this place where he rules, I have become Puppet. And he holds all the strings.
But it feels like bliss. Like holy. Like I’m dunked in the sweet, perfect ambrosia of what should be between masculine and feminine.
He will go on to say and do many things…
But this isn’t about those things. It is about the air moving over my skin, in and out of my lungs. It is about the world, that has evaporated. It is about his heavy hand, touching me, holding me, peeling me open layer by layer and laying his pointer finger on the very center of my soul until I am twitching and trembling all over.
This is what it is to kneel.