Three Stages of Love: Attraction (4 page)

My body was being commanded by darkness. I was physically submitting to what my heart and my mind knew was wrong; but it was my heart and my mind that were ailing me, and that needed to be controlled.

CHAPTER THREE

“Michael, I’m not sure about this.” I shook as I digested the whips and chains and metal that hung all around me.

This room made
my toys
truly seem like child’s play.

“We can stop if you don’t like it, but I can assure you, you will forget Alexander, and the pain he’s been causing you will seem like a faint dream.” Michael’s promise of erasing the hurt, of not feeling the guilt that crept into me with even the mention of Alexander’s name, was reason enough to try.

Michael stood by the contraption with his arms crossed over his chest and stared at me standing in the center of the room. “Remove your clothes—all of them—and do it slowly.”

I imagined that this all worked like sex did—you know: naked. But hearing his command to give him a striptease made me feel awkward and embarrassed, an emotion I was not used to feeling at all.

“Can’t we just—” I tried to plead.

But Michael moved swiftly and had his mouth on mine like a ravenous beast, silencing my words. “You will not question or deny me of my requests.”

He ripped at my dress, pulling it down off my shoulders and to my waist, and clutched my breasts with his large hand applying such intense pressure I thought I would burst into screams. But again, I felt the tingle down between my legs along with the wetness.

“Now, move back toward the wall, and spread your arms and your legs, like I asked.”

Carrying all my fear and pain and sorrow, I complied. I stood naked, stretching my arms up over my head and opening my legs opened toward the angle of the wooden planks where the straps were fastened.

Michael had done this many times over, or so it seemed from his precise movements and practiced harnessing skills as he tied me to the planks. As he moved around me, he slid a blindfold over my eyes. I quivered as I contemplated what his plan was, and I found no enjoyment in it whatsoever. But, like Michael had said, I could stop him at any point, so I waited.

Until he struck me for the first time.

“Ugh! Michael what are you doing?” I was violently startled as a thick leather strap came across my arm.

“I said quiet. I need you to hush and try to give in to this. It will take you away; it will take all the pain away, and you will enjoy it,” Michael urged me angrily.

But I couldn’t relax, I was in physical pain.

I remained silent as tears filled my stinging eyes. The tightness that was building in my throat began to suffocate me, and then I hushed my thoughts and concentrated on my breathing, saying silent prayers in hopes I would live through this.

Michael didn’t speak after that. He turned on the stereo, playing a dark archaic symphony of string instruments, and returned to me with what must have been a whip from the feel of the hard leather. He moved and touched me in the precise crescendo of the music, and as it got louder, his touch became more brutal. He battered my skin with metal and leather whips and sharp objects that I couldn’t place. At times the pain was intolerable and then titillating, and then I would be struck yet again. The emotions were so uncontrollable and extreme that I lost myself in this unknown universe of what felt like death.

I was being punished, and I surprisingly accepted the pain. I was doing penance for the pain I had caused both Alexander and myself; and I almost felt cleansed. Michael was wrong about one thing though: I never stopped thinking about Alexander. In fact his face was all I could see with every lick of the whip and every pinch of metal against my skin. This was my self-punishment, my act of devotion, and show of sorrow for the sin I had committed—the sin of having been loved and having cast away that love because of the cowardly heart I held within me.

Time had escaped me as I struggled to determine how long I had been tied to the planks as my body gave out. Michael released my wrists and ankles from the straps attached to the planks and carried me to his bed. He kept his word and never tried to have sex, but he had had his way with me regardless of not penetrating. He had penetrated my mind, and that was far worse than sex. I felt bruised, and my skin was on fire; every part of me ached except my heart. I couldn’t think about my heartache, for I was defeated by the physical pain I had endured.

I wasn’t happy or sad. I was just relieved. I felt like I had finally paid the price for the wrong I had done; and now it was gone. I just hoped that it would last when the next wave of wretchedness was to strike me.

I awoke around 4:00 a.m., then I scurried to gather my things and ran out of Michael’s apartment. I stood in the parking lot to wait for the cab that I had called, my mind completely clouded and my body still in shock. My thoughts swirled in confusion and were defeated by complete loss.

When I got home, I spent more than an hour in the shower, trying to slowly cleanse the scars on my chest and legs; I cried as I sponged over every scratch and every lash that now scarred my once glowing skin. I cried not for the pain but for the unimaginable existence that I now found my self living in. I once saw the world through rose-colored lenses, and now there was nothing pretty in anything before me; but I was indifferent.

But—for the first time in months—I felt
nothing.

Sitting by my bed, I suddenly recalled a time during my first year in college when my roommates, which I had four of, would sink into these depressive states and either eat us out of house and home or starve themselves into oblivion and exercise themselves until they dropped to the floor. I never could understand the point or purpose of these self-destructive events, but they happened often and all around me and always to the girls.

One evening, after watching a friend eat her way through a tub of pretzels dipped in Nutella, I had tried to chip away at the inner workings and motivating factors that lead to these spurts of “comfortable discomfort,” as I called them. Comfortable for the sensation of safety and calm it gave the person in the moment, and discomfort for the absolute way that person would feel once they snapped out of the shit hole they were mentally living in.

“I don’t intentionally eat. I just can’t help it,” Sarah would respond when I asked her why she was stuffing her face just because her blind date went badly or a guy didn’t call her back after sex. “It just feels cozy to be curled up in my safe bed with my shows and my food. It can’t hurt me, it makes me feel happy, and it’s my comfort.”

Now, for someone who dated but couldn’t have cared less for a relationship, these woes and worries never made their way into my life. But, for those who it did affect, boy, did they do themselves in!

It’s a vicious cycle really. For example: A young woman meets a handsome guy, and of course she begins reeling through an Oscar-winning cinema of their future together. Then after one date, that guy doesn’t call back because he has gotten laid and is moving on to greener pastures. And after several blocked and unanswered phone calls to said handsome guy, the girl tailspins into a dark ball of emotions and blames herself for her imperceptible inadequacies.

So she begins to cry about how fat she is as she proceeds to eat a box of chocolate glazed donuts dipped in vanilla ice cream. She complains about her complexion as she picks at her face, as the acne appears due to all the chocolate she’s been eating. Damn vicious cycle!

So why go through the pain of not only having to clean up the mess from the original situation that ignited the depression
but
also having to remedy all of the additional chaos you caused by trying to bury the emotions in the pitfalls of comfort? Whether it be starvation or eating too much or sex binges, the way women react to conflict or let down is sometimes more of a disaster than the disaster they are reacting to.

And
this
was exactly where I found myself that day, bound and beaten and in the throes of my own demise. I had forced myself into a nightmare of a situation, and the likelihood of a silver lining was slim to none. Most people run toward the light at the end of the tunnel.
Me
? I ran from it.

I had no explanations, no words of wisdom, and no idea how to make it better. How had I turned into
that girl
—the girl who recoiled at the presence of love and instead unknowingly dove into the exact opposite: a masochistic mess of a situation? What the fuck had I done?

My phone buzzed, shaking me out of my waking coma as I lay on the edge of my bed, still wrapped in my bathrobe.

It was a text message from none other than Michael. Michael was my living, breathing mistake. He went from being a friend to pure evil in my life. And though I couldn’t put full blame on him, I hated him for introducing me to the hell that I was now enduring.

The text simply read:
Are you OK?

And all I could think was,
How stupid are you to ask if I’m OK? You spent the night beating me with whips and chains. I don’t love you, I barely like you, and I have allowed you to do to me what I wouldn’t allow Jesus Christ to do to me in exchange for immortality.
But I didn’t respond. I ignored the text and the dozen or so that came after that until nightfall.

As I slept the day away and entered the abyss of night, more dreams came. Dreams that consisted of Alexander and the ecstasy he introduced me to. I had never before understood why I was so dissatisfied with my previous sexual relationships; there were
no emotions
! I had never cared for or lusted after any of the men who adored me. And when the one and only man who penetrated the very depths of my soul came into my life, I pushed him away for reasons that were still vague, even to me.

But this was why the nights were the hardest to endure alone: being in bed with my vivid imaginings of Alexander and every inch of his exalted, and carved physique.

I would wake in a panic most nights, searching for Alexander’s body in the creases of my sheets, hoping that he was tangled within them. And other nights I would awake panting from the wet dreams I had had of him. My vibrators saw more action in those last few months than I had had in all my thirty-two years of life! But it kept me from going elsewhere. Unfortunately vibrators can only do so much for a woman when she goes from getting fucked overpoweringly to being alone, regretful, and depressed. And the harder I thought about Alexander, the more I wanted to orgasm for him, with him, and on him.

Herein lay my problem! The thought of Alexander and my fucked-up dismissal of him from my life left me wanting and paining for him. That pain left me inconceivably miserable and distraught, searching for a means to feel any other way but this way. But at this point, it was either live solo with my vibrator or return to Michael.

And by Friday, I had emotionally collapsed and was fresh out of Duracells. Nothing seemed to help. I formed a habit of having a glass of red wine before I got into bed, hoping it would relieve some of the anxiety—but it didn’t. I had used the vibrator so many times that I almost couldn’t reach an orgasm from it anymore. I would wait until my clit went numb, and then, seeing as there was so still no orgasm, I would throw it across the room. The restlessness of my nights was the anguish of my days, and I couldn’t fathom surviving another hour, much less another day, without some rest.

So, after four long, drawn-out and impossible-to-handle days, I left work promptly at 5:00 p.m., and I sent a text as I hailed a cab.

Help!
is all I wrote.

And the response came sooner than an instant.

What took you so long? Waiting 4 U -Michael

I stared at my phone in raw disbelief that
I
had once again failed to maintain control and exert even the slightest bit of intelligence in these dreadful choices I was making.

But neither my mind nor my heart cared.

It’s funny how we have these mental arguments with ourselves about whether to do what we know is wrong or what is obviously right. And even though these arguments escalate to full conversations with detailed rationalizations of why we should or shouldn’t choose the latter path, our body makes a choice in the end. And I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out what made me do it! What made me text him and go to him?

I pondered this perplexing thought right up until the point when Michael opened the door to his apartment and led me in by my hand.

“I will say that I am a bit shocked that you texted me. I wasn’t sure whether you hated me or loved me so much that you couldn’t stand to see me again.” Michael poked at my sides as I nudged myself past him to get to his couch.

I realized that I had to have a discussion with Michael. There was no way to have spent an evening being, well, basically beaten by a man who was once a friend and not discuss it afterward.

“Michael, we need to talk,” I whispered softly.

Michael nodded his head and walked toward me. He positioned a black velvet throw pillow behind his back and made himself comfortable on the couch beside me. Not realizing he was going a tad too far, he proceeded to lift his legs and perch them over my knees, leaving his body in a reclining position. I had become his footrest, and that gesture made my disgust all the more apparent.

“Um, OK. Michael, we’re friends, and so I don’t want to say or do anything more that will hinder that friendship. The other night—”

And as I proceeded to say my piece, Michael intervened, soft spoken and assured of himself. “Eva, let me stop you there. When you texted me, it was for help. Not to talk, not to end this, but to help you forget. Only a half hour ago you reached out to me to numb you like I did last weekend. Tell me, did you think of him even once while you were here with me?” Michael asked.

“That’s not the point,” I responded, fully aware that Alexander was all I could think about.

“No,” Michael answered for me. “You didn’t think of him. For whatever reason you may have, he makes you hurt, and I have been able to release you of that hurt.”

I shook my head and uneasily tried to disagree, but the statement he had made was half accurate. “Yes. You made me forget for a few hours that there is a void inside of me that longs to be filled by someone who can’t fill it. He didn’t hurt me. I hurt him and myself, for that matter. So, you see, I don’t want to forget him. Being with you and feeling numb and grief stricken by the pain I endured didn’t fill that void. It only made me forget for a short while that there was a void.”