Put Me In The Corner.

I used to think corners were for errant girls who ran their mouths off a little too often. This doesn't feel like that. Whenever I saw a picture of someone in a corner, with their panties around their ankles, it gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling in my stomach. I didn't want that, not at all, but it was nice to look at. This isn't nice to look at. I'm not standing in this corner, for one, I am sitting in it. My face isn't turned towards the wall, it's facing the room. My knees are bent and placed very close to my hips on either side, and my cunt is all I smell. If someone looked at me now, it is the first thing they would see. I cannot look up, but even if I did, I know he is not looking at me. He is sitting on the bed, and has been for however long I have been here. He isn't speaking to me. He won't look at me. I wonder if he'll even remember to call me to bed tonight, because I've started to believe that corners might not be for the errant girls.

I think corners are for the forgotten girls.

Just a little while ago, he was beating me. I was kneeling in front of him and he was beating my breasts with a hairbrush usually reserved for the one time a week I feel the need to brush my hair. I realised recently that my relationship with pain has really changed. It used to be the simplest thing in my life; the easiest thing for me to do. There was no complexity to what I wanted from it and no matter who delivered it to me, it was always in service of my most prominent need. All the pain I experienced was about me, and how I wanted to feel. That's not the case anymore, and maybe it hasn't been the case for a while. Somehow, in the years that we have been together, he has snuck inside me and taken over a wing in my brain closet. I am alarmed that a person could influence my behaviour to the extent that he does, and do it without subjecting me to terrifying amounts of nonconsensual violence. I now experience pain the way he wants me to. If he wants me to feel good, I will feel good. If he wants me to feel horrible, I will feel horrible. If he wants me to scream, I will scream and if he wants me to hold onto silence through a skinning, I will do that too. I really can. I am as alarmed as anyone else.

I have no idea how I do it at all, but it's not really me deciding anymore. I am constantly shocked by that because the truth is that while I like to play games that make me seem helpless and powerless, I run my games. If there is one thing I learnt from my childhood it's that there's nothing erotic about true powerlessness. So even when those games are elaborate and bordering on just fucking nuts, I am running those games, even as people step on my face and piss in my ass, I lose no power. This isn't like that. This was never like that. Perhaps that is what really keeps me invested in this relationship, every day it feels like we are starting something new. Every day, I am surprised not just by him, but myself. I thought I was done being surprised by my sexuality a long time ago but I've never been so wrong about anything in my life. I am reminded of that every day. He was beating my breasts hard enough that I could instantly see marks on them, but I couldn't feel it. Or at least, I couldn't feel the parts of it that make one wish to scream and cry. Somehow, these days, i am fixated on the idea of what feels *fitting*. I've never approached it like that before. Whenever I called myself, or anyone did, worthless or dirty it wasn't followed by this type of acceptance of the terms. There was something of a understanding between believing I was worthless underneath his feet at night and knowing that wasn't true when I sat at my desk in the morning. I don't know anymore. Sometimes, now, I feel worthless in the morning. It doesn't hurt, it doesn't even feel bad, it feels like there's another one of me. The worthless one.

And for that, it feels fitting. It feels fitting that he beats me and expects such unreasonable compliance, because, there is no value to letting me scream and declare my pleasure nor my discomfort. It doesn't matter at all. Not to him. I think to him it actually matters a great deal, and even when he says he doesn't, we know he is lying (and that's a good thing). It doesn't matter to *me*. It doesn't matter to me that he *should* let me express my pain or discomfort or arousal. It doesn't matter what I feel, so long as I feel it the way he wants me to. I used to make fun of that sentiment, but the firmest lesson life has ever taught me is that I will embody everything I have ever mocked. That seems fitting too. There didn't seem to me like there was any need for me to make any noise while he beat me and so I just didn't. Suddenly, it really is that easy. I remember the last time it was that easy, that did not end well. I do things much better the second time.

He beat me and I watched my skin, but it felt like it was just skin I was watching, like it wasn't even connected to me in any way. He spoke around me, pausing every few minutes to run his fingers over the flesh he was pounding. That I felt. I felt ever tiny graze of his fingers over my skin. He won't touch me as much, of late, not in a sexual way anyway. He'll fuck me, he'll hurt me, he'll hold me at night, but when I most want him to touch me, he won't, and that feels right too. Everything's turned upside down in my head, and I'm too old for that. I'm too old to rebuild the order. It's impossible to focus on thoughts when he touches me, I literally stop having thoughts. That used to be what pain did for me, it still does, but only when he'll allow it. His touch does it instantly though, it works in milliseconds. Silence falls over me like a weighted blanket.

He filled my silence with his words. He held me by the neck as he continued to beat me and I looked at him, unsure if I would ever be able to think again. He pushed me onto my back, pushing my legs up with me until I was holding them in my hands and peering at my feet from the sides of my eyes. It was such a drastic change in position that suddenly the lights in the room felt brighter. I think he noticed it too but he didn't say anything. He watched me in that position, and there's something about spreading your legs that feels like you have nothing left to hide.

"I'm going to touch you," he said, leaning over the edge of the bed.

Shivers went down my spine. That's how much he has made me crave this and how effective it is to deny someone.

"If you get the slightest filth on my fingers," he continued, "even the tiniest bit of a mess I find, I'll beat you."

It was like he was delivering a sentence. There was no way his fingers wouldn't be drenched in wetness, I cannot control that, it's not like the screaming. At least, I think it isn't. It wouldn't take longer than a second for it to happen, and I wished I could just beg him to not touch me if he really wanted to give me the choice to not be beaten, but he didn't. I didn't want it either. The six seconds that his fingers spent on my skin made what followed worth it. If I close my eyes, I can feel it right now. It was the kind of touch that keeps you warm when you're alone on a warm night. What followed wasn't as pleasant, and I felt every blow, because he wanted me to. Being beaten in my cunt is one of those rare things that is never hot in concept, and always hot in reality. It's the opposite of most sexual fantasies. I realise now that it's maybe because I find it fitting too. I wish nothing but pain on my cunt, because at least by hurting it serves their pleasure, because I have none to give it really. I have not one instinct to pleasure it at all. He doesn't, either. He just wants to hurt it all the time.

The hairbrush wasn't so bad compared to the other things. In fact the pain in my back from holding up my legs for so long was much worse, and much more worthwhile too. At least I bear that for him, as for my cunt, that's just what it deserves. Regardless, at some point the pain must have gotten worse because I remember crying. I used to think that people who got beaten on their clits must be insane, and now it seems so natural that he would do that to me. He doesn't even take it easy, like it isn't a highly sensitive part of a person's body. It does hurt. It really, really hurts. It hurts my heart too, that he would do that to me. It wouldn't have in the past, but I guess my heart is more sensitive now that he's scrubbed the grime off it with steelwool. Before he stopped beating me, he went at it extremely hard for a few minutes. Sometimes that's how I know he will stop, but sometimes those last few seconds feel longer than the hour before them.

"Are my fingers going to get dirty again?" He asked.

They were. Of course they were. It's such an insane thing to expect that I won't be a wet mess as a result of all of that. It's such a horrible thing to tell me that my arousal is filth. It's such a cruel act to reinforce that he won't touch me because I'm so dirty. Yet it feels like a leaf out of a fairytale I once wrote. Every excruciating part of every dream I ever had comes true with him. I can't tell anymore whether I was wise to have dreams.

"Yes," I told him in response to my question.

I waited for him to go back to beating me. He didn't. He pulled me up to my feet instead. It took me a long time to find my footing and even before I did he was dragging me to this corner.

"Get on the floor," he said kicking me down while I was already falling, unnecessary, and perfect, "Squat in that fucking corner."

It didn't feel like a warm and fuzzy place.

"Stay there, pathetic and dripping," he said kicking me right beside my cunt, but far away that he didn't touch it, "Get your ass on the floor you'll be here a while."

I made a sound. A sound that came before I could realise I shouldn't really ask how long a while was. There were no words, it was just a sound, but he heard it.

"How long? You want to know how long?" He kicked me again, and again, "Until you won't dirty my fucking fingers anymore."

I'm going to be here forever.

It's fitting.

I think corners are for forgotten girls.