The Diary Of A Submissive: A True Story (30 page)

It may sound odd that such cruelty and humiliation inspired the thought, but by the end of our weekend I knew I loved this twisted, clever, tender man who got upset at people being cruel to animals but took joy in doing horrible things to me. He had understood the parts of me I could barely articulate, and coaxed them into achieving and enduring amazing and cathartic things. The intensity of it took my breath away – it was like no one had ever known me as well as he did; no one could understand my nature, my personality, better than him.

So what happens after the most intense sexual experience of your life, the thing that leaves you aching and mentally and physically affected for days afterwards?

Well, it would seem, the answer was nothing.

When we said goodbye he was quiet but no more so than he would normally have been at the prospect of us going back to our respective homes, the weekend over and work beginning again. At least that’s what I thought at the time, when I stretched up to kiss him, enjoying the warmth of his embrace as he hugged me goodbye and we went our separate ways.

I texted him when I got home, the way I always did. I didn’t get a reply but figured that as it was late he’d crashed out in readiness for his early start the next day. But the next morning I didn’t hear anything; in fact, I didn’t hear anything at all that day. It was odd – James and I had spent months in contact multiple times a day and his silence meant I couldn’t help but worry that something was wrong. I sent him a second text, asking him if all was OK. Nothing. Then I tried dropping him an email – a link to a news story I thought might interest him – I didn’t want to seem clingy, although I sent it to both his home and work addresses, but I wanted a response.

Nothing.

For three days I was pretty much beside myself. Texts and an aiming-for-casual-and-bright-but-really-not voicemail went unanswered. I went about my daily business, going to work, heading out for birthday drinks with a friend, but through it all in the back of my mind all I was thinking about was James. Was he all right? Why hadn’t he got in touch? On the morning of the fourth day I couldn’t stand it any more. I rang his office. I didn’t give my name, which perhaps makes me sound like a mad stalker woman. The receptionist was very helpful: yes he was definitely in, she’d seen him this morning, he was at his desk already, but on another call. Did I want to leave a message or did I have his address to email him?

I told her I had his address and very politely hung up.

I was furious. I was upset. I was confused. It was so unlike him, but I couldn’t really think of the best way to deal with it at that moment – I knew that any attempt to talk to him while he was at work was a complete waste of time so I spent most of the day thinking about the best way to raise my concerns without seeming like some furious harridan. There was also the D/s dynamic to factor into it. After the intensity of the time we had spent together I didn’t want to come across as disrespectful, but I had no intention whatsoever of letting it go like I was some kind of wilting flower. But what to do?

By the end of the working day I still had no clue.

I decided to send a casual, non-shrewish, text.

Hey you, you’ve been really quiet since we got back from the weekend. Hope all’s OK, will try ringing tonight.

I didn’t get a reply. In my heart of hearts I wasn’t expecting one, although I still had no fucking clue why.

The clichéd depiction of break-ups is that once you have been spurned by your beau you sink into the pit of despair with some high-quality ice cream and cheesy pop rock of the 70s and early 80s. If that works for you, then great. But for me, to paraphrase Billy Ocean, when the going gets tough, the tough get baking.

I rang James twice that night and it went to voicemail both times. Then I switched on my PC and, thanks to the joys of social networking, found that he’d been online in various places that evening, happy to talk even if he apparently didn’t have the inclination to do so with me. By the time I’d hunted down a post he’d made to an obscure music website, asking for help with his speakers – ‘I’m lying here with an aching heart and a pounding head wondering what on earth’s going on and you’re re-cabling your living room?’ – I knew it was time to step away and do something else.

I’m not a natural cook. Living alone makes anything other than ready meals a lot of hassle and waste, and I’m usually bored of the prospect of eating anything I make part way through the cooking process anyway. But baking, baking I love. Partly, I guess, because biscuits and cakes and all that stuff are good comfort-type foods, but partly because I enjoy the straightforwardness of it. If you weigh the ingredients out correctly, if you cream the butter and sugar to the right consistency, if you bake it the right length of time, you can create something lovely – and you
can give the fruits of your efforts to the people around you in silent apology for walking around permanently close to tears and with a face like a smacked arse.

It was 1am when I decided to start baking ginger shortbread. I don’t know why ginger appealed specifically, but I was convinced. By this point I had already drunk most of a bottle of wine, so driving wasn’t an option. I pulled my coat on and walked to the twenty-four-hour petrol station with attached shop to buy what I needed there.

Now, I’ve never been the sort of person who buys petrol – or indeed anything else – at a petrol station forecourt late at night. But it turns out that they lock the doors and instead serve you through a glass window with a grille, not unlike visiting someone in prison, passing things underneath the – very small – gap in the bottom of the Plexiglas screen. This made explaining my late-night baking needs rather more complicated than it would have been otherwise.

To start with the bloke behind the counter was adamant that unless I wanted fuel, cigarettes or condoms he couldn’t sell me anything else. After listening to me argue for five minutes he grudgingly told me he thought they had some flour he could get me. Once he’d cracked and got that it didn’t take much wheedling to get some sugar out of him, but by the time I was asking him to hold up packs of butter to see if I could ascertain which was unsalted there was a look of loathing in his eyes. He gave me short shrift when I asked if they had any ginger – I admit it was unlikely, but heartbreak and drunkenness hadn’t dented my optimistic streak – and instead sold me
a bar of fruit and nut chocolate to break up in lieu of chocolate chips. By the time I had fed the cash for my overpriced grocery shopping under the gap and he had passed through a carrier bag and then each individual item for me to pack into it, I was so effusively grateful that my eyes were filled with tears at his kindness. As I stumbled away home I think his probably were too, albeit tears of relief that the mental woman buying baking ingredients had sodded off to leave him with late-night petrol buyers and stoners with the munchies.

I woke up the next morning on my living room floor having passed out watching DVDs while waiting for the second load of shortbread dough to chill in the fridge before baking.

If it seems tough waking up with a hangover after being dumped (if that’s what this was; it was hard to tell when the person I was dating – well, almost – was such an emotional fucktard that I wasn’t entirely sure), then waking up in a furnace – the oven had been on all night, obviously – to find a kitchen in chaos is worse. There was flour on the floor, butter on the cupboards from my overenthusiastic greasing, and every bowl and wooden spoon I owned seemed to have been used and dumped on the side. It was like I’d been burgled. By bakers. Combine that with a banging red wine hangover, sleep deprivation and – as I found when I dragged my sorry self up to the shower – dough in my hair, and I felt awful.

I went into work, still not really there (although the batches of shortbread did much to minimize any co-worker snarking about me not pulling my weight). I tried
not to think about James. But thinking about not thinking about James probably didn’t count.

In the weeks that followed my colleagues, friends and family did well out of my heartbreak. I made endless variations of golden shortbread, only moving on to Victoria sponges when our assistant editor raised concerns about all the butter having an effect on his cholesterol. I made carrot cake, rock cakes, cookies, and as I beat the eggs, stirred the dough and waited for everything to cook, I went over every element of my relationship with James, the smutty and the not-so-smutty. It made me cry and it made me wet and more than anything it made me angry. I couldn’t work out whether everything that had happened between us had been founded on the lie that he was as interested in me as I was in him, or if he had just got bored with me, or if I’d done something to piss him off or what. However I weighed it up, he had thrown away something that, from my end at least, seemed quite special. He had thrown me away. It sounded pathetic – made me feel pathetic – but I was bereft and I wanted to weep. James still hadn’t got in touch, although a mixture of stubborn pride and embarrassment made me stop contacting him. I knew he was alive and well, and over and above that all I knew was that he didn’t want to talk to me. And that meant I didn’t want to talk to him. I’d be buggered before he realized how much he’d hurt me.

I was part way through grating cheese for a batch of three-cheese scones when Thomas rang. He asked how I was. I said I was fine as I was long-since bored with trying
to explain the ridiculous depth of my feeling to anyone else. And then he shocked me out of slicing lumps off a truckle of Wensleydale.

‘Bollocks are you fine. You’re not fine.’

I didn’t know what to say for a second; there was such fury and frustration in his tone. I went to say I was fine – by this point it really was my default response – and tailed off as it would appear we both knew I wasn’t.

‘It’s enough moping, Sophie. More than enough. I’m sorry you’re hurting and he’s a fucking idiot but no more crying and no more bloody baking. Charlotte and I are coming round this weekend. We’re bringing DVD box sets and wine and we’re going out for actual non-bakery-related food. No arguments. In fact, I’m going to bring the paddle and if you don’t cheer up then I will use it.’

I smiled my first unforced smile for weeks. We both knew he had no intention of doing any such thing, that our sexual relationship had moved on, but it still made me smile, made me feel reassured, that there was a support network of people I could rely on, even if – Thomas and Charlotte aside – no one really had any idea of what I was mourning.

‘Bloody hell, I’d best make an effort then.’

There was no putting them off. Even my follow up call, where I told Tom I was fine and didn’t need anyone worrying about me, fell on deaf ears. The closest we came to a discussion about the trip was a debate over the DVDs he was bringing – we plumped for explosions, political
intrigue: nothing that was going to leave me weeping into my wine glass like some kind of kinky Bridget Jones.

In the end, it was brilliant. I suddenly realized I’d bored myself with grief. Life in the doldrums is exhausting, depressing and really bloody dull after a while, and when the force of nature that is Thomas and Charlotte blew into my flat, waving booze, box sets and expensive chocolate, I was suddenly ready to shake it off. Or at least to begin trying. The wine and Pringles helped, as did the most ludicrously plotted action TV show I’d ever seen, made ever more amusing by wine. They arrived on Friday night. We started watching TV early – Thomas remained one of my best friends but he was a bloke and as soon as he saw that a mention of James had my lip wobbling, he was happy to just stick with TV small talk and avoid any tidal wave of tears. After finishing several disks (and several bottles), I let Thomas and Charlotte nab my bed and crashed on the living room sofa, ready to resume watching the next morning – although I’d promised them we’d hunt for a fry up first.

When the doorbell went at 8.30am on Saturday I stifled a groan. I was expecting a delivery from Amazon so I knew I had to run to open it, but it was early, I looked like I’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, and I knew the ringing of the bell had probably just managed to scupper Charlotte’s and Thomas’s lie in.

When I opened the front door, though, it wasn’t the postman. It was the man I least expected to see on my doorstep ever, ever again. I knew I must have looked
surprised, but fury … fury was the main feeling that surged through me. He had the decency to look embarrassed, but he took a step back as though he was also a little scared. James always was a bright man.

‘Hi. Sorry to ring so early.’

I actually wanted to swing for him, but in the end I crossed my arms over my t-shirt and made do with glaring instead. As a journalist I’m fully aware of the power of silence. I said nothing, taking the time instead to look closely at him. He seemed tired, but was still sexy enough to make me feel a pang. Not enough that I didn’t want to kick him in the shins, though. I couldn’t decide if this was a good thing or not.

After a few seconds he cracked. ‘I bet you didn’t expect to see me.’

Brilliant. I’ve waited weeks for that? I actually wanted to punch him. Not in any sexual, playful way; in an exacting-physical-violence-that–made-him-wince way. It took all my effort to sound blasé.

I aimed for a carefree shrug. ‘I ordered some books for my brother for his birthday. I figured you were delivering them.’

‘It’s your brother’s birthday?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘Oh. Obviously.’ A long pause. ‘I’m not delivering any books.’

My jaw was clenched so hard it hurt. ‘I guessed that.’

He lapsed into silence. We were floundering, but I suddenly realized I had no inclination to help smooth the path of the conversation. He was finally willing to talk?
Well, he could fucking well talk then. But he wasn’t. Or couldn’t. His eyes were staring intently into mine, looking for answers in a way that reminded me so much of how he looked to see whether I could stand any more punishment. It made my heart hurt.

The moment was punctured as Thomas swung open my bedroom door and wandered out into the hall, pulling a t-shirt on over his boxer shorts. ‘Sophie, is everything OK?’