Once upon a time, a thirteen-year-old girl imagined herself in love. In the secret places of her mind, she allowed images to overwhelm her, carbon copies of the heaving bosoms and ravishing kisses overflowing from romance novels concealed under her bed.
She gloried in the power she held over her fifteen-year-old boyfriend, feeling his body react to furtive gropes in the darkness, hearing his breath catch in between the gaps of long, lingering kisses. Her minion. Her Master. For while she basked in the triumph of her conquest, she held the private belief that she was insufficient, making monsters of innocent conversations with girls locked in their own insecurities.
He had been pressing her, perfected the pull of his facial muscles into a cute pout, for the one thing her father warned, “All boys wanted”, swearing that he knew how to make all her secret wishes come true.
Eventually, she relented and prepared her body.
No romantic spots could be used. Watching eyes with the power to discipline hovered nearby, heightening the excitement.
8:30 pm
She sat in the darkest reaches of the room, hands folded, waiting, anxious.
8:52.
He came in, kissed her, then left to scope the area for those watching eyes.
9:15.
Pins and needles prickling her feet and legs. She swivels her feet and rises to let the blood flow.
9:25.
A light blazed sharp into the room where she waited. The commanding voice did not belong to her boyfriend. She obeyed.
10:30 pm
She lay silently, curled up in her bed nursing the welts of discipline, humiliation and fear gripping the muscles of her throat like a vice, choking her so her breath burst out of her chest in short sharp gasps. How had it come to this?
The years passed, each one eroding those romantic images she had harboured, pruning her ideas, shaping the future she could claim as her very own.
If you asked her today, she would tell you that that night of humiliation saved her.