Again, it is days. Again, it is she who makes contact; he’s been too conflicted, and, frankly, disempowered.
What she had said, how she had set it up, how she had said it, how she had controlled the situation— it had been so completely insane; he had no idea how to respond; every direction he thought he could go in seemed horribly risky— both for any chance of actually getting to fuck Colette in this new mode (he never used the word ‘rape’ in his mind, didn’t want to go there, had decided it was a Colette code-word for ‘heavy, hot sex’— like their first night encounter), or for his own sanity, so he had just shut himself off and concentrated on work and the gym and bad porn.
“I can explain. I want to explain. Please. Somewhere ‘safe’. Set it up, please; tell me, and I’ll be there. Your rules.”
This was something new— one of the exasperating things about her had always been the negotiations about meeting— endless questions, second thoughts, worries about the weather, ‘what will you wear?’; he had gotten used to it, almost liked it now, but this? This was new. A ceding of control. Not a role-play, a request from Colette herself. He feels another of those shameful, exciting throbs. He texts her back:
“My apartment. Friday. 8 pm.”
No ‘is that good for you?’ No question marks. He doesn’t want to see them. And it seems that she doesn’t need them, now.
She arrives at five to eight, he sees from the doorcam. She doesn’t knock, and, feeling both queasy and smug, he watches her fidget, so evidently waiting until the exact time. His dick moves in his pants, even though she’s wearing the same flowing, sexless dress as their first date. Her hands are clasped in front of her, her knuckles white.
He buzzes her in before her hand reaches the button, enjoying her little jump, reproaching himself for the enjoyment, then opens the door; she walks in, and this time she doesn’t— as he is used to her doing— doesn’t walk straight in, looking around, assessing, judging, asserting her occupancy; instead, she looks at the floor.
“Hi …” she says, her voice small.
“Colette,” he says. He doesn’t move to take her coat. He doesn’t offer her a drink. He just stands there, blocking the hallway;
“You wanted to explain.”
She nods, still looking at the floor;
“I .. I know what I said was .. awful. Horrible. I’ve been replaying it, and I just .. I wanted the floor to swallow me whole.”
“The floor,” he says, wanting suddenly to lighten the mood, “seems to be a recurring theme for us.”
But she was having none of it; a little, nervous look up at him, the expression in her eyes new, genuinely pleading with him, a little shake of her head;
“You have to listen to me Clyde. Listen to my thinking. If I’m going to be able to say this. Just hear me out. I have to say it, right now.”
She hasn’t even moved more than a few steps from the doorway.
“If I don’t say it right away I’ll never say it and .. and then I don’t know.”
He backs off a pace, lifts his hands in surrender. This is so fucking weird.
“You need to be in charge in bed. Simple as that. I’m too uptight to even know what I want. To ask you for what I want. To take what I want. To get what I want. And so I can’t do it. And you don’t want to be a bully. So I need to be .. to be obedient; so you won’t have to bully me. And .. and I need to tell you something, now; I need to tell you that .. that I .. that I like being told .. made to do .. to do what you want. In bed.”
“But I don’t think I can .. obey. Not reliably. Not when it’s something that I’m hung up about doing. I’m just going to be be annoying, I know it. Annoying and stupid. And it won’t work if I’m annoying. I know .. I know I am annoying, and .. and I don’t want to be, so .. so it has to be that I’m not allowed to be annoying..”
“I know you, a little. Enough to know that you’re a good man and that you’re not cruel. And you’re not a bully. So, right now, I can get away with being stupid in bed. Getting in the way of both our pleasure. You just get pissed off and silent and quiet, then go and jack off in the bathroom, but you don’t shout at me, or or .. force me. And we have another shitty night .. and there have been too many shitty nights. And you’re right. It’s all over. That’s all over. That relationship doesn’t work. It’s dead.”
“And we both talk too much. Listen to me talking!”
Again, the quick, frightened little look up from under her lashes. He has to hold himself back, or he would step forward and crush her to him and tell her that everything will be OK— except that some part of him knows that doing that would be exactly what would make it sure that things would not turn out OK. This has to unfold, all the way, whatever that is— and then, if it works, maybe he’ll be able to trust his instincts again. Instincts which months of it going wrong between them have crushed.
“OK, so we’ve talked around and about and under and over, just never .. never reached anything .. clear. And I can only do this without you joining in, without it being a conversation, because I’ve been thinking about it for weeks now. And I just have to get it out of my head. And then if you never want to see me again .. well, that’s on me.”
“Sorry, this is coming out like garbage, like a five year old .. ‘and this .. and that..’— and I .. I’m supposed be a writer! But .. but this is the only way I can do it and I’m so frightened so please .. please just let me keep gong until I’m done and then .. then you can throw me out.”
“So, anyway, more .. more talking isn’t going to get us anywhere. It has to be ended, that relationship. And a new one started. That’s why you have to do this thing to me. Because that will be the end of that relationship. Colette— the old Colette— would never stay with the man who did that to her. And you, Clyde, would never be able to be in a relationship with a woman you’d raped— the guilt would destroy you.”
“So this is why I’m saying what I’m saying. I know you’re going to hate this. But it’s true. I need to be frightened of you. To know that you can hurt me. That you will hurt me if I’m stupid. That you will hurt me if I’m bad. If I get in the way of our .. of your pleasure.”
“So then depending on how it goes, the new Colette— the one who’s frightened of you— can choose if she’d like to start a new relationship with you on new terms; with you in charge. A .. a relationship where .. where I accept your right to hurt me; more, even— that it is proper— appropriate— important, even, for you to be free to hurt me. If .. if you decide to.”
“And you Clyde, you can choose if you want that new relationship .. and the .. the responsibility to .. to hurt me, when it matters. To choose for me, when to hurt me, for the sake of the relationship.”
“I need to tell you now that I’m very hopeful— eager— for that new relationship. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s going to be an incredible relief to have you in charge of me. And I didn’t stop being a feminist. And I didn’t stop having my views. And you’re not a bully. You’re not a cruel man. But this .. this is just between us .. how .. how we make it work. And then, maybe we can have amazing sex, like, like we did that first night. And when I get stupid in a conversation, you can just tell me to stop. And I will: just like that. Because you’ll be in charge. And you’ll be right. And because I will be frightened of being hurt if I carry on being stupid.”
“And that .. that’s it. How.. how does it sound?”
He doesn’t answer. He can’t answer. His mind is a battlefield: the arguments she’s laid out like carefully planted mines. The logic is twisted, terrifying, and undeniably compelling. She has taken all their problems— his fear of being a bully, her inability to articulate her desires, their conversational stalemates— and forged them into a single, brutal solution. A line in the sand drawn with violence.
“It sounds,” he finally manages, his voice a dry rasp, “like you’ve been reading some very fucked-up self-help books.”
She flinches at that, a tiny, wounded movement; “Don’t mock me, Clyde. Not now. I’m being more honest with you than I’ve ever been with anyone in my entire life.”
The accusation hangs in the sterile air of his hallway. Mockery. That’s what he’d done. He’d retreated into irony, the intellectual’s shield, because the alternative was to engage with the raw, horrifying, and undeniably arousing proposition she had just laid out. He looked at her then, really looked at her. Not at the dress, not at the downcast eyes, but at the sheer, trembling force of will it must have taken from her to walk in here and say these things.
“You want to destroy us to save us,” he said, it wasn’t a question. It was the only way he could frame it. A controlled demolition.
“The old us,” she corrected, her voice gaining a sliver of strength. “The us that doesn’t work. The us that makes us both miserable.”
“And this new us,” he said, taking a step closer, the space between them crackling with a new kind of tension. “What if it’s worse? What if we do this this thing and it doesn’t work? What if it just makes me into the man I swore I’d never be, and makes you into a victim?”
“Then you’ll leave; I trust you not to become a bad man, not to abuse me; you don’t want to be that, so if it looks that way you’ll end it,” she said, the words coming out in a rush, as if she’d rehearsed them; “.. and that will be it, because— because the new relationship, I’m not allowed to end it, because you .. you will be in charge of me; I’ll be in your hands, and you’ll have the power to make me be the girl you want— unless and until you decide that you don’t want it, and— like I say— that will be the end; and I’ll be devastated. But at least it’ll be a real end. Not this slow, quiet death we’ve been imposing on each other.”
He steps forward, close enough now to see the faint pulse beating in her throat. He can feel the warmth radiating from her body, smell the clean, familiar scent of her shampoo. And he can feel the animal part of him, the part that had thrilled to her surrender on the floor of her apartment, stirring again. He wants to touch her, grab her, to push her against the wall and kiss her until she can’t breathe. He wants to do exactly what she is asking him to do.
And the thought makes him sick to his stomach.
“I can’t,” he whispers, the words tearing at his throat. “I can’t just decide to do that to you. It’s not .. it’s not like a switch I can flip, Colette. It’s not a role I can play.”
“You don’t have to decide, and it isn’t a role. It can’t be; it has to be you; yourself, like you were, that … that night.” she said, her voice dropping to a near-inaudible whisper.
“You just have to let yourself. You’ve done it before. That night … it wasn’t a decision. It was an impulse. A need. It was .. you.”
“And what about you?” he asks, his hand coming up to rest on the wall beside her head, caging her in. “Where do you fit into this impulse? Just a body in the way?”
… she says, her eyes finally meeting his, and what he sees there is not fear, but a desperate, pleading hunger. “I’m the reason. I’m the catalyst. I’m the one who’s asking for it.”
She looks him full in the face, then, cheeks burning, eyes bright, trembling;
“Funny thing is that it’s me that’s being the strong decisive one here— but and I can only do it this the once. For .. for both of us, so that .. so that I never have to do it again.”
“If you don’t .. don’t rape me, now, soon, then .. then I’ve failed; lost, ruined it; and .. and I so don’t want to have ruined it; I need you to do this Clyde, so .. so that I’m begging you, please? Pleas, Clyde, rape me now; rape me hard; hurt me, make me frightened of you, show me that you can take it from me, that I am weak for you. Please.”
He is lost; she’s standing in a bonfire built of the principles they have assured each other that they share, and she is handing him a match. He looks at her, at the woman he had spent months trying to understand, to connect with, to see if he could love in a way that felt safe and sane. And he realises that he had been wrong. He had been trying to fit her into a box, to make her into the kind of woman he thought he should want. But she isn’t that woman. She is something else, something more complex, more dangerous, and more honest.
He leans in, his voice low and unsteady; “You’re sure?” a last-ditch attempt to cling to the cliff edge of decency, of moral normality.
She shivers, a full-body tremor that he could feel through the floor. “Don’t ask me again,” she breathed. “Just do .. do me .. hard ..be .. be merciless. Please, before .. before I lose my nerve.”
And that was it. The permission. The surrender. The final, irrevocable step.
He doesn’t move; stands there, suspended in the moment, the weight of her request pressing down on him. He can feel the old anger rising, the resentment towards her for putting him in this position, for making him the villain in her story. But beneath the anger, there is something else. A dark, exhilarating current of power. The power to give her what she wants, what she needs, what she is too afraid to ask for in any other way.
And, without knowing he is going to do it— he would certainly have stopped himself if he had though about what he was going to do— he backhands her, across the face, as hard as he can, all his upper body behind it— and she crashes to the floor, a cry coming from her that is not outraged, not angry either, but rather a sound of apprehension, of fright, of weakness, of surrender, and something inside him catches fire.
He stands over her, knuckles throbbing. He had expected horror, a sickening lurch of regret, of shame, of self-disgust, of fear of opprobrium. Instead, this fire— not raging, but slow, intense, certain— a terrifying calm descended. He feels clear. The static of their months of circling each other, of unspoken words and failed attempts, had vanished. There is only this: the sound of her ragged breathing, the absolute certainty that he will cross a line he can never uncross.
He bends down, not to help her up, but to grab a fistful of her hair. Her head snaps back, her eyes wide, pupils black with fear. She is weak in his hands, and she has put herself there to feel weak, so that he can do this to her.
“This is what you wanted?” His voice is unrecognisable, a low gravel that scrapes at the air.
A tear escapes, tracking a path across the angry red patch blossoming on her cheekbone.
… it’s a hoarse whisper, but very determined;
“No, I don’t want it. You .. you do. And .. and you’re going to take it, and not ask me any more questions, please?”
Her words are jumbled, choked, but the meaning is a beacon in the storm. This isn’t about her consent. It’s about his will, his desire, his needs. She’s built the stage, written the inciting incident, and now she’s begging him to play the lead— but there’s no script; he has to step up, step in to this, or walk away; right now.
Again, he doesn’t think it through, but his body acts, decisively;
He straightens, pulling her up by her hair until she’s on her knees in front of him. The position is archaic, obscene, from his darkest, most guilt-driving dreams. And yet, it’s the most honest they have ever been with each other. He looks down at her, at the woman who can deconstruct Foucault over brunch but can’t ask to have her pussy touched, who navigates the world with a fierce intellect but is lost in the geography of her own desire. And he sees her. Not the intellectual sparring partner, not the frustratingly ideological girlfriend, but Colette. The woman who needs— has asked, in the clearest possible terms— to be broken in order to be whole.
He lets go of her hair and grabs the neckline of her dress, that shapeless, sexless thing he hated. With a single, brutal tug, the fabric gave way, tearing from collar to hem. She gasps, her hands flying up to cover herself, a reflexive gesture of modesty that is absurd, pointless, immediately a point of focus, of opportunity.
“Hands down,” he commands.
The order hangs in the air, sharp and clean. She hesitates, a flicker of the old Colette, the one who would argue, who would negotiate, who would explain. But it is only a flicker. Slowly, as if moving through water, she lowers her hands, letting them fall to her sides. She is exposed, stripped. Not just her body, but the raw, trembling need that has been hiding under layers of ideas.
He steps back and begins to unbutton his shirt, his movements deliberate, unhurried. He is no longer Clyde, the decent liberal intellectual. He is the force she has summoned, the embodiment of the dark hunger they both share. And as he looks at her, kneeling in the ruins of her dress, her body trembling, her face a mess of tears and frightened arousal, he feels the last of his restraint crumble. This isn’t about rape, not in the legal, societal sense. It’s about power. About trust. About the absolute, terrifying freedom of giving in to the one thing they both want, but were too afraid to face.
“You asked for this, Colette,” he says, his shirt falling to the floor; “Now you’re going to get it.”
She’s crying already, and he doesn’t want to see it, so, again without thinking, just acting on instinct, he grabs her hair again, tight by her scalp, lifts her and half drags, half throws her across the arm of the sofa, face down. She tries to fight, then; to struggle, and he does the first thing that comes to him, takes his belt off, loops it round her neck, strap through the buckle like a choke collar, then ties her elbows off, tight, making her squeal, and for the first time then, he pauses, shocked at the brutal simplicity of what he has just done, the cruel implications of it; shocked at the sheer joy and surging intensity that arose in him while he did it, and looking at her now, bound, helpless, controlled; is he really going to do this?
He steps back and looks at her; she is gorgeous, magnificent, and twice as much so in the condition he has put her in, and everything in his body tells him FUCK YES and that’s it; he steps back in to her and recreates a photo he half remembers, that had him transfixed, years ago, in his teens, by putting his left foot onto her head, forcing her to twist her neck so she can see him, except that he immediately shifts his trainer across her face, repressing the doubts that shout in his head, covering her eyes, then pulls her right knee up, hooks it onto the low back of the sofa, pulls his achingly stiff cock out from the confines of his pants, hurting himself but not caring, then— with brutally simple clarity— lines his cock up and pushes, hard and direct, deep into her pussy, which is absolutely soaking, and starts fucking her; fast, powerful and deep, utterly without finesse, driving for nothing but his own come-off, which comes very fast indeed, so wound up is he, and he shouts and grunts as he jerks himself deep, deep inside her; no condom, no concerns at all for whether or not she wants it like that— none.
He steps back, part horrified with himself, but much more of him exultant. He’s never had such a satisfying fuck, never such an incredible feeling of satisfaction, but then he looks at Colette, still draped over the sofa as he had her, her knee still up; she is sobbing, brokenly, but quite quietly— weak, defeated, not angry or complaining, and his heart is filled with sympathy for his friend, and he almost loses his nerve, standing there, breathing hard, heart pounding, conflicted, full of energy, suddenly desperately unsure.
And then he hears her her voice is almost inaudible, but he steps closer, and she is repeating, on a loop;
“Im sorry. I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry "
It takes a second or two to realise what is going on; she’s doing it again— the second guessing is taking her, and she’s going to say something— something that will start them both back on the path to talking about it, and he sees that he could go that way, let the enormity of what he has just done to her make him weak, suck him back into the mush, and there is a real wobble in him as he realises that this— this is the breakpoint; not letting the eimal loose, but in the calm after the storm; this is when the test comes— when he can see what he has done, and he looks at her, at her tightly shut eyes, her lovely breasts quivering as she sobs, and then it’s over, and he reaches out, grabs her hair, twists her head up, knowing it will hurt her, not caring;
“You can’t be sorry any more, lovely Colette; because you’re not in charge. What happens is my choice; how you’re fucked is my choice, And right now it’s time to get me hard agin so I can do you again, hard and slow.”
