On Stress and Sleeping Alone

When stress rolls in I get this craving, this urge, this need, to be bound tightly and teased and tortured.

The feelings start to creep in late in the afternoon, like the fog gradually inching forward from the bay, and you look around and suddenly it seems the entire city has been engulfed in a matter of mere moments. It's a foggy grey that turns cold and dark once the sun has set and I'm alone, in my house, by myself. The worst is when I climb into bed, lights out, laying there with my eyes closed but unable to sleep. Thinking about you. Missing you.

I imagine you at the foot of my bed. You start with something soft and wide, perhaps it is a very long Ace bandage. You wrap it around my ankles, tight, and up over my calves. My muscles tighten, then relax. Still. Then, to move things along, you graduate to something bigger for my bigger parts. Maybe a long swath of raw silk. You bind my thighs, my groin, my hips and, arms at my sides, you continue up my torso to my breasts and shoulders. You tuck the silk inside itself down along the length of my neck, and roll me over onto my stomach. A soft bandana is tied across my mouth, gag style. It smells clean, freshly washed, and wicks the saliva out of my mouth leaving my tongue dry and cottony.

That's the beginning. I imagine you humming and speaking to me in low, slow, languid tones throughout. I'm mostly quiet. Perhaps a moan here and there. But mostly quiet, tranced like, present. Unknowing, and trusting.

The middle is something heavy. I'm not sure what. Maybe heavy ropes bound around the encasing. Maybe six wool blankets piled on top of me. Maybe the weight of you, laying across me. Something heavy pressing me into my core, grounding me, grinding me, holding me, containing me.

And then the pressure somehow builds. Is it torque? Have you suspended me? Pulled one rope taught or twisted something, say my feet, just enough to cause the dull ache building in my muscles? There are hands at my throat, thumbs digging into my clavicle, lips pressing against my mouth. Energy restrained, like friction and fusion and fast fucking, but not yet released. Impending implosion. I'm screaming, and it sounds like a gravelly whisper through the gag. And I'm crying, but the tears are instantly absorbed by the mattress my cheek is pressed into. And inside I'm writhing and bucking, but outside it looks like a gentle rocking. Because of your hold on me. I'm tied to this earth. I'm weighted down. You are my anchor. My gravity. My tether.

Suddenly there is release. Was it electricity? Vibration? Frottage? Friction? Frisson? But we're spent and limp and wet. You start where you started, at my ankles, and work the blade inside the fold. You cut upwards along my middle, where the scissor slips into the seam easiest, where the pressure valve was hidden all along, and slowly unzip me. With each torn tooth the air rushes in like a gasp and a sigh and I expand again. Not like a balloon. Or a vacuum packed sweater. Or a stressed out woman trying to fall asleep alone in the dark. Like a moth in the moonlight. Like a butterfly. I fall out and unfold and feel reborn.