Do you know the story of Icarus? Maybe it's my story too. He was a slave, imprisoned, and he built a pair of wax wings to escape but when he did it felt so good that he flew too close to the sun and his wings melted. He fell into the sea and drowned. In other words, perhaps I am pushing my luck.
Thirteen unlucky words to describe Bridget this past weekend:
You're a pretty little masochist with a high pain threshold and absolutely no remorse.
I laughed. He always gets it right. Jacob has a name for everything and I am simply a sheltered girl, insular, locked in her turret by the handsome prince while he tries to figure out what the fuck to do with me. For the second time in my life, no less.
And then I cried. I took my praise for making Cole so goddamned happy and just ran with it. If I told you I was easily influenced by the men that I love would you forgive me for it? If I told you we once had it down to a science, my pain for Cole's pleasure and he gave me whatever I wanted as my reward would you forgive me for that?
Jacob won't.
He sat up and swung his legs to the side of the bed, feet on the floor, perhaps planning to carry him away of their own accord. His hands covered his face, fingers clenched in vexation, lines underneath to prove his eyes had closed themselves, a futile, inept reflex to protect him from even thinking about accidents of intimacy that we caused on purpose.
He told me he was sorry. I had asked for all of his limits to be removed simply so we could explore it together and unwittingly he agreed because he is devoted, because he is generous with me. When I insisted that he wouldn't hurt me, he grew angry very quickly. He pointed out our obvious, marked differences in size and strength for the umpteenth time and that if he got caught up in it and harm came to me he would never be able to live with himself. I interrupted him and he yelled at me.
You don't understand, You're not helping things, I won't hurt you, Bridget. I will not hurt you and neither will anyone else!
We've had this conversation before, and it made me angry and I raised my voice but he cut me off again. He turned around and stuck his finger in my face, jabbing at the air around me and I cringed at that while he swore that if Cole could turn me into a masochist then Jacob would turn me back into who I was before that. I was the salt to Cole's vinegar. Rubbed into my wounds because it feels good, figuratively and otherwise. I am what Jacob says I am.
So add it to the list, we'll put it somewhere before victim and after mentally ill. And funny, I covet my submissive label. I like that word. That was the one I can live with. No one cares about that one, it's a very quiet little epithet, my inevitable role and the only one I can play that covers up the darker, shameful ones. That is the only one he likes.
The next time I opened my mouth, I was cut off once again. Jacob looked at me sadly and said,
No, Bridge. I don't care if we ever fix any of it or don't. I love you and I always will.
A small comfort, found in his anticipation of my question. Which is sometimes the very best kind of comfort. Even in the throes of a painful argument, we can still read each other's minds. I could eat him alive and I know he feels the same way and yet sex is this huge battleground, every night he is forced to be dominant, to physically restrict me so that I don't turn it into something he doesn't like, a double-edged dangerous sword in that half the time that's exactly what I want from him.
It will never be perfect at this rate. Jacob wants movie sex, in which he carries me to the bed and I make little noises and simply receive him and let him gently lead the way.
Bridget, well, she's in the seedy unmarked theatre down the street watching a whole other kind of movie.
He just read that and laughed. A laugh barely tinged with a bitter contravention, discernible only because I know him so well and maybe he didn't know me so well.
And one of my greatest joys is that even though such a huge part of him is entangled in his work, he's such a passionate, reverent man, he's upright, and he confided in me that he loves all of it, he doesn't just pull out the easy parts of Bridget to adore and plan to fix the rest, he truly loves all of it. All of me: the sweet, deeply emotional, fiercely loving, word-inventing distracted writer and the fucked-up over the top freakish sexual deviant too.
Which makes him vaguely a freak as well. He's only just a little chagrined by his own revelations on a regular basis but the fact that this has become our new standard argument because we've just about settled everything else is almost comical.
I can live with this one, Bridge. We'll get where we're going.
Do we know where we're going, Jacob?
Of course. But the point isn't the end, it's the journey. And ours is an adventure, we're granted passage a little at a time.
I bet you wish you had booked a cruise instead.
Are you kidding? I thrive on conflict, and adrenaline. This is my fetish, maybe.
I knew you were a freak.
Birds of a feather, princess.
Oh, you're not going to start in with the Icarus-stuff again, are you?
No, instead maybe I'll tell you about Atalanta, and the golden apples she could not resist.
You have a very large brain.
Oh here we go.
Matches everything else.
Uh-huh.
I like that, Jacob.
I bet you do.
