Words the select handful of women I have progressed to physical intimacy with have heard me speak. And have understood. Understood both because of what had flowed between us from that first instant. And too, for the time we had taken from that first moment to build the requisite intimacy necessary for a full understanding of what was conveyed within.
An understanding in which, each woman has come to know, not only that primal animal within me – the one that craves to take her, to own her, its hunger ravening, firing the desire of the physical and spiritual to searing – but too, my warmth. My laughter. And my dreams. And in so knowing all of this, know that I could never hurt her.
And know too, that I see that animal within her. The one that hungers to be taken. To be owned. And yet it will rage in its struggle against me. Fighting helplessly with its all. The battle moving far beyond that of straining muscles. The somatic, only the final expression of that intimacy which has brought us here. An intimacy in whose safety that bestial core within her has been set free. Setting loose an animal which will fight until that last moment, when she is engulfed by the reassurance that my strength – something which has nothing to do with the power of my flesh – cannot be surmounted. A denouement foretold from the beginning. The promise of this knowledge, and the safety it gives, allowing all that which is within her to roar in its freedom. A freedom complete in that exquisite release of submission as she falls to her knees before the one whose strength surrounds her, has become a part of her. Owning her. And there, all responsibility ripped away, a burning red need that encompasses all.
In that rape which is consensual, we both know what is happening. We both know what is unlocked in that descent into raw, untamed primalness. And at that moment, neither of us would want anything less. And afterwards? A man and a woman who have seen and wanted all in the other, and in this want, given all of themselves. The knowledge now born, that all of each is known, is felt, and is hungered for by the other. A knowledge which gives depth beyond measure to a relationship.
Yet why do I rape? And why does the woman I am with want me to rape her? The answer to both these questions is found in the paragraph above. I hunger to rape her, for all that I see within her. All that makes her glow before my eyes. All that makes me crave to know all of her. Take all of her. And in so doing, give all of myself to her. A hunger which, is mirrored within her, where, as a woman, she sees all that which is within me. All that which makes me burn so brightly before her eyes, and makes her hunger to have my strength, my warmth, all that I am, take all that she is. Claiming her in ownership.
But is it rape? Yes. To say that it is consensual changes the manifestation of the beast, but traces can still be seen in its family lineage marking it as of the same species as that other act of rape. The one which occurs in terror and reviling weakness. An act where inadequacy, and the consequent fear and hatred it inspires, culminates in the brutalisation of a woman.
Something which noble masculinity, which seeks to dominate, and in this way nurture, abhors. Yet, for all this, physical similarities do exist between the two acts, which are so different in every other respect. But then, this is not the only place that such stretched taxonomy links two diametrically opposed acts in the shadows of physicality.
For, as a man, I will stand and fight for the intimacy I share with a woman. And in the course of this, sometimes, I will take her across my knees. Both in discipline, in those rare times where her behaviour is warranting of such. And too, in those far more numerous times of reassurance. Where no transgression on her behalf has occasioned the spanking she receives. The strength that enables me to do this, the strength that promises that I will fight for all I hold with her and that I will never lose it, is not of the physical. It comes from all that I feel for her. And it is this that differentiates the abuse and terror of domestic violence, with shared knowledge that, if I wish her over my knees whether for discipline, or reassurance, then that is where she will be. However much she wishes to struggle against it.
The parallels between the two acts – consensual rape, and discipline/reassurance spankings – are obvious. In both, a woman knows a bond of intimacy with her man so great that she knows that she could never be hurt. A knowledge which allows her to surrender.
Surrender to her need for submission.
Surrender to her need to sometimes fight against this.
Surrender to her need for her man's strength. A strength that promises it will always hold her to him.
Surrender.
And at the end. After I have spoken those words. There are always others. Carried on her voice. A cry of completion from her heart of one meaning, whatever the words that flow forth.
“You own me. I am yours.”
Years of living do give one a perspective on life that I don't think can be acquired any other way. But what you do with your experience, how much you learn from what happens to you, is equally important. I've been surprised many, many times at the obtuseness of older people who I thought would be wiser. Some young people are extremely insightful. But it seems to me (no offence intended) that arrogance is usually part of the package when you're about 20. It was for me, anyway.
My own experience is not of issue. Indeed it is meaningless in light of the fact that I can offer no proof of it. Whether it be about what I describe in “Understanding”, or even about the details that are provided on my profile. How could I prove that I am thirty-one? Or that that man in the photograph is me? I can’t. So let us set aside the question of “life experience” that you ask. One which I could never substantiate over the net to a determined critics satisfaction. And instead ask another.
What if another who read what I wrote, while never having experienced it for themselves, saw within my words a truth of possibility that resonated with perfect faith in their heart. Would the mere fact that they had not experienced the emotional/spiritual connection I describe, and what this can then grow to in the flesh, render their faith as nothing more than fantasy?
The history of Man, more than anything else, is a story of a faith in what is known within, even though sometimes, all of what has been experienced in the outer world of the flesh screams counter to this. What else could inspire a man born into slavery to rise to his feet and stand, and possibly die, in the name of a faith that burns within him. A faith described in one word. Freedom. Something which, though he has never experienced it himself, is as real to him, as true, as if for everyday of his life, he has breathed it?
What I am saying Another, is that my physical experience should be an irrelevance to anyone else. For it does not grant validity to what I have presented. Faith doesn’t work that way. Instead it relies upon the individual to find the courage to no longer run from what they know in their heart. Had I not experienced what I have, or had I never even wrote of it, but yet, another somewhere, who had never for themselves experienced in the flesh what I described, but yet nevertheless knew in their heart that it was possible. Knew, because they knew what they could give. And that, if they could give this, then it was possible that there was another too, who could give the same. Would that render their faith as nothing more than an unattainable fantasy? And if they chose to write about this faith they held, without having known its consummation in the physical, would what they gave be reduced to “just words”?
Another, that you did not simply dismiss what I wrote outright, suggests that in what I wrote, you saw a truth. And that truth is not made real because of my experience. It is made real because you see it.
The topic of each individuals ability to learn from what they do experience is another one entirely. But it is one which Bella captured thoroughly in her response to you. This is something I have always likened to the allegory of the blacksmith and the steel. The blacksmith’s hammer falls, again and again, striking at the steel, shaping it. Just as life’s experiences strike against the soul of an individual. Giving it shape. But in both cases, whatever is to emerge in the end, is always dependent on the quality of the steel that is there at the beginning. Whether it be the purity of the raw metal the blacksmith shapes. Or the quality of the steel in a individuals soul.
