Page 79 of Proof By Contradiction
‘Yes.’
‘A lot.’
‘Enough. Not in seven years.’
The number lands in my chest without his face shifting. Seven. I do not say the maths. He doesn’t either.
‘OK.’ I’m trying to sound like a man who has done this before. I haven’t. ‘Talk to me about it.’
He pushes the mug aside. Folds his hands on the wood between us, the way he does in tutorials when something needs care.
‘Stillness, mainly. Holding without holding. The rope does the work a hand would do, leaves my hands free for other things. I would tie your wrists. To begin, only the wrists. Not your ankles, not your chest, not in this conversation. If we do this twice we’ll have a different conversation about it the second time.’
‘Rules.’
‘Yours, mostly. Mine: no gag. No blindfold. You tell me to stop at any moment and I stop. No question, no apology. We pick a word that meansstop now, separate from anything you might say in pleasure. Most people use traffic lights. Red, amber, green. I would suggest a different word, since colour ones can blur when arousal is high.’
‘Pick one.’
‘You pick.’
I think about it.Lewisham,too much.Patient—the hinges, the ex, no thank you. I land on:
‘Notebook.’
His mouth does a thing.
‘Notebook,’ he confirms.
‘And amber for slow down.’
‘Slow down, check in. Anything in betweenfineandstop.Yes.’
‘What else.’
‘I’ll narrate.’ He says it like a man explaining a syllabus. ‘I’ll tell you what I’m about to do before I do it. You may stop me at any point during the narration. Once a thing is done, I check before I do the next thing. The check may be a word. May be your hand on mine. We work out the language as we go.’
‘OK.’
‘Are you saying yes.’
I look at him. The man asking is the same man who, an hour ago, had his palm flat over a proof I closed at seventeen. My pulse is in the soft parts of my hands. My cock is doing the thing my cock does when his voice drops a register, but there’s something underneath it I haven’t had before. The sense of being asked.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Notebook. Amber. Tell me what you’re doing.’
He nods. Stands. Holds out his hand. I take it.
The bedroom is the bedroom. He doesn’t make a ceremony of going to it.
He turns on the bedside lamp with the warm shade, crosses to the chest of drawers I’ve been in twice for clean t-shirts, and from the bottom drawer, under a folded jumper I have never seen him wear, he lifts a coil of rope.
Cotton, natural-coloured, soft from handling. The coil neat.
The way he holds it tells me his hands know it.
‘I haven’t taken it out in a long time.’
Said with the same flatness as seven years, which is a way of telling me he has before, and a way of telling me not to ask.
