The box behind the winter boots

The box lay in the wardrobe behind the winter boots for three weeks. He had ordered it, from my list and on my card, and when the courier handed him the parcel he carried it into the bedroom unopened. I opened it myself, checked that everything was there, and put it back behind the boots. From then on he opened that wardrobe every morning for a shirt, and every morning he saw the corner of the box.

I wasn’t waiting out of fear. I was waiting so that he would look. For three weeks he went to bed knowing I might say “tonight”, and that knowledge kept him awake longer than me. It was already working, and I hadn’t put anything on yet.

Sunday

I told him in the afternoon. He was hoovering the living room; I stood in the doorway with a cup.

“Tonight. Be ready by nine.”

He switched the hoover off. Stood there. Switched it on again, and I could see from the hose that his hands weren’t steady. We didn’t mention it again until the evening. He finished the floor, took the rubbish out, laid the table for lunch, and at lunch didn’t eat so much as cut the bread into very even slices.

Getting ready is his job. A shower, everything that needs doing, an hour to himself. Meanwhile I drank tea and watched an episode of something, didn’t finish it and couldn’t tell you what it was about. That is how it works with us: before anything we do for the first time, he is the one who worries. I am calm, because the first time is his. For me it is an evening where I decide, like every other evening.

At nine I went into the bedroom. He was kneeling on the bed facing the wall, as I had told him, in nothing but the cage. It had been on him since Thursday, four days, and I knew that by evening it was tight.

Straps

The harness took me a long time to put on. I am not quick at it, and I didn’t want to be quick. Straps, two buckles at the hips, a third at the back; tighten, loosen, tighten again so it sat snug and didn’t shift. Every buckle clicked, and with every click I saw his shoulder blades move. He was listening. He wasn’t allowed to turn round, and he didn’t — he just breathed through his nose, loudly.

When it all sat right I came to the bed and stopped behind him, close enough for him to feel it.

“Look.”

He turned. That face I remember better than anything that came after. Not fright. Something between “this can’t be” and “at last”. He looked down at what I was wearing, then up into my eyes, and lowered his head.

“Down. Chest on the pillow. Knees wider.”

I used a lot of lube, more than seemed necessary, because everyone who has written about this says the same thing: plenty, and slowly. A finger first. He clenched, and I waited with my other palm on the small of his back until he let go. Then a second finger. He breathed out into the pillow so hard it moved.

I lined up and pushed in — barely. He was shaking. Big shakes, his whole body, as if from cold, though the bedroom was warm.

“Breathe.”

He breathed. I went in a little further, a centimetre, and stopped. And then he made a sound I had never heard from him in sixteen years: low, from the belly, not a moan and not a word. I froze.

“More?”

“Yes.”

He said it into the pillow, and I understood it not from the sound but from the way his shoulders dropped. In all our years together, that “yes” was the most obedient word I had ever heard from him.

A hand on the back of his neck

Then I went all the way in and put my palm on the back of his head, pressing his face into the pillow. And that was the moment something reached me that I had not prepared for. I had prepared for technique: read, watched, been afraid of hurting him. The technique turned out to be simple. What wasn’t simple was the fact of it: I was inside him. Not him inside me — me inside him. For sixteen years it had been the other way round, and that was turning over not in the bed but somewhere in my head, while I knelt behind him and held him by the hips the way you hold what is yours.

I moved slowly and listened. When he held his breath, I stopped. When he breathed, I went on. The cage was on him the whole time; I could see it between his legs when I looked down: steel in which nothing could happen. He could count on nothing, and because of that he was mine, all of him, down to the last muscle.

Did he come? No. You don’t come in a cage, and I had no intention of unlocking him. He reached some edge where the sound went thin, and there I stopped and pulled out. I didn’t want the first time to end with anything other than my decision.

Did I come? Also no, and I didn’t think about it. I had no room for it. Everything in me was humming from something else, and that was enough.

After

He slid off the bed onto the floor and pressed his forehead against my knees. I was still in the harness. He put his arms around my legs and said “thank you”. Then again. Then again, quieter. I put my hand on his head, and his hair was wet at the roots.

I didn’t feel like undoing the straps. We sat like that for ten minutes or so: me on the edge of the bed, in the straps; him on the floor at my feet; the room smelling of lube and his sweat. It was the quietest evening we had had in a month.

“What was the strongest part?” I asked when he lifted his head.

“The buckles. When I could hear and couldn’t see.”

I had thought he would say the pain, or that first centimetre. He said the sound. I nodded and filed it away.

In the morning he washed everything himself, dried it, put it in the box and put the box back behind the boots. Only now we both know what is there, and he still opens the wardrobe every morning for a shirt. I haven’t said “tonight” again yet. Let him hoover.

• Say “tonight” in the afternoon, while he is busy, and walk away. The hours of waiting work harder for you than the evening does.
• Put the straps on in the room with him, so that he can hear and not see.
• Use twice as much lube as seems necessary. The first centimetre comes with a pause, until he breathes out.
• Don’t unlock the cage. His first time should end on your decision, not his.
• Afterwards, ten minutes at your feet, in silence. Ask what the strongest part was only when he lifts his head.