Coffee on the Nightstand and an Empty Fridge

The coffee was on the nightstand when I opened my eyes. Mug with the handle towards me, a saucer under it so there would be no ring on the wood: he knows what I do about that. He was standing in the bedroom doorway in his briefs and apron, waiting for me to take the first sip. Sunday, nine in the morning.

“The fridge is empty,” he said. “I didn’t get to it yesterday.”

“I know.”

I had known since Friday. On Friday night he spent two hours on his knees beside the bath while I lay in it — my decision, and the shopping waited. Saturday we spent at his mother’s. By Sunday the fridge held eggs, butter and half a lemon.

“No dinner tonight. You’ll make me eggs at seven. Find yourself whatever there is.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

He took the empty mug away. I heard him wash it straight away, before I was even up.

The book

During the day he cleaned the windows and I worked on my laptop in the kitchen. We didn’t talk about the evening. I scheduled nothing: in this house an evening isn’t scheduled, it is waited for.

In the evening I lay on top of the bedspread with a book, in nothing but a T-shirt. I had eaten the eggs; he had taken the plate. Through the wall he finished the frying pan, then turned off the tap, and it went quiet. I knew he was about to come in. He knew I knew. We were both waiting to see who went first.

He came in without knocking — he only knocks on the bedroom door when it’s closed — and knelt at the foot of the bed, by my feet. The cage showed through his briefs, tight, the way it always is by evening. He didn’t say a word. He put his hands on his thighs and looked at my feet.

I turned a page. Then another. He didn’t move. On the third page I realised I was reading the same sentence twice, closed the book and laid it on the pillow.

“You may.”

Two words. Five years ago I couldn’t say them out loud: I pointed, or turned away and waited for him to work it out himself. Now they come out of me the way “put the kettle on” does.

I rolled onto my stomach, drew up one knee, and he slid the small cushion under my hips, the one that lives on the armchair for this. He pulled my T-shirt up to my shoulder blades and no further; I don’t like cold on my shoulders. Then he parted my cheeks with his palms, slowly, and I felt first his breath, warm, and then his tongue.

He started on the outside, broad and flat, the way you lick rather than kiss. I didn’t tense. I used to. Now my body knows it will be long and that nobody is going to hurry him. His tongue travelled the whole length between my cheeks, came back, settled at the entrance and began to circle it in small rounds without pushing in. I opened the book again.

Let me explain the book to the reader. I wasn’t reading because I was bored. I was reading because I could. He was doing the most intimate thing a mouth can do, and meanwhile I turned a page, and he heard the sound and kept working. That is the whole asymmetry I am writing about. Five years ago it seemed to me this must be humiliating for him. Then I saw his face afterwards, when he lifts his head, and I stopped thinking on his behalf.

After ten minutes I stopped reading. I left the book open under my cheek. His tongue grew more insistent — he can feel it in how I breathe — and went in shallow, just the tip, out, in again. I pushed my hips back towards him and he took hold of my cheeks more firmly to keep me open. The only sounds were his breathing through his nose, even, because his mouth was busy, and a wet sound that seemed loud in the quiet of the bedroom.

He didn’t ask for a hand. He didn’t bring his palm to himself, didn’t rub against the edge of the bed. The cage gives him nothing but tightness, and he stopped looking for a way out of that a long time ago. I sometimes think he feels the tightness as part of the job: the harder it is for him, the more careful the tongue.

I came without hands, from his tongue alone, quietly, with the book under my cheek. He felt it — I clenched around his tongue — and didn’t stop, only went softer until I let go. Then he stayed where he was, forehead against my cheek, and waited.

I didn’t turn over. I nodded into the pillow; he heard my head move.

“Thank you, Mistress.”

Water

He got up and did everything he always does, in the same order. He took the cushion out from under my hips and put it back on the armchair. He pulled my T-shirt back down over my back. He brought a glass of water and set it on the nightstand, on the same saucer the coffee had stood on that morning. He straightened the bedspread at my feet. He went out and closed the door. I didn’t touch the glass until the door had closed.

He went to the other room. He would spend an hour there; I don’t know what he does in that hour and I don’t ask. Nothing, probably. He sits. The cage is on him, his lips still smell of me, and nobody is coming to return the favour. He got the words “you may” and a nod. Nothing else would happen that evening.

The first year, after something like this, I would lie there thinking: I take too much. He gives his mouth, his knees, twenty minutes, and gets what? I even tried giving something back: unlocking the cage the next day, touching him with my hand. He accepted it, but I could see it didn’t make things easier for him, it made them harder, as if I had crumpled something he had just folded neatly.

Then I stopped. And here is what I noticed: the less I give back, the calmer he is when he leaves the bedroom. Not happier — calmer. What he needs isn’t equality. What he needs is to know he was needed, and that it was enough.

I drank the water, finished the chapter, turned off the light. Through the wall he washed his hands, for a long time, I could hear it, and put the kettle on. That means the hour is over and he is coming to bed. He came into the bedroom quietly, lay down on his edge without touching me. I didn’t turn over or say goodnight. He wasn’t expecting me to.

He will fill the fridge tomorrow after work, on his own, without a list. I won’t check. In five years he has never once forgotten what I eat.

• One word. Find yours — “you may”, “go on” — and don’t dress it up.
• Read while he works. The sound of a page tells him more than any moaning would.
• Give nothing back. A return favour wipes out what he has just given.
• Afterwards: water, bedspread, door. Give him an hour alone. He isn’t suffering in that hour, he is putting things away.
• He says “thank you” only after your nod. Not before.