Stockings on him, by my own hands

The stockings had been lying on the bed since morning — I put them there while he was in the shower, so they'd be the first thing he saw, with his hair still wet. Black, twenty denier, with a wide lace top. Two sizes bigger than mine. I buy them myself, in an ordinary supermarket, and drop them in the basket between the bread and his cheese. He could buy them. But the choosing has to be mine.

Saturday, nowhere to be. He came out of the bathroom, saw them, stopped in the doorway. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, already dressed — house dress, heels — and waiting.

“Towel off. Come here.”

He came, naked. The cage was on him as always, but I was looking at it differently now: in half an hour there would be lace around the steel, and that thought alone made it stand out already. I took the first stocking, gathered it into a roll over my fingers and said one word:

“Foot.”

The foot

He set his foot on my knee the way you set it on a stool to tie a shoelace. I slipped the stocking over his toes, pulled it over the heel and drew it upward. With my palms, not my fingers: up the calf, over the knee, along the inside of the thigh. He flinches there every time, five years running, and that Saturday he flinched too. I didn't stop and I didn't speed up.

The first time, three years ago, he couldn't stand — he sat down on the bed and I put the stockings on him sitting, like a child being dressed for nursery. He covered his face with his hands then. Now he stands and watches.

I took a long time over the lace top. Straightened it, ran a finger under the edge so it wouldn't cut in, looked at how the black lay on pale skin. His leg is lean, with a hard calf, and in a stocking it doesn't become a woman's leg — it becomes mine. He stood on one foot, holding my shoulder, breathing through his mouth. Looking down at my hands.

“The other one.”

The second the same. Then the thong. I held it stretched open at floor level, he stepped in, I drew it up his legs and settled the fabric over the cage. Lace on steel, steel under lace. Through the black mesh the cage shows entirely, every ring. He went red from his chest to his ears, and I saw the cage shift under the fabric: he wanted and couldn't, and because he couldn't, he wanted more. That's how he's built. I know it and I watch it.

Walk

“Walk. To the window and back.”

He walked. The walk changes by itself: shorter steps, knees closer together, hips working differently. He isn't imitating a woman; he's simply walking in stockings, and legs in stockings walk another way. At the window he stopped and — for the first time in five years — put his hands in front of himself, over his groin. The curtains were open. The block opposite, eighth floor, someone out on a balcony.

“Hands behind your back.”

Not at once. He stood for two seconds, and I could see his shoulder blades working. Then he moved his hands back, laced his fingers and turned to face me. Face red, eyes wet, standing straight.

“May I close the curtains?”

“No.”

From that balcony you can see nothing but a silhouette, and he knows it as well as I do. But it mattered to him to ask, and it mattered to me not to allow it.

“Back here. Slowly.”

He came back. I stood, walked around him and laid my palm on his buttock, under the strap of the thong, on bare skin. Just laid it there; no slap. He went so still that I could hear the fridge humming in the kitchen. I kept my hand there for a minute, feeling how hot his skin was, and said what I say every Saturday:

“Good. Stay like that.”

Dinner

He cooked in the stockings and the thong and nothing else. Fish — I'd said fish that morning — and he stood at the stove longer than he needed to: with his back to me it's easier for him. I sat at the table with a glass and watched him: his back, the lace top on his thigh, black mesh over the calf. Half an hour later he set a plate in front of me and went down on the floor by my chair, because dressed like that he isn't allowed a chair. He ate off his knees. Between two mouthfuls I put my foot on his shoulder, and he turned his head and kissed my ankle. Not a word.

After dinner I went through to the bedroom, lay down on top of the covers and lifted my hem.

“Here.”

He knelt by the bed, between my legs, and I looked not at his face but down, at the stocking on his calf — how it pulled tight when he bent forward. He knows how I like his tongue: slow, unhurried, never lifting away. I came once, then again, holding him by the hair, and both times I could see the black lace on his thigh, and that did more for me than the tongue. All that while he was kneeling in my stockings, my thong, my cage, and I had made him that way — with my hands, in half an hour, on a Saturday afternoon.

“That's all. Go.”

There would be nothing for him that night. He knows. The cage stayed tight under the lace, and I didn't check how he was doing in there: it isn't me it's tight on.

Night

I didn't undress him. Before bed he took everything off himself, in the bathroom, folded the stockings along the seam, the thong on top, and put them away in the drawer where his stockings live. Not mine. His. Then he lay down beside me, on his half, not touching: on stocking Saturdays touching isn't allowed, and that rule is an old one. I lay on my back and listened to him not sleeping. In the first stocking Saturdays he used to ask on nights like that, in a whisper, to the ceiling: may I have your hand. I said no, and he went quiet. Now he doesn't ask. He lies there and waits for Sunday. His breathing even, too even. An hour, maybe. Then he slept.

On Sundays he is always especially tender. In the morning he brought coffee to bed, knelt while I drank and held the saucer. I know where that comes from. He knows that I know. We don't discuss it: he needs it to stay unsaid, and for me it's enough that the folded stockings are in the drawer.

• Buy the stockings yourself. Whoever chooses them is the one who puts them on.
• Put them on with your own hands, slowly. Fast and in the bathroom is a punishment, not a ritual.
• Don't laugh. One smirk and he'll never stand on one foot at your knee again.
• Make him walk, and don't let him hide his hands. Shame should stand up straight.
• Nothing for him that night. Let him undress himself, fold everything, and lie awake beside you.