The first thing Eden does is take my clothes off and tie me up. She uses a long black rope, starts with my balls and my penis, then continues to my ankles, then my wrists to my ankles, all of it a series of complicated knots. She wraps a collar around my neck, ties the rope to the collar so that almost any movement pulls on my genitals. I’m going to New York tomorrow. We’re not going to see each other for twelve days.
I’m on the hardwood floor of my bedroom on my back. I can put my feet down or my head, but not both. She pushes me and I fall on my side. I’ve been tied up many times but everything is different with Eden. I once followed a woman into her apartment on the Upper West Side. There were piles of stuffed animals as high as our knees. The animals spilled onto the mattress, which was uncovered. The walls were smeared in red graffiti. There was a dog leashed to an open refrigerator. I realized when it was too late that I had followed a crazy person home. She tied my arms over my head, blindfolded me, burned me all over my body with her cigarette. That’s the kind of thing I used to do before Eden. I’d go home with anybody; I just wanted to be hurt. I have scars. This is the opposite of that. This is a happy story.
Eden cradles my head in her lap, her bag nearby. Yesterday her mother had a biopsy. There was a chance Eden wasn’t going to be able to come over today, depending on how things went. Eden has thick thighs, comfortable legs. I’m so far gone, so in love, I can barely think. I stare at her cheeks, her nose. I can see every pore, blood vessels below the surface of her skin, hairs that will turn gray one day.
Eden attaches a clip to my nipple. “Do you want another one?” she asks.
“Yes, please,” I say. And that’s how it goes, as my voice gets weaker and she lines my body with her clips, finally running a string of them down my penis. Every movement increases the pain.
“You’re being so good,” she says.
“I love you so much,” I whisper back.
She strokes my face. I keep thinking to myself how nice she is, wondering why she is so nice to me. It makes me want to cry. We have the whole day. Her husband said she could spend the night; her son is away from home at camp. My roommate is home in the next room with his music turned up. That’s the world around us. And then there is Eden and I and all the clips she’s decorated me in, her initials carved across my back, the bruises on my belly, the twentyfive stripes she cut into my shoulders. “So pretty,” she says. She takes the clips off one at a time. We’ve been together over five weeks now. I see her four or five days a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. We don’t always do this. We go to movies. We go dancing. We shop for fabric and groceries and I keep her company while she sews. I go to her house and I make her breakfast and sit on the floor next to her chair, working on my articles while she manages her affairs, her husband at work in the city. We do other things, but this is what we’re doing now.