The night before

So, he's leaving tomorrow.

I've been mentally preparing myself for it during the last couple of weeks but it still doesn't seem easier than last time. My mind is heavy with the knowledge of how quiet it will be. The dearth of cuddling that will ensue. The forthcoming woefully inadequate phone spankings. The return to me and I instead of we and us.

I despise nationalism. With its border fetish. Its obsession with visas. Its fixation on citizenship requirements that even lawyers find dizzying. And don't even get me started on the bureaucracy that surrounds being ill. Policy and purse have long conspired to keep our relationship revolving around these quarterly sojourns, even as I know that someday -- really, truly -- the sojourns will turn into permanent togetherness. I've kept the faith this long, I can continue on.

We spent the day looking at furniture porn (me) or the implements of porn (him) but soon settled down to sorting out our less than meager finances utilizing one card with a bit of money to pay one bill, and a penny jar and another card with a bit less to pay for groceries. While my mind was still fretting over how to make that stretch until August 1st, A. was putting away the wallet.

"It's time to attend to your ass," he said with a grin.

I bit my lower lip. Half-smiled with a quick dash of demure. But my brow remained furrowed.

"I'm going into the bathroom to finish washing my sweater," he began, "and while I'm in there I want you to clear away these catalogues, please. Get out the ping pong paddle, both brushes, and...the rubber paddle. Oh and the riding crop....And the strap. I haven't decided what I'm going to use yet."

I closed up my laptop and began picking up the catalogues, trying to put myself into a kinky frame of mind.

"Is there a particular sort of dress you want for me?" I asked.

"Nothing," he said with gleaming eyes.

Upon his return, attending to my ass began with me draped naked over his lap. His hand preparing with gusto my fat cheeks for the as yet undecided upon implements to come. When he grabbed the ping pong paddle, he began to question me about the schedule I had agreed to the week before, the memory of which was rather hazy at that moment. I had successfully done the reading I agreed to. Done the exercises and yoga when I felt well enough. Bedtime was a mixed bag because we'd been fooling around a lot more at night due to his impending departure. But meditation, which I'm normally very good at doing daily, was a complete miss as A.'s and my bedtime and waking schedules had totally switched, leaving me floundering as to when to do it since I usually do it in the morning while he's still asleep (it's a small studio apartment).

"You could have simply asked me to leave you alone for a bit to do it," he so helpfully pointed out.

True. But I didn't think of that. I'd get distracted when I woke up and then, since I had not done it at the usual time, I didn't think about it. Except one night before bed. But meditation is hard to do when you're sleepy.

I felt like I had, if not a good excuse, then at least extenuating circumstances. A. was less convinced. And the thing was, even if I disagreed with him about the severity of the crime, there have been a zillion other times before where life for both of us would have been a lot easier had I just opened my mouth and talked to him. So I figured that on the larger point, he, um, well, had a point. I just didn't want to admit that while he had the ping pong paddle in his hand.

My lack of external contrition (or perhaps, because of) did not stop him from using that ping pong paddle over just about every square inch of my ass, as well as repeatedly on certain square inches. With my mind still not quite in a kinky or punishment frame of mind, and still somewhat indifferent about my meditation misdeed, and still grief-stricken about being alone for (hopefully only) the next three months, I thought I just might cry. I could feel that familiar lump coming to rest near the spot my tonsils once were.

Before I could cry, the punishment part was over and the kinky/for-your -own-good-while-I'm-away spanking began. There was the clothesbrush. And the rubber paddle, which, mixed with my mental state brought me once more to the brink of crying. After a lot of kicking and squirming, he switched to the cane. It's really a deceitful implement, that cane. To avoid bruising me too deeply, A. will often use it lighter than it would be otherwise. And that will seem, at first, not that painful. But it's the cumulative effect that gets me clenching and jerking about, to the point that he had to hold my legs down. He then ended this beating with a half dozen strokes of the riding crop.

It was after the spanking that I started to cry. When I was laying on my stomach against his chest, and the wind was caressing the marks on my naked ass.

I just want to stay here. Naked. On my belly. In the temperate summer afternoon with the wind cooling the sting on my left cheek. With A. here in his blue striped shirt that still smells faintly of the sweat he worked up walking to Trader Joe's.

But forever ended a half an hour later when a friend of my mom's arrived to cut our hair. As I stood watching while she snipped A.'s hair ever so delicately, I realized that even if my mind had been grasping for its kinky frame, my body had been in full blown kink mode.

"I'm wet," I said sheepishly to A. after my mom's friend left.

"I bet you are after that spray bottle."

"No, I'm wet," I stated again.

"Oh, that wet."

At first I thought of switching and having him service my cunt. But he was still all top. In the end, we played a pseudo rape scene.

"Let's sleep together tonight," he said as we both lay back in that yummy, lethargic post-fucking way. After a few years of awkward nights together in my double bed, we finally broke down and got a separate futon last year and have slept separately every since.

"Yeah," I said dreamily after making certain he'd want to risk a poor night's sleep before such a long flight.

I'm going to love every minute of those gawky five hours before he has to go.