Out of the Shadows. Senta Holland

on alt.com, of meeting, if anyone, the wrong people. Also, of course, probably, seven years of reminding himself of other priorities. Of having and developing those other priorities.

      And now we are here, in bed, in a hotel room high over Ayuthaya, the town of ancient kings waiting in their urns, and we do things that the seven years dreamed of, long and long and long, and here is a woman who puts on a latex dress for him, and who holds a blue, curved vibrator inside her vagina for him, and who blushes when he tells her that now she will be punished as the vibrator falls out with too much wetness, and who sings with delight as her knickers are ripped off and who screams big screams as he spanks her, a festival of spanking after seven hungry years.

      A woman who licks his penis and caresses his ass and puts her fingers in, puts all her four fingers in and strokes his sensitive spots.

      A woman with soft, beautiful skin and large breasts that can be so tender that you can feel the path of each vein and so hard that the nipples push into your palm as if they want to pierce it through.

      A woman who has a lot of experience and who makes little passing remarks about her previous Doms and lovers and who can come from the lightest touch on her clitoris, or a fingernail drawn not quite sweet and not quite sharp over her delicate vulva lips. And from being spanked. By him. On the right spot.

      A woman who knows jokes about condoms.

      A woman who matches so many of his dreams with secret dreams of her own.

      Falling out of history, the urns crack open.

      And now, after seven years, the moment has finally come and he is impotent.

       How is a relationship defined?

      By its best bits?

      By its worst bits?

      Is it defined by how it ends?

      Oh, look, here is a tragic story, oh, look, they are happy in the end …

      Everything takes on that colour …

      But when they lived, when they lived it, they didn’t know.

      Only the reader knows.

       I had to leave

      I stood in the phone booth at the station. The station and the booth and the phone were outlined in grimy black, we were all in mourning.

      Grief is not clean.

      I didn’t know if my coins would work. I had tried before.

      I had to leave.

      After Ayuthaya, he did not call again. He did not say, my darling little sub and slave princess, can I kiss you and hold you and smack you again until you sing and cry?

      He did not say, be with me. He did not say, I’m sorry I have to leave you.

      I was on my journey anyway. I had to go.

      So I cried, black-rimmed grimy tears, and I rang him from the railway station back in Bangkok, rusty diesel engines sweating out poison fumes into a shrouded afternoon, my suitcase wedged into a decaying steel frame.

      I had enough money for a minute.

      He said hello and I said goodbye.

      I gave him my number on the island I was going to, again. I didn’t say I was leaving forever, I wasn’t leaving the country, I gave him a chance, a more than even chance to reach me if he wanted to be with me again.

      He said yes. I said goodbye.

      I had met my Nai. I didn’t know what would happen to me if I stayed.

      After so many years, there was someone with the same dreams. But he didn’t know if he wanted to live them, could live them. With me.

      It was more than I could take. I had to leave.

      Chapter 2 Tiger Island

       My private monsoon

      I sat on my side of the taxi and held his hand.

      I sat very still.

      My dream might be over.

      No, all that would be left would be my dream.

      Nothing else.

      I tried to look at him as much as I could.

      To remember him if necessary.

      He was very remote.

      I don’t know why, or what he was feeling.

      He’s not the kind of man who’d tell anyone.

      I know what I thought: I thought, he’s withdrawing. He’s preparing himself for going back to his life in Bangkok.

      And, depending on what he feels when he is alone enough to feel it, he will be gone. Or not. Or be there again. Oh, I don’t know.

      As I looked, something was blurring my vision.

      I couldn’t stop the tears from coming. It was a very private monsoon.

      I gripped his hand more strongly and pressed it like a child.

      He returned my grip but didn’t look at me.

      I remembered when I was very young and had to have really painful surgery done on my foot. It was awful, like being butchered. And there was no one who even showed me any sympathy.

      Cold-hearted old men in white coats. Did they know what they were doing to me?

      I felt so alone.

      I held somebody’s hand.

      I don’t remember whose.

      Only that it was the only hand that was there. Somebody human. Something other than fear and desolation and pain. Even if it was an old cold-hearted man.

      I gripped it with the same desperate and trustful grip that I’m holding his with right now.

      But I know I will have to let it go when the pain grows worst.

      At the airport, the same place where we met all these many hours ago, and every one of these hours is embedded deeply into the ridges of my core memory, I followed him from station to check-in station, all disguised as palm trees.

      He put his bags on the cart, and he had to pay the airport tax, and then finally it was time and he had to go.

      I followed him around with tears glistening in the tropical midday sun.

      He didn’t say much and I found that I was making little remarks in a small voice.

      At the end, I trotted along beside him and cried.

      So much to lose.

      So much just found.

      So much life just opened up.

      So much to develop, and maybe cut off.

      Now I wasn’t sure why he had given me the pictures, though I was glad I had them.

      ‘I’ll call you,’ I said again.

      ‘Yes, on Saturday,’ he replied, again not looking at me.

      We stood in the sun, beside the too cute little hut that was really the boarding gate.

      The lady in the shadows nodded to him.

      ‘I have to go,’ he said.

      Would he have just turned?

      I didn’t give him the chance.

      With all my strength I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him with my whole body.

      He gave an embarrassed little laugh and then he hugged me back.

      This may be our first fully clothed hug I thought.

      How strange to hug him when I’m not naked.

      I