Out of the Shadows. Senta Holland

a few days old.

      He had tried several times, he said, but there was no getting through on the phone number I had given him. But he had set up a special account, just for us, just for him and me, if I wanted to write to him. Ever. Or now. Or ever.

      I ran out into the hot street, startling the dying dogs and Mr Hong who had never seen a tourist leave the shop with minutes of airtime still unpaid. The next time I went there he was cautious, as if he suspected me of not really being a tourist. Or carrying some other dark secret.

      He had a good instinct.

      I knew I didn’t have a lot of time left. I had to catch the truck before it went back through the wounded jungle.

      Of course there were no phones. All I could find was a lady in a travel agency who let me use her mobile, at an exorbitant fee.

      It rang. It was the wrong number, no it was the right number.

      He answered.

      I stood in the relentless sun, getting my skull burned.

      My ear filled with sweat.

      He answered.

      What matter the details?

      He answered and his voice was small. He didn’t recognise the number, he said. Of course not! It came from jungle island.

      ‘You are calling,’ he said. Twice. Then he said it again.

      ‘I tried to ring but they said you weren’t there.’

      ‘So I went away. Right now I’m – being blessed. At a temple.’

      He made a little embarrassed laugh.

      ‘And now you are calling.’

      Of course he could not come to the jungle hut. My lizard would never have allowed him in.

      For weeks I stood there in the dusty sun, talking to him on the phone. Yes, there was one. The locals used it and they had made it look as if it was broken. They needed the income from the mobiles.

      But I was such a frequent user, I was given access to the proper phone.

      Then I went back on the truck, squeezed between water bottles.

      ‘I’m going to come and meet you,’ he said. ‘On the other island.’

      He gave me a time.

      I would have gone there straight away. If I ran I could have jumped on the ferry. I could see it from where I stood.

      But it seemed he had a schedule that we both had to follow. It would mean a complicated journey and a tremulous wait on the other island where they had an airport.

      Just like my life.

      I told everyone.

      Well, not about the BDSM, but about the meeting.

      I told the owner, I told my fellow hut residents, I told the ants and the lizard. When the cockroaches raced across my bed before the swift claws and poison of the tiger spider I smiled benevolently.

      I counted the hours, I counted the days.

      I drank coconuts at the airport.

      I never thought he would really come.

      But I saw him, riding on the last cart, wearing an island hat.

       Intimate studies

      ‘Now you want to come,’ he said.

      ‘No. Well, OK, yes.’

      I snuggled into the crook of his arm.

      ‘I know,’ he said. ‘When you’ve been spanked you want to come.’

      I had never thought of it like that. I had thought of spanking, of course! And had been spanked. And I love sex. But never like that, a connection that describes my sexuality.

      ‘Yes,’ I said, surprised, ‘that’s true.’

      ‘I’m beginning to know you.’ He was so pleased.

      I was pleased too. No, I was thrilled. To be known, so intimately. To be so intimately studied. To lie here, skin to skin, touch to touch, under the pink duvet, with my Nai.

      My Nai always travelled with his pink duvet.

      And he always turned the aircon to zero.

      This was one of the many ways in which he acted like an upper class Thai. Although he was American, he had lived here in Thailand longer than anywhere else. He had grown up in a garden in Bangkok with mango trees and spoke Thai with his nannies while his mother spoke English with princesses.

      When I first got to know them I didn’t realise how important names are, to Doms. Every Dom has a very specific desire, and he wants to be called by a specific name.

      To me, that was quite alien. My desire to submit didn’t focus on magical names (well, that’s not entirely true, it didn’t focus on magical names for Doms, but there was some word magic elsewhere). But when I understood, I started to find this quite endearing. Adult men with identities had the chance of re-naming themselves, and of naming their passion.

      Of course there were quite a few whose imagination wasn’t so original, or who had been powerfully attracted by tradition. They did want me call them ‘master’ or ‘sir’ and at first I just did it to please them, it held no special meaning for me.

      Later I met those who had other ideas. Some names emerged from amorous nicknames, some were cryptic and clearly carried a lifelong significance that would or would not be revealed but would resonate with my lover every time I said his name, some were unashamedly the names of impossible daydreams, and some the names encountered in the shadow lands.

      And now my lover and Dom had a completely new, unheard-of name.

      My Nai.

      The two go together.

      My Nai.

      Like my Lord.

      So new then, the word Nai, and what it means to him. Actually, I am still not sure. What it means to him. I know it is a Thai word that means something like ‘lord’ or ‘head of the family’ or ‘someone of high rank’. But to him, I think, it means a lot more.

      It means being accepted and recognised in the culture he lives in and grew up in. That may never happen in Thailand, since he is after all a foreigner, tall and pale. The certainty of never belonging.

      His servants call him Nai. Oh yes, he has servants. He has a driver, and a cook, and several maids. He has a wing of the house where he lives. And another wing for his estranged wife, when she visits. And a guest wing for parents and American relatives.

      I had never been intimate with someone who had servants.

      I had never been asked to call anyone Nai.

      I didn’t. I called him my Nai.

      He smiled.

      ‘I am the Nai,’ he said. ‘My household knows that. If I change, they have to change with me.’ And he held himself up more proudly and smiled again.

      At moments like that he looked so fragile. I could have held him in my palm and broken his wings with a snap of my finger. At moments like that I opened my heart to him. Of course, moments like this would also turn against me. Right now, I was the personification of his freedom. Later on, in his mind, I would join the ones who didn’t let him be, didn’t let him be the Nai.

      But at that time, all I could see was a boy who would be Nai. Just as I was a woman who lived her dreams.

      I shivered with secret delight, I was me and not me, I was becoming the other person, the person who lived in my dreams. Because I didn’t know her, at least not very well, in many ways I didn’t know how she would react.

      In the morning I took my shirts out and we saw a huge spider, more like a scorpion or a tarantula, running with