For a second Emily didn’t react. Then she jolted, as if she’d been hit by an invisible tennis ball. She blushed, equally suddenly, and looked away. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She turned back to look into my eyes. “I don’t know, Jaime.”

“You asked me to cane you. If I caught you smoking?”

But she saw the doubt in my face. “Well, yes… But that was then. Anyway, Jaime, you said you wouldn’t. You said you can’t punish me just because I do something you think is wrong.” This was true. I’d turned her down, with self-admiration. “Remember?” 

“And you said you wanted me to punish you when you fucked up. That was just about smoking. Well hell, Emily, this is bigger than that.”

Emily would’ve gone on apologising forever, and I’d have gone on making her feel worse while acting as if I was being nice, also forever. That would be boring. This was dramatic.

One thing we’d learned together was that we had a mutual taste for drama.

“I haven’t given you the right, Jaime. Not for this.” 

“I think I should punish you.” Emily frowned. She knew I wasn’t convinced of that. “Well, what do you think? Do you think you deserve it?”

“Of course.” That was dismissive. “Well, okay. Yes, I do. I was really stupid. And I was mean. I hurt you. Of course.” That was less dismissive. “I’d deserve anything you did to me. Well, to my ass, anyway. But that’s not the point, Jaime. You said you wouldn’t punish me for real things. Not for real. You said you couldn’t. We’re supposed to be equals.”

“It’s your choice. We’d be equals if you choose it.”

“So you’d punish me for fucking another guy. But you’d want me to ask you to first. You’re saying that would make us still equals?”

“Um. Well, it’s your choice. And it wouldn’t just be for fucking Marty.”

“Oh, because you’re too high-minded to be jealous.”

“I never said that.”

“Jaime, you’ve got every right to be mad at me. And you are angry with me, you know you are.”

“Okay. That’s true.”

“So, I say I’m a bad girl and then you cane me. Only difference is that this time it’s real.”  

“It’d be real.” I hadn’t changed my mind about the politics: I didn’t believe any adult has a right to tell another adult what to do, let alone punish that adult. Everything I felt about sexual politics, plus my basic anarchism, was against it. But this wasn’t between citizens. It was between Emily and me, and though we weren’t open about it, it was about sex as much as justice. 

She sank to her knees. She wasn’t pleading. Not to be let off. We looked at each other, with nothing new to say. It helped that I knew that Emily wanted and intended to lose this argument.

She didn’t exactly want the cane, but she wanted to have been caned.

Then she wouldn’t be in the wrong any more. Neither of us liked occupying the moral low ground. Punishment would make her good again: I’d have forgiven her, and more importantly she could forgive herself.

But I was certain that her real reason was the same as mine: sex. It had been one thing to play dominance and submission games. But this was about making my dominance and her submission real, with real-world consequences. That seemed hot.

Emily said she’d spent the night with a guy called Marty. I knew and despised Marty. He sold pills, and like a lot of doctors Emily liked her psychopharmaceuticals. She said she hadn’t set out to meet him, and they weren’t having an affair. Spending the night with him had been a wine-fucked mistake, she said, and she’d hated lying to me. I said, truthfully, that I believed her. Emily said she didn’t intend to let him anywhere near her again.

That night he’d been dangerous. She’d undressed him and sucked his cock, and then he’d fucked her on the floor.

But afterwards she’d sat on his bed. I saw her, at this point in her story, patting the bed, smiling at him, with his come in her. That vision didn’t make me happy.

But Marty’s mood had turned suddenly and he didn’t join her. He’d paced the room and shouted, and at one point held his closed fist against her mouth. Then he’d pushed her, so she bounced off a bedside table on the way to the floor. He’d stalked off, muttering, and not come back. Emily, still too drunk to do anything effective, had crawled onto a mattress in another room, pulled clothes and eiderdowns and pillows on top of herself and slept. She got out as soon as she woke up. Someone had followed her car. That was why she’d looked so scared when she arrived. 

Marty was dead, two years after this story

There was something wrong with Marty. He sold middle-class drugs to doctors and lawyers, but he also sold drugs that cops took more seriously. He did it so openly that even I knew about it. He mixed with gangsters because he thought they were glamorous, but his indiscretion and violence were making him unpopular.

Because she’d parked her car outside his place, many people would have stored the licence number, her name and our address. I hoped it was only a cop who’d followed Emily home. At that time in Marty’s life, which ended a couple of years later, he was dangerous. He was also tall, good-looking in the style of the very young, skinny Clark Gable, and on a good day he could present his outlaw act as romantic. 

So on top of the usual reasons for being annoyed when your lover fucks someone else, she’d chosen a stupid and slightly evil man, and she’d put herself in harm’s way. I was angry and I was scared. 

I’d caned Emily lots of times. That wouldn’t be new. But the meaning had changed. That’d be new territory for both of us

I thought about punishing her. She’d asked me to cane her for smoking, when she was trying to give up cigarettes. So there had once been consent in principle. But she’d hurt me and I wanted to hurt her back, and I was suspicious of that desire. She might deserve punishment, but I didn’t trust my motives. Revenge seemed a bad one.

We talked. I said she’d scared me. She said she was ashamed of herself, and sorry. But when everything was said, nothing was resolved. Our talk went in a circle, over and over.  I was hurt, and I’d been scared, and then I was angry; she said was sorry, and then sorry again.

Eventually, in the second hour I broke that circle, and most of my own rules along with it. Partly I was motivated by boredom: it must be time to say something new. “So. Emily. So what should I actually do? This is a bigger deal than you smoking a cigarette, wouldn’t you say?” 

Emily still smoked cigarettes, though she knew better and wanted to stop. I praised and rewarded every smoke-free day, and I was patient while the cravings made her almost continuously angry. She got through a month without smoking, and that should have been that. But after three months she started again.

It’s odd, in retrospect, how hard I resisted accepting the right and duty to punish

Soon after that relapse, Emily asked me to help by taking control. She suggested that I should cane her if I smelt tobacco on her breath or clothes. Not caning her for play, not for sex: a real punishment, hard enough to hurt and make her want to avoid getting another punishment like it.

She wanted to fear the consequences more than she craved the nicotine. I’d had discussions like this before, and I refused, again.

Punishing Emily for smoking probably would help her give it up, and she’d enjoy being a submissive girl who got punished if she didn’t do as she was told. I could see that. But I still didn’t think I had the right to do it. I’d managed to find a way to do bdsm without acting like a sexist bully-boy, and I didn’t want to lose the formula.

On occasions like this, it was acceptable to call me “Sir”

Emily called me “sir”, but only when she was naked.

This issue grumbled on in the background. My rule against assuming real power suited me. It kept me comfortable politically. Emily was finding that it didn’t really suit her. I knew she wasn’t quite satisfied, but I decided to stick with the rule.

Until Emily unstuck me.

One afternoon there was a party. I had to work, so Emily went without me. I expected it to wind up by about ten or so, and to see Emily before midnight. By early morning I was worried. Emily’s car had recently been in an accident. It hadn’t been her fault, but it made it easy for me to imagine harm.

I called police and hospitals and ambulance services. Just after two she called me. She was staying at her girlfriend’s because she’d drunk too much to drive home. I told her I loved her and went to bed.

Oh, this is going to be all awkward, isn’t it?

But the next morning that girlfriend called and asked for Emily. I caught myself in time not to say, “Isn’t she with you?” Instead we chatted cheerfully, and I promised I’d get Emily to call when she got home. 

So when Emily came home – she looked scared – I passed on her friend’s message.

And I waited while she understood that I knew she’d lied. We knew we were about to enact a boring cliché, but we were stuck with it.