Kink: Stories

by R.O. Kwon

She enjoyed their attraction the same way that, as a child, she had enjoyed the skin that formed on a cooling bowl of hot cereal: compelled by the physics of it, the surprising cohesion, the way a substance could be relied upon to change in a predictable way.

As she walked home from the restaurant, she thought of something her therapist had once said to her: You can’t get enough of a thing you don’t need. She had rolled it around her mind for years, tugging at the riddle of its meaning, testing it against every kind of unhappiness.

Masculinity was a glass vase perpetually at the edge of the table.

She put herself to bed as gently, as lovingly as if she were her own child.

I realized he was waiting for me to take control. That there was someone each of us didn’t normally give ourselves permission to be. And that here was where they’d meet.

We were like prisoners who’d used each other to break out, and now that we were in the wide world, there wasn’t anything more to say to each other. I knew who I was now, or what I was. I suspected he did, too.

Here is a project, the project of becoming close to someone.

Maybe she could follow him anywhere. Maybe it could be nice to do so. To say yes to everything, to fold her future into his future. Years from now, she’ll remember this moment, this weekend, how her world suddenly seemed to shrink and grow at the same time. It was as though she were trying on a new dress that didn’t fit but looked beautiful, and she wanted to be the kind of woman who wore beautiful dresses, so she kept it on.

She is prone to this, to disappearing within her own life. Everything seems to happen to her.

There is this way she has of looking at him. Like something caught.

Maybe it’s better when they’re not talking. When they’re quiet, she doesn’t have to worry about the shape the thing between them isn’t taking.