So we have the kind of intimacy I don’t talk about for all the many reasons I don’t talk about it. So I am suddenly unconscious, and then I am on my knees, and the water is spilled, and my tears are in my eyes and on His jeans, and I am looking up and I am declaring Love like it is fealty and admiring shock and awe like a weapon (and didn’t he once say…?). And He wields it over me or I hold it in phrases, give it over to Him anytime He demands. So then we are in the living room, this couch an island, the world just the two of us — but we are briefly coming back to it, back to what is outside of Us. And He’s going into the kitchen; He’s saying, I’ll get myself a popsicle and I’ll get you an ice cream sandwich, and I say, Actually, Owner, could I please have a brownie instead?
And He says, I don’t think I heard you right. Could you repeat that?
So I say it again and it feels weaker. My pores are already wondering if this is some act of rebellion somehow, if He didn’t hear me or if I just misspoke or if I’m just wrong, so I say, the soundwaves themselves disoriented, Please, Owner, a brownie? And now He is above me and I don’t know how He got there. So He bends down, locks on, looks in, and I feel reality flutter, the unmasking that takes us back to the pretty voids He has made for us. I am falling again, I am leaving, I am gone, and He says, What is it you want? And I think: what is the right answer? I think: I want to give You what I’m supposed to. And so I say An ice cream sandwich and He says I don’t believe you and I am smaller; He says, Beg.
And I do not know how. I have never known how. This is not a dynamic where I beg; this is a dynamic where He takes. But right now, I do know how, so I am wretched, I am louder, I am saying Please, Owner, please. I really just want an ice cream sandwich. I was wrong. I want nothing more. Could you just get me an ice cream sandwich? I just want an ice cream sandwich.
No, He says. No, I don’t think you do. There’s something… false in your voice. You’re not telling me the truth. What is it you really want? And I say a brownie but we both hear the ghost of a question mark. And He says, Yeah? Is that what you really want? And I say, No, I want an ice cream sandwich, please.
So He breaks the spell, walks away, says I’ll just get you the brownie. And I say, No, no, could You get me that ice cream sandwich actually? And He says, You don’t have to pretend. You did well trying, good girl. And I say, No, I mean it, and I mean it.
And it is the best thing I’ve ever had.
And so He catches me, eyes closed, and He smiles at it the way that He smiles when He catches me, eyes closed, all the time. And He says: So what is it you really wanted, property? And I stop, stop without swallowing. I look at Him and I’m sure it’s filled with fear or reverence, words I’ve long known well share a root in our mother tongue. They might as well be the same. And I say, Yeah, I really actually wanted an ice cream sandwich. And now, He says, But did you?
So I don’t know anything again. So I don’t need to. So I don’t know when and how this started. So still we have come back to reality; we do not remain on that island. So I had missed this one thing:
Reality was always in His grasp. I had missed that He holds it in the same way He can hold my skin between his nails, the thin layer of barely detachable surface His to manipulate, His to move.
So something changed. So I meant it. So I know I meant it. So He knows it too. So He smirks. So I wonder still if I ever wanted a brownie. I think maybe it’s that He always knew better than I could. And then I realize: no, I knew; I did — and then He changed what I could know. No. I knew everything about the world, and then I didn’t. No. I wanted an ice cream sandwich.