What I do while you’re standing in the corner, naked, motionless, gagged with a ball gag, waiting for me to use the cane on you in punishment for earlier recalcitrant behaviour:
Check my emails, while sitting in my desk chair, about four paces away from where you stand. I delete several. Read three in full and write short responses. Label or archive everything else until my inbox is empty.
Drink an entire cup of tea. It is the one I made just before you arrived, and thus is already slightly cold. By the time I have finished responding to emails it has achieved a perfect, barelywarmatall temperature.
Read the last few pages of Haruki Murakami’sPinball, 1973. A second reading, but so long after the first it is like reading the novel for the first time. Once complete I close the book and put it flat on my desk. I sit and think about the ending as I finish the dregs of my tea.
Browse Amazon until I find a set of postage labels that are compatible with my printer. Purchase two sets. During the checkout process I sign up for a discounted trial of Amazon Prime to save on postage, which I then immediately cancel.
Speak your name. Once. Quietly. Because you are moving, shifting from foot to foot, evidently uncomfortable. You are notrequiredto be comfortable. Your name alone is sufficient to still any movement, to make you freeze where you stand, your forehead nestled into the spot where the walls meet. Nothing further.
Get up and go to the kitchen, where I make two cups of tea, yours with sugar. For afterwards. I add cold water to the kettle and then fill the hot water bottle with the resultant hotbutnotboiling water. Also for afterwards.
Return to the room. Place the tea out of the way on a shelf. Make the bed, which is rumpled from where you flopped onto it when you first arrived, before I begun our discussion about your earlier behaviour, before you removed your clothes, accepted the gag, took your place in the corner. I smooth the duvet. Square everything away.
Sit and watch you. Your naked, motionless form, apologetically hunched, quivering with stillness, as if trying (belatedly) to demonstrate that you are good, are obedient after all. I watch you until I feel myself harden under my clothes. Then I stand up. Then I clear my throat.
