Performance at Risk (Patreon)

I submit the pitch for this story, thinking it wouldn't get picked up. When I sent in my first draft recording I was *sure* it wouldn't get picked up. The story was too long but I didn't know where to cut it. I had no idea how to end it. I submit it saying "this was the best I could do. Maybe it's just not right for the show." But they cast me in a show anyway.

After feedback from the people at Risk, my partner, my best friend, and a surprising amount of help from my therapist, I managed to shape it into the story pasted below.

It was a tough story to tell, especially the end, but I could feel that the audience was riveted. And a number of people thanked me after the show. I'm not really sure what other people got out of it emotionally, but I'm incredibly thankful that people were moved by it. This story is sacred to me and I'm glad I managed to do it justice.


When I was first dating Lucas, one of my friends said “Wow, he’s either a really great Dom or an actual psychopath. But we’ll only know which one he is if he kills you.” and I was like “I KNOW! HOW HOT IS THAT?!?”
I don’t know why I’m like this! I had a pretty happy childhood. My parents are VERY nice people! But for whatever reason I have some kind of sexual death wish. 
Which I’m starting to think I have taken too far when I’m half naked, tied to a table, and Torrance, a man I only know well enough to know that I should fear him, is putting a straight razor in my mouth.
Let me back up a touch.

The first thing that Torrance says, when he’s wheeled up to the end of the table next to my head, is.
"Why are you looking at me?” 
I immediately avert my eyes.
Wheelchair or no, Torrance is imposing as fuck. When he stands, he’s over six feet, with broad shoulders, black hair, and piercing blue eyes. His posture is so regal the wheelchair seems less like a mobility device and more like a luxury he is owed. It was easy to forget that he had been battling with diabetes for a long time, and one of his feet had been amputated.
But that was why Jadis was here, standing at attention with a thick rattan cane, looking like Barbie joined the secret police.
Torrance tells Jadis
“When I lift my finger, hurt her.”
“Are there degrees you want?” She asks eagerly. “More fingers for more pain?”
Believe it or not, Jadis is my friend. She’s the closest friend I have at this event, which means she’s spent most of the weekend listening to me being a sadboy because Lucas finally dumped me.
“So go get laid!” Jadis said, exasperated. “We are at a weekend long event devoted to fucked up sex, so go get some.”
“It’s not that easy,” I grumbled and Jadis rolled her eyes. Because it should be that easy. I should be like a kid in a candy store just grabbing whatever looks good and shoving it in my mouth. That’s what I’d been like before Lucas. But now I knew that some of this candy was actually poison. And I didn’t know how to tell the difference. Worse, I feared that maybe there was no difference.
But I couldn’t bring myself to say that out loud so Jadis just rolled her eyes and said
“Fuck this noise. Let’s go play withTorrance.”
Once again, Jadis is my friend but that’s hard to remember when Torrance lifts his finger and she cracks that cane across my thighs.
“I expect an answer when I ask a question, is that understood?”
“Yes.” I say, still wincing.
“Good. Now, when did you first begin to fear me?” As long as there has been Torrance in my mind, there has been a fear of Torrance. But that’s not really an answer. And he expects and answer. A point he drives home by laying a straight razor across my cheek..

A quick note on negotiation: Before a scene, kinky people will have a discussion called “negotiation” where you say what you want, your partner(s) say what they want, and your scene consists of where those things overlap. They’ll also establish safewords and talk about any triggers or medical conditions that may create a problem.
Now, for this scene that I’m doing with Torrance and Jadis, I should have done….literally ANY of those things. But after two years with Lucas, I just...kind of...forgot I could. 
Lucas never met a boundary he couldn’t push through, ignore, or argue his way around. I don’t just mean in play, I mean in LIFE. If I put a private post on my livejournal, he would demand to read it. If I closed the bathroom door, he would open it. 
His specialty was tromping through boundaries I didn’t even know I had to set so he’d end up saying something like “Well you never said I couldn’t fuck someone else in the bathroom during your show. And anyways we weren’t having sex, I was punching her for 20 minutes so, really, you should be apologising to me.”
My needs became so irrelevant that I just tried not to have any.

Which is how I end up tied to a table with a straight razor an inch away from my eye. Nah, that’s just because it’s hot..
It takes only a few questions and a couple of cane strikes to reveal the unforgivable truth that I don’t remember when I first met Torrance.
“Well that’s very disappointing,” he says “I’d hate to have you forget this time together. Perhaps I should give you something to remember it by.”
He presses the razor into the corners of my mouth.
“Something you’ll see in the mirror every day.”

A quick note on safewords: Even if you’re a dumbass like me and don’t do all your negotiation beforehand, the kink world has the standard safeword Red. Red means “This scene needs to stop right now.” Not much use when you’re playing with someone like Lucas, but it comes in handy when your partner isn’t a psycho. But even if they are a psycho, red can work as a failsafe if you’re playing in a dungeon because everyone around you knows that it’s a safeword. And dungeons have monitors whose job it is to step in if someone ignores a universal safeword.
And I am in a dungeon so I am totally safe. Probably. Mostly. Except for one tiny detail because guess who’s in charge of, and friends with, all of tonight’s dungeon monitors?
If you guessed Torrance, congratulations! You’re smarter than me.
I talk him out of any face lacerations but he says

“Still, it’s disappointing that you don’t remember the first time we spoke. Perhaps you couldn’t hear me. Oh, I know. There’s a little piece, right here.” I feel the blade whisper up to my ear.
“Just a tiny little piece of skin, but if I cut it off your ears would be pushed forward and you’d hear so much better. You’d hear like a fucking bat. Then you’d never miss another word I ever said. Now wouldn’t that be lovely?”

I could try to safeword, but I find I don’t want to. I genuinely don't want to. I'm not done yet. I came into this scene wanting something, and even though I don’t really know what it is, I can feel in my bones that I'm close to getting it. 
I have to give him an answer and there’s only one answer to give. I look him straight in the eye and I say
“Yes.” 

Strength. That’s why I do this. To remind myself how strong I can be. I spend so much of my life being afraid. I needed to prove to myself that I could do something fearless, not just something reckless. And if that bravery cost me some small amount of flesh, well, there are worse things to lose.

“Yes, what?” He presses. “I want to hear you say it.”
“Yes, Torrance, I’d like you to mutilate my ear.”
“Please,” he insists. I can hear the smile curling his lips.
“Please.” I whisper.

I wonder if this is what faith feels like. My parents often say “let go and let God,” which sounds so utterly freeing, if only I could believe that God existed and, like, cared about me personally. Instead I let go and let Torrance. Because some part of me needs to.

“Thank you for asking Mary,” he says, voice like velvet, “but I don’t know you well enough.”
For the first time in a very long time, I have put my trust in someone and it was not misplaced. 

Tears erupt from me the way a drowning survivor coughs the water out of their lungs. There’s been something sick inside me, this knot of shame that tells me that Lucas was my fault, that I asked for it, that I could have stayed safe if only I was normal. That twisted knot is broken up and pushed out with the tears that I cry. That poison is purged.

Torrance puts away the razor and enjoys my tears for a long, slow, moment. Then he leans down close to my ear and speaks with something like tenderness.
“I haven’t played in three years.” He says softly, his voice as relieved as I feel. “I didn’t know if I would ever play again. I wasn’t sure that I could. Thank you Mary.”
It had never occurred to me that someone like Torrance could doubt themselves that much. Or that someone like me could help them. Throughout this scene, his words had broken me down and hollowed me out. Now his thanks fill me up with gold.

I never played with Torrance again, but we became friends after that and I got to watch his life change. He didn’t just keep playing, he thrived. His health got better. He spent more time out with friends. He met the submissive who would love him and serve him for the rest of his life.

And I met someone, too. The man who taught me how a healthy relationship could work. He’d caught my eye in a couple of workshops throughout the weekend, and I managed to talk to him on the last night. I’m not great at making conversation, but he made it easy.
“What about you?” I asked “Have any great scenes this weekend?”
“I actually haven’t gotten to play,” he admitted. “I’m single. Still pretty new to the scene.”
“Oh, that’s gotta change,” I said, taking his hand. “Let’s talk."