Disclaimer: Of course, all Twilight-based characters, settings and plot elements belong to the marvelous Stephenie Meyer. Thank you, Ms. Meyer, for sharing!
Also, I owe a large debt of gratitude to the late BDSM author Jon Jacobs and his recent followers for both the nature of this story and my ability to write it (for more details, read my profile). It is through their writing that I was introduced to the concept and terminology of "profound" dominance and submission.
However, the story to follow is otherwise my own creation, conceived of the moment I asked myself: "What if I had figured out how my sexuality was different from average BEFORE I had to make adult decisions? What if I had been part of a community that educated, with intention and compassion, its young people in different ways of being in relationship, not just in the mechanics of reproduction and disease prevention?" And then, bringing it into absolute fantasy-land where I find so much comfort residing, I added, "And what if a perfectly-matched profound dominant was in that class with me?" Hey, it's possible, right? (I hear that snickering! I didn't say it was likely!)
So here's my answer to myself, in the form of one perfectly lovely, though—as I've already admitted—highly unlikely, as well as terribly lawsuit-courting should it ever actually be attempted, scenario. Enjoy if you like, but be warned: true profoundly dominant males who are ethical and loving are probably even rarer than vampires. Sorry.
p.s. Forgive my apparent hypocrisy, and please, beware the internet! It is not a safe place for self-discovery unless one is very, very careful. And skeptical. And guarded. And experienced enough to have a shot at recognizing a predator when they approach. And finally, in frequent communication with real-world friends with whom one can be totally honest and open so that if something does go badly, someone else knows what computer file to open in order to try to fix it. As much as anything important in life can ever truly be "fixed" once it's broken. Best wishes and loving thoughts to you, Liza.
p.s.#2: To all the 16-year-old through twenty-something iterations of me out there (and knowing, of course, that I'm a middle-aged iteration of them)... You! Yes, you with the copy of A Little Princess and the daddy complex! Do not dabble in the BDSM community, on-line or in person, as a desperate attempt to stave off the suffering and pain of existence! It will not help! You will be eaten alive and spit back out! Explore carefully, and slowly, and conservatively when you are least desperate, and use fantasy stories like this as pain medication and NOT as a roadmap. I am writing this story exactly because it NEVER HAPPENED for me, and most likely IT WILL NOT HAPPEN FOR YOU EITHER. I know it's not fair, I know it hurts, I know it's lonely beyond words, but once you accept the pain of it, I swear it gets a little better. Not a lot, but a little. And then a little more. And before you know it, you'll be okay. Hang in there. I care. xo liza
"Edward Cullen." It was three-quarters of the way through biology class when Mr. Banner finally read my name off the list he was using to send students out, in pairs, to meet with someone—a psychologist from the University—who who was overseeing a new twist on sex ed. at Forks High. Termed "Self-Study," it had already spawned any number of crass jokes in the halls and locker rooms. But still it was seen by most of us as much preferable to the traditional human sexuality component of the junior-year biology class.
Why require 17-year-olds to take sex ed. so long after the window for good (and bad) decision-making had, for most of us, been opened? Because of a paper on the development of Forks High School's graduation requirements I'd written for the local history and civics class I had to take sophomore year, I know the answer to that question. Back in the '80's, a former-hippie school board member had decided that older students needed to be reminded of the bird-and-bee basics they had already been subjected to in eighth grade. Her argument had been that doing so would support students' "personal growth and development." The more conservative members of the school board saw it as an opportunity to scare wayward students back onto the straight and narrow. Thus two normally divergent philosophies united for once, allowing the proposal to pass unanimously. Forks' juniors had been suffering ever since.
I was in agreement with the popular assessment that this year's innovation could be nothing but an improvement, especially after learning that a mortified-as-usual Mr. Banner would still be overseeing the old-school approach every Monday for the rest of the semester. As unlikely as it may seem, the powers that be had managed to make this default option even more unpleasant than in years past with the addition of a class presentation requirement on an assigned STD. It was easy to imagine the jokes that would be running once assignments were made about who "had" gonorrhea, or herpes, and enduring that degree of inanity would most likely be even worse than completion of the actual assignment.
So, I had been careful about turning in both my own and my parents' signed consent forms, and my signed agreement to maintain the absolute confidentiality of what my partner and I would discuss. The penalty for failing to respect this confidentiality was an unceremonious return to Mr. Banner and chlamydia central; I didn't need this threat though to know I would keep my mouth shut. There is almost never anything good to be gained from feeding the high-school gossip beast…it is definitely a monster that eats its own.
Despite agreeing to participate, I was pretty pissed about the terms of participation in the research study, given that the researchers were going to be appropriating my conversations and written assignments for their own purposes. I just don't like the idea of a bunch of academic leeches using my words to further their own agenda, without my input or truly informed (as to their opinions about me and my behavior and thoughts, and its support or lack thereof for whatever split-hairs theory they're cooking up) consent.
Sure, my parents and I were granting what passed as legal consent now, but it was a shitty way to go about it—asking for blanket permission up front to do what they will when we hadn't yet had the opportunity to take the measure of those in charge of the program, or been able to weigh the value, to me and to the researchers, of the specific information they would want to be obtaining. So I planned to be on guard, and to play both the situation and the people ostensibly in charge of it well.
But there was one aspect of this experience I couldn't control, and that had me—if I was being honest, which I didn't necessarily plan to be—a little stressed: the assignment of study partners. In order to make the experience more "real" and "meaningful," (the researchers' words, not mine), each participant was to be assigned a partner, as well as a topic on which to focus our reflection and enquiry. I didn't much care about the topic, figuring I could spout b.s. on anything they liked; but the selection of a partner was more important. Much more important.
So who was mine? After Angela and Lauren walked back into the room, each of them surprisingly content-looking given their pairing, Mr. Banner had read my name off and gone right back to his love affair with mitochondria. I sat, as patiently as I could, waiting for him to self-correct. I was just getting ready to interrupt him and ask when he looked at me, still waiting for my partner's name.
"Edward?" he asked. "Didn't you hear me read your name?"
"I heard you, Mr. Banner," I replied respectfully. I am careful always to seem respectful towards those having power over me. I know, as do they, that it is a temporary power that will, in most cases, soon be superseded by my fortunate superiority in intelligence and resources. But while I am underage and enrolled in this school I am vulnerable, and they all know it. At least Mr. Banner doesn't seem to take any pleasure in lording his authority over me—unlike certain others, such as Coach Clapp.
In response to my noncommittal answer, for though I am always respectful, I also don't give up anything more than is necessary, Mr. Banner raised his eyebrows. Then he asked, "Are you having second thoughts about participating, Edward?"
"No, I'm just waiting to hear who I'm paired with," I answered, as if it was no big deal. And it shouldn't have been, but I was starting to feel like it was.
"Oh! Well, that makes sense; but you're not paired with anyone. It's just you at the end of the list I was given. Must have had odd numbers."
Inside, I was crushed. Outside, I smiled politely, my face a mask. Then I nodded, and said, "All right, I'll head out," as I stood up, grabbed my belongings and started down the aisle.
I hadn't admitted to myself up until that moment how hopeful I'd been to be paired with a certain fellow class member, but I had been. Extremely so. And especially as the class had gone on. Just before my name was called, there weren't many names left that hadn't been called already, and most of the few remaining I either knew for certainty or had a shrewd guess had not returned their consent forms. Which left, to my delight: one Isabella Swan, my lab partner.
Most people call her Bella, like her father does, though she has never expressed a preference on the matter. At least not to me. So some of the time, I use her beautiful—yes, I know that's a literal translation, but it really fits—full name. It always makes her blush, which is a wonderful bonus.
And yes, I have been harboring a secret crush on the unbelievably-shy Miss Swan for as long as she has been a student here… about four months. She had both my interest and affections, without having the first clue about it, I'm sure, ever since her first day at Forks when she walked fearfully into the classroom, got her seat assignment from Mr. Banner (who evidently scared her, as milquetoast as he was, is and evermore will be), and stumbled into the seat next to mine.
After tripping and sprawling onto her lab stool, catching herself with her hands, she had briefly looked up at me and—accidentally, I'm now certain—made eye contact. Besides the beautiful blush that colored her cheeks, her eyes were absolutely intoxicating: so full of fear and shame and sadness, and communicating them all to me at top volume.
I was instantly curious about what had her feeling all those things, and feeling them so strongly, her initial awkwardness not seeming near enough of an explanation. I was even more intrigued when I watched, my head tipped towards her and an expression of interest on my face I have no doubt but no words having left my lips, as a heavy metal door slammed shut behind her eyes and cut off the flow of emotional information. This was just before her head dropped and she righted herself on the stool, studying her knees as she politely offered a quiet "Sorry about that."
I had to manfully suppress an extremely strong and equally inexplicable urge to gather her up in my arms and cradle her in my lap. Momentarily freaked the hell out by this ridiculous impulse, I fortunately got my head out of my ass fast enough to just offer a mild greeting in return; something basic and low-key (never mind that I still really wanted to touch her) along the lines of "Don't worry about it. I'm Edward, by the way."
I waited for her response, expecting her to introduce herself to me. But she said nothing more than a tiny, barely-audible "Hi," whispered in my direction, and accompanied by a quick and shy smile, delivered so fast I barely had time to catch it.
Instead, she wrapped her arms around herself after unpacking a notebook and pen, and appeared to focus all her attention up to the front, where Mr. Banner was drawing himself up to start class. I say "appeared to" because it was obvious to me where her true attention lay, and that was with me. It was obvious too that the metal door behind her eyes had only succeeded in neutralizing the public appearance of her emotions, and she was still very much in the grip of them. The anxiety buzzed off her so clearly I swear there was an audible hum, and both fear and shame were evident in the hunch of her shoulders and the hanging of her head. Not to mention the myriad other tells, like the hand-shaking, the arms-holding-her-torso-together, the lip-biting. Oh God, the lip-biting.
Never had I responded (inwardly only, thank God) in so primal a manner to a girl before. I wanted to ravage her, I wanted to comfort her, I wanted quite simply to consume her, and the strength of this wanting horrified me. I was not used to feeling vulnerable, and the degree of desire I was feeling for a complete stranger, and an enormously socially awkward one at that, was both unasked for and unwanted.
Somehow I made it through that first hour without touching her or asking her out, and after that I had been determined to keep it all-business during biology class. However, that didn't keep me from directly and indirectly attempting to find out all I could about her, without making my interest obvious. What I uncovered wasn't much, but then there wasn't much to be uncovered: she announced most of the important facts about herself in loud, clear tones with her body language and deferential words.
Still, for details I knew now that she had left her mother's home in Phoenix in a self-sacrificial act of filial loyalty on the occasion of her mother's new marriage last summer to a much younger man. (I had ascertained his age from the website of his minor-league baseball team, having first dragged out of Isabella the nature of his employment during the single question-of-a-personal-nature I soon gave in and allowed myself towards her each week.) From observation and gossip, I also knew she was terrified of men generally and her father in particular, although she seemed to be surprisingly comfortable with me.
Though she never asked, I always made sure to offer reciprocal information about myself. So, for example, she was now in possession of the information that my father was the Chief Surgeon and Medical Administrator of the Forks Community Hospital and Clinic, a career move made from the high-end of Chicago medicine at the end of my 8th-grade year, and which gave me the dubious benefit of a smaller pool in which to be an enormously big fish.
It had been my older brother Emmett's fault that we moved. He'd gotten involved with the wrong crowd and had made some stupid decisions as a result, narrowly missing a juvenile conviction of drug possession and reckless endangerment. Although a sweetheart of a guy, and loyal to a fault (thus the stupid decisions), he had inherited all of the brawn and none of the judgment from the Cullen-Platt gene pool.
Uncertain what less-dramatic step would untangle my brother from his nasty friends and burgeoning drug habit, my parents announced we would all be moving back to the Platt ancestral home in Bumf #$, Washington, otherwise known as Forks. Luckily, Mom's grandparents had been loaded, and though her parents had neglected it some since the elder generation died, the house was easily brought back to its earlier beauty and made much more modernly comfortable than ever before. This has been a source of endless pleasure and satisfaction for my mother. My father has taken similar pleasure in rehabbing the antiquated Forks medical establishment, both physically and procedurally, so that the two of them now feel the move to be the best decision they've ever made.
As their child, I have taken a little umbrage with this position, and when I made the point to my mother—that perhaps she might rank deciding to have her children above the exile I have been enduring in the annals of good decisions—she just laughed and told me more than I ever wanted to know about my conception. "Oh, honey, you three are the best things to come from me and your dad. But we sure didn't decide to have you, any of you. You just happened!"
I gave her a hard look for that comment, figuring a man in an M.D./Ph.D.-Public Health program and a woman with a master's degree in theater history should really have had a clue about what their extracurricular activities would lead to. But it's true that Emmett was conceived and even born out of wedlock. Esme always assures him that this was just a result of her feminist beliefs against marriage at the time, but I'm not convinced that's the whole story.
I don't doubt though that my mom and dad were truly and wholly in love; the photos of their early years are proof enough even without the copious love letters and mementos they both have squirreled away in more places than they can keep track of. As soon as I was reading books from their library shelves, I had to grow immune to the shock of finding pages of bad love poetry (written by my father), or even worse, bad nude sketches (made by my mother, of my father I presume since they were in his books but you really couldn't tell by the subject's facial features) used as impromptu bookmarks.
Even better, my parents are still truly and wholly in love, and I am beginning to understand from observation of the lives of my peers how rare and valuable this state of affairs may be. Indeed, apart from Emmett's episode of unsanctioned hell-raising, our entire family does a pretty thorough representation of wholesome American happiness, with beautiful, privileged people leading beautiful, privileged lives and—this is the shocker—actually being satisfied with the lives they lead. At least the rest of them are.
Emmett, for his part, has been ecstatic with Forks ever since he met his girlfriend Rosalie. And since that happened the first time he hit the pool at the golf course the day after we arrived, he's been happy as the proverbial clam our whole time here.
My little sister Alice, too, has adjusted to the exile much better than I. Though not twins, we are in the same grade at school. This is because she was only born 11 months after me and, when it was time for kindergarten, my parents used my summer birthday and male gender as an excuse to hold me back a year. That decision would have been laughable, seeing as I was already reading my mother's novels and begging my dad to write out math problems for me to solve, but both my mom and Alice hated to see me go on without them, and my Dad figured it wouldn't hurt me any to wait a year. As for me, I was just happy to have another year of unfettered access to the piano and the Nintendo, the joys of both of which I'd discovered the year I turned four.
Initially distraught over leaving behind her friends and the theater program she was so active in, my sister quickly learned to love Forks for the lack of competition for leading roles and the existence of Jasper, Rosalie's brother. The path to true love was a little bumpier for the two of them, seeing as Jasper was clueless at the start and also is a twin to Rosalie, meaning he's got a good two years on Alice. This is true despite the fact that he's only a year ahead of us in school, same as Emmett and Rosalie. Emmet had to repeat the 10th grade when we moved to Forks due to failing most of his classes the previous year in Chicago, and Rosalie and Jasper were together held back one year in elementary school due to being moved around the country so much by their desperate, alcoholic mother. If Emmett hadn't been so enthralled by Rosalie, and Rosalie hadn't put in so many good words for her brother (who may be the only person on earth she truly loves besides my own brother and herself), he wouldn't have stood a chance against Emmett, who tends to be bossy when it comes to Alice's well-being.
Even I was skeptical at first that Jasper could be good enough for my sister, especially after meeting Rosalie who I am not nor ever have been on friendly terms with, but time spent in his company changed my opinion on the matter. It also made him my closest friend, which causes a little awkwardness at times. But overall the friendship is worth it, as is Alice's happiness, and I'm glad the two of them have found each other so soon. If maybe I'm a little jealous at times too, well—that's to be expected, right?
As for me, at least I'm not miserable like I was when we first moved here. I still miss the culture of a bigger city, though now that I have a driver's license and my own car, I solve that with near-weekly road trips to Port Angeles and, much preferably, Seattle. I've also driven down the coast to San Francisco twice with Jazz and Emmett, the summers before my sophomore and junior years. Those were good times; but that's another story.
So what else is missing? Besides having to suffer through what passes as a high-school education in this academic backwater, I'm sure you can guess the source of my discontent. I mean, I'm surrounded by true love, and despite all my hard-as-nails posturing, I'd like a little taste of it myself. Or a lot. I even think, after months of alternately fantasizing in explicit detail about getting to know Bella, well, better, then second-guessing my insanely strong reactions to her as mere evidence of something f'd-up going on in my head, no doubt the result of unwilling rural living, that I have a candidate right in front of me… but I've been so uncertain about both of our possible reactions to initiating something formal that I've just sat and watched her instead.
The excruciating part is seeing ever more clearly how much Bella might benefit from having me around; but that's also the part that keeps me from acting on my feelings, because what happens to her if I screw up, or screw her over? I'm not known for being the most sensitive person, and the idea of causing her pain is itself too painful to contemplate. So I don't, dancing around it in my head, and in the end leaving her more or less alone.
And that's how the object of both my ever-increasing desire and my active fantasy life remained, to any outside observer, merely the little-girl-looking lab partner I left sitting at our table as I started off to meet with the asshole (so I'm presuming—sue me) researcher who's going to spend the next few months analyzing the sex lives of the Forks High junior class. I don't know who I'm sorrier for: him, or me.