It's About Power

Chapter 24

You still don't get it. It's not about right. It's not about wrong. It's about power.


I sat down on the sofa and let the last rays of sunlight warm my skin. I listened to him rustling in the other room, waking after a long day in the coma-like sleep of the dead. I was both calm and excited. I'd already made the decision. I was ready to take the next step and there was no time to waste. It had to be now. I closed my eyes and opened them again. The view of the treetops was stunning. I could see the park, the skyscrapers, the fading light of day on the river. A censor in the room made the lights turn on as the sun set and darkness fell. Eric's door opened. He was wearing a snug black tee shirt and a pair of loose fitting flannel pajama pants. I lifted my eyes to him.

"Can we talk?" I asked him in a quiet voice. I knew what I had to do, what I needed to do, but I was still nervous. I was afraid. I knew he wanted to help me, to protect me, to keep me safe. That didn't make the fears fall away. It didn't make the process easier.

"Sure," Eric nodded. He came to the sofa and I took his hand. I led him into my bedroom and I curled up on top of the bedspread. He joined me. I don't know what it is about a bed, but things always seem so simple there. I knew I couldn't look at him while I spoke. I knew I couldn't face him. But lying in a big pile of pillows, I could stare at his hands and still feel close to him.

I took a deep breath. I let it out through my nostrils so it sounded like a sigh. I still had the salty smell of the harbor in my hair. It brought me back to the day I'd spent in the glowing March sun. I opened my mouth and licked my lips. Here it is, Sookie, the moment of truth. You'll feel better when it's over. I know its hard now, but you can do it. You have to do it.

"I didn't tell you everything. Some people might say that what I'm about to tell you is too much information, that they don't need to know the details. But the thing is, I need you to know the details. I need someone to know the details the way I know them. I can't even imagine letting go of all this baggage until it's all out there, on the table, in the open. So if it gets to be too much, I'm sorry in advance. If I freak you out, I apologize. These things I've done? I'm ashamed of them. I never talk about them and no one knows."

My hands shook, but it didn't matter. It was too late to stop now, and anyway, I wasn't giving myself the option.

"I'd never had sex before I met Bill, but I wasn't completely naïve. I knew that the things we were doing weren't conventional and I agreed to do them anyway. Sometimes I didn't agree and we still did them. I don't know what I want you to do with that information. I don't want you to think I was raped. I wasn't. Not once, not ever. To be raped, you have to say no. You have to be unconscious or unaware, or you have to fight back, or you have to say no. I never did. I never told him no. I never fought back and I was never unaware. I knew exactly what was happening to me and I let it happen. I don't want to take something away from women that are survivors of rape. They did something about it. I didn't do anything. I just let it happen. So I want to make that clear.

"The first time I was with him, I was on my knees. I was terrified. I didn't know what I was doing and I was scared of that thing in front of me. I didn't know the first thing about giving head and he didn't ask me. He didn't ask me to do it. He told me to do it. At the time, I was thrilled by that. Thinking about it now makes me want to cry, to suck on eight bars of soap to make the bad taste in my mouth go away. When I think about it now I want to vomit. But at the time? At the time, I wanted to show him that I was capable. I wanted to show him that I could do it. I wanted to please him. That was all I wanted in the world at that moment. I didn't get anything out of it, nothing physical. I was excited, but that was all.

"If I'd had more experience, I might have known that our relationship was uneven. He released, climaxed, whatever you want to call it, and I didn't. He told me not to enjoy myself, to hold back, with promises of pleasing me later. How do you hold back on personal enjoyment? At the time I didn't know how. Isn't it funny that now I could tell you exactly how to do it, how to keep a firm grip on yourself, how not to have an orgasm. I felt so guilty at the time. He told me not to climax and I did it anyway. He had a grip on me, even that early on, and I couldn't do anything about it. I was hooked on him like a fish on a line. I couldn't have escaped, not even then.

"I'm ashamed of a lot of things I did with him. Hell, I'm ashamed of everything I did with him. We did a lot of kinky things. He'd hit me with leather straps or tie my arms behind my back or to the bed posts. He'd wrap his hands around my throat and choke me until I saw spots. He'd cut me with knives and lick the blood from the wounds. He'd send me to work with phallic toys hidden inside me or with dirty words written on my skin. He'd call me names when I pleasured him. He'd tease me about loaning me out to his friends, either as a willing donor or a sex object. I liked some of those things. I don't know what it was about them. Maybe the excitement of having a dirty secret that no one knew about. Sometimes I got a huge adrenaline rush or it made the few climaxes I did experience more vivid. Thinking about them now just hurts. I don't know how many of those things I would still enjoy now, how many of them I liked because Bill liked them, how many of them are memories that I've twisted and turned around in my mind. The whole umbrella of experience makes me shiver with disgust.

"But the ones I remember most, the memories that keep me up at night or feed my nightmares, they're all things that we did and I didn't like. Usually, I would tell him that I was afraid or nervous or unsure. It didn't matter. It never mattered to him. He did those things anyway and I didn't get a say. It's great to not have a say when it's something you like. It's almost like the blame isn't on you. You can say he did it and I just happened to like it. You can revel in the lack of control. You can celebrate it. But when it's something you're forced to do and you hate it, I mean really hate it… that's different."

I shut my eyes because I knew any moment I was going to start crying. I could see myself on that bed, my fists gripping the quilt, my head turned off to one side. I was shaking. I was biting my lip and I was terrified. He told me I'd enjoy it, but I didn't. Not ever. Not once. I wanted him to stop. I wanted to beg him to stop.

"I don't know why I didn't tell him to stop. I don't know why I didn't crawl away and say no, please, don't do this anymore. I wanted to tell him. And at the same time, I wanted him to be happy. I wanted him to know that I'd sacrifice my comfort for him. I'd be an object for him. I'd be something less than myself, something less than human. I couldn't point my finger at something and say yes, that right there, that's why I never spoke up. It isn't like that. It isn't cut and dry. We had anal sex, many times, and never once did I enjoy it. Never once did I get used to it the way he said I would. He didn't care. If he did care, I couldn't tell. We did that act when he wanted to do it. I didn't get to have a say.

"I don't know what I want you to do with all of this information. I'm ashamed of myself, for letting him do those things to me. I know that sounds silly. It even sounds silly to me. But I can't help thinking that I'm the one responsible. Maybe I'll stop thinking that way, eventually. But right now, it's my fault. I did it. I let it happen."

I let out a breath. I took in another one.

"I cry when I have sex. It didn't start out that way for me. It was something that developed over time. I didn't have sex until I was twenty five years old, but, since we're being honest, I'd pleasured myself before. I didn't cry doing that. But with Bill, I wept. They weren't tears of joy. Bill told me I was releasing tension, that I was letting go of pent up stress, and that my reaction was normal. You saw past that. It wasn't until you told me I was miserable that I came to realize it. It took a long time. But I can look back now and tell you that you were right. I was miserable. I was ashamed of what I'd done, what had happened. I was torturing myself. Now I associate every thought of sex with pain, crying, misery. I cry when I try to pleasure myself. I'd probably cry if we had sex right now. Hell. I definitely would.

"The worst part is the thing you saw the other night. He trained me to hold onto my orgasm, and now I can't let go of it. I don't know what I'm so afraid of. He can't punish me anymore. I guess I just don't want to be vulnerable. I don't want to put myself in danger. The punishments weren't as bad as his anger, his disappointment. It was that that drove me over the edge. Whenever I did get a chance, and they were limited, it was always way out of my control. I'd be tied up or strapped down. I'd be blindfolded or gagged. He'd take me well past the point of crying, screaming, begging, aching. And when it was over, I sank back to earth like a stone. It sounds great in theory, but it was scary. It was always followed up by those crying fits. Every time. So maybe now, I'm just too afraid of ending up there again, completely out of my comfort zone, completely removed from reality. I don't know."

I closed my eyes and opened them slowly. I was almost done.

"I know I'm not even close to healed yet. I don't know when I'll get there. It could be months from now. It could be years. I'm afraid it will never go away, that I'll never be able to walk into a room, see him, and not want to rip his guts out. I know I'm not free of his influence. I know he's still going to haunt me in my dreams, that I'll still wake up and think he's watching me. You sent him away and I knew he was gone and I still thought he was staring at me from across the lawn. I know I'll never forget. I don't want to forget. I don't want to make that mistake again. I don't want to let someone control my life the way he did, and if I forget, it'll happen again."

I sat up and looked into his face. His eyes were dark and thoughtful. His brow was furrowed. He lifted his hand to my cheek and I held it against my face with both hands. The tears in my eyes made my vision blurry. I wiped my eyes so I could see him clearly.

"But I want to let you in. Knowing everything you know now, everything that's shaped me, everything that's made me the fucked up Sookie Stackhouse I am today… please, tell me you still want me."

He swallowed up my face with both of his massive hands. His thumbs brushed through my windblown salty hair. I let the tears fall like rivers from my eyes and I didn't hold them back. There was no use holding back from Eric anymore. He knew everything there was to know. He had every secret, every thought. He seemed to be studying my face with those dark stormy eyes.

"I still want you, my lover," he whispered. His chest rumbled. He slipped his arm down to my waist and pulled me against him. I slid both of my arms around his neck and we kissed.

It was a soft kiss but a needy one. In that gesture, I needed to know that he accepted me, all of me. I needed to know that he was going to be there with me, that he would understand my reactions to the balls life was bound to throw at me. I needed to know he was going to guard me from the future and yet still allow me to be my own person. He was going to help mold me back into a person, and he wasn't going to let me suffer alone.

It's about power. Who's got it. Who knows how to use it. So tell me, who's got the power?


The End.

Quotes in this chapter are from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, "Lessons".