Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2006 13:27:04 +0200
From: Julian Obedient <julian.obedient@gmail.com>
Subject: The Mark of Possession

Daniel Surtin took a last, disgusted draw on his hardly-smoked cigar.
Then he put it down. The ashtray was a capacious amber-toned glass
thing, with fashioned glass swerving around its edge. It had a
twenties look. He let the cigar burn itself out there. The smell of
the smoke would permanently permeate the air of the room and mark it
indelibly and irrevocably with his presence.

But that would hardly do. It was not good enough. The influence he
needed to exert now was not ethereal. The force he needed to release
now could not achieve itself in the imagination. Fulfillment was not
something intangible.

It was hard, subservient flesh. It was a definite look in the eyes of
surrender and devotion. It was the power of the man who had conquered
another man. Those things added up to fulfillment. To be fulfilled he
needed to have possession of another man, so that he could shape his
life as he willed.

That's what he wanted. He wanted to fill the insides of another man
and dominate him. He bit his teeth and felt the fibers of his muscles
insisting.

He stripped to his jock and his boots and did a hundred push ups. He
was made of iron. He held the chinning bar and did fifty on that. His
abs were like rocks, his cock a powerful fist that ached to connect.

He showered and admired himself in the bathroom mirror. He was a
splendid animal.

He pulled his leather jeans over his bare body, snapped on his leather
bracelets and armbands, slicked his thick, dark hair back, checked the
diamond stud in his left ear, and admired his powerful naked chest in
the bedroom mirror.

In the hallway he smelled it. The rich residue of his cigar hung in
the air the way that the perfume of a woman who knows how to get men
to do what she wants remains in an elevator even after she's gone.

He turned the key in the lock and walked down the steps into the
summer street still hot at midnight.


It was a hot night in New York City, a hot night in July. In the
street it felt like you were in a closed room, stuffy beyond
endurance, and you just had to open the window. Except there was no
window to open. The air shut against you like the walls of a closed
room. You were outside and there was nothing to open. It was like a
brick wall.

David had not seen Roque for over a week. He had declined to give him
his cellphone number and David did not know where he lived. He often
still pictured his feet and how he had lost himself in kissing them.

The heat drew crowds on to the streets all over.

David stopped into Benny's for an iced daiquiri and stood at the bar
flirting with Wally.

It was cool inside Benny's, but not so cool as to make it
uncomfortable for Wally and the other bartenders to be shirtless, or
any of the clientele who so chose also.

David was wearing a short-sleeve black shirt, sleeves rolled high
revealing his beautiful slim, muscled bare arms. The shirt was
unbuttoned revealing a chest he was proud of, that had taken several
years' work, but was not overdeveloped. Lean and muscular were the
words that turned him on and that described him. He was tanned and
sleek and smooth. Every now and then his nipples peeked out from
behind the curtain of his open shirt.

Wally reached over and touched one. He nodded and winked. David felt
like he was going into a trance. He caught himself, smiled, waited a
beat, and winked back.

Wally looked away for a moment and gestured to Daniel with a tilt of
his head. Daniel was sandwiched between the jukebox and an old
telephone booth that hadn't been torn out, even though cellphones had
made telephone booths obsolete. At Benny's this one had gotten new
life. Guys went inside together, stripped off their shirts, and became
supermen.

Daniel was watching a couple pressed shirtless outside the booth,
chest to shirtless chest, embracing and surrendering to a kiss the way
lovers in the nineteen forties might stand in front of a row of phone
booths at the old art nouveau glass and steel Pennsylvania Station
taking a long goodbye from each other, the heartbreak of separation
momentarily vanquished by this tangible conjunction of spirit.

Daniel saw Wally's nod and walked up to the bar.

You two ought to know each other, Wally said.


I'm afraid you wouldn't understand even if I could tell you, David
said, sipping his third daiquiri and gazing at Daniel with longing as
they stood at the bar. You're...I don't know how to say it.

What? I'm what?

You're...well-balanced. You're whole. Me, I'm a collection of
ill-fitting fragments which are at odds with each other and are always
compromising themselves and each other.

Daniel shook his head.

What's in that stuff you are drinking, lover?

I know what I'm talking about, David said gently, imploring. That's
what's at the root of my fascination with sado-masochism and
domination and submission. I have trouble understanding it completely.
I mean...

Daniel smiled.

I've never understood what that's about, myself, he said.

That's what I was trying to say before, David said, misunderstanding
him. It's just not in your bones. Me, it's who I am. One part of me is
always dominating another part of me. I'm always being dominated by
another part of me. I am enslaved to myself. So I want to be free of
myself. It's simple. That's what's behind my lust to surrender to a
master. That way I can defeat the part of myself that's making me do
what it wants.  But I'm also myself. And myself doesn't want to. So I
got all kinds of currents running around me ^Ö domination, humiliation,
pain, discipline, shaping myself into an ideal object, hating myself,
loving myself, hating loving myself, getting off on hating myself.

Be quiet, Daniel said, putting his finger to David's lip. You're too
wound up in your mind.

I know, David said. Sorry. It's the daiquiris.

Daniel smiled.

How 'bout another daiquiri? he said.



Daniel took two small key-rings from a wooden box on his desk.

He separated the wire strands, the way you do when you slide a key on
or off a ring. He pulled them apart far enough to clamp each one on
one of David's nipples.

It stung and almost felt good.

Look at yourself in the mirror, Daniel said.

I like how it looks, David said. It brings everything out.

David meant the definition of his pecs and abs pleased him.

The rings bit into his nipples and they became hot from the sensation.

Daniel told him to do fifty push ups. After the tenth David no longer
felt a stinging sensation in his nipples. He was full of a dynamic
energy that kept him going like a piston.

After the fiftieth push-up, David sprang to his feet and presented
himself with hands cupped behind the neck and legs about eighteen
inches apart.

He was happy, exposed like that, smooth shaven and being looked at.

He was proud.

And then he gasped from the pain when without warning Daniel tugged
the rings off his nipples.

David did not like the pain, but he sensed his own feelings were
unimportant. Discipline was achieved only through pain. Pain made it
necessary to ignore and overcome your feelings. That's discipline.

Thank you, sir, David said with bowed head.

Daniel put the rings back on David's nipples. They bit when he let go.
Then he twisted them.

It was burning, stinging pain.

But once again David said, Thank you, sir, and maintained his position.

It was not to stop. Repeatedly Daniel snapped the rings on, tormented
David twisting them and tortured him tearing them off.

David wanted to say Yes, sir, thank you, sir. But he could do nothing
but shout, No, No, please, stop. The pain. No. Please, Master, please.

He heard himself and was ashamed.

Daniel ignored him. He knew the resistance would pass. He continued to
inflict pain.

David held himself tighter. His breathing was furious and he growled
like an animal. But he held himself still, and still Daniel did not
stop. And still David looked for someplace within him where he could
want this pain. He wanted to want it, to be able to want it. It was a
dear goal. But as much as he strove to desire the pain, it did not
change: he did not want the pain.

It was that awareness of his failure to conform his will perfectly to
Daniel's, more than the pain itself, that broke David's spirit and
made David's sobs break out -- no matter how hard he resisted.

I can't. I can't. I can't. I want to and I can't.

For shame he sobbed and cried out. Not shame at being so used as he
was by Daniel. Shame, rather, at failing to respond as he knew he
ought to, as he wished he could, as he wanted to. Shame at his
shameful weakness. Shame at the childish pleasure he felt at the
outrush of his warm urine soaking his boxer briefs as he lost control
of himself completely.

Come, Daniel said, as he guided David gently to the bathroom. In the
shower, David soaped and scrubbed himself. Coming out, he allowed
Daniel to wrap him in a thick terrycloth robe.

I'm sorry, David said.

Daniel took him in his arms and kissed his cheeks and eyelids and ears
and neck and lips. David felt like a stone that was suffocating him
had rolled off his chest.

Daniel opened David's robe and looked at his beautiful naked body and
the steady tumescence of desire. He took the scrotum in his palm,
brought his lips to David's and pressed kisses into him like he was
returning to him something that had once belonged to him.


When Daniel's fingers gently touched David's sore nipples later, David
felt the way a machine must feel when it is switched on and the
electric current hums through it. He knew with a thrill he had never
known before that he had no purpose other than what Daniel used him
for.

In the morning, but not too early, Daniel took him to have his nipples pierced.

It may seem strange that a piece of silver inserted through the nipple
can have a profound influence on the mind. It seems strange even to
me, who have experienced the change and am making it a part of David's
experience in this story. But it is real and it was exhilarating.
Strange too that this mark of bondage should feel as it did to me and
as it does to David now, so liberating.

David had often imagined having his nipples pierced, but something ^Ö
modesty, shame, shyness, fear? ^Ö always had prevented him. But now the
matter had been taken out of his hands. This man, whom he had met only
the night before and who had so quickly taken control wished it to be
done, and so it was done. He was transformed. The insertion of a tiny
silver bar through each nipple seemed to pierce his mind, and -- how
to say this? -- his mind seemed to collapse, like a balloon that's had
all the air let out of it. It was a feeling of supreme emptiness, of
buoyancy and lightness. Whereas he had always been weighted down with
an awareness of himself, now he was so weightless, he floated like a
dancer on a tightrope. He glowed like feathery, cotton candy clouds
flooded with pink in a sunset like the one I saw tonight in the
western sky.

He was pierced.

It's a reward, Daniel said. It's my mark of possession.


The temperature was in the nineties. They walked east on Bleecker
Street and then turned left, heading towards one of the grand old
apartment buildings forming the west margin of Washington Square Park.

David walked shirtless in the heat, proudly showing off his pierced nipples.

Daniel, he said, What is the virtue of obedience?

The answer is simple, Daniel said. You know it in your bones. It
satisfies a fundamental desire, more fundamental than the desire for
pleasure.

David knew he was right.

There's a desire for discipline, Daniel said. Discipline comes from
learning to endure, and then to accept, and then to love pain.

Accepting pain is the mark of obedience. Obedience comes from
discipline. Rebellion destroys discipline. Rebellion is the rampage of
a mind that has not accepted and surrendered to a master.



Seeking pleasure, Daniel continued, is always the goal of rebellion.
It is the sign that something's wrong, that something is not there
that you wish were. Going after pleasure is rebellion against the way
things are.

Accepting pain means you are sufficient in the present. It is the mark
of submission and self-conquest, of obedience and strength.

Once someone has surrendered he can feel the much greater and much
subtler, the mysteriously nuanced pleasure of inflicted pain. When you
can feel the pleasure in pain, then everything is going to be filled
with joy. You know that from your own experience.

David's mind was glowing with a white light.



----------------------------------------------------



I loathe having to animadvert to anything as vulgar as reality, but
essentially, there was nothing else I could do. I needed, frankly, the
money.

In the circle of mostly men gathered around him broke ripplets of
laughter. The men were young, good-looking, confident, or they faked
the attitudes of confidence skillfully drawing strength from their
well-carved, tightly held bellies. And they all had success on their
minds.

I'll be pulling them in in fewer than five years, Tom told Andy on the
way over to Wellington's. Getting an invitation to Daryl Wellington's
is something guys in my position would kill for. The contacts.

He didn't want to part from his cool, not-really-there,
don't-really-care attitude, but something irresistible forced him to
get a rush from Andy's excitement.

It means I'm getting somewhere.

You're always somewhere, Andy said, who had stars in his eyes when it
came to Tom but was afraid to confess to it.

Everyone laughed when Wellington dropped the end of his sentence. They
did not know how much, but everyone knew Wellington had shifted gears
and driven himself into money.

Afraid he would no longer be taken seriously, he came to have a sharp
critical eye for himself, and in pearl words strung together on the
frail string of his on-going talk he mercilessly, savagely exposed and
derided himself and his bundle of faults.

He had made, indeed, a felix culpa, he said winking when he'd unburden
himself to his intimate friends in a conspiratorial voice.

Daniel, he cried as Daniel came through the grand arch to his living
room, one arm slung over David's happy shoulder.

They had come directly from the gym. They had showered after their
work-out. As they embraced in the shower stall with the needle points
of hot water falling on them and their muscles, they felt, as they
embraced, little particles of energy bouncing against each other and
embracing too, until they achieved the heaven of relief and mutual
surrender.

You've put on weight, Wellington, Daniel said facing his host and
sipping a Rob Roy.

Don't rub it in, dear boy. I have not had the incentives recently to
exercise. And I have developed, over the years, a fondness, you know,
for greasy meats. You, on the other hand look like you have been
eating your vegetables, he said, scanning David standing by Daniel's
side, at ease, quietly.

What the hell are they talking about? Andy whispered to Tommy as they
sat crammed on a leather sofa between a bohemian girl who kept taking
pictures with her cell phone and a young Arab boy who was rolling
joints on the low table in front of them and passing them around. An
older woman in a black satiny long dress with a shimmering gold beaded
yoke sitting cross-legged on the floor across the room was staring at
them.

You don't get it? Tom said

What's there to get? Andy said sotto voce and confused.

I am going to Hollywood. It is true, Wellington drawled. I have sold
out, my darling, big time, I'm happy to say. But all this talk and you
have not introduced us, Daniel.

David, Daniel smiled, gesturing with a sweep of his arm, like an
exhibitor presenting some marvel.

David, Wellington repeated the name. David, indeed! David as David as
the David in the Academia di  Belle Arti. Come here, David.

David looked at Daniel for permission, which Daniel quietly granted
with a wry smile.

Yes, sir, David said.

Very well behaved, Wellington said approvingly. You have been well
trained, haven't you, David?

Yes, sir, David responded.

May I touch? Wellington asked looking at Daniel.

But carefully, discretely, Daniel said, with a nod.

David stood unmovingly still. As if by magic he took on the aspect of
marble. Wellington traced fingers along his torso and thighs. He
traced the shape of his lips and marveled.

Extraordinary, he said smiling to Daniel as he returned David to him.


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