The nerves started the night before, just after the talk. I adjusted the pillows again and again, clinging to the firmest one, trying to slip into dreamless sleep. 

I often feel a pervasive feeling of general guilt, but this was different. This guilt was pointed and purposeful. The line had been drawn and I had been found on the wrong side of it. And I felt childish. It seemed all too fitting, but none too pleasant.

Work distracted me most of the day, but as I drove toward the city, the nerves started again. I drove a little slower than usual, and not because of the rain. 

I sat in the car a few extra minutes, letting the stresses of the day melt away, still trying to push the nervousness back. It continued as I stood on the steps. 

You surprised me by coming from the other direction, and as I turned, your figure was striking in a way it hadn’t been before. The shift had begun. 

My hands shook a bit as I folded my skirt, and then shirt, neatly. The ritual of it was jarring, and as I knelt, placing my nose carefully to the wall, I felt very small. So small, in fact, that my physical height caused momentary cognitive dissonance.

The little girl is not my thing, but there was little alternative. When one acts out in childish ways, she is treated as such, and the message was sinking in. It pushed me into a place where I felt moldable, suggestible–submissive.

I was determined to be obedient, still, and quiet, but my flimsy emotional defenses were no match for your swing. 

My body betrayed me when you checked for my arousal, and I felt the heat of embarrassment on my cheeks.

In the pain and panic, I forgot my determination to be obedient, and moved my arm to a more comforting position. I caught myself halfway, but you caught me sooner. I was immediately sorry, but you made sure I would be just the same, and I struggled against the acceptance. 

Could you hear my internal tape, it would have been a loop of ‘Don’t move. Don’t move. Don’t move. Is it over? Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Stop moving. Just give in. Process the pain. Don’t move damn it.’

But I couldn’t process it. It was just there in a very real, and though my body said otherwise, pointedly unerotic way. There was no feeling of injustice, just chastisement, and a sense that I had earned this and not earned the comfort of erotcizing it. The reality of the lack of control hit me. 

When I stood, whatever was left of my willfulness was blessedly broken.

As I stood hands on my head, listening to the noises around me, I tried to piece together what was happening, and as obvious as it should have been, I hadn’t guessed at all. The sense of littleness and abandonment of will returned and was fixated on perfect obedience. 

For all the control I am supposed to take in the day to day functions of my job–the control that I loathe to take, to give in was freeing, but not without unpleasantness. The idea of any further disprespect caused a shudder in my mind. 

Perhaps the shift was complete.