“That was a mistake,” John said, pointing at my face.
“You said you like water,” I squealed, laughing as I struggled to get away. “I was just helping!”
His hands went to his waist, and he unbuckled his belt.
“Oh, my God,” I exclaimed. “John, we’re outside! We’re in a field!”
“You should have thought of that before,” he said, as he pulled his belt off through the loops on his pants. I tried to squirm away, but John wrestled me over onto my stomach, folded his belt in half, and whipped it across my butt. He was kneeling on the backs of my legs, straddling them, so I couldn’t escape. I folded my arms and hid my face in them. On the far side of the field, a spotted black-and-white cow was looking at us.
Shakespeare hides Romeo and Juliet’s sex scene inside the break between scene 3.4 and scene 3.5, by the way.
I ROLLED OVER onto my back, basking in the Alpine mountain scenery and the afterglow that comes with a really satisfying spanking.
“Get up, bird,” John said. “Someone is going to see us.” He was already standing up.
I pointed at his waist, where his belt had been restored to its more traditional place.
“That is a dangerous object,” I said dramatically. “I need a minute to recover. You don’t know how it feels.”
John snorted.
“I grew up in Oklahoma,” he said. “Of course I know how it feels.”
The dark implication was a bucket of ice water. Nothing puts a frost on sex quite like psychology.
I hopped to my feet.
“Fine, I’m up,” I said. “Happy?”
“As a matter of fact, I am happy, darlin’,” he drawled, grinning.
We collected my water bottle from the far side of the field, rode the tram back down the mountain, and then took a series of trains back to Geneva.
At a stationery shop in one of the Swiss train stations, I bought a pad of paper and a blue pen. On the next train, when John leaned against the window and fell asleep, I pulled out the notebook and began to draw. I drew rolling waves, crested with froth and bits of spray. I’m not an artist, but I rocked that wave drawing. It looked great. I was proud.
John was still asleep. I crawled over to his seat and poked him in the ribs. He grumbled and turned away.
“Wake up,” I whispered, poking him again. My excellent wave drawing demanded admiration. “The train is on fire.”
That did the trick.
“What?” he muttered, waking up.
“Nothing,” I said. “I made you a drawing.” I pressed it into his hand.
John looked at it for a long time. Then he touched a wave with the tip of his finger.
“This is beautiful,” he finally said. “Thank you.”
“You like it?” I asked.
“I love it,” he replied.
“I’m glad to hear that,” I told him. “Because it would mean a lot to me if you got this tattooed on your back.”
“What?” he asked.
“I’m kidding,” I said, laughing.
It can be hard to accept that Romeo and Juliet isn’t a love story. There is so much beauty there—beautiful language, beautiful moments—which can feel undercut by the realization that the play is about childishness and lust rather than real love. But love and communication are the same thing. And the characters in Romeo and Juliet, including the title characters, don’t communicate. More than a romance, Romeo and Juliet is a bloodbath. (“Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love,” Romeo claims at the beginning of the play, but I’ve wondered if perhaps the opposite is true.) Six people die. And the reason they die, more often than not, is that they didn’t talk to each other. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare couldn’t be more clear about the importance of communication: at the end of the play, if a single letter were delivered on time, Juliet and Romeo would likely survive. When the lines of communication fail, love fails.
Romeo and Juliet is a play about children, and John and I were children, too. We didn’t ask each other the right questions, or have the necessary conversations. I shouldn’t have ignored the ominous implications of John’s remark that his childhood taught him what it feels like to be hit with a belt; at the same time, he should have shared himself with me through more than hints. And I should have shared myself with him. But, instead, I tucked my legs under me, leaned against his shoulder, and we watched Switzerland pass us through the window of our high-speed train.
We arrived back in Geneva and headed straight to the airport. Hotels were expensive, and we had an early flight home to Barcelona, so John and I had decided to sleep in the departures terminal. Airports are free.
We walked inside and looked for a comfortable place to sleep. Under my pants, I could feel the telltale deep, prickling itch that told me something was healing.
“I’ll be right back,” I said. “I need to run to the bathroom.”
“Going to survey the damage?” John joked.
“No,” I glared. “I just need to pee.”
“Sure, sure,” he said, sarcastically. “You hate all of this.”
“Watch my backpack,” I ordered.
I left John alone and wandered through the deserted terminal until I found a bathroom. Friar Lawrence was already inside, washing his hands over a sink. I rolled my eyes.
“This is the girls’ bathroom,” I said. “But I suppose you’re here to tell me that ‘these violent delights have violent ends,’ right?”
“That’s right,” he said gravely. “Don’t forget.”
He shook the water off his hands and grabbed a paper towel. Then he walked out, letting the door swing closed behind him.
I checked under the stalls for feet. When I felt confident I was alone, I locked the door, stood in front of the mirror, and pulled down my jeans and underwear. I twisted around to look at my butt in the mirror. It looked okay. No, it looked great. In the months since that first spanking, John and I had discovered, to our mutual delight, that I could bruise beautifully. And there it was: a purple-and-pink aurora borealis on my ass.
I wondered what kind of dress I would have worn to prom.
I pulled up my underwear and, with my pants still wrapped around my knees, hopped into a stall. I peed, and then stepped back out. The line of sinks was in front of me. A sudden, infuriating thought sprang to mind.
I dashed to the bathroom door, unlocked it, and ran out into the airport. Friar Lawrence was nowhere in sight. I sprinted across the terminal to the automatic exit doors, which whisked open before me. To the right, in the darkness, I could just make out the distant, brown-robed figure of the friar. I ran down the pavement after him.
“Hey, asshole,” I shouted. He turned around and waited until I reached him. I skidded to a stop.
“What the fuck was that?” I yelled, pointing toward the airport. “Was that some kind of shitty metaphor? Are you also washing your hands of me now?” I reached out and shoved him in the chest. He fell back a step.
“Stop worrying, child,” he replied, taking one of my hands in his own. “Not everything in your life is about your childhood. Sometimes a soap bar is just a soap bar.”
He squeezed my palm, then turned away to resume his walk toward Geneva.
I stood there, huffing and watching him go.
Back in the airport, I found John upstairs. He had set our backpacks against a wall and was using his own as a pillow. I settled on the floor next to him and put my head on my own backpack. It felt hard. I shifted on the floor, trying to find a comfortable position, but it was useless. I wouldn’t be able to sleep that night.
We lay there, listening to the soft murmur of the airport.
I turned my head to look at John. His eyes were open, too.
“I missed my prom,” I told him.
John looked at me for a few seconds, then stood. He walked over to a nearby display case of glass figurines and held out his hand to me.
“Dance with me here, little bird,” he said.
I peeled myself off the floor a
nd walked over to take his hand. He pulled me into his arms. I put my hand on his shoulder; he put his hand on the small of my back. And right there, on the second floor of the Geneva airport, surrounded by sleeping travelers and one night janitor, I rested my cheek on his chest and we danced. Tiny sparks of light bounced off the glass figurines in the case and scattered across the floor of the terminal.
“Hey, look how the floor of heaven is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold,” Lorenzo, from The Merchant of Venice, called over to me from the arrivals lobby, where he was dancing with his wife, Jessica.
Then it was silent, save for a few occasional snores. We danced to the music I imagined in my head.
2.4 The Taming of the Shrew:
Rough with Love
John grabbed my upper arm.
“We’re going home,” he growled, as he dragged me down a busy Barcelona street called Passeig de Gràcia. “I’m going to spank you until you learn to be more considerate of my time.”
He stepped off the curb and lifted a hand to hail a taxi.
I had just turned eighteen. Like many teenagers, I had a problem with tardiness. John didn’t like that. Luckily, my punctuality (or lack thereof) was something I could control. If I felt restless—in other words, if I wanted to play—I could leave twenty minutes late for a date. Or if I unintentionally arrived on time, I could slip into a café and wait a few minutes to be tardy. It was a reliable and predictable way to get a spanking, when I wanted one.
But this time wasn’t part of a plan. My subway train had gotten stuck inside a tunnel, which is why I was late to meet John at an after-work movie for which he had already bought tickets.
“It wasn’t my fault,” I told him. “The train stalled. If you need to spank someone, go find the subway conductor.”
“It was your fault,” John corrected. “You have to plan to arrive fifteen minutes early. You can’t plan to arrive right on time. Things happen that you don’t expect, as you’re about to discover.”
A taxi pulled up to the corner. John grabbed my shoulder and, with a firm nudge, pushed me into the backseat. He slid in after me, then leaned forward and recited his address. Our taxi pulled into the stream of traffic.
The driver was in earshot, and likely understood English, so I settled for a vague complaint: “This isn’t fair.”
“Nonsense,” John replied. “You’re too argumentative.”
I had to concede the point. I was too argumentative. He was right, and it stressed me out. The scraps of information that I’d found on the Internet suggested that I was “submissive,” but that word didn’t seem right. I never acted or even felt submissive. I had spent the entire span of my sexual maturity fantasizing about this kind of relationship, but now that I had it, I was holding back. To steal from Henry VI, Part 3: if John was “stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless,” wasn’t I supposed to be “soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible”? But I was none of those things. I argued, complained, bargained, negotiated, and did everything a submissive wasn’t “supposed” to do. I couldn’t help myself. Spankings hurt. I craved and fantasized about them, but I also feared them. This confused me.
Years later, I would learn that I’m a bit of what the kink community calls a “brat”—someone who is a bottom, but has a play style that is more sassy or combative. In mature, healthy kink, responsible “bratting” isn’t shameful; it’s just a different point on the kink spectrum. But I didn’t know that yet. At the time, it felt like I’d failed at normalcy and failed at kink. I couldn’t even succeed at being messed up.
The taxi arrived at John’s apartment building. He dragged me into the elevator.
“Have you considered the possibility that you’re an agent of patriarchy?” I growled, once the doors closed. “And if patriarchy is terrorism, that makes you a terrorist.” (I’d recently stumbled onto the selected writings of Andrea Dworkin.)
John ignored my elementary discourse on gender politics.
“I think sometimes you’re late on purpose,” he mused. “Either way, we’re going to break you of this unattractive habit.”
“That’s not true!” I exclaimed, bristling with indignant embarrassment. Maybe conviction would cancel out the fact that he was, technically, correct.
John stuck his hands in his pockets. “I think,” he said, leaning against the wall of the elevator, “you just need discipline.” Then he grinned.
Damn it. That boy could be sexy.
“I have never been late on purpose,” I lied. “You’re paranoid.”
“Maybe I am,” he replied. “But that doesn’t change anything.”
“I bet you like it when I’m late,” I grumbled under my breath. If John heard that, he didn’t respond.
The elevator arrived at the seventeenth floor. John grabbed my upper arm and pulled me toward his apartment. When he got inside, he pointed at the couch in his living room.
“Bend over the end of that sofa,” he said. “And don’t you dare test me on this one.” Then he left the room and disappeared down the hallway. A second later, I heard the air conditioner in the other room click on.
While he was gone, I did what I’d been told. I bent over the arm of the sofa, rested my elbows and forearms on a cushion, and dropped into the arch of my back. I loved this position. It made me feel sexy.
John walked back into the room, rolling up his sleeves.
WHAT IS ABUSE? It’s a question I’ve often asked myself. After all, the consensual interactions that feel so erotic and necessary to me would be considered abusive in other contexts. This is what interests me most about The Taming of the Shrew.
It’s easy to forget that The Taming of the Shrew is a play within a play, but it is. In the first scene, a group of people play a trick on a drunk beggar, Christopher Sly, who has passed out in an alehouse. They put rings on his fingers and place him in a lavish bed. When he wakes up, they treat him like a nobleman. At first, Sly is bewildered when these strangers insist that he is a lord. But they assure him that a play will cure his amnesia and “melancholy,” so he agrees to watch it. It is only in that form—as characters in this play within a play, performed for people who are themselves pretending to be something they are not—that Kate and Petruchio, the central characters of The Taming of the Shrew, appear.
Their story is controversial. At the beginning, a wealthy young man named Lucentio falls in love with a beautiful woman named Bianca. But there’s a catch: Bianca’s father, Baptista, has declared that she cannot get married until her older sister, Katherine, does. Finding a husband for Katherine, Lucentio learns, will be difficult. Katherine has a terrible reputation around town. People say that she is rude, hostile, mad, and ill-tempered: in other words, a “shrew.” No one wants to marry her—which is fine with Kate, since she dislikes all of them, too.
Meanwhile, Petruchio arrives in Padua and decides that he wants to marry Katherine—or, rather, that he wants to marry the wealthy inheritance her father guarantees. But in their first meeting, Kate and Petruchio’s relationship accelerates beyond the financial. After they spar in perfect symmetry—it’s a jousting match, not a conversation—Petruchio announces to Baptista that he “must and will have Katherine to my wife.” At this, Kate uncharacteristically has no sassy retort.
On the day of the wedding, Petruchio is late. The moment when Kate fears that Petruchio has left her at the altar is a rare glimpse of sincerity. Her tearful disappointment is no game. Kate, this woman who refuses to do anything she doesn’t want to do, wants to marry Petruchio. He eventually shows up and, after the wedding, he takes her back to his house.
Once they are alone, Petruchio begins the uncomfortable and alarming process of “taming” Kate. He inflicts on her the same tactics that Elizabethan falconers used to tame their birds, which emphasized deprivation of food and sleep. (Petruchio inflicts this deprivation in the guise of “love,” insisting that Kate is too good to eat his inferior food or sleep in his inferior bed.) These scenes can be difficult to watch, especially fo
r people who believe, as I do, that Kate and Petruchio share a real and meaningful love. But their “taming” process is mutually exhausting. When Katherine does not eat, neither does Petruchio.
In the final scenes, Kate and Petruchio return to Padua to visit her family. On the road, they share a climactic denouement when Petruchio asks Kate to pretend that the sun is a moon, and she does. “Be it moon, or sun, or what you please,” says Katherine, “. . . henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.” Soon after this, they kiss.
The play ends back in Padua. Kate, in front of the same people who dismissed her as “mad” and “curst,” delivers a long speech about the “love, fair looks, and true obedience” that women owe their husbands. Her use of the word “true” is significant. In this moment, as in the rest of the play, Shakespeare screams in our ears not to forget that there is a difference between what is “true” and what is play.
Above all, The Taming of the Shrew is a play about playing. Innkeepers pretend that Christopher Sly is a lord. Servants pretend to be noblemen, and noblemen pretend to be teachers. Kate pretends to believe that the sun is a moon, and that an old man is a young virgin. Shakespeare saturated this play with so much pretense, in fact, that we cease to notice it—just as we forget that a play-within-a-play narrative frames everything. Lucentio even cautions us to not let “counterfeit supposes [blear] thine eyne.” That is, we shouldn’t let false impressions cloud our sight. Yet despite this warning, we still forget.
Shakespeare wrote many plays within plays, including the ones in Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But The Taming of the Shrew is the only one where the play within a play destroys its narrative frame and becomes the play itself. That detail fascinates me: Kate and Petruchio’s story appears so real, and so powerful, that it takes over.
But their relationship is a literal fantasy. It’s play.
Should we hold play to the same standards as reality?
Masochism and sexual fetishism existed during Shakespeare’s life, of course, and I have no doubt that he was aware of them. One of the most graphic literary descriptions of kink—frankly, it sounds like a spanking fetish to me—appeared in a 1599 collection of epigrams and elegies by John Davies and Christopher Marlowe, which Will Shakespeare, then thirty-five years old, likely would have read:
Sex with Shakespeare Page 9