Sex with Shakespeare

by Jillian Keenan

So that was Lesson Number One: implements.

  “This is plastic,” I said, days later, lifting a paddle brush in my right hand. “And this is wood,” I added, nodding to the brush in my left hand. “Wood is more painful than plastic. It’s also more painful than leather.”

  David nodded.

  I picked up a wooden spoon.

  “This is a spoon,” I continued. “As far as I’m concerned, cooking is its secondary utility.”

  Fetishists call household implements that can be repurposed for kink “pervertibles.” There are lots of pervertibles: hairbrushes, bath brushes, rulers, belts, spatulas, wooden spoons, and more. I get distracted at Bed Bath & Beyond. (Books can be pervertibles, too. I’m under no illusions about what my friends will do with hardcover copies of this one.)

  That solved the problem of David’s manual discomfort. The good news for his hand was “bad” news for my butt.

  “Ow!” I laughed into a pillow, weeks later. (We spread these “seminars” out over a period of months.) David had just hit me hard—very hard—with a wooden hairbrush.

  “What number was that?” he asked.

  “A six?” I suggested. We were measuring the intensity of different strokes with scientific meticulousness: it could only have been David’s idea.

  “Okay,” David noted, with professionalism. “So this one hurts more than the belt.”

  I nodded.

  “Yes,” I confirmed.

  “You have a crazy pain tolerance, Jilly,” he observed. “How do I push you past a six?”

  I giggled over a flutter of nerves.

  “Hit me that hard, but don’t stop,” I admitted. “Just lay into me.”

  David nodded.

  “Got it,” he said. Soon after, we achieved a nine.

  “What the hell is a ten?” David marveled.

  I laughed.

  “No rush,” I said. “We’ll figure it out.”

  Another week, I swallowed three shots of candor—also known as whiskey—and, red with shame, finally introduced the word scold.

  “You want me to scold you?” David clarified.

  “Yes,” I mumbled, squinting at the ceiling. “It’s not like I’m externalizing internal guilt. I don’t think I deserve to be scolded. It just—it helps me drop into the right headspace.”

  David shrugged.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “It’s so weird,” I moaned.

  “Is it more weird than putting the produce section of the Asian foods aisle up your—”

  “Hey,” I interrupted, pointing at him. “Don’t dis ginger.”

  We were drunk. Things got funny.

  “You buy three-dollar beverages, have two sips, and then never—finish—them,” David ranted, spanking me. “It makes me crazy.”

  David rarely unloads. I was oddly charmed to discover that this was the secret resentment he’d been bottling up inside.

  “That’s what you’re upset about?” I laughed, squirming. “Iced tea?”

  “What is the point of ordering a drink if you don’t finish it?” David continued. “Three dollars here, three dollars there—”

  I was still laughing.

  “The tea I bought yesterday was too sweet,” I pointed out. “You’re a doctor—did you really want me to drink unhealthy sugar water just because I paid for it?”

  David paused. I had made a good point.

  He fell back on a classic.

  “I’m the one who is talking now, not you,” he said, ignoring my rebuttal. “This thing you do with drinks is killing me. You are torturing me with tea.”

  He was serious. It was hilarious.

  (My friend Kelley, who is very committed to BDSM ethics, would be furious if I didn’t mention that alcohol complicates consent. For safety’s sake, BDSM practitioners must be especially conscious of those lines. David and I both understand that. But our bodies are our own, as is our relationship. David and I have enough experience with each other to feel comfortable playing drunk, and we know when we’re too inebriated to consent. So cut us some slack, okay?)

  “Did it feel good to get that off your chest?” I asked afterward.

  David grinned.

  “You know,” he said, “it really did.”

  I laughed.

  But David wasn’t the only one who had a thing or two to learn. Eventually, the student became the teacher.

  “It’s not like you’ve made a great effort with vanilla things, either,” David snapped one day.

  Oh, shit. He was right.

  I had things to learn, too. Which is why, weeks later, I was in our kitchen, wearing stilettos and a frilly apron over black lace lingerie. (To put this in context, my preferred pair of “erotic” underwear says “ONE TOUGH COOKIE” alongside cartoons of the eponymous snack.) There was a lasagna in the oven and a glass of scotch in my hand. I’d found a soundtrack for the evening by searching for “porn music” on YouTube. It was all very normative.

  I felt—

  Well, bored, to be honest. David wasn’t home yet. I had been standing there, restarting my porn music, for more than half an hour.

  I picked up my phone.

  “No one ever says how boring sexy surprises can be,” I texted Peng. “I have this big reveal planned, but he’s not home yet. So I’m just waiting.”

  “That’s why you bring a book to sexy surprises,” Peng replied. “Always bring a book.”

  David’s key scraped the lock.

  Months passed like this.

  For more than six years, that damn folder—“David, If You Find This, Please Don’t Look Inside”—had been sitting on my hard drive. Even after I wrote about it in my first New York Times article, it stayed closed. I always knew that, even if David found it, he would respect my wishes and leave its contents unread.

  But every class has a final lesson.

  “You also have a clown fetish, don’t you?” David said, settling in front of my laptop. “I knew it.”

  I laughed. “Don’t tease me, babe,” I said. “This is hard for me.”

  David sighed. “You’re about to show me some super cool, edgy, sadomasochistic, like, French erotica,” he said. “And it’ll make my stupid porn seem lame.”

  I shook my head.

  “No, honey,” I replied. “That’s really, really not what’s about to happen.”

  “It’s like I’m marrying an onion,” David said, squinting into the distance. “So many layers. And every one makes my eyes water.”

  I snapped my laptop shut.

  “That’s it,” I said. “I’m not sharing my heart, or my soul, or my thoughts, or anything with you, ever again.”

  David was laughing.

  “That was a joke,” he said. “You’re not an onion.”

  “Well, now I feel like an onion,” I pouted.

  “You’re not an onion,” David repeated. “I take it back.”

  “Say I’m an artichoke,” I demanded. “My layers taste good, and they don’t make you cry.”

  David pressed his lips together to suppress a laugh.

  “You’re an artichoke,” he agreed.

  “And my heart is, like, the best part,” I finished.

  David raised his eyebrows.

  “Oh, wow,” he said. “This metaphor really carries.”

  I grinned.

  “Yeah!” I cheered, proudly.

  “And artichokes take a lot of work, too,” David added.

  I stomped out of the room.

  Twenty minutes later, after David got me to admit that, yes, like an artichoke, I do require a lot of work—but, he added, artichokes are worth the effort—we went back to my computer.

  “Okay,” I told David. “As you know, my fetish deals with power dynamics. Things like discipline and hierarchy turn me on.”

  David nodded.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “So, like, the military is one example of that kind of power structure,” I said. “Religious groups are an example of that, too.”

&n
bsp; David nodded again.

  “Okay,” he repeated.

  This was so embarrassing.

  “My point is, if something were to mix military hierarchy with religious discipline,” I continued slowly, “I’d find a lot of potential in that, right?”

  David nodded.

  “Okay,” he said.

  I scrunched up my face.

  “Can you think of anything that combines those two aesthetics?” I asked. “Military and religion?”

  David shrugged.

  “No, I can’t,” he said. “But I bet you’re about to tell me.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” I said, cringing, “if the force is with you.” I covered my face with my hands and flopped over onto the couch, as if I had just died.

  David was cracking up.

  “Oh, my God,” he said, laughing. “You’re into sadomasochistic Star Wars porn.”

  I dropped my hands from my face.

  “It’s not porn, exactly,” I insisted. “They’re stories. I read stories.”

  David squinted.

  “That might be worse, love o’ mine,” he said. “That means you’re into sadomasochistic Star Wars fan fiction.”

  I made a face.

  “I didn’t say I was into the perfect writing quality, David,” I snarled.

  “Okay, show me,” he replied.

  A few minutes later, David was inside my secret folder. (The stories were on my hard drive instead of online because, after the website where I had found them disappeared for a while, I panicked. If the website were to disappear again, it would take 90 percent of my private sex life with it. So I copied every single story into Word documents—and thank goodness I did, because a few months later, the website did disappear for good.)

  I’ll just say it: It’s a bunch of stories about Qui-Gon Jinn spanking Obi-Wan Kenobi. I’ll never again be able to watch a Liam Neeson or Ewan McGregor movie without blushing.

  “Wow,” David said, as he scrolled through my collection.

  “Yup,” I said. I curled my legs up on the couch.

  “But you don’t like the Star Wars movies,” he said.

  “Trust me, I’d like them if they were like this,” I replied.

  “These aren’t even characters from the good Star Wars,” David teased. “Is Jar Jar Binks in here?”

  I snatched my computer away.

  “Don’t be mean,” I said. “You’ve never shown me your porn.”

  “It’s embarrassing,” David replied.

  I raised my eyebrows and pointed at the computer.

  “Most of those stories are from a website called ‘Padawan Punishment,’” I said. “Is your porn more embarrassing than that?”

  “I don’t think anything is more embarrassing than that, dear,” he replied, patting my shoulder with mock sympathy.

  “Ha, ha,” I said. “Now you have to show me yours.”

  Thirty minutes later, after we plowed through a bottle of wine to lubricate the situation, David and I sat next to each other on the couch, staring at a video on his laptop screen. A woman was giving a man a blow job.

  “This is a couple having oral sex?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” David replied. “It’s one of my favorites.”

  We continued to watch.

  “Does anything else happen?” I asked.

  “Well,” David added, “in a minute, another man comes in. And she gives him a blow job, too.”

  I looked at David. I could not imagine a less embarrassing kind of pornography.

  I put my hand on his.

  “I love you, vanilla bean,” I said.

  He squeezed my hand.

  “I love you, too, my young apprentice,” he replied.

  I laughed. At some point, we have to let all the anxiety, insecurity, and self-loathing go and laugh about it. Our sexual secrets can only humiliate us if we let them. Sex, even weird sex, even sexless sadomasochistic Star Wars fan fiction, isn’t embarrassing. It’s funny. It’s great.

  David took a deep breath.

  “The thing is,” he said, “the next guy in this video is actually that woman’s husband.”

  I smiled and shook my head.

  “I get it, I get it,” I joked. “Your porn is super respectable, don’t rub it in.”

  David frowned.

  “No, you don’t understand,” he said. “That means the man she’s with right now isn’t her husband.”

  I squeezed David’s hand.

  “It’s a fantasy, honey,” I reassured him.

  He squinted at the screen.

  “But I like this type of scenario,” he said, in a tone of voice I recognized. “I really like it.”

  I blinked.

  “David,” I asked. “What are you . . . ?”

  He scrunched his lips together.

  “I’m not sure,” David said, his eyes fixed on his screen. “But the truth is, I find the thought of you over someone else’s knee incredibly . . .”

  We turned to look at each other.

  “. . . hot.”

  AT THE PEAK of As You Like It’s sexual urgency, Orlando speaks for all of us.

  “I can live no longer by thinking,” he says.

  But he won’t have to. As You Like It is a comedy.

  And you know what they say about how comedies end.

  Beneath Ganymede, there is a girl. Even when Orlando couldn’t see her, Rosalind was always there. It just took some time to coax her out.

  It’s possible to know—really know—other humans. I have to believe that.

  From David’s (sexually normative) perspective, his biggest triumph was when he spanked me so well, with such a perfect buildup of pain, that I had an orgasm while I was over his knee.

  “But I didn’t even touch you!” David said, astonished.

  I sat up and eyed the wooden spoon in his hand.

  “Well, that touched me,” I pointed out.

  “Oh, my God,” David said. “My mind is blown.”

  I laughed. Although I’d never climaxed during a spanking before, I had known it was possible for a while. I’d even come close with David a few times, but I never told him. I didn’t want him to feel pressured, or to think that spankings are supposed to lead to climax, when that’s not true at all. (It’s not even something I’d want to happen every time.)

  “Do you feel like a stud?” I asked, grinning.

  David nodded.

  “Hell, yes,” he said. “I just made my fiancé come using only my mind.”

  I squinted.

  “Sure, honey,” I agreed, in a dry voice. “Your mind—plus millions of conversations, months of practice, and a wooden spoon.”

  David laughed and kissed the top of my head.

  “Exactly,” he joked. “Easy.”

  But from my perspective, that orgasm wasn’t the best part. The best part took place months later, in a war zone. That’s an improbable setting for a spanking scene in this narrative, I realize, so I’ll explain.

  For years, David and I had hoped that our careers in global health and journalism, respectively, could eventually come together. To our delight, we weren’t wrong. When we plan ahead, David and I can work in the same places at the same time. In this country, David volunteered at a hospital while I worked on a magazine story about pirate prisons.

  Let me give some context. The situation in this country, which has been in a civil war for decades, is not a game, and my journalism job brings me into the lives of real people. I refuse to write something that could harm them. So, for lack of safer options, suffice it to say that—in a city I will not describe, through means I cannot disclose, with the help of people I will never name—I snuck into a prison to interview someone I was not supposed to meet.

  A few hours later, David and I were alone in a safe house, on our way back to the relative safety of a neighboring country. David had already finished his service at the hospital, so this interruption didn’t derail his work. But I also hadn’t warned him about my unauthorized—
and, in my defense, unforeseeable—prison visit in advance.

  David wasn’t thrilled.

  “That’s right, I forgot,” he roared, only half joking, as he paced around the room. “You have a death wish! You want to die!”

  We had been living in the hospital where David worked. We’d had enough privacy for sex, but it had been a while since we’d had enough privacy for an activity that requires loud slapping sounds.

  “Gosh, if only there were some way to punish me for this reckless display of journalism,” I teased in a singsong voice.

  David shook his head.

  “Hell no,” he said. “If I reward this insanity with a spanking, every time I look away you’ll try to get yourself killed.”

  I climbed on the bed and bounced up and down on my knees.

  “Please?” I begged, clutching my hairbrush in front of me, like a bouquet. “It’s not a reward, it’s a terrible, terrible punishment.”

  David crossed his arms in front of his chest and glared at me. I changed tactics.

  “Okay,” I negotiated. “If you give me a spanking right now, I promise to never sneak into a prison again.”

  David laughed and gave in.

  “Fine,” he said, sitting on the bed and pulling me over his knee. “But I’m going to hold you to this promise.”

  He started spanking me with his hand. I snuggled my face into the pillow.

  “Repeat after me,” David said. “I will not sneak into prisons.”

  “I will not sneak into prisons,” I repeated. “Unless it’s for a really good story.”

  David picked up the hairbrush and pounded it on my butt.

  “That wasn’t our agreement,” he growled.

  “Wait, wait,” I yelped into the pillow, trying to crawl away from the hairbrush. “That hurts! I’m not ready!”

  David held me in place and kept hitting my butt.

  “You told me to ignore you if you said that,” he reminded me.

  I shook my head.

  “No, but this time I mean it,” I begged. “Maybe I’m not a fetishist anymore. It’s a miracle! I’m cured!”

  David laughed.

  “You told me to ignore that, too,” he said.

  “Damn it!” I said, giggling into the pillow. “I told you too much!”

  Things continued along these lines for another twenty minutes. By then, I’d fallen into the sweet spot where my endorphins overpowered the pain. The glow was so all-consuming that I almost didn’t notice when David began to alternate the intensity of slaps.