I don’t know exactly when it started.
Maybe it was a book.
Maybe it was a photograph.
Maybe it was a sentence by the Marquis de Sade that I found late at night and shouldn’t have kept reading.
The strange thing is that it wasn’t the violence that stayed with me.
It was the obedience.
I remember closing the book and sitting still for a few seconds.
I told myself it had nothing to do with me.
And yet I came back the next day.
And the day after that.
And the day after that.
There is a particular kind of shame in discovering something that attracts you when you’ve always believed you were someone else.
I’m not talking about desire.
Desire is simple.
I’m talking about curiosity.
The kind that settles in quietly and begins watching everything.
You start reading about domination.
Then you imagine scenes.
Then you wonder what it would feel like to be there.
Not doing.
Receiving.
Not leading.
Following.
And for some reason that difference feels heavier than it should.
Sometimes I catch myself thinking about something as simple as a kiss.
Not a romantic kiss.
Not the kind from films.
Something else.
A kiss that means more than affection.
A kiss that feels like a silent acceptance.
As if two people were signing something without using words.
And that’s where the problem begins.
Because part of me wants to understand it.
And another part doesn’t want to look like the kind of person who needs to understand it.
I read more.
I search more.
I try to explain it away as intellectual curiosity.
As a passing interest.
As research.
But I know that’s not true.
Because I feel the anticipation before I even open a page.
Because I recognize the excitement.
Because I start waiting for those moments.
Sade wrote about bodies.
But bodies are not what follow me.
Surrender is.
The possibility of setting something down for a few minutes.
The possibility of not having to decide.
And admitting that is far more difficult than admitting any fantasy.
Sometimes I close the screen.
I look around the room.
I try to think about something else.
But the question remains.
Small.
Persistent.
Uncomfortable.
What does it say about me that I want to keep reading?
I don’t have an answer.
Only that curiosity that returns every night.
And the feeling, increasingly difficult to ignore, that I am moving closer to a part of myself I still don’t know whether I want to meet.
Before any concrete experience, only reading exists.
Not the act.
Not the practice.
Only the repetition of images, concepts, fragments.
At first, it is perceived as information.
Something external. Something observed from a certain distance.
But that distance does not remain stable.
There is a point where the reader stops consuming the content as an object and begins to notice it as an echo.
It does not happen clearly.
There is no decision.
Only a slight persistence.
Certain sentences are revisited without intention.
Parts that were already understood are reread.
Attention lingers longer on details that would previously have been ignored.
And something slightly uncomfortable appears in that repetition.
Not pleasure.
Not rejection.
A form of attention that does not fully fit the original intention.
The mind tries to classify it.
“Curiosity,” perhaps.
“Interest.”
“Overthinking.”
But no label fully fits.
The only clear thing is that the content does not end when the page is closed.
It remains for a few seconds more.
As if the text needed a little more time inside you before leaving.
And sometimes it does not fully leave.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it I should the base of the skull a porous alabaster surface the taste of lime filling the glottis the pulsing inertia of the lip stops the record reaching absolute zero I should
