I do not remember when I started paying attention to the waist.
Not to bodies.
To the waist.
To the way a posture seems to change before it moves.
It is a silly thing.
Or at least that is what I try to tell myself.
But I keep returning.
An image.
An illustration.
A description hidden inside a book.
I close it.
And a few minutes later I am already checking whether I remember it correctly.
In the literature of the Marquis de Sade, the corset and the girdle rarely function merely as garments of compression. Their strangest effect is not physical. It is temporal. They introduce a doubt between the body and posture. They make every movement seem to have started seconds before becoming conscious.
Perhaps that is why I keep returning.
Not because of the garment.
Not because of the tightening.
But because of that difficult sensation.
The suspicion that the body was already obeying a shape before deciding to adopt it.
The shoulders seem to position themselves.
The back seems to remember something.
Breathing finds a different path.
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing that should justify so much attention.
And yet I return.
To check.
To verify.
To revisit an image I have already seen.
As if there were a detail I continue to miss.
In Sade’s universe, the corset does not always alter the body.
Sometimes it alters the relationship to the body.
It transforms posture into a permanent record.
Into a question.
Into a verification that never fully resolves.
Am I holding this position?
Or did I simply realize too late that I was already holding it?
The difference seems small.
But it is enough to make me return.
I look at my posture.
I adjust it slightly.
Or I think I do.
A moment later I check again.
And what unsettles me is no longer the posture.
It is how familiar the act of returning has become.
It wasn’t the corset.
That’s what I told myself for weeks.
Just a strange image.
Nothing more.
One of many things that appeared when I followed one link, then another, then another.
At first I wasn’t even attracted to it.
It seemed excessive.
Unnecessary.
Too rigid.
Too serious.
Too theatrical.
And yet it kept appearing.
I saw it once.
Then again.
Then I started recognizing it before it appeared.
The buckles.
The laces.
The impossible waistline.
The posture.
Always the posture.
The coffee cup sat beside the keyboard.
I picked it up.
It was already cold.
I couldn’t remember when I had started reading.
I only knew I was still doing it.
Articles.
Then personal journals.
Then forums.
Then interviews.
People describing something I still couldn’t fully understand.
Some talked about control.
Others talked about discipline.
Others used much simpler words.
Calm.
Surrender.
Silence.
That last word appeared too often.
Silence.
I couldn’t understand what silence had to do with a corset.
Maybe that’s why I kept reading.
Because something didn’t fit.
Something felt important.
Something everyone seemed to understand except me.
It wasn’t arousal.
At least that’s what I kept telling myself.
It was curiosity.
I wanted to understand.
Only understand.
But understanding never arrived.
Every answer created another question.
Every text seemed to point toward something just beyond my reach.
Then I started noticing something.
I didn’t think about the corset while reading.
I thought about it afterward.
When I closed the screen.
When I went for a walk.
When I tried to focus on something else.
It returned.
Without invitation.
Without explanation.
Like a song refusing to leave my head.
Why this?
I had no answer.
And the less I understood the answer, the more often the question returned.
The monitor was the only light in the room.
Everything else was dark.
I checked the time.
Far more time had passed than I thought.
Much more.
I considered closing the tab.
I did.
Five minutes later I opened it again.
That was the part that started to bother me.
Not the object.
The repetition.
How easily I found reasons to come back.
Just one more article.
Just one more photograph.
Just one more explanation.
Always one more.
I should move my neck.
I’m not moving it.
The thought appears.
The movement doesn’t.
I realize I’ve been sitting exactly the same way for several minutes.
Reading.
Watching.
Returning.
I’m starting to suspect that I was never truly interested in the corset itself.
Maybe I was interested in the feeling that appeared whenever I looked at it.
The feeling that there was something I still didn’t understand.
Something attractive precisely because I couldn’t explain it.
And the more I tried to explain it, the more space it occupied.
It wasn’t an answer.
It was a presence.
Small at first.
Persistent afterward.
Now settled somewhere inside my head.
The cup is still on the desk.
The coffee is still cold.
The room is still the same.
But something has changed.
I don’t know exactly what.
And maybe that’s what will make me come back tomorrow.
Not to find an answer.
But to discover why I’m still looking for one.
I have to move my neck…
