I keep telling myself it’s just curiosity.
Just curiosity.
Nothing more.
That is probably the first lie.
Not the biggest one.
Just the first.
I read an article.
Then another.
Then a forum thread written fifteen years ago by someone I will never meet.
Then a photograph.
Then a story.
Then a description of a collar.
Then an explanation about protocol.
Then another.
And another.
I close the browser.
Ten minutes later I open it again.
As if I forgot something.
As if there were an answer hidden somewhere between all those words.
There isn’t.
I know there isn’t.
The strange thing is that every explanation creates a new question.
Every answer leaves a residue.
A small grain of dust.
The dust accumulates.
That is what nobody explains.
Not the desire.
The dust.
The accumulation.
The slow sediment.
The room smells faintly of old plaster.
I don’t know why I notice that.
The window is closed.
The air barely moves.
There are particles suspended in the afternoon light.
Tiny white fragments floating without purpose.
I keep staring at them while reading.
The article is talking about submission.
I am looking at dust.
I don’t know which of the two makes me more nervous.
Sometimes I find myself imagining things.
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing extreme.
Simple things.
A command.
A permission.
A rule.
The possibility of stopping thinking for a moment.
That thought should embarrass me more than it does.
Maybe it already does.
Maybe that is the problem.
I delete my browsing history even though nobody is going to check it.
That feels ridiculous.
I do it anyway.
The chair creaks when I lean back.
The sound is louder than it should be.
For a second I feel caught.
Caught by nobody.
That is the worst part.
Nobody is watching.
Nobody knows.
And yet the shame arrives on schedule.
Perfectly punctual.
I keep reading.
Not because I understand more.
Because I understand less.
The deeper I go, the less stable everything becomes.
The words stop looking like words.
Submission.
Control.
Trust.
Authority.
They begin to orbit each other like objects with their own gravity.
I tell myself I am studying.
Researching.
Learning.
Maybe I am.
Maybe.
But there is a moment when research becomes anticipation.
And anticipation becomes something warmer.
Something I don’t want to name yet.
The screen light reflects on my hands.
I notice my fingers are cold.
I have been sitting in the same position for almost an hour.
I hadn’t realized.
The neck hurts a little.
A small warning.
Nothing serious.
Just enough to remind me that I still have a body.
That detail feels important.
More important than all the articles.
More important than all the theories.
Because the body already seems to know something that the mind is still trying to negotiate.
That realization stays with me.
Long after I close the browser.
Long after the room goes dark.
Long after the dust disappears into the night.
And that is the uncomfortable part.
The truly uncomfortable part.
Not the fantasy.
Not the curiosity.
Not even the desire.
The fact that tomorrow I already know I will read again.
Just for a minute.
Just one article.
Just curiosity.
Nothing more.
Probably.
I don’t know exactly when I started thinking about Sade this way.
Not as a writer.
Not as a philosopher.
Not even as a monster.
But as a room.
A room inside me.
Small.
Cold.
Always lit.
There are nights when I catch myself doing something ridiculous.
I look at my phone.
I put it down.
I look again.
Nothing has changed.
I know that.
Yet I return.
As if I were waiting for instructions.
As if someone might tell me who I am.
I’m embarrassed to admit it.
Because I like imagining myself as independent.
Hard to influence.
Capable of standing on my own.
And yet there I am.
Waiting.
Always waiting.
I think Sade understood something terrible.
Submission does not always require chains.
Sometimes it only requires expectation.
Sometimes a closed door is enough.
A glowing screen.
The possibility that something might happen.
The room is silent.
So am I.
But silence has weight.
I can feel it behind my eyes.
Beneath my tongue.
At the base of my neck.
Like a hand that never quite settles.
That is why augmented reality feels strange to me.
Not because it adds fantasies to the world.
Because it reveals them.
The fantasies were already there.
Waiting.
Clinging to walls.
Hidden behind ordinary objects.
Sleeping inside familiar things.
A chair.
A hallway.
A door.
A glance.
Sade would have understood that.
Imagination as an overlay.
Obedience as architecture.
Freedom as something that sometimes looks suspiciously like a well-designed command.
And the worst part is that some part of me finds comfort in it.
I shouldn’t say that.
But it’s true.
There are forms of exhaustion that long to surrender.
Not to a person.
Not to an authority.
But to the effort of deciding all the time.
Sometimes I want the world to be prewritten.
I want someone to have chosen already.
I want the next step to exist without asking anything from me.
Then I become frightened.
Because I recognize the mechanism.
I recognize the pleasure.
I recognize the comfort.
And I recognize the shame.
The room remains.
Always.
White walls.
Lime dust.
The sensation of being watched even when I am alone.
And then comes the question I can never answer.
If nobody were watching.
If no machine were recording anything.
If no eye existed behind the glass.
Would I still behave exactly the same way?
I’m not sure.
And perhaps that uncertainty is the room.
Perhaps that uncertainty is Sade.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it the fantasy was already sedimented in the lime…
