I Learned to Be Submissive the Night I Stopped Resisting

My name is Camila and, until a little over half a year ago, I knew nothing about myself. That sounds exaggerated, I know. But it’s the truth. I was twenty-seven, had a boring job, and a very tidy idea of who I was: a shy, quiet girl, the kind who sits in the back row and prays nobody asks her anything. That Camila wore baggy jeans and sweatshirts two sizes too big. That Camila would have died of embarrassment if a man looked at her too long.

Then Mateo came along. And I started writing this because I need to tell it somewhere, even if it’s to strangers.

I met him at a friend’s birthday party. I was in a corner, holding a drink I wasn’t planning to finish, and he came up as if he already knew something about me that I still hadn’t figured out. He spoke to me softly, slowly, unhurriedly. He didn’t ask me what everyone asks. He looked at my hands, my neck, the way I avoided his eyes, and smiled.

—You hide a lot —he said—. What a shame. You have a back that deserves dresses.

I blushed scarlet. And yet that line stuck to me all week.

***

Mateo is quite a bit bigger than I am. I’m five foot three, I weigh very little, I’m not strong at all. He towers over me by two heads and a few dozen pounds. From the beginning I understood, without anyone saying it out loud, that with him I wasn’t going to be able to insist on much of anything. The strange part was realizing that this reassured me instead of frightening me.

The first time we went out, he told me he’d pick me up at eight and that I should leave my clothes laid out on the bed. Not so he could choose them, I thought. I was wrong. He arrived, opened my closet, took out a short dress I’d bought in a burst of courage and never worn, and left it on the bedspread.

—This one —he said—. And nothing underneath that shows.

My hands were shaking when I pulled up the zipper. I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a woman I didn’t recognize: my legs bare, the heels he had also pointed out, the neckline lower than I’d ever dared on my own. This isn’t me, I thought. And at the same time: I wish it were.

That night I walked down the street feeling the way men turned their heads. Before, that would have made me want to disappear. With Mateo beside me, with his steady hand at my waist, it gave me something very different. I liked being looked at. I liked knowing he saw it and that, even so, I was his.

***

The rough treatment came later, but it didn’t catch me by surprise. It was as if everything else had been the preparation.

One dawn, at his apartment, he kissed me against the hallway wall before even turning on the light. It wasn’t a gentle kiss. He grabbed my hair, tipped my head back, and kissed my neck as if he wanted to leave a mark. I let out a sound I’d never made before.

—That’s it —he murmured against my skin—. I want to hear you like that.

He took me to the bed half by shoving me, half in his arms, and turned me over. I didn’t object to anything. That’s the part that’s hardest to explain: that not objecting was, precisely, what turned me on most. He moved down my back with his mouth, spread me open with his hands, drove his tongue where no one had ever touched me like that before. I pulled at the sheets, trembled, moaned his name into the pillow. He laughed softly, satisfied, like someone checking something he already knew.

Then he came up. He mounted me from behind and, with one open hand on my nape, pressed my head down into the mattress.

—Down —he said—. Stay down.

I felt all his weight on top of me. It was hard to breathe and I didn’t want him to stop. He fucked me hard, with no pauses for me to get used to it, and each thrust tore a moan from me that I no longer minded being heard. At some point it hurt. I told him so, almost voiceless. He didn’t let up. He lowered his mouth to my ear and asked me if I really wanted him to stop.

—No —I answered.

And it was true. I liked that it hurt. I liked not having the strength to push him away even if I’d wanted to. I came like that, crushed against the bed, repeating things I would never have said out loud: that I was his, that he should do whatever he wanted with me. He finished inside me, slowly at the end, and stayed there for a while without pulling out, breathing against the back of my neck.

—You’re more obedient than you think —he said.

I didn’t argue.

***

Over the months I began to understand how this worked between us. I’m delicate about almost everything. I like attention, I’m fussy about little things, I demand to be indulged. But in bed I shed all of that. I hand over the decisions like someone letting go of a weight. He chooses how I dress, when, what I wear underneath. I can’t remember the last time I wore loose clothes. Now it’s short dresses, heels, thongs almost every day, and often nothing holding up my breasts because he likes them visible.

He taught me to obey in small things first. To wait quietly. To ask permission. To lower my gaze when he spoke to me a certain way. He says a bowed head is a sign of submission, and at first that made me laugh a little nervously. Now it comes naturally. It’s strange how the body learns before the mind does.

Once, while he was fucking me, he set his foot on my cheek and held me there, against the floor, not pressing hard, just enough for me to feel who was in charge. I should have felt humiliated. And in a way I did. But that humiliation, chosen, made with him, lit me up like nothing else. I came looking at him from below, with his foot still on my face, feeling like the smallest and most desired woman in the world all at once.

***

The photos started by accident, one of those afternoons when I fell asleep on his couch. I was face down, in a thong, with my dress hiked up. He woke me very gently, phone in hand, and showed me what he’d taken.

—Look —he said—. Look at what I’ve got here.

They were pictures of my ass, my back, the edge of my half-asleep face. I had never liked being photographed. Seeing myself made me uncomfortable. But those images were different. I looked good. I looked desirable in a way I didn’t know how to see in the mirror. I stared at them longer than I should admit.

—I like them —I admitted, softly.

—I know —he said—. It shows.

That night I suggested something I never imagined would come out of my mouth. I told him I wanted to show them. Not my face, not yet. Just the body. I wanted other people to see them, for some stranger to look at them and fantasize about me without knowing who I am. As soon as I finished saying it, I covered my face with my hands out of sheer embarrassment. He pulled my hands away, slowly, and made me hold his gaze.

—So my shy girl is an exhibitionist —he said, smiling—. We’re going to take it slow. But we’re going.

And we started going.

***

I opened an account where I post photos. Nothing that identifies me: no full face, no tattoos, no apartment in the background. Just me, in the clothes he chooses, in the poses he decides. The first time I pressed publish my heart was racing. I thought about deleting it as soon as I uploaded it. I didn’t.

What happened next changed me from the inside out. Messages started coming in. Men I don’t know and will never know, writing what they’d do to me, telling me how they picture me. I, who would have died of embarrassment if someone looked at me on the subway, now get turned on reading strangers fantasizing about my body. Knowing they’re on the other side of the screen, looking at me, wanting me blindly, does something to me I didn’t know existed.

And the best part of all: I tell Mateo about it. I read him the messages out loud while he touches me. I tell him how many people looked at the photos, what they wrote, what they’d like to do to me. It drives him wild. He fucks me harder when I talk to him like that, as if the idea that half the world desires me from afar confirms that at the end of the day I spread my legs only for him.

—Let them look all they want —he told me one night, his hand tight in my hair—. But I’m the one who puts you on your knees.

—Yes —I answered, and lowered my head without being asked.

***

I know this would be incomprehensible to a lot of people. A woman who enjoys being treated roughly, who likes being made to cry sometimes, who likes being called nasty things in bed and comes precisely because of that. A shy girl who became a voyeur of her own desire, who gets off imagining other people’s eyes on her. I don’t expect anyone to understand it. It took me a while to understand it myself.

All I know is that I have never felt as free as I have since I learned to obey. I know that sounds contradictory. But handing Mateo control didn’t make me smaller. It stripped me bare. That Camila in the back row, the one in the oversized sweatshirts, still exists by day. At night, though, I become something else. I am his. And each time I explore a little farther.

We’re still taking it slow, step by step, trying out each new thing when he decides I’m ready. I’ll keep telling the rest later, what comes next, what I dare to do the next time he tells me “down” and I, without thinking, lower my head. For now I’ll keep this: discovering what you are is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.