They Left Me Tied Up and No One Knew How Much I Wanted It

The classroom smelled of disinfectant and reheated coffee, that sterile scent of places where other people’s lives are practiced on. I sat in the plastic chair they had placed in the center, under the fluorescent lights, and felt all the gazes settle over me. My role was simple: to be the patient, the inert body the rest of the class would learn to work on. No one suspected that, the moment my thighs touched the seat, I stopped pretending.

I wore the most comfortable clothes in my wardrobe and, at the same time, the ones that exposed me the most. The black top clung to my skin like a second layer, and underneath there was nothing. I had decided that morning, in front of the mirror, my heart pounding in my throat. With the air conditioning, my nipples had hardened until they hurt, two tips rubbing against the synthetic fabric, searching for a pressure that never came.

I hadn’t put on any makeup. Without that mask, my insecurities were plain to see: the pallor, the small acne marks on my cheeks, the dark circles from several sleepless nights. The instructors kept commenting on how “believable” my shocked-patient face was, and I had to bite my tongue not to laugh. It wasn’t trauma that had drained the blood from my face. That blood was lower down, thick and hot, pooling where no one could see it.

—Carla, relax your shoulders —one of them said.

His voice reached me as if from the bottom of a well. I closed my eyes for a second and the classroom dissolved. I was no longer in a course; I was kneeling in the dark, offered up to your gaze. The shame of having someone see my bare face, my imperfect skin, suddenly turned into fuel. I wanted you to see me like that, stripped of all my defenses.

I rested my hands on my thighs, over the fabric of my leggings. I looked at my fingers: nails bitten down to the quick, raw from the stress of those days. It disgusted me and, at the same time, sent a shiver of pleasure through me. I felt dirty, exposed by my own lack of control, and that was exactly what I needed to feel.

The instructor came closer and my personal space shrank to nothing. The smell of coffee and antiseptic grew dense. I tried to breathe, but the air got stuck in my throat, because in my head that man had stopped being a technician.

—We’re going to assess the pupillary response and pulse —he announced to the class.

I felt the pads of his fingers, cold and professional, pressing at the base of my neck in search of the artery. I imagined it was you, measuring how much my blood sped up when you touched me without asking permission. The contrast of the cold of his hand against the fire at my nape tore a shaky sigh from me that I disguised as tiredness.

—It’s very rapid. Notice the coloration of the neck —he murmured.

Heat rushed up my chest, a red tide over the pallor. The humiliation of being examined like a specimen was exactly what kept me wet. My thong was already a damp restraint; every tiny movement in the chair reminded me of the weight of my own betrayal, a stain I was sure everyone could smell.

His hands moved down to my shoulders to reposition me. The pressure went through the thin top and, without a bra, the fabric rubbed my nipples with exquisite cruelty. I wanted to push him away. I also wanted him to squeeze harder, to sink his fingers into me until they left marks.

—Carla, look at me —he ordered, bringing a flashlight up to my eyes.

I forced my eyelids open. The light blinded me, but what truly dazzled me was how close he was. He was so near I could make out his pores, and I felt naked with my marks only inches from him. I bit down hard on my lower lip, seeking pain so I wouldn’t lose my mind, and tasted the warm metallic flavor of my own blood.

—Now, cervical immobilization. Keep the axis aligned, don’t let the patient rotate —he said, taking up position behind me.

I couldn’t see him. I didn’t know when he was going to touch me, and that uncertainty became a finger running down my spine. Then I felt the pressure. His hands, much bigger than mine, closed on either side of my head, wrapping my ears and jaw in a firmness that admitted no resistance.

The world went out. His palms against my ears erased every sound in the classroom. Only my heartbeat remained, pounding in my temples, and the heat of his skin against mine. I was trapped, unable to move my head a millimeter, and the suffocation of that stillness was delicious.

Master, look at me, I screamed inwardly, because in that absolute silence you were the only thing that existed. I imagined those hands weren’t protecting me but claiming me; that the rest of the class was watching my surrender without understanding it. When he finally let go, the noise returned in a rush, like a slap, and I felt the cold emptiness where his touch had been.

***

We were given a break. I stood up with my legs trembling, a weakness born at the center of my pelvis and spreading like sweet poison. I walked to the bathroom feeling my thighs brush with every step, and locked myself into the stall, the latch thrown.

I moved closer to the mirror. Look at yourself, I told myself. A pale woman, hair badly pinned up, cheeks lit by a fire that was anything but healthy. But what hurt most, and what excited me most, were my lips: swollen, a violent red, with a crust of dried blood at the corner. They looked like the mouth of someone who had just been used.

I slid my hand under the waistband of my leggings, desperate to check the scale of my own disaster. My fingers sank into the soaked fabric of the thong. I brought them to my nose and closed my eyes: the scent was thick, metallic with blood, heavy with repressed desire. It was the smell of surrender, and I wanted to drop to my knees right there.

I imagined you behind me, watching in the mirror as your bright girl came apart in a public bathroom. I wanted to rub myself, put an end to it, but I heard other women coming in, voices, trivial conversation, laughter. The contrast made me feel like a caged animal. I washed my face with ice-cold water. It didn’t put out a thing.

***

I went back to the chair. The instructor held a roll of elastic bandage that, in his hands, looked like a chain waiting to be unfurled.

—We’re going to practice a chest compression bandage —he announced—. Carla, raise your arms.

When I obeyed, my top rode up and exposed a strip of pale stomach. The exposure was a jolt. There I was, arms raised, nipples hardened and pointing into the void.

—Take a deep breath and let it out —he ordered.

I felt the cold bandage just under my breasts. It started wrapping around me, turn after turn, and with each one the compression increased. The elastic fabric flattened my breasts against my ribs, denying them movement, and the gauze brushed my bare nipples in a rhythmic torment that made me grind my teeth.

They were packing me up. Breathing became difficult, short desperate gasps. In my mind it wasn’t a bandage: it was your hands encircling me, squeezing until I could only breathe with your permission.

—Too tight? —he asked, his fingers dangerously close to the curve of my breast.

I wanted to say no, but only a muffled moan came out. I closed my eyes, red-faced, sweaty, my hands clenched into fists in my lap. I imagined he was wrapping me up to hand me over, that I was a package ready to be used.

—Perfect. Stay like that, we want to observe respiratory restriction —he said, and stepped back.

He left me there, compressed, suffocating with desire. I felt more naked bandaged than without clothes. I was ready for that pressure to become something else, but his professional indifference hurt more than the bandage itself.

***

The instructor signaled to four students. The murmur died away and the metallic sound of an orange canvas stretcher unfolding cut through the air. Two boys and two girls surrounded me as if I were a delicate object about to be dismantled.

—Carla’s body is inert cargo. She can’t help you, she doesn’t control her movements —he explained to them.

Those words sank into my stomach like a stone. Inert cargo. No control. It was exactly the invitation my mind had been waiting for. I let my muscles go slack, let my arms fall to the sides of my bandaged torso, and turned into a flesh doll surrendered to the force of strangers.

Hands slid under my armpits, others around my thighs, others gripping my hips. They lifted me. Losing contact with the floor cut off my breath. As they moved me onto the stretcher, my body swayed, heavy and vulnerable, and I feared the stain I was leaving on the chair was a bright confession to the whole class.

They laid me on the cold, rigid canvas, forcing me to stare at the ceiling. Then the straps came. Click. A nylon strap crossed my thighs, pressing the leggings against my inflamed sex. Click. Another went around my waist. Click. The last one passed over my chest, on top of the bandage. I was tied down. I couldn’t cover myself, couldn’t hide my face, couldn’t stop my legs from trembling.

—Lift her on three. One, two... three.

The floor disappeared. Suspended in the air, held only by the effort of four strangers, every step they took shifted me against the straps. The friction was rough, burning. The chest strap pressed on my already restricted lungs and forced me to pant. I imagined they were your guards, taking me to you so you could see how well they’d packaged me.

—Keep her up, we’re going to simulate a transfer over rough terrain —said the voice.

They started rocking me on purpose. The world tilted. The friction of the straps, the taste of blood, the suffocation of the bandage: I was at the limit, wanting the drill never to end and, at the same time, begging for a hand to tear the straps apart and claim me for real.

***

The exercise ended with the same coldness with which it had begun. The stretcher dropped abruptly to the floor and the impact tore a moan from me that no one heard.

—Good work. Ten minutes’ break before the final evaluation —he announced, and the students dispersed amid laughter and after-school plans.

One by one they unfastened the straps from my legs and waist. But, in their hurry to go outside to smoke or check their phones, someone forgot the last one. The strap crossing my chest remained fastened. I was left lying on the orange canvas, in the middle of the empty classroom.

Immobilized from the shoulders up, I tried to sit up, but the nylon dug into the upper edge of my breasts, reminding me I was still under custody. The soaked top clung to my skin. My hands were free, and yet I couldn’t use them to free myself: the fear that someone might walk in and find me in the middle of my own degradation kept me petrified.

I imagined you walking into the deserted classroom and finding a woman tied to a stretcher, her lip split and her chest struggling to steal air from the bandage.

—Master? —I whispered into the void, and the sound of my own voice sent a shiver through me.

There was no one to save me, but no one to use me either. It was the purest form of despair. I bit my lip again; the wound opened and iron flooded my mouth once more. I was so wet I could feel the chill of evaporation on my thighs.

I heard footsteps. My heart slammed against the nylon. The door opened and, for an instant, I held my breath, waiting for the verdict. It wasn’t Him. It was the instructor, a folder in his hand and total indifference on his face.

—Ah, Carla, still here —he said without looking at me, as if I were a forgotten mannequin—. Sorry, the last strap got stuck.

Clack. The pressure vanished from my chest and the physical relief was almost painful. The blood started circulating again, but my mind remained chained to that canvas. I slowly sat up, dizzy from a freedom I hadn’t asked for.

—You can go. We’re done with the demonstrations —he added, crossing something off his list.

***

I walked out to the parking lot with the heavy, cold dampness of the thong marking me with every step. I closed my eyes and tried to summon again the sensation of his hands over my ears, the pressure of the bandage, the weight of the straps. I wanted to imagine you waiting for me in the darkness of my car, to make sense of that whole ordeal of exposure and shame.

But the parking lot was deserted. All that fire, all that gathered moisture, all the humiliation of showing my skin and my flaws before strangers dissolved under the dim light of the streetlamps. I had been ready for total surrender, and no one had come to seal it.

At home I took off my clothes, which already felt like dead skin. In front of the mirror, the red marks from the bandage and the straps still ran across my pale torso, scars from a war in which no one had claimed me. I touched myself, searching for the trace of a heat that was already cooling, with the deep sadness of someone who has not been possessed. I had imagined myself naked before everyone, had tasted my own blood and soaked my clothes waiting to be taken. The reality was an empty classroom and a man who didn’t even remember my name. I curled up in bed, hugging the void, while the echo of my frustrated desire rang in my head like a sentence.