The Day My Master Brought Needles to the Session

I’d been seeing Damián once a week for months, sometimes twice when his head was clear and my body was willing. At first it was hard for me to look at myself in the mirror after our sessions; now it was different. The marks he left on my back and thighs I wore like a reminder that something inside me had, at last, fallen into place.

I even changed the way I dressed. I started wearing long-sleeved shirts even in August, jeans instead of shorts, loose sweaters that hid the sting of the most recent bruises. My coworkers thought I was going through a weird phase. Better that than having to explain what I no longer wanted to hide from myself.

Damián wasn’t the first. Before him I had tried two guys who said they knew what they were doing and knew nothing. One of them apologized when he saw my reaction, as if crying with relief were a catastrophe. The other had dressed up in cheap latex and had bound my legs with a rope that smelled like a basement. Damián was one of the few who understood that I wasn’t looking for a game. I was looking for something almost nobody knew how to give me.

—Mateo —he said one night, as we finished a tea after the session—, next time I want to try needles.

I laughed almost without meaning to. There are things in my body that don’t work the way they do in everyone else’s. Injections have never hurt me. As a child, according to my mother, vaccines never drew even a whimper from me. I explained to Damián that he’d have to work very hard to get a wince out of me.

—I’ll find something —he replied—. Don’t worry about me.

I asked for a favor, too. That he not forget the studded leather paddle, the small one, the one with the exact shape to seed my skin with constellations. That paddle and I had a particular history. When he used it on me I saw patches of light inside my eyelids.

—You’re awful —he said, smiling—. I tell you “needles” and you negotiate extras.

—I’m an obedient masochist —I told him—. And you’re the sadist who has to do the giving.

***

Damián’s apartment always smelled like something clean, almost like a hospital. I think he did it on purpose, so the ritual of arriving would have its own solemnity. The door closed, the bolt slid shut, and the slapping began; there was never much exchange of words at first. It was as if his hand reminded me of the rules before his voice did.

That night, while I was undressing, I glanced at the low table in the living room. Damián had prepared everything: gauze, alcohol, a screw-top jar, and a metal tray full of needles. I felt a jolt in my stomach. There weren’t three or four. There were so many. They were a different thickness from the injections I knew. Longer, too. I wondered what store he bought those things in and promised myself I’d never find out.

—Look what I’ve got for you —he said behind me.

—You took what I said seriously —I replied.

—You never learn.

He started with the paddle without warning. Without the usual warm-up ritual, without the first soft taps to get the body to accept it. The first stroke took my breath away. The second ripped a sound from me I hadn’t expected. By the fourth, my ass was hot as if it had been under the midday sun for a while.

Then he put the clamps on me. He tightened the screws all the way without asking. The chains hung from my nipples like two little plumb bobs, and I breathed through my mouth, trying not to think about what would come next. I knew that in Damián’s ritual the clamps were the prelude to something worse.

When he drove the first needle into my right buttock, I felt almost nothing. Pressure, a clean pinch, a deep entry. I smiled on the inside. My body wasn’t betraying my prediction. Damián drove in the second, symmetrically. Then he drove in two more, and two more. Ten in one cheek, ten in the other. I watched him in the mirror on the back wall and laughed without laughing. It was a strange sight: a man with a straight back and skin seeded with little steel rods. He looked like a hedgehog just awake.

—For now you’re winning —I said.

—For now —he answered.

He moved to my nipples. He pulled on the little chain with his left hand while with his right he pushed the needle behind the areola, from one side to the other. That first one hit me differently. I felt it as a shiver climbing from my chest to my teeth. The second, with the nipple already taut in the clamp, made me close my eyes. By the fourth on each side, I wasn’t making calculations anymore. I was enduring.

—Now what? —he asked me, his voice as calm as a physiotherapist’s.

—Keep pretending they don’t hurt —I replied.

—Be good and wait.

He started moving them. Not one by one, but two at a time, one in each hand. He shifted them a millimeter, twisted them, pulled them out a little and pushed them back in to the very end. The pain wasn’t the pain of the paddle. It was a different animal. It was a fine current branching through the skin, one that knew nothing about muscle, one that stayed around to live there for a while. I started sweating for real. On my forehead, down my back, in my palms.

—Now you’re starting to complain —he said, almost tenderly.

—You found something —I admitted—. Congratulations, asshole.

—I told you I would.

***

When he got tired of moving the ones in my buttocks, he ordered me to walk. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. He made me take a full lap around the living room, slowly, with all twenty needles still in place. Each step was a discovery. The muscles contracting pulled against the tiny points where the metal entered the flesh. They were thin needles, they weren’t going to tear me open, but the pain was like electric pinpricks running down my thighs.

I counted the floor tiles so I wouldn’t stop. I came back to him like a dog returning to its place.

—Good boy —he said, and inside I melted.

—I’ve got more, if you want —I offered, though my voice cracked a little.

—You’ve got more —he confirmed.

He drove another five into each buttock, this time closer to the thigh, where the skin is thinner. Those I felt differently, deeper, faster. I let myself fall face-down over his knees without him asking. I knew what he wanted. He knew what I needed.

—You make it easy for me —he murmured, with that half-smile that appeared when he liked what he saw.

—Yeah —I said, my face pressed against the couch—. Do what you have to do.

He went back to moving the needles one by one, slowly, giving them time. I closed my eyes and focused on breathing through my nose. It was a new sensation. It wasn’t the sharp pain that had been with me these past months. It was a patient pain, one that stayed, one that spread. I was beginning to understand why Damián had insisted so much on the idea.

***

He pulled them out with the same calm with which he had put them in. One by one, gauze in hand, pressing for a second after each extraction. The blood was little, thin spots that looked like mosquito bites. He asked me to kneel on the rug and worked on my nipples. Those hurt more coming out than going in. I felt each reverse pinch like a tiny jolt that stayed at the center of my chest.

When he was done, he let me breathe for a while.

—Damián —I said, my voice hoarse—. The paddle.

—Are you crazy? —he asked, and really laughed, genuinely surprised—. Do you know what it is to get beaten with the studded paddle right where you just had twenty needles?

—I can imagine —I answered—. That’s why I’m asking for it.

—You’re a case, seriously.

—I’m your case.

He put me on my knees on the couch, ass raised, hands on the backrest. The first two blows tore a scream from me I hadn’t expected. The skin was already sensitized by the needles and the little red pricks turned into a map of fire when the leather with metal landed on top. Damián stopped for a moment, looking at me.

—I thought two would be enough for you —he said.

—You were wrong —I replied—. Keep going.

And he did. He stopped counting. He kept hitting until my ass took on a color that had no name. Reds, purples, shining lines where the studs had marked me, some fine drop where there had been a needle before. At some point I began breathing differently, with my mouth open, almost as if I were falling asleep. The arousal had grown until it became a single hum at the nape of my neck.

—That’s enough —he said, lowering the paddle.

—It’s not true that that’s enough —I answered.

—What else do you want, Mateo?

—What’s missing.

***

No explanation was needed. Damián took me by the hips, without lube, and pushed in with the calm of someone who knows the other person is waiting for it. His fingers landed right on top of the spots where, minutes earlier, the needles had been, and the pain of the entrance mixed with the burn of the pressure. I couldn’t say which of the two hurt more. I didn’t want to say it. The only thing I wanted was for him not to stop.

—You deserve this —he said as he moved—. You went looking for it yourself.

—I went looking for it —I admitted—. And I’d keep looking for it.

He drove into me all the way, unhurried but relentless. Every time he hit the end, my buttocks slammed against his pelvis and the burn flared up again, like a wick that never quite went out. I held on to the backrest with both hands and pushed back against him, as if telling him I still had a little more left.

When he came, he grabbed the back of my neck with his open palm and pressed my head down against the couch. I didn’t come; I didn’t need to. That night the climax was something else, one that needs no explanation between two people who understand each other like that.

Afterward, in silence, he cleaned my wounds with gauze soaked in something that smelled like chamomile. He spread a white ointment over me that burned less than I’d expected. He handed me an old T-shirt that I stole from him that night without warning him.

—Tomorrow you’ll remember —he said as he walked me to the door.

—Yeah —I answered.

—In a bad way?

—No. In the best possible way.

I went down the stairs of the building with my legs a little tight, my ass burning with every step, and a smile that wouldn’t fit on my face. I pulled out my phone and sent him a message before crossing the street.

Thanks, man. Next week I’ll find another way to be a pain in your ass.

He took a minute to reply.

I’ll be waiting.