I don't remember repeating his name over and over until he tells me that I did, and then the memory comes back, and I can almost feel it, the ghost of what I meant when that was the only word I could say.

I remember the start of the night – the way he fucked me with the prong collar on, struggling to hold me down as I raged and choked and bucked underneath him and eventually went limp, escaped by virtue of checking out of my head. My throat hurts afterwards, a hoarse voice and angry red lines on my neck. He tells me we need to talk about my behaviour and I refuse to look at him because I don’t want that. I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to understand, it is so much easier to be an animal in the way I so often am – intractable, feral, mildly savage. Understanding only of violence and other terrible things. Not conversations about my behaviour. You can’t blame an animal for the things it instinctively does. There are some lessons that won’t stay learnt. 

We need to work on your self control.

I don’t want to control this. 

I won’t. You can’t. 

Later I remember half dancing, half play-fighting around his room to the kind of terrible music that makes me roll my eyes but nevertheless gets stuck in my head for days afterwards. I push him on to the bed and when he stands back up I push him back down, kneel on his chest, keen and clumsy to press all of myself up against all of him. I’m strong, did I mention? He can stop me by hurting me but even though he’s much bigger than me if I am determined enough I can push him around, pin him down. I see flickers of frustration sometimes when he can’t struggle free. In this moment, though, we are laughing. I am happy and silly: a clown. When I start to get out of control he sprays me with a water bottle. I lash out reactively and break it. It’s a pretty thing, glass and oxidised silver and it’s broken now, because of me.

He puts my collar on before we leave to go out. I’m not sure why and I don’t ask.

I don’t remember fighting him on the way home, kicking and biting so that he has to drag me by my collar up the road. He tells me these things the next day.

I don’t remember hitting him in the chest, hard and deliberate, when he takes me to bed.

I remember crying so uncontrollably when he fucks me that I can’t breathe through my nose and I have to move my face from the pillows because I’m choking. I can remember some of the things he said to me but not what he made me say back to him. I can remember how much he hurt me, the too deep ache in my chest as I brokenly try and come to terms with what is happening. The most difficult games we play are the ones where it stops being a game. 

I don’t remember repeating his name over and over until he tells me that I did, and then the memory comes back, and I can almost feel it, the ghost of what I meant when that was the only word I could say. 

In the morning, before I don’t remember these things, he reaches out to stroke my face and I flinch away violently, my head jerking back quicker than thought because my body remembers even if I don’t. I’m trembling. It feels like balancing on the very edge, loving someone so much it could burn a hole in your chest whilst at the same time being genuinely, unthinkingly scared of them.

He shows me the marks on his body that I made, that I don’t remember. When I first met him he was so smooth, unscathed. Now there are too many scratches and bites to keep track of. He’ll point out a new one and tell me, That was you. And I’ll say, No. I don’t really mean no – I know it was me, logically I know I did whatever it was that caused that angry red mark, that jagged scratch. It’s more that I can’t quite believe that it’s something I could have done. I can’t believe it’s something I could do and not remember doing. There are so many. Some that have healed have left more permanent marks, discolouration, darkened skin. Before I met him I didn’t know you could remove skin – draw blood, even – by lashing at someone with your nails. She raked him with her claws. I thought that was just a turn of phrase, fantasy.

It’s not. 

I look at the marks on his body, the ones I don’t remember making, and I see the animal that left them in a different light.

It doesn’t seem quite as funny any more.