In his lair

The door opened before I could knock a second time.
He was there.

In person he was even more imposing than in the photographs. He was a mature man, with a calm demeanor, dressed in black. He made no exaggerated gesture upon seeing me. He simply observed me for a few seconds, as if checking that the man before him matched the one he had known for so many nights through a screen.

“You’ve come.”

I didn’t know what to answer.

I nodded.

He let me in.

The door closed behind me with a sharp sound.

That was when I understood that the true power of that place was not in the objects I had seen in the photographs. It was in the atmosphere. In the silence. In the sensation of having left the everyday world behind.

The hallway was barely lit.

I walked forward behind him without saying a word.

We reached a spacious room. Some of the items I already knew from the photographs were there, but beholding them in person produced a completely different impression. They were no longer images on a screen. They were real.

He turned toward me.

“Before we continue, there’s something I want to know.”

“What?”

“Do you still want to be here?”

The question disconcerted me.

After so many nights imagining it, after weeks talking with him, that was precisely the question I least expected.

I looked toward the door.

I could leave.

He didn’t move.

He waited.

“Yes,” I finally answered.

“Then remember something. Here you don’t have to prove anything. If you want to stop, you stop. If you change your mind, you leave.”

I nodded again.

But my voice came out lower than I expected.

“I don’t want to leave.”

A faint smile appeared on his face.

“We’ll see about that.”

Those three words gave me a chill.

Until then I had imagined submission as something simple: someone commands and someone obeys. But there I discovered that it was much more complex. He didn’t need to raise his voice. He didn’t need to threaten me. It was enough for him to look at me to make me aware of each of my doubts.

He indicated that I should leave my things and undress.

I did.

Then I remained standing, waiting for instructions, feeling strangely exposed even though nothing had happened yet.

He walked slowly around me.

He didn’t touch me.

Precisely for that reason it was more unsettling.

“For months you have imagined this moment,” he said. “Right?”

I swallowed.

“Yes.”

“And now you’re here.”

Another pause.

“Yes.”

“Then I want you to understand something.”

He stopped in front of me.

“Fantasy belongs to your imagination. What happens here belongs to reality. And reality is always different.”

I couldn’t find an answer.