After G moved out I ransacked our little apartment looking for the crop we kept hidden in the back of the bedroom closet, along with a few lengths of gold rope (leftover from an elaborate toga ensemble I'd worn back in high school on "Greek Day") and the cat-o-nine I picked up in college at the shop downstairs that sold vintage clothing, crystals and other new age wares, and a small but interesting assortment of BDSM gear. 

G was my convert.  Far from vanilla with his tattoos and high-tech drug paraphernalia, he was nonetheless completely new to arts of spanking, whipping, tying up (and being tied up).  I was fairly new to it myself.  He was only the second man for whom I'd worked up the courage to whisper, "I... I want you... to... spank me."  The second asked; the first to say yes. 

G had the requisite pushiness, at least in matters sexual, that I now recognize in natural dominants.  The first time we had sex he was trying to maneuver me into a position that I found a little embarrassing.  I resisted and might have succeeded in keeping our encounter relatively tame if he hadn't demanded, "Put your pussy on my face."  A week later I wriggled around with him on the sofa until I had his belt off and wrapped around my neck.  A week after that he gave me my first adult spanking.  Within a month we were moving into a small, one-bedroom apartment.

I had been fantasizing about spanking for as long as I could remember.  Really, it was the only thing I ever DID fantasize about.  G and I spent hours researching all things D/s.  I brought home books; he bookmarked useful pages from the Internet.  G had a surprising aptitude for wielding a whip.  He studied and practiced and soon mastered the butterfly, covering my whole body, gradually building from feathery brush strokes to intense flogging, learning to linger in one place just long enough, but never too long.  I worked to express my feelings and impressions, to make him understand the concepts that make up sub space.  Soon, out of curiosity or possibly waking desire, he accepted my offer to switch.  After his first time he started asking for it after a difficult day at work the way another man might ask for a gin and tonic.  "I want you to beat me," he would say, and I understood.

Part of the appeal of dominance and submission is all of the accoutrement.  We went on a tour of adult stores, buying nipple clamps, wrist and ankle cuffs, more rope.  On a trip to visit college friends we stopped at one of those massive adult mini-malls on the side of the interstate, just to browse.  I think we both saw the crop at the same time.  I carried it up to the register and the bristly bear of a man behind the counter giggled and shook his head while he rang it up.  I knew he was wondering who would be on the receiving end and in a fit of shame I prayed that he wouldn't think it would be me.  But it was me.  And G. 

When we broke up a year later, the clamps and other implements long abandoned in the sad dissolution of what we'd had together, he moved out and back into the shared house he'd lived in when we met.  It wasn't until months later that I noticed the crop was gone.  I've always wondered why he took it when he left.  Was it out of love of the sting of tightly woven black cord, or in remembrance of the dark, sweet journey we'd taken together?