For Three Years He Called It Fear
“For three years he had called it fear, because fear can be forgiven.” Pinned to the sheet, wrists above his head, Simon hears inside: “Move. Knee him. Scream.” — and his fingers stir under the grip “not away,” but “toward it.” Here is “the filthiest part of his secret”: he liked it. The grip that asked no questions, the weight that left no choice, the “mine” in which his own no meant nothing. “For three years he had called it fear, because fear can be forgiven.” No need to decide. No need to fight. No need to be. Only to belong.
This confession calls for careful reading. The wish to hand over control is neither a pathology nor “the victim’s fault”; many people have it, and in safe relationships it is acted out by agreement, with the right to stop everything with a single word. The difference between such a wish and what Simon learned lies not in its content but in its conditions: his “I want to belong” grew where being was mortally dangerous, and he never had a safeword (see “Not to Belong to Himself”). The shame here is not for the wish but for the fact that it was formed out of necessity. Separating the one from the other is years of work, and the book honestly begins it with an admission, not with a justification.
