Kink by R.O. Kwon Garth Greenwell

Author:R.O. Kwon, Garth Greenwell [R.O. Kwon, Garth Greenwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2021-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

Gospodar

by Garth Greenwell

It would have made me laugh in English, I think, the word he used for himself and that he insisted I use for him—not that he had had to insist, of course, I would call him whatever he wanted. It was the word for master or lord, but in his language it had a resonance it would have lacked in my own, partaking equally of the everyday (Gospodine, my students say in greeting, mister or sir) and of the scented chant of the cathedral. He was naked when he opened the door, backlit in the entrance of his apartment, or naked except for a series of leather straps that crossed his chest, serving no particular function; and this too might have made me laugh, were there not something in his manner that forbade it. He didn’t greet me or invite me in, but turned without a word and walked to the center of what I took to be the apartment’s main room. I didn’t follow him, I waited at the edge of the light until he turned again and faced me, and then he did speak, telling me to undress in the hallway. Take off everything, he said, take off everything and then come in.

I was surprised by this, which was a risk for him as for me, for him more than for me, since he was surrounded by neighbors, any of whom might open their doors. He lived on a middle floor of one of the huge Soviet-style apartment blocks that stand everywhere in Sofia like fortresses or keeps, ugly and imperious, though this is a false impression they give, they’re so poorly built as already to be crumbling away. I obeyed him, I took off my shoes and then my coat and began to undo the long line of buttons on my shirt, my hands fumbling in the dark and in my excitement, too. I pulled down my pants, awkward in my haste, wanting him and also wanting to end my exposure, though it was part of my excitement. It was for this excitement I had come, something to draw me out of the grief I still felt for R.; he had left months before, long enough for grief to have passed but it hadn’t passed, and I found myself resorting again to habits I thought I had escaped, though that’s the wrong word for it, escaped, given the eagerness with which I returned to them.

I made a bundle of my clothes, balling my pants and shirt and underthings in my coat, and I held this in one hand and my shoes in the other and stood, still not entering, my skin bristling both from cold and from that profounder exposure I felt. Ne ne, kuchko, he said, using for the first time the word that would be his only name for me. It’s our word, bitch, an exact equivalent, but he spoke it almost tenderly, as if in fondness; no, he said, fold your clothes nicely before you come in, be a good girl.

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