Content note: Contains sexual references

Bruises

I noticed the first one when we were having sex. A dark, round mark on Skye’s right breast, about the size of a golf ball. It was mid-afternoon and we were in her bedroom with the curtains pulled, so the light wasn’t good. As I went to take her nipple in my mouth I paused and almost said something, something like ‘hey there’s a mark on your breast’ or ‘what’s this?’ but then I remembered and started doing rapid calculations. As I silently licked her nipple I counted backwards. It was Saturday. She and I hadn’t seen each other for ten days. I knew from a phone conversation we had this week that she had had a date the previous Thursday, a ‘really good’ second date. They had had sex, though Skye didn’t sleep over. In the same conversation Skye said in passing that ‘I seem to see her on Thursday nights,’ her voice light and cheery, like she was describing having joined a new netball team. I deduced from this that there might be a pattern emerging, and perhaps they had a date this Thursday just gone too. But she also liked going to pilates on Thursday nights. I couldn’t be sure. 

Was this bruise nine or two days old? Was it even a bruise or was I seeing things? Was it definitely a sex bruise? Was it some other kind of mark entirely, a mark I should comment on out of care for Skye’s body? I went down on her. She came in my mouth, long and hard, then fell into a deep sleep. I climbed up to lie next to her. Looked at the pictures on her wall. Maybe she was tired because she didn’t sleep at all on Thursday night, and was still catching up. Her pictures were an eclectic mix of prints and paintings, some in elaborate gold frames, others bare on stretched canvas, the thick lines of their brush strokes protruding up off the cotton and into the room, making me want to run my fingers over them. My favourite picture was an illustration of a handsome fox, whose big, lonely eyes gazed back at me with an intensity I found comforting. As I stared at the fox I noticed for the first time a scar on its cheek, a dark jagged line showing where the animal had survived an attack. I imagined the fox bleeding, screaming, fighting back. Eventually, Skye woke up, fucked me, and went to make dinner.

I lay alone in her bed for a while, the room darkening as the afternoon crept on. Then pulled on some clothes – I kept tracksuit pants and underwear in her middle drawer now – and went to sit in the kitchen. Skye had planned a meal, and she stood by the sink chopping onions.

‘I’m having some tea, do you want some?’ 

Skye’s habit of making fresh mint tea, the leaves pulled from a sprawling pot plant on her windowsill, was one of the small, endearing features I discovered about her once we started spending weekends together.  

‘Okay.’

She brought over a mug and set it on the table in front of me, touching me gently on my back. As she stepped away I saw more bruises down her neck. I stopped breathing momentarily, did a double take. Were they what I thought they were? How did I not notice them before? I saw her yellow silk scarf tied in a ball on one of the dining chairs. Was she wearing it when I first arrived earlier this afternoon? Had she put it on so the bruises on her neck weren’t the first thing I saw when I got here?

I felt sick. I stood up and went to sit on the sofa with Peaches, her 12-year old blue staffie, a reliable source of affection.

‘Do you want to watch tele?’ she asked, her voice a melody, her relentless kindness always managing to penetrate our every interaction.

I didn’t want to watch tele. Peaches greeted me with an attempted face lick and then settled with her head in my lap. I checked my phone. Pulled my book out of my bag, read a page, but couldn’t concentrate. I sat and looked out Skye’s window, into those of the buildings opposite. So many takeaway coffee shops and yoga studios crammed in around Haggerston station, the rhythm of the trains synchronising us all to the sad beat of city life. There was never much going on in the cladded multistories right across the way, probably Airbnbs. On the facade of one there ran a line of large monochrome boxes with metal bars, each identical and adjacent to a window, the boxes sitting atop each other all the way down to the ground, in a formation that made it look like every flat came with a BDSM cage for the resident bottoms to be locked in, when they were bad.

‘I think they’re air conditioning units,’ Skye had replied, when I pointed this out to her at some time now past.

‘Oh yeah,’ I had answered. 

It was starting to get dark now as night settled on the buildings. I wondered if Skye’s bruises were all from sucking/aggressive kissing, or whether they were from grip or impact. I had never given her bruises like that. Did she like being hit with that kind of force on her breasts? Her profile had included ‘kink’ in her list of desires, but while she had a good selection of cocks and a small flogger, our sex was pretty vanilla. Surely the neck marks were hickies. I pictured her new date, already a Marvel-like fantasy character, the world’s hottest lesbian and all-round catch, with her mouth on Skye’s neck and breasts, devouring her. I pictured Skye pushed up against a wall, gasping in pleasure and begging to be fucked.

‘I love you Green!’ Skye sang out from the kitchen. I didn’t answer back. 

I patted Peaches, felt the warmth of her body on my legs, tried to breathe deeply. 

It wasn’t that I didn’t want Skye to have sex outside our relationship. We’d met on Feeld, the slick dating app for ‘open-minded’ people, in the summer. On Feeld, there are 21 options on the drop down Gender menu, 19 for Sexuality. I had been overwhelmed by the choice. For Gender I guessed I was somewhere between Genderqueer, Androgynous and Non-Binary. I’d never really thought about it before, saw such options as reserved for younger queers, those still in their 20s. But after leaving my 15-year monogamous relationship, as well as uncovering the full breadth of my sexual appetite, I had started wearing a chest binder from time to time, and asking people to call me by a version of my surname. Within the first two minutes of meeting Skye on a warm June evening in Dalston Curve Garden, she asked what my pronouns were. I hated this question, but she managed to ask in a way that was sincere but not annoying.

‘I don’t know. I’ve always used she/her obviously, but maybe they/them is fine too.’

‘Which do you prefer?’

And that’s when I started experimenting with they/them, and found it surprisingly comfortable, a category I could fit into without having to constantly fight for space. I discovered a sense of freedom from leaning into my failure of both gender categories, and Skye made me feel like my androgyny was hot.

Skye was femme. She wore dresses and dangly earrings and make up, and it all looked right on her gorgeous curvy body and softly rounded face. She was almost straight-passing, and I was more attracted to her than I had expected to be from her photos. I’d gone on our first date because I was lonely, she was local and ‘solo poly’, and her messages were kind. I hadn’t expected it to turn into anything.

During the nine months Skye and I had been dating, we had both kept our Feeld profiles live. I’d had playdates with one lesbian couple and a few individual hard butch doms. One of those relationships was ongoing. Skye was dating someone else when she and I first met, but that had fizzled out quickly. And she’d been on a couple more first dates since then, but none of them had turned into a second, let alone a potential third.

‘Are you upset?’ Skye appeared by the sofa. I was usually more chatty at home, a comforting domesticity having sprung up between us from early on. 

I smiled at her, but found that I had lost the capacity for speech. A dull, overwhelming force was pulling me down into the centre of the earth. My limbs felt heavy and my insides flat. I leaned onto Skye’s scatter cushions, but their bright abstract patterns were starting to frighten me, their clashing blotches of pinks and yellows trying to lull me into a trance. The Frida Kahlo upholstery of her Chesterfield footstool, the fabric buttons pulling and distorting her face and body out of shape, also began to look grotesque, menacing.

‘What’s up?’ Skye asked. 

I kept smiling at her but remained mute. The food sizzled and hissed in the kitchen and she went back to attend to it.

It’s not like I hadn’t had bruises before. After a couple of my playdates I’d had deep blue blotches up my legs and ass, so dark that I stayed away from the pool for a week. But I’d still managed to hide them from Skye. It had been winter by then, so she and I were only ever naked together under a duvet, and I’d made sure to climb into bed while she was in the bathroom. Skye always got up before me in the mornings, my lower body remaining concealed and cosy while she brought me tea in bed. 

Skye served up two steaming bowls of perfectly cooked ramen and set them on the table. I managed to lift my body off the sofa and drag it over to the table. Peaches jumped down from the sofa too, and trotted over to curl up in his bed. Looking down at my dinner, I found my stomach had shrunken and turned hard. I ate slowly, chewing many times on each bite. 

‘Is it polyamory stuff?’ she asked. 

I nodded.

Now we would have to have this conversation. I recalled the advice of the Instagram therapy reels which kept appearing uninvited on my feed: keep it simple, direct. Be honest, but don’t overshare. I decided to say, ‘My heart hurts’, which was the kind of sentimental language she liked. But when I pursed my lips together to begin the sentence, only the ‘m’ sound came out. I gave it a few goes but still couldn’t articulate a full word. In my bowl, a piece of beef glistened in the broth, sending ripples of tiny oil pools along the liquid surface. I reached for the notepad and pen on Skye’s table and wrote it down.

She looked at my message, annoyed.

‘I have had to do so much emotional regulation over the past months, when you’ve had all your other dates,’ Skye said. ‘I have felt the pain of you building a relationship with someone else, the uncertainty of not knowing what’s going on. I know how hard that is. Maybe you’re experiencing some of that too.’

I pulled the notepad back and started writing again.

You want me to experience that? I slid the notepad back to her.

Skye read it, shook her head and looked at the ground.

‘You have such a negative view of me Green.’

She looked like she was going to cry. I had to get my voice back. But my internal organs were still not functioning normally, and the monochrome stripes of her Keith Haring wallpaper were starting to peel off the wall, the multiple black lines merging into one and creeping across the room, toward me. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t have a negative view of her. That I knew I’d acted callously, been disingenuous in expecting her to be fine while I actively curated a sex life separate from our still new relationship. I knew Skye was trying non-monogamy for the first time, and also that she was in love with me. I had grown to know and understand Skye, to read her emotions whether or not she articulated them. And I knew that whatever agreements we made and rules we followed, she was going to feel like death while I kept inviting other people to fuck me. I cared about her feelings, but kept doing what I wanted anyway. I had only discovered kink so recently. I was addicted to the high that came with handing over control of my body, to materialising the fantasy of consensual violence. Skye kept saying she supported me seeing other people, but all of her body language said she didn’t. I knew she was hurting, I wasn’t willing to give up kink, but I didn’t want to lose her either. The language of polyamory told me I could have it all. I could cloak my selfishness under the shroud of political progressiveness.

I didn’t know how to write all that. 

It hurts seeing your bruises.

She took a deep breath.

‘I assumed they would be fine because you’ve often been covered in bruises,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve been trying to hide them from me, but really Green, do you think I’m blind?’

She paused.

‘When I was on my date this week she actually asked if bruises were ok, like, for you.’

You saw her this week?

‘Yes, on Thursday night.’

The black wallpaper line had sidled along the floor towards my feet. I felt it reach up and take hold of me, wrapping itself around my ankles and tying me to the chair. Skye’s Moominmamma and Moominpapa salt and pepper shakers were starting to laugh at me, their line drawn eyes opening wide in derisive pleasure, their shiny white porcelain bellies jiggling in glee. The decorative plates, vintage teapots and assortment of trinkets on display in her glass cabinet had also started to move. Commemorative royal jubilee coffee cups bought ironically, a fist-sized purple crystal, a tiny model of an ice cream van… they all seemed to be inching themselves into formation, a silent army of seemingly useless objects about to attack. Thursday night was less than 48 hours ago. It was too close. They were fresh bruises.

We sat in silence. I looked down at my almost untouched dinner. Skye’s bowl was already empty. 

‘Are you still fine with seeing me on the same day I’ve been with someone else?’ Skye asked.

I paused, more math. 

You’re staying overnight with her?

‘That did happen, yes.’

She smiled. Partly it was an awkward smile, but I also felt some vengeance in it, and a touch of pity.

I had asked Skye to see me on the same day as I’d been with someone else once, way back in the early Autumn. The only time my dom could see me that month was at 3 on an afternoon when Skye and I had already planned to meet for dinner at 7. They say a lot of the work of being poly is scheduling. When I say ‘they’ I mean smug influencers with poorly produced podcasts, and when I say ‘being poly’ I hate myself. I found the superiority of ‘relationship anarchists’, most of them skinny white ‘creatives’ adding ethical non-monogamy to their list of character traits rather than having an actual personality, difficult to stomach. But Skye wasn’t one of those, she was just looking for a better life after decades of monogamy had failed her. She’d made a conscious decision to do things differently: read books about polyamory, listened to those smug podcasts, followed polyamory accounts on Instagram. And she was good at setting her own boundaries. When I’d asked if I could have a playdate in the afternoon before our dinner she’d said no. And so I’d said no to my dom, and didn’t get to be bound, caned and humiliated that month, didn’t get to lie at their boots and clean them with my tongue. 

‘You said you wouldn’t mind, if I did.’

My arrival in the world of non-monogamous dating had been far less intentional. 

‘You know I’m not like you, I couldn’t have the kind of kink relationships you have.’

It was true, she couldn’t. On her Feeld profile, Skye categorised herself as a ‘Demi-sexual’: she needed to actually like someone, to have an emotional connection, before she wanted to fuck them. I was the opposite, which I guessed was a slut? That wasn’t an option on the Feeld Sexuality menu, so I’d chosen ‘Queer’. I had only gone on Feeld to find hook-ups. I’d had enough emotional labour and codependence, at least for now. But then I started loving Skye by accident. Because she was so adoring and warm, and she smiled when Peaches chose to sit with me while we were watching TV, and she brought a thermos of tea for us on the Palestine demos, and she wanted to do jigsaws together at Christmas.

‘You know Green, dating you has been really challenging.’

I could feel the Haring line pulling tightly on my lower legs as it wound its way up toward my knees. I would have rope marks there tomorrow. 

‘I think you’re being like this because I’ve finally met someone I actually like. I’ve gotten used to not knowing what you’re doing during the week. I can’t handle revisiting our agreements again now.’

The trinket army, led by the Moomins, continued to advance slowly, its destination unclear but its intent malicious. 

‘You know I love you but you’re really so self-obsessed.’  

From its position on the table, Moominmamma detonated a projectile attack of its gritty black insides, which exploded out of its still intact head and scattered across the surface. 

‘I have to stop dating Pisceans.’

Skye stood up from the table, cleared her bowl away and walked around the corner, closing the bathroom door behind her. Now alone in the space, this was a chance to escape. I wanted to disappear completely. If I could get out of here now, I could delete her from my phone and probably never see her again. I looked around the room for something I could repurpose as a tool for my breakout. But Skye’s place was so tidy. All the surfaces were clear except for the objects that lived on them, the ones conspiring against me. I gazed at Skye’s scarf, still lying in a yellow ball on the dining chair, and pictured throwing it out the window like the secret weapon of a spy on a mission impossible, a kind of mobile wrecking ball that would hold open Skye’s window the perfect amount, harming no-one, releasing an emergency chute for me to slide safely down onto the street below.

‘I wish you’d talk to me,’ Skye appeared in the hallway.

I had missed my opportunity. 

‘Are you coming to bed?’ 

I looked back at her with a forced smile. 

As she hovered at the edge of the living room, Peaches raised her head suspiciously, then stood up and barked. I saw something move behind Skye, a large orange-brown block, soft in texture and low to the ground. The thing edged itself around her, staying close to the wall, and then I saw its face. It was the fox, from the wall of Skye’s bedroom. It had broken out of the picture and was here searching for something…life? Freedom? It locked eyes with me and I saw its pupils grow wide and its body stiffen. Having escaped the frame, it didn’t know what to do. The fox scanned the room, and started toward the window, first hesitantly, then in a gallop. The window was partly open, just enough to let some air in. But as the fox dashed forward it easily pushed the window out further, forcing its body out onto the ledge. 

Skye lived on the seventh floor. It would not survive the jump. I tried to stand up to save it, but was completely immobilised by the Haring line. The trinket army started to move into a new formation as the fox leapt into the air.

Raised on Giabal and Jarowair land in Toowoomba, ‘Australia’, Keenan Lew is a writer now living in London. They have a PG Cert (Creative Writing) from Birkbeck, and their writing has been published in Queer Life Queer Love 2 (Muswell Press) and The Bittersweet Review.