I arrived in Kensington with Thom on my mind. I allowed the guilt of not seeing him today swell in my belly, figuring that guilt may play a certain part in my adventures with Madame X. I also spent some time rehearsing my itinerary for the next three hours and while I was aware of precisely the procedures I would ask of her, I also knew that a certain aspects would depend upon her own psychology, her mood, as well as her appearance, and to allow for minor adjustments I intended to ask Madame X that, initially, we spend five minutes in silence. As a prelude it was immensely important, allowing me to smell her strengths and weaknesses without the obfuscation of words, but also, in glorying in the length of her long legs and long, blonde hair, the dark eyes (thank god they were not blue), I was able to silently accept I would submit to her. It's a measure of the liminal power of silence that Madame X understood this, too, for at the moment of reckoning, she ended our silence and so it was, we begun.

Mother died when I was nine. I had, of course, taken on a sense of guilt. Living alone with my father made for an intense, difficult grief, all of which made my overcoming of him the most painful wrench, only fully realised after a few years at university. I understood the terminal decline of my father was informing these feelings, but it was to the guilt over my mother to which I returned. Aged nine, I grieved. I missed her terribly. Yet she was, in truth, a cold woman with a voice that sliced flesh and I sensed that my current oedipal regression, similiar to one at the time of my mother's death, was perhaps a psuedo regression. In fact, a defence mechanism against older, more infantile fears and so as Madame X twisted the nipple clamps harder, then harder, it was the ancient fear of abandonment that I wished to retrieve upon my body.

She did a thorough job of re-awakening the guilt. My scolded arse, back, and chest have raw welts that, even touching now, return a warmth with the pain. Yet it was the chest, lungs, and nipples which I decided were the locus of my terrible coldness, and the necessary site of resexualisation. I gave Madame X a single line to say (improvisation would have been fatal), you will never see me again. It took an hour or so before the line became a serious, terrible thing. I was handcuffed to the slab but would have pulled the world to pieces just to curl up and lie like a baby. Finally, I did. Madame X released me, and, at last, I lay curled on the floor as she gently fondled me.