22. Nom De Guerre

“You don’t recognise me anymore,” I giggled. “I’m mostly trying to enjoy every day Ciaran and I have together. I’m not at the point where I’d want to compete to see who’s the best submissive amongst this group, but I’ve finally shaken off the shame. You were right that all this dominant behaviour is deeply ingrained in his psyche. Just look at those male monkeys on that rock, beating their chests.” I pointed to the other corner of the room where Ciaran was loudly boasting about how he had caught an enormous fish in the stream behind our house, to the great hilarity of the others.

Sylvia looked at me intently. I felt more naked than I had just been upstairs with Ilse. She had always been good at reading me. “Ugly girl came from you. Your whole life I’ve been telling you that you’re not ugly and that there’s no one more beautiful inside and out than you, but somehow it never seems to sink in.”

“It’s a nom de guerre,” I admitted.

“No, it’s more than that,” Ilse said, our psychology student. “It’s a form of self-mockery that shows you’re above those words, that they no longer affect you. The collar is a badge of honour. Instead of making you weaker, you show that you’re above them. The collar does what a collar should do for a true submissive: it elevates you to something only you can reach, and everyone else can only guess at.”

I smiled at her. My only response was a soft kiss on her lips. Jutta looked at me wide-eyed. “You’re absolutely radiant. If someone had told me Ugly would sit here at a birthday party beaming because of the collar around her neck ... It’s unbelievable. You truly belong to an undiscovered human species.”

All those exaggerated words did me good. Maybe I was actually beaming. If I just could just beam my rays to Ciaran, I’d be even happier. More people I didn’t know came to visit. I ate pastries and drank coffee with the girls. At some point, I ended up in the chair next to Natas. She looked at my collar.

“I see you’ve finally joined the sect as well,” she said. This is the Natasha I knew. Before I could give a suitably sharp reply, she continued, “Good for you. Alone is merely solitude. I’m glad you found someone. It’s that handsome curly boy, isn’t it?”

I couldn’t help blushing. “Yes, his name is Ciaran. He’s from Scotland.”

“If he’s a Highlander, that makes you a Sassenach, doesn’t it?” she said with a mischievous look.

“Yes, I live in a Netflix series.” I admitted. “How is Alex? I heard he’s been ill.”

A safe choice to change the subject. Like many parents who have endured a traumatic experience with their children, the entire story came out. The ignorance of a child unable to adequately express what’s wrong, the uncertainty of the tests that will follow. The fear and, ultimately, the confirmation that something is seriously wrong with your child. The helplessness of the parent unable to do anything for their child. The technocracy of a hospital, primarily focused on the treatment, not the patient. The only way to cope with the intensity of those feelings was to talk about them incessantly. It didn’t matter that I was probably the twentieth person or more she’d told this story to. With each new time, a tiny bit of her fear disappeared.