Heat level (1-5): 🔥
Notes: Written in Sanskrit the second century CE, The Kama Sutra is a seven-volume guide for organizing and understanding the chaos of passion. Originally translated into English in 1833 as Principles of Love, I retell it here for a modern audience as Rules of Lust. This is the first rule of many that will follow.
Pairs well with: “Hold On” by Brooke Annibale
“Write to her. Tell her how you feel. Be patient. Give her time. Earn her trust. She is your destiny, and everything depends on her. Trust the rules.” Kāma Sūtra I:2
I’d have killed for her. Died for her. Done anything she asked. It was only supposed to be about fucking. It was never supposed to be more than that. But I fell in love with her, and it fucked with my head. With my sense of power and control. I’d never loved another woman and I didn’t know what the fuck to do. So I went back to what I’d always done. Being an ungrateful motherfucking asshole. A total son of a bitch. A cruel and ruthless jackass. I treated her like shit; made her life hell. It wasn’t some love story. It was a fucking nightmare. A hurricane. A shipwreck. A catastrophe.
But I loved her like she was the only good thing in the world. She was. Is. I didn’t love her like a lover; I didn’t love her like she didn’t matter. I craved her, worshipped her, because I couldn’t stop myself. And I pushed her away because I couldn’t meet her where she was, because I wasn’t man enough to tell her that I loved her more than life itself.
. . . . .
How many assholes have said a woman made them want to be a better man? I never believed that shit. Until her. And when it happens, I had no idea how to be better than the dick that I was.
For three years she didn’t speak to me. Not a fucking word. That’s how bad I fucked it up. Silence like that will make your soul bleed. It will split your mind in two. It’ll make you get fucked up on whatever is nearest to blunt the pain. Poker. Blow. Weed. Molly. But never another woman, not since I first saw her. I never would. Because nobody compared. Nobody ever could.
. . . . .
Life without her was agony. Worse than death. And in those more than 1,000 days, I lay alone in bed thinking, “If ever I have her again, it will be different. If ever she lets me back in, I will change everything.” At night, I’d jack off to videos we made. As I came, I fucking swore myself to her, my Queen. The only person I’d ever love. If I didn’t have her, I didn’t have a fucking thing.
Three years to the day that last I spoke to her, I wrote to her again. A last ditch attempt. One last grenade in the foxhole. Hail motherfucking Mary.
Better to flame out than burn out. If she didn’t respond, then this was it. I would finally let her go. Or die trying.
Talk to me. Please.
. . . . .
I expected nothing. Hoped for nothing. Writing that to her, it wasn’t any harder than saying a prayer. I’d prayed to her, for her, every night for a thousand nights.
But then I saw she’d read the message.
Holy Christ. I’m a stone cold motherfucker, with a rap sheet twenty years long, but one “message read” check mark from her and I couldn’t breathe.
But still no answer. Not a word.
For two hours I paced around my house like a fucking animal. She’d read the message, which was more than I’d gotten from her in three fucking years. But it wasn’t enough. Now that I knew she wasn’t shutting me out completely, I had to talk to her. I had to know. I had to make peace with her, with this, before it destroyed me. Before it consumed me whole.
Before I lost my nerve, I told it to her straight.
I fell in love with you. I know I wasn’t supposed to. I’d never loved another fucking soul before. I didn’t know how to love or be loved and I fucked everything up. You deserved better. You deserve better still. You gave me life. All I want is to hear your voice.
Goddamn it. Messy fucking words for messy fucking feelings. But I said what I meant. Right from my heart. And I figured that would be the last of it. Forever.
. . . . .
But it wasn’t. It was only the start. Five hours later, the last grenade in the foxhole went off, and she wrote:
I missed you so much.
. . . . .
A month later, and the first day of a new life. She was coming back to me. Driving to me right then.
Of all the days I’d lived, this one mattered most. Trust needed to be rebuilt. A life needed to be made. And I needed to make her mine forever. We would go back to the beginning. I would heal us both, through each other. Step by step.
Rule by fucking rule.