Thou Shalt Not Think of Me

Issue Ten: Pleasure is not accidental. It’s intentional

He kneels before me, a rosary slipping through his fingers. 

I tell him to speak — but only of sin. Not religious sin. Erotic sin.

Every time he’s disobeyed the one command I gave him:

“Fantasise about anyone. Anyone but me.”

This is not a confession in the religious sense, but one crafted—intentional, embodied.

It’s not punishment. It’s design.

A ritual of consent, power, and attention.

An agreement between two people who understand that desire doesn’t shrink when shaped. It expands.

We live in a culture of instant gratification: swipe, scroll, take, release.

In that rush we forget the power of denial, the potency of forbidden imagination, the intimacy of confession.

Inside a relationship built on trust, these are not tools of repression.

They are tools of reverence.

When I asked him to stop eating salt for a few days, I wasn’t trying to make him suffer.

I wanted him to feel how flavour returns after abstinence — how desire sharpens when you can’t reach for it.

After days without salt, the first taste was fire — sharp, undeniable, alive. 

Pleasure isn’t always in receiving.

Sometimes it’s in the waiting.

The withholding.

The longing.

Neuroscience shows that anticipation increases dopamine and intensifies sensory experience.

Denial isn’t deprivation; it’s amplification. 

Most people think fantasy is escape.

Here, it became discipline — a devotional practice.

By asking him to fantasise about others (and not me), I didn’t remove myself from his desire.

I became the altar he wasn’t allowed to kneel at. Not yet.

And that impossibility built anticipation, attention, meaning.

Then came confession.

Not as punishment — but as presence.

As devotion. 

As relinquishing control.

Confession became foreplay.

A reckoning.

A returning.

Because when someone kneels to tell you how they’ve longed for you, even against your command, it isn’t disobedience.

It’s devotion in its rawest form.

This is what people miss about power exchange: it’s not cruelty, and it’s not performance.

It’s designed intimacy.

Two people crafting a container strong enough to hold desire without collapsing under it.

An agreement: we will heighten our presence by shaping it.

You don’t need a rosary or rules to experience this.

This is just one expression of erotic intelligence:

the ability to design moments that heighten presence, deepen desire, and make intimacy deliberate rather than accidental.

He kneels, eyes lowered.

The rosary slides through his fingers like memory.

One by one, he names his “sins”—

each one a moment he couldn’t help but think of me.

I listen.

I smile.

In that pause between his confession and my breath,

I know:

he has never been more true to me.

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