White, Red, Black.

White

I can't keep it clean but I like to wear white. Actually, I can't keep it clean and that's why I like to wear white. White shirts look better with mud on them and white panties look better with blood on them.

But I am sure I like unspoiled white when I look at my reflection in the mirror. I don't expect this white lace will remain pristine once it spends some time draped over my shoulders. It's beautiful in all its clean perfection but that's not why I bought it.

I remember, being at the market with my sisters, racing from stall to stall in some kind of shopping marathon. I love that market because everything is cheap, easy and fast. Plus, it has character. It's a bad market but everyone you know will shop there. In broad daylight it appears and disappears. It exists as more than can be accounted for. It's an evil market too. Bastion of consumerism. Surplus. Mass-manufacturered goods. Illegal settlements. Price discrimination. All that. Yet you still can't stay away from it because it knows what you want. Pretty little cheap things.

I did stay away from it, though, for many years I didn't care for any of this: Pretty clothes, Markets, Buying stuff that wasn't absolutely necessary. It was too much to delve through, you know. Going to a market to buy needless pretty things isn't as simple as it sounds. I worry about needing things. I worry about how I represent as a woman. I worry deriving happiness from objects. But one day I let myself put on a dress and it felt nice. Then I let myself buy lipstick and that felt nice too. Then let myself buy pretty clothes and it felt good to look at myself. Then i went out shopping with women and it was fun. But it's harder than it sounds. It should not be hard but being a woman is conflicting sometimes. I hear people say, quite often, that their feminism does not interfere with their submission and I wonder because I find that there is often conflict.

Because all of this, all of these things I do are for a man. And of course, as a feminist I am allowed to do things, however superficial, to please whomsoever I choose but I still find myself considering how I represent. I love being pretty too please him. I love buying things he would like and decorating myself. I love enabling him to see me as an object; a pretty, dirty, cheap object he could do anything to. But also I hate representing as a woman who objectifies herself for the attention of a man.

From that place, it was hard to get to the place where I was in a market with my sisters, looking over pretty, cheap lace and laughing about how much shit we had just bought and being happy to be there. I found though that separating my womanhood from my femininity was the best way to have more clarity. Womanhood is and always will be very political to me because there absolutely is a feminist agenda and it is not, shockingly, to destroy and emasculate all men. Femininity seems more personal. Like the aspect of womanhood that allows for creative expression. Like the liberal arts minor to the accountancy student. And it seems okay to represent as the woman whose femininity is somewhat servile. I can't help that. It's who I've been for as long as I can remember. And I like that. I also like that the man I'll do it for is respectful, conscientious, caring and extremely sane. That choice represents all I've learned from being a woman. And I do want to represent as a woman who chooses a partner who respects her, no matter what.

But in my femininity.

I like cheap white lace.

And putting it on for him.

Because he likes it when I'm pretty.

And I like it, when his fingers are dirty.

Red

It's all in the lipstick brush. It took me many years to figure this out. I kept trying and trying to apply it right but it just wouldn't stay inside the lines. Not that I tried very hard. I only wore lipstick during one phase in my life and even then only when I saw clients. I formed a very negative opinion of lipstick very early on and wasn't because of feminism either.

My father hated it. He hates all kinds of make up but nothing as much as red lipstick. I remember the one time in my teenage years that I put on red lipstick. He started screaming the moment he saw me and then made me wash my mouth immediately. Later my mother explained to me that he hated red lipstick so much that she had never worn any her whole life. I never wore it again. Not until I was 20. And even then I did it only to fit a stereotype.

A year ago I started wearing it by choice. And I even bought a lipstick brush because I wanted to make the effort to stay inside the lines. For him. Because it bothers him when things aren't neat. It was the kind of choice I made because I know it pleases the man I love. He likes me adorned in red. Not all the time and not any other colour.

Red lips.

Red nails.

Red skin.

Red is beautiful. The colour of sirens and danger. It's too bad my dad doesn't like it. My daddy does. And I'd paint myself red, just to please him.

And so I am. Carefully in front of the mirror. Painting myself with the brightest red I can find on my neatly organised shelf. Staying inside the lines.

Red lips go with cheap white lace.

Somehow.

Black

I hate wearing panties the way most women hate wearing bras. My sister describes taking her bra off at the end of the day with more euphoric detail than she describes orgasms. And that is exactly how I feel about taking off my panties. I hate wearing them so much that most of the time, I just don't. I've made a habit of it but the downside to this habit is that suddenly one day you actually completely run out of underwear.

That's what happened last year when I bought these black panties. I completely ran out of underwear (except the trashy sex wear) and I clicked on the first link I saw on Amazon and ordered a pack of ten cotton panties. That can easily cover me for ages by mostly not covering me at all. A couple of days later when they arrived I decided to try one on. The black one. It was very comfortable but more than that. It felt good. Too good. Something about this particular brand of cotton against my skin.

Later that night he slipped his hand between my legs and started touching me through the fabric. It felt like nothing had ever felt before. Something about the cotton and his fingers together just worked on like magic.

And now we're here. Where he hasn't touched me directly in weeks. Every night his fingers look for the soft cotton between my legs and he torments me until I beg him to stop. And then he leaves me there bound in the blackness. Aching to escape the night but dreading the dawn. Because every morning, l know I will once again adorn his ammunition and cover my cunt with clean fresh cotton that I can dirty.

I know as I slip on his favorite black panties that there will come a moment in that evening when I will squeeze my eyes shut wishing I wasn't such an easy target for him. And wishing I didn't constantly assist him in stacking the deck against me. I knew there would come a moment when I would beg him to rip the blackness off my body and he'd deny me to please the darkness in my soul. At least the black would hide my shame. At least until his fingers grazed against me and found me soaked. No amount of black can hide me then. Not when he can feel it and smell it.

That's the thing about black. Like the night. It tricks you into believing no one can see you.

And it did me.

All I could see was night. Windy and dark. I forgot I could be seen too. So hidden I felt as I waited for him. In my cheap white lace and wet black cotton, anxiously biting my rep lip.

So naive to believe he wouldn't expose all of me without ever having to rip off my pretty, cheap finery.