Birthday Girl

So I should probably explain how I ended up standing in my own living room in just my bra and jeans while my three best friends stared at me like I’d grown a second head.

Actually, let me back up.

It was my birthday. Twenty-six. Which is, you know, not exactly a milestone year. Not sixteen, not eighteen, not twenty-one. Just. Twenty-six. The sort of birthday where you’re officially too old to be exciting and too young to be interesting about it.

I’d invited three people. Just three, because honestly the idea of a big party made me want to crawl into a cupboard and die. There was Priya, who I’d known since university, all sharp wit and sharper eyeliner, the kind of girl who always seemed to be running slightly late and completely unbothered about it. There was Gemma, who was Priya’s flatmate and had become mine too, in the way that people just sort of absorb into your life, soft and warm and perpetually wearing oversized jumpers. And there was Dan. Dan who was just. Well. Dan was tall and had this irritating habit of looking at you like he was actually listening, which, in my experience, was rarer than people admit.

I’d made a playlist. I’d bought wine and beer and those little fancy crisps that come in black bags and cost too much. I’d cleaned the flat, which took three hours because I’m the sort of person who has towers of books on every available surface and a complicated relationship with tidying.

The plan had been to have a normal birthday.

I mean, that had genuinely been the plan.

I don’t know exactly when I decided to tell them. I think it was about forty minutes in, when we were all sat on the floor because my sofa is small and the floor was comfortable and someone had put the fairy lights on and the wine was open. It felt, I don’t know. Safe. As safe as it was ever going to feel.

“Okay,” I said. Just like that. “Okay, I need to tell you all something.”

Priya looked up from her wine glass. “You’re moving to the countryside.”

“What? No.”

“You’ve joined a cult.”

“Priya.”

“Sorry, sorry.” She mimed zipping her lips. “Go on.”

Gemma tucked her knees up to her chest. “Is everything alright, Kel?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, everything’s fine. It’s just.” I picked at the label on my beer bottle. Didn’t look at any of them. “It’s my birthday.”

“Confirmed,” Dan said.

“And I’ve been thinking, like, for a while, about what I actually want. For my birthday. Like, what would actually make me happy.” I paused. “And I think, this year, I want to ask for something kind of specific.”

Silence.

“Okay,” Gemma said carefully. “What do you want?”

I took a very long sip of beer.

“I want you to dominate me,” I said.

The silence that followed was a different kind of silence. A very particular, very loaded kind of silence. The kind that has texture.

Priya put her wine glass down.

Gemma blinked.

Dan went very still.

“Sorry,” Priya said. “You want us to what?”

“Dominate me.” I still couldn’t look at them. My face was, I’m fairly sure, approximately the colour of the wine in Priya’s glass. “I’m, like. I’m submissive. I have been, I mean, basically always. And I’ve never really, I’ve never had anyone to. I mean I’ve never asked anyone. But you’re my closest friends and it’s my birthday and I just.” I exhaled. “I wanted to ask.”

Another silence.

“Kelly,” Gemma said, and her voice was very gentle and also very careful. “Are you, like. Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

“Like, properly serious.”

“Yes, Gemma.”

“Because it sounds like a joke,” Priya said. Not unkindly. Just honestly. “It sounds like a bit you’re doing.”

“It’s not a bit.”

Priya looked at Gemma. Gemma looked at Priya. Some kind of conversation happened in that look that I wasn’t privy to, and based on their expressions it wasn’t entirely flattering.

“Okay, I’m going to be honest,” Priya said, because Priya was always going to be honest. It was one of her best and most terrifying qualities. “I think it’s a bit weird.”

“Okay.”

“Like, I’m not judging you as a person, you know I love you, but like. You want us to, what, boss you around? On your birthday?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“That’s.” She frowned. “I mean, that’s a bit gross, isn’t it? Like, why would you want that? You’re a grown woman. You’re clever. Why would you want to just, like, do what people tell you and have people be, you know, mean to you?”

“It’s not mean, exactly.”

“What is it exactly?”

I finally looked up. All three of them were watching me. Priya with her eyebrows up, head tilted slightly, processing. Gemma with that soft worried look she got. Dan with an expression I couldn’t quite read, which, I have to say, I found significantly more unnerving than the other two.

“It’s like,” I started. “It’s complicated.”

“We have time,” Dan said. Quiet. Even.

“It’s about, like. Giving up control. Trusting someone enough to just. Not be in charge for a while. And the embarrassment is part of it, and the, like, the obedience is part of it, and.” I pressed my lips together. “I know it sounds weird.”

“It sounds really weird,” Priya said.

“Priya,” Gemma said, almost reprimanding.

“I’m just saying what we’re all thinking!”

“I don’t think it’s weird,” Dan said.

We all looked at him.

He shrugged. “I mean. It’s not my thing. But I get the logic of it.” He looked at me. “What do you actually want? Like, specifically. What are you asking for?”

And I don’t know why it was easier to answer him than the others. Maybe because he’d asked properly, without judgment, just this calm, direct question. Or maybe because the way he was looking at me made something in my chest go very quiet and very loud at the same time.

“I’m into humiliation,” I said. My voice came out smaller than I meant it to. “And, like, forced nudity. Being made to. Being told to undress, that sort of thing. And soft punishment. Nothing, like, nothing serious. Just.” I swallowed. “Just enough.”

Gemma made a small noise. Not quite a laugh. Something between startled and uncomfortable.

“Nudity,” Priya said flatly.

“Yeah.”

“In front of us.”

“Yeah.”

“Kelly, babe.” She shook her head. “That’s, I mean, I don’t think young women should, like, demean themselves in front of other people for, for what? For fun? It doesn’t seem right.”

“It’s not demeaning if I want it,” I said. And that came out steadier than anything else I’d said. “That’s the whole point. It’s consensual. I’m asking. Nobody’s making me do anything I don’t choose to do.”

“But why choose it,” Gemma said softly. Not really arguing. More like she genuinely didn’t understand.

“Because it makes me feel good,” I said. “Because I spend every day in my head and in charge of myself and managing everything and I’m. Tired. Sometimes. And I want to just.” I looked at my hands. “Switch off.”

Another one of those silences.

Dan was watching me.

“Alright,” he said.

Priya looked at him. “Alright? What does alright mean?”

“It means I’m in.” He met my eyes. “If that’s what she wants.”

Something happened to my breathing. Something fairly catastrophic.

“Take off your shirt,” he said. And he said it quietly, but there was something in it. Something that landed.

“Dan!” Gemma gasped.

“She said she wanted it,” he said simply. “She’s right here. She can say no.” He looked at me. “Can’t you.”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“So.” A pause. “Take off your shirt, Kelly.”

My face was burning. My hands were shaking slightly when I reached for the hem of my jumper and I thought, for a wild second, that I might actually bottle it. That I’d laugh and say just kidding and redirect everything back to normal. I thought that right up until the moment I pulled the jumper over my head and set it down on the floor beside me.

I was left in my jeans and my plain black bra. The air in the flat was maybe 20 degrees but I felt feverish.

Nobody said anything for a moment.

“Oh my god,” Gemma finally said, very softly.

“Kelly,” Priya said, and her voice had changed, gone a bit flat with what might have been shock. “What are you doing?”

“What he told me to,” I said. And I looked at Dan. “Sir.”

And I swear, I swear, the look on Priya’s face when I said that word.

“Sir?” she repeated. “You’re calling him sir? He’s Dan!”

“He’s in charge,” I said. I glanced at her and Gemma. “You both are. If you want to be.” I paused. “Miss.”

Gemma made a sound like she’d been lightly electrocuted.

“This is genuinely the strangest birthday I’ve ever attended,” Priya said. But something in her expression was shifting. Just slightly. She was still uncomfortable, still sceptical, still half-convinced this was an elaborate prank. But she was also, I could see, starting to think about it.

“Get us some drinks,” she said suddenly.

I looked at her.

She looked back. Her chin was up. She’d made a decision. “Well, if we’re doing this. Get us some drinks. There’s a good girl.”

The “good girl” surprised her as much as it surprised me, I think. Her eyebrows went up a little, like she hadn’t quite meant to say it.

“Yes, Miss,” I said.

And I got up, in my jeans and my bra, and went to the kitchen to get the drinks.

What happened while I was gone, I pieced together later, bits of it told to me directly, bits of it I could infer. But I think, knowing them, it went something like this:

The moment the kitchen door closed, Priya looked at Dan.

“Okay,” she said. “What is happening.”

“She told us what’s happening,” Dan said.

“She’s standing in her bra, Dan. In her own living room. On her birthday.”

“She took her top off because she wanted to. She called it, she was clear about what she wanted.”

Priya pressed her fingers to her temple. “I just. I don’t get it. She’s so, you know she’s so sorted. She’s got the job and the flat and she reads like twelve books at once and she’s got her whole. Thing. And she wants to be, what, humiliated? By us?”

“By people she trusts,” Gemma said quietly.

Both of them looked at her.

Gemma had pulled her knees up tighter, her oversized jumper bunched around her hands. She was looking at the kitchen door. “That’s what she said, isn’t it. She’s always in charge of herself. Always managing. And she wants to stop.” She paused. “With us. Because she trusts us.”

A beat.

“I mean,” Priya said slowly. “When you put it like that.”

“I think it takes a lot to ask for something like that,” Gemma said. “Don’t you? To actually say it out loud to people you care about. That would terrify me.”

“It’s still. I mean it’s still a bit odd, isn’t it. The nudity thing.”

“She said forced nudity,” Dan said. “Being told to undress. It’s about the obedience, not the nudity specifically.” He paused. “I think.”

Priya gave him a look. “You’re very calm about this.”

“One of us should be.”

“Are you actually okay with this? Like genuinely?”

“Yeah,” he said simply. “She’s an adult. She’s been very clear. And honestly, if it makes her happy.” He shrugged. “It’s her birthday.”

Priya was quiet for a moment.

“It is her birthday,” she said, very slowly, as if weighing each word.

“She looked, like.” Gemma bit her lip. “When she took her top off. Did you see her face?”

“Which part of her face,” Priya said.

“She looked. Relieved, almost? Like something let go.” Gemma paused. “I thought she was going to cry for a second but not. Not in a bad way.”

Another silence. Longer this time.

“Alright,” Priya said finally. “Alright. I’m not, I’m not fully on board with the whole. I still think it’s a bit much. But if she’s genuinely asking for it.” She sat up straighter. “I’m not going to be the one who ruins her birthday.”

“Really?” Dan said.

“Don’t make it a thing.” Priya picked up her wine glass. “I’m just saying I’ll. Participate. Within reason. I still think she shouldn’t be degrading herself in front of people, I think that’s. I don’t know, I think it sends a message, you know, about how women should act, and I don’t like it.”

“The thing about consent,” Dan said, “is that it kind of doesn’t matter what message we think it sends. She gets to decide what she does with her own body.”

“You sound like a pamphlet.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Yeah, well.” Priya smoothed her hair. “Fine. I’ll try. I just.” She lowered her voice even though Kelly was clearly in the kitchen. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

“None of us do,” Gemma said.

“We watch her,” Dan said. “If she’s uncomfortable, we stop. But I think.” He glanced toward the kitchen. “I think this is something she really needs.”

“It’s weird,” Priya said.

“You’ve said.”

“I’m saying it again.” But she almost smiled when she said it.

“The main thing,” Gemma said thoughtfully, her chin resting on her knees, “is that she asked. She asked us specifically. She could have gone somewhere, I don’t know, found people online or whatever. But she asked us. And I don’t think we should make her feel bad about that.”

Priya looked at her for a long moment.

“When did you get wise,” she said.

“I’ve always been wise. You just don’t notice.”

The sound of glasses clinking in the kitchen.

“Right,” Dan said quietly. “When she comes back.”

“When she comes back,” Priya agreed, and there was something in her voice that hadn’t been there before. Something considered. Something that meant she’d made her decision.

Gemma uncurled slightly. Straightened up.

All three of them looked at the kitchen door.

And waited.

I came back with a tray. Three drinks, the glasses arranged neatly because I am, in fact, a bit like that, I can’t help it. I was still in my bra and jeans. The walk from the kitchen back into the living room felt approximately seventeen miles long, every step of it with my shoulders back because if I hunched I’d draw more attention to the fact that I was half dressed and carrying a tray like some kind of extremely anxious waitress.

I could feel all three of them watching me.

I set the tray down carefully and straightened up.

The room felt different.

That’s the only way I can describe it. It felt different. Not quite the same as when I’d left. Like something had settled, or shifted, or been decided.

Dan picked up his drink. He looked at me over the rim of the glass.

“Good girl,” he said.

And I thought, oh. Oh, we’re doing this, aren’t we.

“Thank you, Sir,” I said. And this time, the word came easier.