Content note: This essay contains some discussion of daddy dom/little girl kink, and some minor spoilers for the movie Babygirl, which you don’t need to have seen before you read this (although if you like my writing, you’d probably dig it!).
Imagine you’re at a seedy biker bar, surrounded by surly old men with fistfuls of beer and smokes. They’re milling around, grumbling, drinking. Radiating the misery of repression, their bodies held stiff and strong as pillars of masculinity, load-bearing defense mechanisms keeping them upright.
Imagine the stuff flowing from the jukebox all night was fairly predictable – old-man country, classic dude-rock. And then imagine that someone pressed a few buttons and suddenly, a shiny, sparkly song came on that lit up your whole heart. My mind goes to Carly Rae Jepsen, but maybe yours conjures Chappell Roan, or Prince, or Beyoncé, or some obscure chiptune band you saw at an underground video games festival once… Whatever it is, imagine that the whole room goes still, struck by the oddity of what they’re listening to, its total wrongness in this environment. And then imagine that you lock eyes with the person standing at the jukebox, the person who wanted to hear this song as much as you needed to – and imagine how you would feel toward them, knowing that in this whole big scary room, you’re the only two people feeling what you’re feeling. The only two people feeling that specific shame, and that specific joy.