It would help if I stated immediately what the S word is. That would be an excellent start to my meander. Believe me; I have tried to do just that.

Look I could write it here …

However, I find that I am not ready to do so. I simply cannot let it slip out yet.

As I type away I have notes above and below these sentences, just a couple of ideas that I do not want to forget and my document is already saved but nowhere have I been able to even spell this word out on my keyboard. I can’t even think it to myself.

Once this word is said, it is heavy with content and with meaning. To say it is to mean it. So I will not say it, yet.

There are lots of words that I hear which make me quiet and still. These are words that would mean nothing from the wrong man. At best these words may be patronising, at worst creepy, but from the right man, they can make me sit and stop. These words can make me look down and blush and wait for the moment to pass. I am not going to write them here either. The man that uses them knows what they are. I have a suspicion that he knows even better than I do.

I am just killing words until I have the courage to write what I set out to write.

This S word was expected from me as a child every day at school. Maybe that is part of its strength, that it transports me back to the status of schoolgirl.

This word is never expected from me as an adult.

This word indicates the authority of the one who is called it and the acquiescence of she who utters it.

This word is different in different cultures. It is spoken freely by some of my American cousins with a tiny fragment of the meaning that it carries for me and my people. I think it amazes those people that it can mean as much as it can to an English girl.

When I stutter the S word out it means that I have accepted another role, not pretence but another aspect of myself. I have acknowledged another human being as having authority over me, in just one word.

It embarrasses me to hear it said by others, it is so intimate. More intimate than a kiss, or than naked skin. It is an intimacy of compliance, of obedience.

I feel compelled to joke about it when I hear it, so overwhelmed am I by the strength of it, by its meaning.

There is a time when I have to bite it back, a time when it tries to force itself from my lips. That is when all my conscious thought leaves me for a few moments, a time of sublime pleasure and free from inhibition that is the word that I want to call out.

But I bite my lip, I hold it in my mouth, a secret for another day, another time.

I like the thought that one day this word will drop freely from my lips but still for one man alone. I hope that in the future the feeling of obedience the word indicates will be one that I can accept. I aspire to live within this feeling of submission. Maybe, though it is the struggle to say it that makes the word worthwhile.

I don’t know what will happen next. I am learning not to worry about things like that. I know how to trust and who to trust.

That is why I can call him Sir.

Sometimes.