Knightfall 6: Edgeplay

Apologies for not writing more often lately (either here or in the "Beginnings" story), but as I noted last time, my Bruce Wayne life is pretty damn full these days.

Which has interesting ramifications for my extended roleplaying with The Monk. I'm so overwhelmed with mundane (and not-so-mundane) matters that my appetite for erotic/spiritual/psychological exploration is lower than usual, at least for the time being. (Should ease up a little next month.) But deep down I still feel the strong pull of the bat-self; after all, it's been the driving force of my life for more than thirty years.

Sometimes the break from nightly encounters with The Monk helps me regain my strength as a masked manhunter (even though he's long ago stripped me of my mask, and I'm pretty much the hunted man rather than the one doing the hunting these days). In those moods I feel reconnected with this central metaphor of my life, and I am convinced I will somehow find a way out of his clutches, or at least that this chapter of my saga will end sooner or later and I'll be able to resume my secret life on my own terms again.

Other times, however, I sense that all really is lost on the bat-front, that my story will not have a happy ending like in the movies and the TV show and the comic books, after all, that I'm destined to be broken for real and end my days doing his beck and call (in our mutual fantasy, that is). This latter thought is, I dread to say, intensely exciting to me. I hate to admit it, but the prospect of absolute failure is a tremendous turn-on to me. (And, of course, The Monk knows this and exploits it to his full advantage.)

So this is what M meant by "edging"--Batman's dance out on the edge between self-control and utter collapse. Something has to happen sooner or later: a breakthrough, a breakdown (of the bat-self), or both. My schedule notwithstanding, I'm hoping it's soon rather than later. The longer it takes, the more likely I'll come out on the losing end of the deal.