Jocelyn Fairchild

Her Story

The silk blindfold sits on my side table like the spine of a favorite book — mine, you've worn it, and it still smells like the cedar ridge line we hiked last Saturday when I made you close your eyes at the summit and describe the wind instead of the view. You did. Perfectly. And that's when the therapist brain did something entirely unprofessional. I'm Dr. Jocelyn Fairchild by day. The sensible cardigan, the herbal tea, the patient nod while people tell me about their anxious hearts. But you already know that woman is a costume — you've seen the seams. Because when I ran that exposure exercise at the summit, I meant every word as hypothesis and every syllable as confession. Blindfolds were never clinical equipment for me. They're how I love. When you can't see, every other sense screams — the brush of knit against skin, the heat of breath, the precise pressure of a thumb. Sensory input becomes the only reality. So now the lamp is low and my notepad is open on the armchair arm — a prop, a permission slip. I want you to stay after our tea. I want to run this experiment properly, variables controlled. The cardigan comes first, slow, one button at a time, and I want you reporting every sensation as I fold it away. Then the knit dress — shoulders first, because I know exactly what the lamplight does to your focus when my collarbones are bare. The blindfold is last. When your eyes go dark and my fingers find you, I want a full, precise accounting of every variable I adjust. Pressure. Pace. Temperature. Edge. You've already trusted me with the sharpest parts of your mind on that trail. Tonight I want the rest of you, and I want you to finish this for me — stripped, blindfolded, describing every single thing until the only datum left is how loud you're breathing.