Tackling in rugby is one of the most erotic parts of my day. This isn’t at all because of the girl tackling me – I stand by the time sixteen-year-old me refused to talk about how hot the girls on my team looked in the locker room – but because it’s this sheer, raw moment of absolute pain and total power. It’s simultaneously a moment that depends on each of the other 14 players on the pitch – I don’t think there’s another sport that requires more teamwork than rugby –and is entirely mine.

Rugby taught me my own body. A lot of what I thought I’d known about it, I learned through other people: it was only when they did something that I liked that I learned a new sliver of myself. When I learned how to tackle, however, I learned how bodies bent in the air, what would make them topple; I learned exactly how hard my body could hit the ground or another person or a flying object without breaking. I know what parts of my body bruise if you lightly bump into them, and which parts require the hurtling of a two hundred pound opponent to leave a mark. I learned that I liked pain: that nothing delights me more than working so hard that I can’t get up the next morning, but getting up to do it again anyway. I know that the extents of the exhibitionism I enjoy are not the teenaged fondling with which I’d littered the suburban parks of my youth, but the brazen display of the bruises of yesterday’s activities.

At first I thought it was weird to enjoy getting beat up on the pitch every day, and to be a little sad when I didn’t end up with any crazy bruises. But I’ve been doing it for a while, and it makes a lot more sense to me. I’ve found some other kinky people, and some that want to explore their kinks with me. But this one is all mine. It’s stripped of a scene, of roles, of planning, of props: it’s just me, and it feels damn good.

— By Chloe