When I tried to explain the fundamental difference between a medically recommended procedure to relieve years of chronic pain and an elective cosmetic treatment, Gerald finally revealed the resentment he had long been harboring. He admitted that he preferred my old body and confessed that he felt entitled to some form of "compensation," since my reduction had altered the very appearance that had attracted him to me in the first place. It was then that I realized—with a pain far deeper than that of the surgery itself—that he viewed my body as his own property and was reducing years of physical suffering to mere bargaining chips to satisfy his own desires.
