Just once, he asked why in three years she’d never told him any of this.
“I don’t want to be this way,” she said, turning toward him her pale, determined face. “I’d rather not be this fucked up.”
By now, the right reply came automatically. “You’re not fucked up.”
* * *
The dominatrix had Jihyun bent over the black table, her ass soaring upward. With quick, rhythmic slaps, the dominatrix struck her well below her tailbone. “I’m warming her up,” Ava explained to Paul, who resisted the juvenile urge to say he knew that, already.
Mistress Ava Adamson was attractive enough, he supposed, in a sturdy way that wasn’t his thing, but some guys would be into it, with her strong calves showcased by the short boots, the clusters of muscles sleek in the low light. Big breasts, too, tucked away in that no-nonsense shirt. The dominatrix was more muscular than he was, admittedly. He used to work out a lot more, then one day he caught himself fondling the flat planes of his abs and stopped, embarrassed. What was the point of all these muscles? It was the physique of a bodyguard, miscast in the life of a—fund manager. Brawn wouldn’t maximize the possibility that he and Jihyun would have long and happy lives; money would. He had no romantic illusions about money, but he understood its ability, so he went less often to the gym and spent those saved hours at the fund, instead.
In one of the dungeon mirrors, he caught himself looking worried. The high flushed forehead settling into its first wrinkles, the disappearing hairline, his entire reflection these days a memento mori. He felt old, and tired. This was the thing about being an ex-Christian: like that, your life expectancy went from eternity to seventy-odd years. A death sentence on you and on those you loved. He tried not to think about it; he thought about it all the time.
“Up,” the woman told his wife. Her ass was alarmingly red, and all she’d had was a so-called warm-up. “Jihyun, turn around. Look at me. You know, don’t you, that we’re just getting started? And you can’t do a thing about it. Scream if you like, and no one else will hear you. If you try to get away, Paul and I will stop you. You’re not going anywhere.”
Jihyun looked—glassy, as if, Ava’s threats to the contrary, she wasn’t entirely here. “Are you okay, Jihyun?” he said. “Is this what you want? Is there anything else we should be doing?”
She blinked a few times, and shook her head. “I’m all right,” she said, the words sluggish. A glance at him, and back to the dominatrix.
“Poor little Jihyun,” Ava said, in singsong. “You’re such a very submissive little girl, aren’t you?” She spoke over her shoulder to Paul. “Your wife doesn’t want to be asked what she wants. What she wants is to be told what to do.”
“How do you know what she wants?”
“For one, because your wife told me so,” she said. Ava had required a half-hour phone consultation with Jihyun before the session. “Plus, you see how she can barely talk? She’s so high on endorphins, they’re scrambling her brain. It’s beautiful to see.” Smiling at him, Ava added, gently, “She’s been like this her whole life. In all likelihood, she’ll stay this way. People don’t change.”
Something inside of him flailed, upset. He hadn’t even realized he’d been hoping that, somehow, all this would go away. That they’d have their little excursion into the foreign land in which he was expected to beat his wife, then they’d come back to their cozy, normal life in which they took care of each other. But the dominatrix was still talking. “Right now, she just wants to be good, isn’t that right, Jihyun?”
* * *
Of course, if he’d known what to expect, they wouldn’t have had to come here. A week ago, he’d stolen out of the office early to get to stores before they closed. First to an equestrian shop on the Upper East Side that, according to Yelp, was the best in the city. He selected a few sturdy crops and whips. On second thought, he also picked out a zippered kelly-green canvas bag, to hide his purchases. Next, he rode the subway downtown to a sex shop on Sixth Avenue, where he bought a gag, a blindfold, and handcuffs. They sold whips there, too, but he knew—from his research—that they would be badly made, too flimsy to be functional. One last stop at a hardware store for a length of rope, and he was back on the subway, going home.
Jihyun called to say she was running late at the office. He waited in an armchair, drinking his Laphroaig and trying to read the Journal, but failing: nervous, though he shouldn’t be. He had it all planned out. He was going to astound his wife. He was Mister Fucking Poppins, and when she walked through the door and he greeted her with the canvas bag, and she unzipped it and said, “Oh,” and sat on the floor, like a kid, he figured, or, at least, he hoped, that everything was going to be all right.
She lifted her head, and her eyes were shining. “You’re sweet to me,” she said. He smiled at her. Then, he frowned. Sweet, an adjective fit for puppies and, what, figs. Wasn’t his role now to be mean?
Soon, he had his wife trussed to the four posters of their bed, facedown, crops lined up at her side. “Jihyun-girl, I’m—going to hit you,” he announced, like an idiot. The back of her head, banded electric pink with the blindfold, nodded her assent. Shostakovich was playing, in case of neighbors. Her hair split away from her head like black wings, but he knew she didn’t want to fly away, so he raised his hand and let it fall on her trouser-covered ass.
Things went well enough, as far as he could tell, at first. Per the instructions in Screw the Roses, he steadily increased the intensity of his blows. At some point, he started wielding the lightest of the three crops. He could feel the Scotch; still, his aim was good. Jihyun wiggled, and cried out a little, but the knots held—he’d studied that, too—and they’d agreed on a safeword, “red,” if things got to be too much for her, and it wasn’t natural, frankly, it terrified him, to hurt her, but it was like trying to speak in tongues for the first time when every other believing kid but him could do it, his father telling him all he had to do was loosen up, open his mouth, and let God in, let God work, so he gave it a try, jumbling together consonants until he was yelling out something that sounded about right, and since doubt was the work of the devil, he kept going, telling himself that what sounded like squeals of pain were actually squeals of pleasure, and, in fact, he was starting to feel pretty good, getting into a rhythm, crop down, crop up, like Romeo-plus-a-whip, when she squeaked, “Red!”
“What is it?” he said, at her side, pulling up the blindfold. Her face was twisting with pain.
“You-hit-me-on-my-tailbone!”
“What’s wrong?” he said, desperate, fumbling with rope knots. “What did I do?”
“Don’t you know? It’s unsafe,” she said, wailing until he finally got her free.
* * *
So now Jihyun was fastened onto the black table, bottom up. The heels of her feet were dry, haloed in white bits of skin. A strap. A flogger. A belt. A leather paddle. A crop. A Lochgelly tawse. A ruler. A wooden paddle. A Lexan paddle. (“What’s Lexan?” he asked. “A kind of plastic,” Ava said.) A rattan cane. A Lexan cane. “This is how you hold it. This is how to strike from the wrist. Make sure to avoid her kidneys.” (“Where, exactly, are her kidneys?” “Right here,” she said. “And here.”) “Swing from the elbow. Now, from the shoulder. Try her thighs. Yes, she’s tender there. You can hit harder, if you like. That’s it. Again from the shoulder. Don’t mind her—it’s good for her. She likes it. Isn’t that right, little girl?”
Jihyun was yelping, her toes curling piteously into the soles of her feet. But no pleading, no safeword. Her ass was tingeing from red to bluish, which worried him. At some of Jihyun’s screams, Ava tipped back her head and let loose a big laugh. He glanced at Ava, fascinated. The dominatrix wasn’t faking it—she loved hurting his wife. Was he supposed to enjoy it, too, and how much further was this going to go, and exactly how often did she want to be hurt, and if he couldn’t keep beating her up, then what, and what about his needs?
With each instrument, after a few strokes, Ava
handed it to him, guiding him. She ran long fingers over Jihyun’s skin, pressing marks and ridges, inspecting. He hesitated, and she urged him on. At some point, he noticed she’d soaked through the cotton, and there was a small puddle under her half-covered crotch. So this was why Ava had had Jihyun keep her panties on. He hadn’t even known that could happen outside of the porn film demimonde, let alone with his wife. They kept an economy-sized bottle of lubricant in a bedside table because of how slow her body could be, sometimes, often, to respond to his.
Jihyun was gulping, possibly hyperventilating. He stopped hitting her, but before he could get to her Ava was there, bending down until her face was level with Jihyun’s, which lay flat to the side, her mouth open. She raised the blindfold and said, “Breathe. Deep, long breaths. Breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out. That’s a girl. I want you to keep doing that. Okay? You’re all right. Shh. That’s a very good girl. You’re okay.”
With each word her voice got lower and her face closer to Jihyun’s until her lips, almost whispering, were no more than another reassurance away from kissing his wife. Her dark hair swung forward, a curtain. Jihyun inhaled and exhaled, visibly obedient. His prick, infuriatingly enough, was perking up, interested. Something about the two women, one little, one Amazonian, almost kissing. He’d have felt self-conscious, but hey, they weren’t going to notice. Another few breaths, and Jihyun said, “Okay. I think. I’m all right, Mistress.”
Ava laughed again, the loudest yet. She stood and said, “Of course, you’re all right. I wasn’t asking you, I was telling you.”
He was tired. His right shoulder hurt. He didn’t want to hit Jihyun anymore—he wanted to get out of here. He wanted to untie her and take her home, soothe her and have sex with her, his wife, whom he loved. But he kept going. Finish the session, he told himself. He got through the next round of implements, through Ava’s jerking Jihyun’s head up by a handful of hair and informing her it was a lucky thing her husband was so nice to her. “If you were mine,” she said, “I’d string you up by your toes.” She got out a paper-wrapped package of jagged plants—stinging nettles, she said—and next he got through seeing her stick the stems into Jihyun. Now there were nettles sprouting from his wife’s ass, then came Jihyun’s gleeful screams, and Ava’s laughter, and which of the two was crazier, he didn’t know, but because he was finishing the session he got through that, too.
* * *
On Ava’s recommendation, Paul and Jihyun stopped at a pharmacy on the way home and picked up arnica gel, a homeopathic treatment that was supposed to reduce bruising. Once they were home, Jihyun rolled off her stockings, wincing as the elastic rode over her skin. Then she grinned—she was in such a good mood. When she asked him to help her put the cream on, he sat on the couch and she crawled over him, positioning her ass over his lap. He smoothed the gel over the discolored, swollen mass of her, and she sighed.
He was applying the gel to her thighs when it occurred to him that she was in a classic spanking position. If Ava were in his place she would give Jihyun a few more smacks, now, for fun, to hurt her just when she thought she was safe. Paul raised his hand. From behind, his wife was unrecognizable. He raised his hand higher, then he put his hand back down to the couch.
“Up you go,” he said, and she thanked him, patting his thigh as she pushed herself off his lap. She stood, stretching, and she moved away from him.
Canada
by Callum Angus
I’ve had only coffee to drink, and the back of my throat tastes like rubber hose left out in the sun. I realize, as I normally do late afternoon with the sun slanting in, that I haven’t said a word since waking up. I clip my toenails, put on a new shirt, turn left from the driveway to reach the fields outside of town, but the only farmstands I find are locked plywood boxes relying on suburban faith in the rough-cut slots for folded bills. I choose two tomatoes: one for the veins peeking through reddish-green skin, the other for the pucker where vine meets fruit. On the radio, archipelagos. I can’t see them from here, but the announcer says they’re out there, new islands made by rising water, like kneecaps in a bath.
I pass the greenhouse where Jay works a double shift. Forty-two acres tented over by white canvas. Jay and the others are torching the tomato plants row by row because of too many whiteflies. It’s a sterile environment, and I’m not allowed inside. Inside they still call him Jenny.
At home in front of the sink I say goddammit after cutting my finger trying to filet the branzino. Bleeding, I leave them whole but gutted in a casserole dish on top of thyme and stuffed with lemons. The kitchen smells briny, garden-ish as I eat them, along with tomato slices floating in oil and vinegar.
A single Canada goose flies low overhead, squawking in the late evening, mid-March, eighty degrees, Massachusetts. Most birds have left, but I still look to see where the geese are going, hoping what’s left of winter is enough for them. I can’t tell which direction she’s heading in the growing darkness. The squawking lingers like she’s doing loops; she’s looking for the others, she’s circling the town, she’s a mixed-up squawk of feathers and loneliness trying to get to Canada. Maybe Earth’s magnetic fields have flipped, scrambling the tiny crystals in her head like microwaveable popcorn.
* * *
I always knew I’d enjoy the plague when it came. Bugs—tiny, flying—devouring everything in their path so all that’s left are hundreds of brittle seastars bearing shriveled fruit. These I pull gasping from their plastic pots, throw their stems away to be trucked to the landfill. The tops of the plants, where the tomatoes grow, I pluck and place into big metal coffins. They’ll go to the landfill, too, but we have to keep the infested harvest separate; we have to marvel at the wilted balloon of each tomato, its red long sucked away. It’s an even trade: the whiteflies take my job, and I get to watch their devastation unfurl row by row. I try to look sad like my coworkers, drawing out the day for a few more cents before they’re unemployed, moving slowly from plant to plant like zombies. But I won’t miss it. What’s money when they still call you Jenny? I want to tell the whitefly not to stop at the fruit but to keep going for the heads, not as juicy as the tomato but riper, more rotten.
* * *
Still no Jay when I wake up at eight. The goose is back a little after ten. In between I do the following: masturbate, check my email, fry eggs and sausage, brew coffee, read a violent book by a Portuguese writer. I sit down to write but nothing comes. Mostly I write because the most interesting thing for me to be doing is writing. Other times it’s watching birds.
Instead of writing I go to the bedroom and open the top drawer of the dresser. On my side, bras in nude and black. On Jay’s side a collection of thick Lycra tank tops. I pick one out, shiny like a bulletproof vest, and scrunch my torso inside it. The bottom pinches the skin just above my belly button. My breaths become shallow puffs. I pull on a pair of straight-fit jeans and a button-up. Finally, one of his caps.
It’s a relief not to be me in the mirror anymore.
The fuel gauge reads almost empty, but I don’t fill it because I’ve decided the most interesting thing for me to be doing is driving a new road, not pumping gas; the most interesting thing right now is not unleaded or diesel, it’s the sun setting across that field, it’s the way the power lines cut a hole through the oak trees, it’s the yellow film of pollen on top of a stagnant pond. But then it’s also keeping my eyes on the road so I don’t crash; survival often becomes the most interesting thing, while still being sort of banal.
I park at the college and walk down to the lake, an oblong amoeba carved from the dirt by backhoes in the middle of campus. A flock of geese hollow out the afternoon with their honking. The closeness of their feathered bodies makes me horny, and I start to count the string of eighty-degree days since Jay and I last had sex. I stop when it exceeds one equinox and a solstice. Jay’s binder is itchy under my shirt, and the hot-cold sweat collects in my armpits.
Wanting to see them take off all at once, I watch the geese for a whil
e, but they make no move to fly. I’m the only one standing by the water looking at the birds, and even though I don’t have anywhere to be I start to feel conspicuous and sad, like I’ve lost a game I don’t want to be playing.
* * *
The bugs are gone or burning now, the last paycheck’s been collected, and I’m sitting in my truck wondering where to go. After hosing down the greenhouse we sprayed a chemical foam over everything the whiteflies might have touched, and now the only thing appealing is dead, dried meat, so I buy two packs of jerky at the corner store before going home. Out front the rhododendrons bloom the third time this spring like nothing’s wrong. The rain gauge is Seattle-full. Lawn moldy, worms drowned and decomposing. New England has lost its shit. On the kitchen table, junk mail piles up: debt collections, library fines, student loans, all auto-mailed in cellophane windows to my old name, husks of my former self collecting like the papery exoskeletons of dragonflies. I hear Nina’s car pull in while I’m chewing jerky and it’s with the salty-sweet tang in my mouth that I see her, chest flattened, dressed in my clothes. I pull her into the bedroom and tear them off her. It’s been so long since it’s been this natural, since I’ve seen my hands, stained green from the tomato plants, cling to her body like she’s an ancient ruin in jungle country. I want to erode her stone by stone, make her fall apart.
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