Laura Meets Jeffrey

by Jeffrey Michelson

  “Yes, I want it hard. Hurt me bad.”

  I might be full of anxiety but this is fucking hot!

  “Can I have your whip?” he asks.

  “Spank her first,” I say, trying to gain a toehold.

  “Count them!” he commands her.

  He spanks her hard a dozen times as she counts them off with pained glee.

  “The whip now!” Mr. That’s Unimportant semi-growls at me.

  “Not yet,” I growl back.

  He spanks her harder a dozen more times as she counts, and thanks him with more breathy pain and more obvious elation. I hand him the whip and without warning, he whips her once across the buttocks. I can tell it hurts. I’m thinking that I just might have to intervene when Laura says, “Oh, God. I need that. Please hurt me. Hurt me bad.” My dick is rock hard in my pants.

  Mr. That’s Unimportant spends the next ten minutes teasing her with the whip, making her beg for it and whipping her. Usually Laura says, “This is for you, Jeffrey. I’m taking this pain for you.” This time I hear no mention of my name.

  “Do you want to fuck her?” I ask. I don’t know why I say that. I think it is just to break their rhythm.

  “No. Not tonight. Maybe another night.”

  “Are you sure? She likes to be fucked. She’s a great fuck. She’s got a wonderful pussy.”

  “No. Not tonight. Maybe another night.”

  Laura says, “I want more pain.”

  For the first time ever with Laura I am jealous. I am on the outside of whatever they are sharing. In some twilight zone perverse logical way, I think if he fucks her, or has any kind of sex with her, the jealousy might go away.

  “Maybe you’d like to have her suck your cock?”

  “No, thank you,” Mr. That’s Unimportant says politely.

  He never takes off his pants. We never see his cock. Maybe he is like Jake Barnes? Maybe he has a tiny penis? Maybe he has genital herpes? It doesn’t matter. I am jealous.

  Mr. That’s Unimportant continues for another ten minutes, whipping her more than I ever did and harder. All I can do is stand there. I never before lost control of Laura in all our outings. I never felt fear when she turned a trick. This is something brand-new and ugly and it is not sex that does me in—but Laura’s masochistic desires. She lets out half a real whimper and Mr. That’s Unimportant asks her whether that is enough, and amazingly she says yes. I am relieved.

  I smell foul from my own fear. My hard-on is long gone. All I want is for this evening to end. Mr. That’s Unimportant puts out his hand and I give him the key. He unlocks her handcuffs and she falls to the floor theatrically, at his feet. She holds on to his feet and kisses them and thanks him.

  I feel humiliated.

  Mr. That’s Unimportant bends down, thanks her, gives her one long tonguey romantic kiss, stands up, shakes my hand firmly, thanks me, and walks out of the room without making any future plans or asking for our number. Thank God. I’m afraid Laura might have given it to him.

  “Was that good for you?” I ask, hearing a cracking lack of confidence in my own voice and hoping it won’t telegraph to Laura.

  “That was fabulous. Fuck me, please. Now I need you to fuck me.” She pulls her knickers off her feet and lies on her back with her arms and legs outstretched to greet me.

  I don’t know whether I can get it up.

  “I love you Jeffrey for letting me have that,” Laura pants. “You are the greatest master. It’s my pleasure to be your slave. Please use me now. Please use me now.” Maybe she does sense something. Or maybe not.

  One thing for sure: At that minute with her makeup smeared and what I have just seen, she is the ultimate slut-goddess. I undress, put my cock in her warm mouth, feel it grow hard, move around to put it inside her and fuck her hard and long, very long because my head is so full of psychic turds it takes forever to shovel them out and make room for an orgasm.

  To Laura it is just a great long hot fuck that allows her to come about half a dozen times, but to me it is an uphill battle, wondering the whole time if she is making believe I am him. Usually, when we fuck after a scene I instant-replay the best moments with color commentary. This night I am silent.

  Laura stops coming and hangs in there another ten minutes to get me off. Finally, after a rest stop and some amyl nitrate poppers, the real things, I come. It is not great. I feel cold and alone. Now, not only do I fully hate the coke, I half-hate S&M. Wherever Laura has gone with her “M” is no longer the complement to my “S.”

  It wasn’t Mr. That’s Unimportant; it was what she did with him. I was the outsider. I’d been with Laura while she thrilled to terrific orgasms with handsome men, and I never blinked. Like her coke habit, her sex trip had moved beyond mine.

  43

  S&M clarification

  December 1982

  For the first time down this road I find myself uncomfortable. Being an “S” in an S&M relationship sounds playful. Being a sadist sounds cruel. I need clarification, so the next day I go to the New York Public Library while Laura is seeing several of her clients.

  I read that there are pathological sadists who like to inflict pain on the innocent, and sexual sadists who only enjoy giving pain to those who beg for it. At least I was in that latter group, rather than the first one with Ted Bundy and Dr. Joseph Mengele.

  I find comfort in Havelock Ellis’s classic, Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Ellis died just before World War II so he never went to Plato’s Retreat, but his theories are helpful. He says sadomasochists want the pain to be inflicted or received in love, not in abuse. Ellis says mutual pleasure is essential for the satisfaction of both the S and the M.

  Ellis says consensual S&M is not only pain to initiate pleasure, it’s also violence—or the simulation of violence—to express love. Sadomasochism, Ellis believes, might appear to be controlled by the sadist, but it’s really controlled by the masochist. That took the ugliest side away from it. And the part about Laura actually controlling it not only made me feel better, it was true.

  I read that addictions are there to relieve and control psychological suffering. It may be a clumsy and dangerous answer—but it is an answer. I really do not know what Laura is working out, but at the beginning I bought the idea that I was helping her, that somewhere inside her was an intolerable pain that couldn’t be soothed except by being a whipped sex slave.

  The master-slave relationship Laura and I lived was nuclear synergy where one plus one equaled four. It was an explosive shot of adrenaline, like jumping out of an airplane or riding a huge draft horse at full gallop or performing on stage and basking in the applause of a huge crowd. It was living in the beauty and serenity of black and white and exploding to the vivid color and saturation of Kodachrome.

  I left the library wondering if an evil person walks around thinking of himself as being evil. I thought not. So what was I?

  44

  New Year’s Eve 1983

  Little Richard meets the Sopranos: The wedding of Silvio Dante

  After that night at Club O, we slipped back into our routine. Laura turned tricks and did too much coke; I continued my video apprenticeship and our sex continued to slide into S&M. I couldn’t tell day-to-day that we were falling apart but month-to-month I could feel whatever we had getting smaller.

  On New Year’s Eve, 1983, Laura and I got a gig with the video company I’d been working for. The pay ($100 and a half gram of coke each) wasn’t the draw; it was the chance to be part of a glamorous New Year’s Eve party-slash-wedding.

  Little Steven, a.k.a. Miami Steve, a.k.a. Steven Van Zandt, the lead guitarist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, was getting married. Bruce Springsteen was the best man, Little Richard was the preacher, Percy Sledge would sing “When a Man Loves a Woman” at the kiss, and Gary U.S. Bonds and Southside Johnny were the wedding bands.

  I was an assistant director so I went to the rehearsal a few days before the wedding with my boss, George. George was killing himself with cocaine a
nd vodka, but he was brilliant and I kept learning the business from him while he remained alive. At one point during the rehearsal it fell to me to go over to Mr. Springsteen and tell him, most humbly, that he was standing in the wrong place. Springsteen was amazingly polite and shy. You could hardly hear his voice when he talked.

  He didn’t move much either until he started talking to a young black man, one of Little Stevie’s ushers. The topic was dance steps, and the young black man said he’d never heard of the “Mashed Potato,” so Bruce, with great flair, gave a demonstration. The rehearsal ended with many in the wedding party doing the “Mashed Potato.”

  If you could bet on whether celebrity couples would last, I would have bet that Stevie and Maureen would make it. The first time I met them they seemed like an old Italian couple with conspiratorial togetherness, deference and tenderness. They were a couple that didn’t seem to need to work things out. And as far as the chemistry thing went, well, that was easy; Maureen was a slinky fox with such a warm smile that any man would enjoy being naked next to her.

  This wasn’t a normal one-camera wedding job. We would cover the wedding with four cameras. Each camera package was totally mobile with battery packs, cameraman, a grip with a hand-held Sun Gun, and a soundman with a boom. Each team was connected to each other by headset. And on a different channel the two assistant directors were connected to George. Two production assistants just charged, recharged, and ran batteries to the units. Unconnected to us was another company, an audio company with a mobile, sixteen-track tape deck in a truck outside that would record all the sound that wasn’t synch-sound video. In total it was nearly the equipment, minus a live switcher, used for a small televised rock concert.

  The New Year’s Eve party-slash-wedding was held at the Knickerbocker Club and the place was grand. I heard the flowers alone cost $15,000. Huge exotic floral displays were everywhere and they made the entire hall fragrant, like what I guess the rain forest smells like when the sun comes out.

  I was in charge of two mobile units. I followed George’s instructions over the headset and made sure what he wanted got captured on tape. Even when he was stoned on coke and booze his talent was formidable. With Laura holding one of my unit’s Sun Guns, we covered the wedding from various angles, interviewed guests, and then shot the bands and the dancing. Stevie wore his trademark bandana. Maureen looked like a seductive pixie angel. I was surprised that Bruce Springsteen came without a date.

  “Little Richard said, ‘Come over here and sit on my lap.’ He was totally coming on to me, playfully.” Laura remembers. “He was being very forward with me. I did go sit on his lap, and I was sitting there talking to people, waiting for the wedding to start. I thought he was gay but he was at least bisexual that New Year’s Eve.”

  At midnight, just after I wished Little Richard “Happy New Year,” and a belated happy birthday (we both are born on December 5th), I was looking into Laura’s face and over the airways of our headsets we wished each other Happy New Year and said, “I love you.” I did love her, but it was changing shape. George had given us each half a gram of coke. Mine was still in my pocket. Laura’s was dripping out of her nose.

  At 2:30 a.m. on New Year’s Day 1983, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band took the stage and played for two hours straight. Springsteen, quiet as a mouse and slow as a sloth offstage, exploded as a performer. The entire room stood and sang every word of every song and at one point Bruce just took a break, and became Mitch Miller leading the sing-a-long.

  “Before that, I didn’t like Bruce Springsteen’s music,” Laura confesses, “but then we were standing right on the stage watching them perform for two hours, maybe three hours and I was so taken with the energy. And the music just pored over me and I liked it. He was so quiet before he performed and then when he got on stage and he was like someone else.”

  Twenty years later Steven played Silvio Dante of Sopranos fame. His wife on the show was played by his real life wife, Maureen. They did pass the longevity test.

  45

  The final chapter

  Spring 1983

  From that height the year gets worse.

  Laura and I are spending less and less time with each other. With three residences it is easy to be somewhere else. I am spending more time alone in the country and enjoying it. When we are together I hardly ever see Laura sleep for long. She naps and then gets up and snorts. She hardly eats food anymore. She’s become a jittery coke whore and is now anorexic thin. I’ve always been turned on by svelte and thin, even skinny, but Laura is emaciated.

  Many in the crowd we hang out with are out of control. More people we know have nasal surgery because they’ve burnt out the center of their nose. I wonder how long it will take for Laura to burn out hers.

  She is smoking freebase more frequently, often with George, the video producer I am working for. He is more strung out than she is and doesn’t like to get high alone. He even goes to her house in New Hope when she is there without me. He provides the drugs.

  George was a perfect example of a nice person losing his life to cocaine. Every film and video shoot he did, from car commercials and rock concerts to MTV music videos—including music videos for Aldo Nova, and Blue Oyster Cult’s pyrotechnic laden “Burnin’ For You”—had drugs covertly written into the budget. It was where all the per diems, art supplies, and several other categories of money went and, as time progressed, most or all of the profit.

  It finally got so bad that Jeannie, George’s long-suffering partner and the rock of the company, plus many employees and a half dozen friends got together with George in an attempt at intervention. We all cried. George cried. We all promised to stop all drugs and go “Straight for George.” He made all the worthless empty dope head promises that dope heads make. I think his rehab lasted two days. Then he was back on the grand slide.

  George was so talented that his work, even a grade below his best clear-headed effort, was still brilliant. Along with the coke, he was drinking a fifth of vodka a day. And even stoned on coke, George could eat. Unlike Laura, who kept getting skinnier, George was a fat cokehead getting fatter. Not many people could be so hedonistic as to gain weight while nurturing a severe coke habit. Much of it was junk food, but a fair amount was lavish dinners at Cafe Un Deux Trois, where the video company and an entire hip entertainment subculture of New York City hung out. George always picked up the check. He was that kind of gracious, larger-than-life, super-talented, charismatic, suicidal man.

  Every time I see Laura she is out of her head stoned. I still do coke occasionally, not often but in a group of people passing it around it’s hard to say no. There is still something about the first twelve minutes of being stoned on coke that I like. I love the part about not wanting to eat. I just don’t like doing coke for hours and hours. And I don’t have the physiology that can withstand doing it for two days in a row unlike other physiologies that want more and more every day. This isn’t a choice, it’s biology.

  Laura has gone from the optimistic cheerful princess whom I saw as releasing a damaged underside to being all damaged underside. Part of me wants to save the relationship and save Laura, and part of me wants out. This goes on for months, with our fights about her coke habit taking up half of our conversations. Sometimes Laura promises to quit. But it never lasts longer than a few days.

  “Tough shit if you don’t like it,” she shouts at me. “You love me and it’s the price you have to pay for my pussy. All pussy has a price.”

  That gives me something to think about. I do love her. That is a fact. All pussy does have a price. That is a fact. I am arrogant enough to believe I can get her off drugs. Maybe it is hubris or just naïveté´, but I keep thinking I can make the difference. I still love her enough to not want to love any other woman. Fuck another one, yes; be emotionally involved with another one, no.

  We still have heat sometimes and still have warmth sometimes but in general we move to a lower temperature. There is less stuff traveling between us emot
ionally. We are wilting.

  Outside in the real world it is the opposite. The buds are on the trees. It is unseasonably warm and after the hard winter it feels magical. I have spring fever. I am randy. I don’t bring up the drug thing and try to concentrate on just having fun and sex with Laura. It is Friday night. I do coke with Laura.

  We start off the evening with me hand-cuffing Laura’s hands behind her back. I give her directions. Suck my asshole. Lick my feet. Suck my dick. When she begs for the whip I give her enough to bring her to a frenzy and conclude with a hot fuck.

  I take off the handcuffs and we rest. She tells me she loves me more than ever, but I know it’s not true. We fuck some more and whatever primitive coding we share takes center stage. Laura climaxes several times and then I come again. It is explosive and lifts my spirit. I nap for a while. I wake to Laura rubbing me and begging me to do more drugs so I can fuck her more. I do a line in each nose. I am careful not to do too much and lose my ability to get hard.

  We go back to sex games. I put Laura on her knees, tie her up with long pieces of rope, and began to whip her furiously, which is to her liking. She has a collection of welts from her neck to her thighs. I stop whipping her and with her hands still tied, I fuck her. Then I wet her anus with my spunk and fuck her in her ass. It takes me forever to come and it is intense in the way orgasms you really have to work for usually are.

  I have to piss, and since piss isn’t part of our sex scene, I go to the bathroom, leaving Laura tied up.

  I’m standing in front of the mirror. I look at the face in the mirror. I’ve got coke juice dripping down my nostrils and into my moustache. I still have the whip in my hand. The whole world stops.