“Hey, that’s what domme training is all about,” she says, then grabs a few tissues and wipes the makeup remover off her face. “You should practice all kinds of scenes with different types of guys, and then if you want, you can specialize or be a generalist like me.”
“How come ’Chelly gets to train with Jaime LoBianco?” Leticia pretends to gripe. “When are you going to let a sister dish out to some hottie?” She turns to me and says, “See, I have nothing but average Joes in my stable, and after a while they stop challenging me. Now that’s when I get bored and get myself into trouble. Like sometimes in the middle of a scene, I start to think, ‘Your wife can’t do this for you at home for free?’”
“That’s not good,” I tease her.
“I know.” Leticia grabs a cushion from the sofa and tosses it at Josie. “So what’s up?”
“Okay, quit whining,” says Josie. “Danny Vilar’s coming from L.A. next week to promote his new movie. Wanna sit in on that session?”
Of course she wants to sit in on that session. I want to sit in on that session! Danny Vilar is the Bolivian answer to The Rock and Hollywood’s latest action star.
“Cool!” say Leticia. “But why just watch? Is that his thing?” I live for the day when I’m less star-struck and can ask something like that as nonchalantly as Leticia.
“No, he’s one of those guys that likes to test my authority, so I have to stay focused when I’m with him. He answers back, he forgets to address me as Queen, I say sit, he lies down…. You know, Danny’s so huge, he really has to push my buttons, so when I let him have it, he can actually feel it.”
Leticia says, “That’s even more reason why you should involve me.”
“She’s got a point, Josie,” I say. “Danny might really get turned on about the idea of ‘needing’ two women to break him down.” I squeeze quotation marks in the air at the word “needing.”
Josie leans against her locker and crosses her arms over her chest. “Really? You don’t think the opposite? I’ve been afraid of sending him the message that I’m not strong enough to dominate him.”
“Well, if he was your average gym rat from around the way, yeah, I could totally understand you worrying about that,” I say. “But Danny’s this attractive, famous, rich man who’s so used to everyone catering to his every whim. He probably needs more convincing to feel that he’s not in control.”
“Oh, yeah,” Leticia says as she nods. “And he’s all A-list and everything. You know how massive his ego must be.”
Josie starts to come around. “Hmmm…you guys may be right about that. So what do you think if I—”
There’s a knock on the door and Veronica—aka Miss Veronique—peeks her head in. “’Chelly, just wanted to let you know that your six-thirty walk-in is here.”
I groan at the idea of having to put those platform boots back on so soon. Josie reassures me that once I break them in, they won’t hurt, and I pray she’s right. “It’s only a quarter after.”
“So you know what you do?” Josie says. “You make him wait until six-thirty, and then you punish him for being early.”
Veronica applauds. “I love it.” She curtsies before Josie. “That’s why you are the Queen, Josephine.”
“Seriously?” I laugh. “Punish him for being early?”
Josie says, “Nena, I’m dead serious. You told him to be here at six-thirty. Not six thirty-one. Not six-eighteen. Six-thirty. He needs to understand that you told him six-thirty for a reason. What that reason is, is none of his business. His only business should be to please you by doing exactly as you say. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“She’s right,” Leticia says, snapping her fingers. “This is how Queen Josephine keeps asses in check and makes that paper. Listen to her, ’Chelly.”
Josie preaches on. “Madame Michelina, you have other things to do besides meet with him, so he needs to respect your schedule. So you make him wait until six-thirty, and then you go out there and discipline him for disobeying your commands.”
“Okay, I’ll do it!” Suddenly, my feet come alive. I jump up and look for my purse. My coworkers cheer as I reapply my eggplant-colored lipstick.
“Michelle, his name is Giovanni Ryan,” Veronica says as she heads for the door. “And Leticia, Michelle’s new sub brought a woman with him who said she was interested in domme training. Once I set Michelle and him up in the Ruby Room, you can meet with her in the lounge.”
“Cool,” says Leticia.
“She’ll be easy,” says Veronica. “I know a natural when I see one.”
“And what’s her name?”
Veronica looks at the forms on her clipboard. “Gina.”
We all exchange amused looks. “Giovanni and Gina?” says Josie, cringing. “I hope she’s a cousin.”
I look in the mirror, rub my lips together, then say, “Kinkiness must run in that family.” Then I head to the Ruby Room to prepare for my session with my new client Giovanni.
Chapter 14
This place is nothing like I expected, and that doesn’t exactly calm me. When Ryan parks the car in a garage near Madison and Thirty-first Street, I wonder if he screwed up the address. This is Midtown, for God’s sake. The Empire State Building is right there.
Then we walk to this dingy building above a wholesale fabric store, and while closer to what I imagined, it’s still far off. Ryan and I ride up in this dark, gilded art deco elevator that has no button for the thirteenth floor. When we arrive on the floor, it seems like we step into another world. A hospital, to be exact. The floors and walls are so white, and the light is almost blinding. This Whipped place is the last suite on the floor at the foot of an L-shaped corridor away from all the other offices.
We press the intercom, and the same woman Ryan and I spoke to earlier buzzes us into the reception area. The front is very small and clean, with a few pieces of furniture that remind me of a doctor’s office. I expect this Veronique to be in full regalia. Thigh-high boots, a latex bustier, and leather garters over a thong bikini or something like that. But instead she wears a simple sundress that hangs slightly above the knees and a matching bolero jacket. The only thing out of place in her ensemble is the holster with the two-way radio that hangs low on her hips. She introduces herself as Veronica, hands Ryan a clipboard with consent forms, a medical history, and all kinds of paperwork, and asks me who am I.
I have to think quickly. “I…I’m his…my name’s Gina.”
“You’re not a couple, are you?” she asks.
“No!” If I give the wrong answers, I might be asked to leave. Then I remember what she told me over the telephone. “Well, when my friend here told me about this place, I thought, ‘I could do that.’ So…”
“Ah, you’re interested in domme training.”
I’m still not sure what the hell that is, but I nod and say, “Yes, that’s right.”
Perky li’l Veronica chirps, “Oh, okay,” as if I said I wanted to go out for cheerleading. “Let me give you our brochure and take you to the lounge where you can meet with one of the mistresses who will answer all your questions.” She motions for me to follow, then says over her shoulder to Ryan, “And then I’ll come back to escort you to the Ruby Room for your session with Madame Michelina.”
So now I sit in this lounge, fanning myself with this brochure and trying to figure out what to do next. Of course, I have to get out of here and find this Ruby Room before Veronica takes Ryan there and Michelle recognizes him. But she’s standing right outside the door speaking to this woman I can’t see. I hope Ryan has the sense to write very slowly.
This is what you do, Jen. Once this woman walks in here, tell her enough to make her think you’re legitimately interested, ask for the ladies’ room, and find Ryan. And do it fast!
A petite African-American woman wearing a Baruch College T-shirt and loose jeans enters the lounge. She offers me her hand and a huge grin. “Hi, Gina, I’m Leticia. Welcome to Whipped. I hear you’re interested in our domme training
programs.”
Her causal outfit and warm greeting throw me. “There’s more than one?”
“Of course, we have different programs for different needs. Didn’t Veronica give you a brochure?” Then she notices it in my hand. “Oh, there you go. Let me show you.” Leticia opens up the brochure and says, “We have everything from onetime ‘Unleash Your Inner Dominatrix’ seminars—you know, for women who don’t really want to adopt the lifestyle but just want to have a few techniques to keep the love life from falling into a rut—to this three-day intensive for those who may want to incorporate BDSM into their daily lives.” Leticia stops abruptly, shaking her head and smiling. “I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. Tell me this first, Gina—do you want to dominate a man that’s already in your life or do you think you might be looking for a new career?”
“I—I—I…ladies’ room please,” I whisper.
Leticia grins at me as if women choke before her all the time. “Of course.” She reaches into her pocket and hands me a ring with a solitary key. “It’s down the hall to your left past the red door.” Red door! I fight the urge to snatch the key and bolt out of the lounge. When I reach the door, Leticia asks, “Gina, can I get you something to drink? Water, tea, coffee…”
Acid. I swallow hard and say in the strongest voice I can muster, “Coffee would be nice, thank you.” This will buy me some time to find this red door and get into what is surely the Ruby Room.
The second I cross the threshold, I’m down the corridor like Marion Jones running from a steroid allegation. I see the red door and race toward it. When I get to it, I just grab the knob and fling myself into the room. “Ryan!”
Ryan’s nowhere in sight, but there stands Michelle. She has on a fuchsia-colored bustier with black strings across the front and lace down the sides. Her matching leather skirt is so short that I can see the lace at the top of her black thigh-high stockings. And those boots…She must have bought them at a garage sell organized by the rock band Kiss. What is that she has in her hand? Is it a paddle? A black leather paddle?
“Jennifer!”
“Michelle!”
Then we both yell, “How could you do this to me?”
Chapter 15
“You’re going to get me fired!” I yell.
“Get you fired?” Jennifer shouts back at me. “You’re going to cost me this election!”
“How am I going to cost you the election? This is my private life, not yours. How is anyone going to find out?”
Jennifer flails her arms and screams, “The same way I did!”
I fluster for a moment. I mean, she’s right. How the hell did she find out? I hadn’t told a soul. The only other people who knew were in the business or lifestyle with me. And none of my clients knew my real name, or anything else about me for that matter. “Who told you about me?”
I get my answer when Veronica comes through the door with Ryan Alfaro trailing behind her. “With all the yelling going on I thought someone else was conducting a scene in here….” Then she recognizes Jennifer. “Gina?”
“Gina?”
Veronica reaches for the two-way radio on her hip. “Michelle, do you need me to call security.”
“No, Veronica,” I say. “I know these people. This is my sister, Jennifer.”
“Oh.” Veronica takes her hand off the radio. She glances at each one of us then says, “Okay, I guess you’d like some privacy, then.”
“Please,” Jennifer and I both say. Veronica hands me Ryan’s forms, reaches for the doorknob and starts to back out of the room.
“You!” I bark at Ryan. “Stay.” He steps around Veronica and into the Ruby Room, his eyes glued to the tassels on his loafers. When Veronica closes the door, I ask, “How did you find out about me?
“He was doing research,” says Jennifer. “Once he finished digging around Cuevas’s past, he started delving into mine.” Her eyes cut into Ryan. “Even though I told him not to.”
“It’s one thing to defy her,” I say to Ryan. “But you had no right invading my privacy. I’m not a candidate in this election.”
“I wasn’t invading your privacy,” he says. “I found out about you by accident.”
“Oh, you were just surfing the Internet in your free time and you just happened to come across my picture?” And the second I say that, I know it to be true. The slightest grin on Ryan’s face even as he stares shamefully at the ground confirms that it’s true. I walk over to him and gently lift his chin with my finger so I can look him in the eye. Using my loving but dominant voice—the one Josie trained me to use when rewarding a compliant submissive or reassuring him that no matter where the scene goes he’s truly safe—I say to Ryan, “You’re interested in this, aren’t you? You want to be dominated. Not by a fat abusive man like Cuevas but by a strong beautiful woman with a bit of a tender streak.”
His smile widens. Jennifer mumbles, “God help me.”
I shoot her a look and start to tell her to be quiet when I take in her stance. In her tailored linen suit with the short skirt and high heels, Jennifer stands with legs apart and her hand on her hips. She’s fuming so hard it’s a wonder her glasses haven’t steamed up.
Then it hits me.
I rifle through the forms in my hand until I find the preference checklist. Which scenario does Ryan rank as number one? Boss Lady. I look at his list of favorite costumes, and he has chosen none of the traditional options. Instead, on the line next to Other he writes Suit. Ryan made sure to cram an additional note into the margin. But not a man’s suit! A woman’s suit. I’m not into the androgynous look. The more feminine, the better, please. And of course in the prop sections Ryan has only one selected.
Glasses!
I get it so good now, I can’t stop laughing. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” says Jennifer. “My sister spends her nights running around this cavern or dungeon or whatever looking like Rosario Dawson in Sin City, and how do I find this out? Because she tells me? Nooo. Because my campaign manager is surfing the Web looking for women to spank him!”
“Ryan’s not just looking for any woman, Jen,” I say. I double over and hobble to the bondage bench with the handcuffs and leg irons. “He’s looking for someone just like you. You got the man so worked up, he went on the Internet to find a dominatrix who looks just like you. And that’s how he found me! That is so cute!” Now I’m howling, and even Ryan chortles just a little.
“You’ve been waiting for twenty-seven years for my ambition to bite me in the ass, so go ahead,” says Jennifer. “Humiliate me.”
And instead of getting furious at her arrogance, I feel sorry for my little sister. I stop laughing and say, “Hey, Jen, don’t think that. The truth is I stumbled onto this trying to be more like you.”
“Like me! You want to be more like me, and this is what you do? I am nothing like this.” But I can see right through Jennifer. Maybe she hasn’t done anything like this, but she sure as hell wants to. After all, she really didn’t have to come here tonight to confront me.
“Ryan, will you excuse us for a few minutes please?” I say to him. For a second he seems disappointed by my request, but eventually he complies. That boy is ready to take his whipping, if only I can convince Jennifer to dispense it. When he leaves, I pat the bench. “Come over here.”
“I’m not sitting on that thing.”
“Fine, but you’re going to have to come closer so I can show you how to use it.”
“I don’t want any part of this,” says Jennifer, even as she sneaks peeks at the torture rack. “When did I ever tell you that I would be interested in anything like this?” She swats a wrist restraint on the rack.
“Now that you mention it, it is kind of weird.”
“Thank you.”
“No, I mean, we’re sisters, right. We’re only three years apart and all that each other has left here in New York City now that Mom and Dad are in Puerto Rico and our cousins are all over the country.” I stand up and walk over to Jennifer. Naturally, w
e’re the same height, but in these boots I tower over her. For the first time in years I feel like the older sister again. “It’s kind of odd that we don’t confide in these things to one another. You know, that we don’t talk about sex and relationships. And yet I saw how you were with Rocco, and I imagined that you were this Amazon in the bedroom, and I wanted to be more like you. So I took a workshop here, and then I took another, and the next thing you know, they offered me a job.”
Jennifer scoffs. “Trying to dominate Rocco in the bedroom is how I lost him.” As she speaks, she makes her way over to the bench. “He complained about my ordering him around about keeping the house and working on his music, but I think he liked it. I know he liked it. Then I went too far and tried to bring that into the bedroom. Well, he liked that, too, and it scared him.” Jennifer sits on the bench and runs her fingers across the leather.
“Ryan’s not scared,” I say. “He’d love nothing more than for me to show you a few things to practice on him.”
Jennifer suddenly leaps to her feet. “How could you stoop to this, Michelle?” She sounds much less judgmental now and much more concerned. “Okay, it’s one thing to do this with a man you know in the privacy of your own home. But you’re trading sex for money—”
“No, no, no! There’s no sex involved. I mean, there is, but it’s all psychological. It’s fantasy. Role-playing. And it’s one hundred percent consensual, safe and legal. Some of the most powerful men in the city are among our clients. After spending twelve hours every day with millions of dollars and hundreds of lives depending on their every decision, it’s liberating to come here, drop their alpha male postures, and have a woman who they know deep down inside means them no harm tell him what to do.”
Although there are so many more layers to this scene that I myself have yet to learn, I can tell that the little I explain to Jennifer makes sense to her. Then I reveal to her the one thing I know that concerns her most of all. “I couldn’t tell you this before, Jen, because then I would have had to admit how I knew, but now that it’s all out in the open…”
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