Masochism of M: A Sexual Mémoir

by Janice Collins

  No, no wait, I could do this; yes, I could.

  It was time for somebody to say something again, fulfilling the definition of ‘conversation’, but...

  Crickets. …

  A full minute went by with dead air. Sir apparently had no answers either, so, accepting the silence, I gathered my chutzpa, what little I could muster, and slipped from the seat. Once on Terra firma I took a few steps, then, looking up at him, whirled and curtsied (my throwback aristocratic move). What I saw tugged at my heart. Those eyes. He was staring back at me, helplessly. There was nothing more I could say or do, so I drew a deep breath, spun around and scurried up the garage ramp to the elevator. I pushed the button and stepped in.

  This was hopeless; so near and yet so far. So close to what we both needed and yet, here we were at this impasse; this big, blank wall.

  At my floor I exited the elevator to hunt down my car as I unhurriedly dug for my keys. My purse was a jumble of confusion, just like my life. Unlocking the car door with trembling fingers, I climbed inside. I took a few seconds to regroup, closing my bleary eyes and resting my throbbing head on the steering wheel. I felt so lost.

  I started up and slowly maneuvered my car down the winding ramp toward street level. The further down I spiraled the harder it was to hold back the tears. I paused at the bottom to clear my wet eyes with a quick swipe of the back of my hand before hazarding the traffic. I blinked and what did I see? My god! Sir was still waiting! One glance up at him and everything crumbled. This sprinter was done. The dam broke and I burst into a gusher, damn it all!

  My breaking heart throbbed as I sobbed uncontrollably. I loved this man; loved enough for both of us. At this point it no longer mattered if he never loved me back. It didn’t matter if he was married. It didn’t matter if he just wanted to use me for sex. I didn’t care about any of that anymore. I just wanted to be his—somehow. I wanted him to scoop me up and take his pleasure with me, and I didn’t care what that pleasure entailed. To dominate was his right; it just seemed like a given. But people were screwing with him. This docile man wasn’t Sir. ‘They’ had him all confused. I had experienced the real Sir, and this touchy/feely, sensitive guy was not it.

  Whoever the hell was messing with him was really fucking up. They had no clue of the depth of his power, or the iceberg of dominance that loomed beneath his surface. I did. I was very perceptive and I felt it in my soul.

  OK, so maybe I’d blown it not picking up on the marriage thing, but I wasn’t wrong about this. I could taste it. This man was masterful; I could feel it. All he needed was a subservient on her knees before him, bowing to his will. I was more than willing to volunteer!

  I couldn’t drag him to his throne, kicking and screaming though. He had to bring himself there.

  “We could’ve done remarkable things together,” I sobbed to no one. Damn! What’s with life, anyway? Was this karma? Well, maybe I had done something horrible in a former life to deserve this, but it sure sucked to be repaying it now.

  I pulled through the city streets, maybe a little fast, maybe a little crazy. I don’t know; I was too busy being crazy. I did notice after a block that behind me in the dark, the lights of a high-set-up vehicle trailed me. It was Sir. Was he worried about me? Was I driving that erratically? Yeah, probably.

  I straightened. ‘Stupid. Don’t act like a baby. You’re being ridiculous.’ ... Sniff.

  I slowed, but I stayed on course. My goal was to indulge in some self-pitying, wound licking while I sat beside my soporific river. Expecting to see nothing, nonetheless one last time I casually checked my rear-view mirror. Wow, they were still there, those telltale, insect-looking headlights of the Mercedes. I slowed and coasted into the deserted riverside park, suddenly embarrassed at my two-year-old style tantrum. Sir pulled in right behind me.

  In a matter of seconds he opened my passenger door and climbed in. That did it. There was no way in hell I could resist him now. Marriage be damned. I couldn’t care less about anything except touching him, and breathing him, and feeling his strong arms wrapped suffocatingly tight around me.

  I piled into his lap and buried my face in his hot, fragrant skin. There was nothing left but to murmur my plea:

  'Just let me stand next to your fire.'

  6 —Break

  “There are some things a man just can’t run away from.”

  It was cold. December usually is here in the upper mid-west. The piles of snow that had been shoved into the backs of the parking lots had morphed into ugly, gray peaks sprinkled with a thick crust of black grit from car exhaust. I gingerly maneuvered around ice patches on the sidewalk as I made my way from the lot where I didn’t usually park, but where I had strategically located today to be across from Sir’s big, black car.

  It was the last day before the Institute’s winter break and I was beside myself with despair. Thoughts of struggling to breathe without my ‘H2O Sir’ tormented me.

  It hadn’t gotten any easier for me with the clandestine lifestyle we were attempting, though at least it helped having things more out in the open between us.

  It had been a week or so since we’d gotten together, what with the ups and downs of his divorce and the latest ‘squeeze his balls’ game ‘she’ was playing. The sport of let’s pretend was very much still on for us at school. The noose tighter than ever, I was helpless to loosen it for either of us. It was an unfunny joke, all this cloak and dagger, but for his sake I played along. Nobody at school, not even the factuality, knew he was married. That’s how tight-lipped Sir was.

  Last month he’d said his ‘ball and chain’ and he were days from divorcing; that’s the last I’d heard. I only knew now he seemed more reticent than ever, as if a sickening desperation was sealing him tighter and tighter inside a black cocoon. He was an enigma, all right; but I wasn’t giving up on the riddle that easily.

  A few days ago we’d been on a ‘field trip’ to the library, and he had planned to drive us to the river after class. I was anxiously looking forward to our little reunion. He was quiet, not in a very good mood as he sat broodingly beside me at the table. Suddenly his name was called over the PA system. Right there in the library, paged like a big shot to the board room. He started at his name, his face first blanching white and then flushing scarlet ear to ear. He jumped up and took off like a bat out of hell. From across the room I watched him at the front desk as he took the call, then, without even a backward glance, made a beeline for the door. One-two-three, BOOM—he was gone.

  I was shocked. I’d been deserted. Left scrambling to hitch a ride back to school with one of my classmates. It was kind of embarrassing, because everyone noticed I’d been dumped; odd, too, but hey, crap happens, right? I licked my wounds and said nothing.

  Turns out it was his wife on the phone yanking his chain again. She was literally AT the lawyer’s office, signing THE papers, when she decided to give Sir ‘one last chance’ and ferreted him out at the library... jeesus peesus ‘one last chance’? How fucked up was that? She wasn’t going to let him see his kids again if he didn’t play ball and take this ‘one last offer’ of being raked, balls first over the coals. He loved his kids; of course he took it. I don’t blame him.

  It also didn’t change things. The eleventh hour save didn’t matter to me when I found out later because I knew nothing was different. Not really. There’s no way I would have siren-called him if he didn’t want to follow. There’s no way I could.

  I didn’t want to be a home wrecker, or for Sir to have any more problems in a rocky marriage than he already had, but it was kind of late for me to back out now. I had fallen hard for the Loner long before he had sprung that marriage thing on me, and now I was in way over my head. I was caught up in some kind of dizzying obsession that was absolutely impossible to ditch. He was, too.

  ‘You can love more than one person’ he had said. And he was right.

  Plus I truly cared about him, and by extension, his family. I understood that he loved his wife and me both, though
maybe not equally. It may sound crazy, but I did understand. There were always two levels to love: life and sex.

  Life was, well, how you were used to somebody and didn’t want to hurt that person, how you shared kids and experiences, good times and bad—history—but how you also grew apart, how sex shriveled and died, but your needs didn’t.

  Sex on the other hand is primordial. It’s a blitzkrieg. They don’t call it ‘sex DRIVE’ for nothing. Sex is a Mac Truck, a magnet that gravitates to sex-steel. Sexual love grabs your heart, your soul. It’s irrational. It’s powerful. It’s absurd.

  It’s sex.

  So play the game it had to be, making me feel at best like a tag along puppy. Other times I couldn’t even exist. Now that the school’s quarter was ending, ‘his fire’, to which I was so addicted, would soon be extinguished. At least for a time.

  Though only for two weeks, the break seemed like the forever it was going to be. Already the mental distance was tough to take; how on earth could I survive being physically away from him that long too?

  The answer had come to me. I devised a devious little plan and had carried out the first leg earlier that morning. Now I hurried to my car across from his in the parking lot edged in gritty snow to retrieve my dirty little secrets.

  Though I’d vowed never to manipulate him, I sinned...just a little…

  7 —The Shoot

  “Cause even grown men need understanding.”

  I had been working for a short time with a photographer in town. Actually, playing with him is more apt. I let him test out his new lights and cameras on me at his studio, he got me a few minor modeling jobs, and I picked up practical darkroom and real-world camera experience, which gave me a leg-up in my photo classes at school.

  I had met Frank a year earlier when I stopped into his studio to have some modeling-card photos taken for a new agency with which I had just signed. From the get-go Frank was congenial and professional, jovial and funny, and put me entirely at ease. I already had an on-going romance with the camera lens, but he made it even more fun. As the shoot progressed that morning so long ago, his studio took on a kind of party atmosphere, Frank cracking jokes and—being also an accomplished musician—playing his own-recorded ‘40’s jazz tunes in the background. Jazz is not my favorite, but still the mood was eclectic and fun.

  Soon we had gotten a number of nice shots for the cards and it was time to process the composites. Since I had mentioned in passing that I was taking photography, it seemed only natural that Frank invited me into the dark room for the processing. I don’t know at what point Frank started falling for the ‘lady in black’ with the incongruous pale skin and dark hair that the camera loved, but there in the heady-scented, tiny dark room Frank got even more ‘jovial’. As we basked in the safety light’s seductive red glow, the confined space lent itself to his borderline flirtatiousness, though it was still innocent enough at this point.

  When all the film was processed, he insisted, breathily, that I was exactly what he was looking for, ‘to model for his camera’. He called it ‘playing’ in the studio, and promised if I were to come back to help him try out his newest equipment from time to time he’d teach me the practical side of photography and give me all the photos I wanted for my portfolio. Not only would I learn a lot of photography short cuts, he said, but he suggested he could help with modeling jobs, claiming he knew some agents. (Didn’t I see this in a really bad ‘After School’ special?)

  Hardly naïve enough to fall for this old line, I was, however, interested in learning more about the studio end of photography, and I knew I was savvy enough to handle the likes of ‘gentleman Frank’, in or out of any dark room. So I did return, but without any stars in my eyes. Frank had years of experience in the art of photography, and it was a great opportunity for hands-on learning of the craft. Unfortunately it became progressively apparent that my version of ‘hands-on’ wasn’t quite the same as Frank’s.

  Each time I came back to play ‘dress-up for the camera’, Frank went to ever-increasing heroic heights to keep me there. He dreamed up clever reasons why I must stay longer, and other reasons why I must return. Dinners, people coming in whom I had to meet for my career, new lighting equipment I had to check out. He’d do crazy things, like waltz me next door to his friends’ expensive jewelry shop to let me pick out loans of exquisite necklaces, earrings, and bracelets in which to photograph me. He brought in stylists and makeup artists to touch me up, though I preferred to do my own hair and makeup. Along with a few other spots, he actually did line up a modeling ‘gig’ for me in a craft magazine with which he worked, photographing me modeling the luxurious handcrafted musical instruments that were being shipped around the world. He was obviously enjoying himself, but I knew probably sooner than later I was going to have to put the brakes on this runaway train racing toward a dead end. Whether he realized it or not, there was no way in hell I was going to have sex with him.

  To me, we were just good friends—no ‘benefits’ involved. As such, at times when we were working late, Frank would order in a pizza, and pop the top on a bottle of his beloved peach schnapps which he proceeded to drain. Then came bottle number two. The empties stacking up in the bin were all on him, as he was the only one drinking. I didn’t drink— then or now.

  In fact, Frank’s serious binge drinking was a big warning sign that there was trouble in his paradise. It was sad; for as the alcohol made Frank’s cheeks rosy it made his lips loose, and he began pathetically brimming over about his ‘physically unappealing wife’ and their ‘non-existent sex life’. Why married men think they’ll win brownie points with women by ragging on their wives is beyond me. Again, piss or get off the pot. Stay in the bed you’ve made and shut up about it or divorce.

  Whether it was a ploy or the real demons oozing out of Frank’s schnapps-soaked pores, the details of his malcontent were becoming a bit too explicit for me. Though I lent the sympathetic ear of a friend, unfortunately the morose subject began infiltrating our conversations even without the lubrication of schnapps, and more seriously it began leaking into the dark room.

  It was painfully obvious that Frank was becoming too firmly attached to me, and—though too late now—I suppose it would have been kinder to dump him before it had gotten this far. He began to do everything in his power to keep me in his studio as late as he could, despite my excuses to leave. Obviously he hated going home.

  That in Frank’s mind he was a wannabe lover there was no doubt, but that wasn’t going to happen and I let him know in no uncertain terms, every step of the way. His plans for some hot affair were strictly in his own little head. I was not interested. I was 100% taken.

  Oh, every now and then I’d let Frank pose me, rearrange my hair, scoop me up from a table or tall chair and whirl me around in a dizzying and playful dance to his jazz music, but that was just Frank feeling his peach schnapps, and that was as far as we were ever going to go. Sometimes he’d push his luck in the darkroom, that tiny space where the exotic red light and the acetic acid made the rest of the world seem far away. He would on a rare occasion come up behind me as I stood at the bath tray, wrap his arms around my waist, pull me back into him, and nuzzle my neck trying to pretend there weren’t several layers of clothing between me and his hard-on. I’d just laugh, clack my tongue at him, and side step his libido, shaming him with a good-natured frown. That was my deal with Frank.

  It was an oddity, our relationship. One that was to continue status quo through several years, and even past his knowledge that I was very much owned. The poor man downed that bomb with most of a bottle of his beloved peach schnapps, and sweated even more profusely in fear of the ‘Sir Monster’ that I described to him with unbridled gleeful delight. Frank was aware—and acutely afraid—of Sir. Yes, he wanted to soil his marriage with me in the worst way, he just didn’t have the balls for it. With me, there was never a snowball’s chance in hell of that affair happening. Sir owned me body and soul, then, now, and forever.

  This
Christmas season, however, I purposefully relented to Frank’s ever-pleading calls to come in and ‘play’. He moaned that he was lonely. From his description of his wife and the snapshot’s I’d seen, his chubby, shrewish ‘better half’ would have had that effect on a man... a shriveling of the balls and a strong desire to stay late at the studio till the little lady was fast asleep. So sorry, I had a different agenda.

  The only reason I finally said ‘yes’ to Frank’s begging this Christmas was because I needed some new photos. Needed them. BADLY; and in a hurry. These had to be different photos, however; they had to be hot, seductive, and lens-meltingly juicy. They were destined to be bait.

  As soon as I got to the studio early that morning I described to Frank what I wanted. “OK,” he squeaked, swallowing hard.

  Standing there behind his camera, Frank’s poor red face would gush great beads of sweat even when I was just doing a ‘girl-next-door’ pose. His shirt would soak through as his puffy face would light up like a man about to have a coronary. Yep, the sexual hots seemed to consume Frank like a disease. Today was gonna be a particularly difficult shoot for him.

  This time, when I clutched the bit of black velvet cloth to my ‘naked’ body, draped strategically to intrigue, I thought he’d collapse. In actuality I wasn’t naked at all. I retained my bra but hid the straps, squeezed my bulging breasts together, and smoothed my long legs with totally nude pantyhose, but it gave the desired effect nonetheless and made poor Frank quiver. The photos said, ‘Come hither, sugar, and nibble my naked nipples’, while my bitchy eyes warned ‘…but don’t you fucking touch me’. I slathered on whore makeup and pouted my smoky-eyed way through a set of cheesecakes worthy of Marilyn Monroe. I wasn’t doing this for Frank; I was doing this, of course, for Sir.

  To say the least, the pictures were unlike anything I had ever done. These shots were hawt. Playboy even. I shook out my long, thick hair full, wild, and free, and attacked it with my fingers for a ravaged nymphomaniac look. I nearly got a nosebleed from the six-inch black, patent leather stilettos at the end of my long, long legs. I stared down the lens like a tigress in heat. No mercy. If this didn’t do it Sir didn’t have a pulse.