Masochism of M: A Sexual Mémoir

by Janice Collins

  I knew his wife only from answering the phones. I’d never met her. Cecile called on occasion for her husband, and when I buzzed him, Gio would heave a heavy sigh and announce to me, “Ahhhh! I’ve got to get rid of this,” a pretty good sign that something was amiss in paradise.

  I resisted; I did. I really did. Enduring five weeks of daily bombardment I held strong. There was my birthday, and jewelry, offers of cruises complete with detailed catalogues and brochures, and dinners, and lunches, and presents, and presents, and more presents. All to the tune of me reiterating my status to him. Not in the manner in which I presented myself to my Owner, of course ('I belong to you body and soul and you can do anything to me that you want, Sir,' ) but in unmistakable terms nonetheless. I directly told Gio that I was taken. Seriously taken. You must believe me when I say I did try—hard. But poverty sucks. So yes I did eventually weaken and accept the gifts, pawning most of them to pay rent. While , granted I could have continued to refuse them, in all honesty it would have been cruel, because the giving made Gio even happier than the receiving made me.

  So Gio continued to slather me with the aforementioned gifts, which he always adamantly insisted I take and keep, 'no strings attached', and poor-as-a-church mouse me needed every one. What I couldn’t use outright—as in 'practical' stuff—I did pawn. I couldn’t help that. For instance he bought me gold jewelry without even asking. I cannot wear gold, so I had no choice but to give it back or liquidate it. I chose the latter. Beside, except for Sir’s beautiful chain Bracelet and my priceless Ring, jewelry is wasted on me. The only 'best-friend-diamond' this girl wants is one that can be hocked before its little carbon weight can dwindle one more thousandth of a carat.

  This continued until the night I finally convinced Gio what I meant by I AM TAKEN. In desperation I held out my arm and showed him the chain bracelet that I wore, the one Sir had sealed on my wrist permanently, the one that would remain there until the day I died, or till the tragic day Sir released me.

  It happened when Gio and I were the parking lot of a fancy hamburger joint one night. I had had enough. Gio was torching things way too hot and I knew I had to make my status crystal clear or risk losing control over this situation. His Mafia-style approach to a full-blown affair was royally pissing me off. The stubborn Celt in me hit the New Jersey-Italian in him and all hell broke loose. I threw caution to the wind, drew a deep breath, and let fly. I began by sticking that bracelet under his nose and hitting him with fact…that I was 'owned'.

  It nearly killed him. He couldn’t believe that I, or anyone, would be involved in such a relationship; a relationship of possession. Oh, I didn’t spell it out for him 'A-B-C' with all the juicy S&M details. That I would not do. That got into my Owner’s right of privacy and would have been a monumental mistake for everyone if I had. Dear god.

  So instead I skirted the issue slightly, still making it perfectly clear that I was not fair game; that I was deeply involved with a man I loved more than life itself, and to whom I was totally devoted—'obsessively so', was my exact term. Gio’s face looked like an aneurysm about to pop as he flew into a rage and in his thickest New Jersey accent declared, “If I wasa little younger,” his brow furrowing so deeply his eyebrows disappeared, “I’d take that thing offa you!”

  Yeah, you and what army? I thought to myself. Tough, get over it, I chuckled sadistically. It was hard to have pity on a guy so blatantly cheating (or trying to) on his wife. Again, Sir was the exception. He was a god to me. He could do no wrong. But Gio? Fuggetaboutit.

  One of the few things Gio did have going for him was that he yakked. A lot. Making him a convenient guy with whom to go to dinner. Finally, a man who talked more than I had to. I could actually eat a meal without having to entertain my partner between bites! In fact, I could finish my entire dinner and dabble in dessert before he was past his salad!

  Sadly, that and his gift-giving were his only redeeming qualities. Though he was a diplomat and had lived a more interesting life than several people put together, was rich and uniquely European with his thick Italian accent and 'mistresses mentality', for an intelligent guy Gio was perversely stupid. Inexplicably the man just couldn’t resist cutting me down! A little suggestion now and then from this older gentleman might have been cool, but It was hour after hour on his soap box lecturing me about everything from politics to finances to family, a verboten subject with me if ever there was one. I might have overlooked his diminutive stature, a gross turn-off for me—he was shorter than I—but his constant bitter critique was unforgivable. Honestly, for a 'wannabee' it made no rational sense. He lost sight of the goal entirely, and made me so sick of the drama that I couldn’t bear to be around him despite his 'gifts'. So rah, rah, Gio, but he couldn’t hold a candle to my Owner on anything. He wasn’t, nor could he ever be Sir. Not even a close, no matter what. No one ever was, or ever could be Sir.

  For a while, the luxury of going into these swanky places and arriving there in the style which a brand new BMW affords was an interesting development. Nothing to get used to, mind you. Just something to polish me more finely for my Sir’s whip.

  Gio was from a different era entirely, being a full twenty years older than I. His idea of 'romance' was blaring 'Bolero' on a loop in his car’s CD player when we met blocks away from my home, in the dank parking lot of a seedy bar in the pitch black so that 'no one would see us'. This got old. I couldn’t care less who saw me with him; it wasn’t me who was ducking and hiding. I wasn’t the married one. If it sucked that bad to get caught, divorce her ass and then pick me up at my house in broad daylight. And 'Put a ring on it.' Truth is I think it just gave him a thrill, the 'cheating husband espionage' bit. But it gave me the creeps... with him at least.

  A man has to have the moxie, like my Owner, to pull it off right. I would go anywhere, meet him anywhere, and do almost anything with him. His word was law. He was a god. It’s not your fault, mere mortals. It’s just that being with my Owner is like starring in a new action thriller every single time we’re together. With Gio, just being able to make it into my house without puking was a problem on occasion.

  Seriously.

  Case in point, once he drove ‘round and ‘round and ‘round the block for literally two hours just to get up the nerve to tell me he wanted to have an 'affair' with me. I got so car-sick I told him I was going to throw up. On our last go-round I was feeling so bilious he finally pulled to my curb. I shoved the door open and beat a path up my steps. Threw right the hell up the instant I cleared my front door. Lucky for him it wasn’t in his spotless new Beemer. Heh heh heh. That would have been justice.

  Perhaps it was his heavy-handed cologne, or a tainted expensive seafood dinner, or the pulsing beat of Bolero on the tape left to grind and grind as we circled ad nauseam. But Gio was convinced it was he who sickened me.

  Well, perhaps it was.

  More likely it was the seafood.

  Whatever.

  All I know is that when I used to hear Bolero I immediately thought of the original 'Star Trek' episode with the green slave woman and Capt. Kirk talking about nailing her. Now all I think of is Gio and projectile vomiting. Bummer.

  I never want to hear Bolero again.

  Gio did treat me with fatherly respect, aside from the verbal abuse 'for my own good', whether I wanted to be treated that way or not. You see, he made an 'ass'’ of 'u' and 'me' by 'ass-u-ming' I was a normal human being.

  First mistake.

  Second mistake, he loved to eat me out and begged me to allow it. I would eventually acquiesce and let him. With my feet hanging over the front seat and the car windows all steamed up he just couldn’t get enough. It turned him on. Not me.

  As my Owner knows, I hate getting licked. It’s difficult for me to even tolerate, let alone enjoy. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I feel, like O, I just don’t deserve it; that rather I should be on my knees before my Owner sucking him instead. In fact my Owner uses cunnilingus as a punishment to debase me; something I must endure on ra
re occasions. Proper.

  So there we were, Gio and I, this time in a scene out of Lolita. In the backseat of his BMW, my black knee-high boots on my long legs were hanging over the posh, smoky-platinum leather front seat, boots gleaming like sweating horses in the parking lot’s lights. Gio was hot, no doubt thinking of hiding from wife et al behind the steamy, rain-streaked car windows outside this fancy restaurant. I, on the other hand, couldn’t have cared less if the entire world had seen us. In fact it would have been a turn-on... Gio licking away on my swollen vulva like a hungry pup on a juicy steak and everyone a-gasp, watching in envy. But my mind was only on him getting off and getting me home. Period. Yes, I am my solely my Owner’s whore.

  He was simultaneously playing with and sucking on my tits, which—as usually happens when other men do it—just served to irritate me. Though I know he was trying to pleasure me, what he did just made me want to kill something! He was rough in a way that was not sensuous… for a European, his lovemaking was anything but continental… and he was not Sir.

  On this occasion I finally coaxed him to cum just so he would take me home and let me out of that abominable, steamed up, new-car-stinking vehicle. Some like that new car smell. Me? It makes me ill. Give me the aroma of an old Chevy pick-em-up any day.

  If ever the non-existent dominatrix side of me wanted to emerge it would have been with Gio. I think that’s what he wanted anyway. He as much as told me so on several occasions. “I could never dominate a woman; if anything I’d like it the other way around,” he said between lectures.

  Well, I just couldn’t 'top' as I think they call it in the lifestyle. I couldn’t bring myself to be a dominatrix. No way, no how. A huge brick wall arose when I even thought about being dominant because of my years of training by my Owner, or perhaps just because I’m not bent that way, or both. I had no doubt that Sir would have whipped my ass bloody, right back into submission had I even looked like I was thinking of domination. Dominate Sir, now there’s a laugh. But if ever I were going to flip it would have been with Gio. He aggravated me that much.

  I tried to imagine tying up Gio. I tried to imagine teasing him and just blowing hot breath on his dick and tickling his testicles with only the tip of my tongue, till he whimpered like a gimp in ecstatic agony.

  Well, maybe. Yes, maybe that would work—with him alone. (Please don’t tell anybody.)

  In the meantime, Gio and I were popping into every expensive restaurant in town and I was gorging—ala Scarlet O’Hara in GWTW—on every manner of rich food imaginable: calamari—one of my favorites—escargot, Brie, puffy breads, rich desserts, and exotic dishes from all around the world. I began to wonder if my clothes would burst. I would start to drool the minute I picked up the menu. Years of starving just doesn’t prepare you for such no-holds-barred culinary orgies.

  Starved? OH yes, I starved. Not just figuratively starved, literally starved. Sad, yes, but true. In fact, in the eight years since fleeing to Iowa from a psycho Ex redneck in Missouri who repeatedly tried to kill me, I had truly starved 95% of the time. Various reasons, all of them sadly valid. No lectures, please; just keep it to yourself. It’s a capitalism—not a moral—thing, you probably wouldn’t understand. Nonetheless, I tell myself poverty is what helped to keep my girlish figure. Now, that was being challenged!

  The dinners were fine. Food was nice (I always took most of it home in doggie bags to feed me for the week) and Gio was tediously entertaining, especially if I could manipulate a moratorium on the lectures.

  It was all very cozy, but unfortunately trouble at work with the Candita bitch sent me surveying the temp agencies for greener fields. If there was one thing I knew it was office politics—didn’t play it at all, but I could smell it a mile away—and knew when it was time to move on. Office politics, me-no-do.

  Sigh.

  It was happening about twice a week now, Candita and Playboy, the owner of this accounting firm, would have monumental, knock-down, drag-out 'lover’s spats' if you could call them that. They were loud, raucous, and clearly for the benefit of their captive audience—we workers—and always followed by great public makeup sessions complete with outrageously expensive 'apology gifts' from Playboy… as in cars, cruises, and diamonds expensive. Everyone was sick of it, but Gio, the president and CEO was boiling over like Mt. Vesuvius.

  The whole thing was terrible for business!

  It was clearly Candita and Playboy’s entertainment and perhaps the spark-de-vivre that polished Playboy’s mahogany desk-of-life, but it was quelle boring to the rest of us. It irritated Gio most of all because he wanted in on the excitement. To a married man it seems anything—risky business, ducking and hiding, or downright turmoil—is better than a vanilla-bland or sexless marriage.

  Fear is never boring, you know. Say, that makes a great song title, don’t you think?

  Gio would call me to his office during these workplace hurricanes and try harder than ever to cajole me into our affair. It was wearing. I knew my days were numbered at this little hellhole, if for no other reason than Candita had begun to eye me as a rival and the recipient of Playboy’s lurid glances, real or imagined. It wasn’t true, as far as I was aware, but hell hath no fury… Gio was the president all right, but Playboy was the owner and had to be reckoned with on some level.

  Candita was pressuring Playboy to boot me. That was the scoop on the floor, and exactly what my bitch-dar was telling me. Been there, done that, far too many times. Women bosses hate me because their men love me, and the women bosses that love me are far too weird. Yes, it’s a problem for a pretty woman, especially if you’re poor.

  BAM! That’s the sound of the door hitting me in the ass every time this situation arose. I even hired on with an openly lesbian boss once, with whom I had not one ounce of attraction (and vice-versa) and her lover got jealous. Boom, fired. Jeez! Can’t win.

  Don’t let anyone tell you that pretty women don’t get the shaft (pardon the pun) because they certainly do. Get sexually harassed, refuse the guy, you get fired. Get sexually harassed, tell on him, you get fired. Even if he’s reprimanded and you get to stay, it’s still a man’s world and the good old boys stick together and brand you a scarlet woman, and you get fired for sneezing in the hallway instead. Get hit on and comply? Well eventually you end up leaving anyway because it’s a dead end street. Men almost always stay with their wives; shrews, frigid, bitches, kids or no kids, they stay. Trust me, I know.

  All the guys in the firm were afraid of Candita, and rightly so. Many a perceived offence to her had chopped a guy off at the nuts and ended his career. No one dared utter a word of protest against Ms. Sluzzie or the ridiculous 'Peyton Place' atmosphere that prevailed. I was not worried about being canned, however, because I carried the much bigger stick... Gio.

  Nonetheless I saw the handwriting on the wall: Candita and Playboy’s shenanigans were starting to cost the company money—Big Money—and that was a horse of a different color. I began an intensive job search.

  At 'Peyton Place' huge contracts were being lost strictly due to the starry-eyed ineptitude of thinking-with-his-dick Playboy, and the gross ineptitude from just plain dim-witted Candita. Not to mention the mint he was 'borrowing' from his company to shell out on her was beginning to take its toll. Too many whole afternoons were spent 'polishing' Playboy’s desk. Playboy’s bank account was rapidly dwindling with every new battle and makeup session. I took calls from the bank nearly every day about delinquencies. Checks were bouncing like rubber balls, and everyone, including Gio, was getting worried about the future viability of the company. No one’s paychecks had bounced yet, but if Playboy didn’t get it together soon he would lose yet another company to bankruptcy, just as he’d lost several already, and usually because of his dick. This was exactly why he’d begged Gio to come aboard to handle things in the first place, to keep his spending sprees in check. With Candita’s hands in his pants however, it was impossible.

  Gio was fighting to do what he’d been hired to do, to ste
er the company into solvency, but Raging Hormone’s Playboy was doing his level best to drain the coffers faster than Gio could replenish them. Yes Gio protected me, but it no longer mattered; there was so much tension in this crazy place I wanted out before it imploded completely.

  After months of Gio struggling to salvage the company and to guard me from Crazy Candita I finally got a sweet offer from a huge, fortune fifty company and away I went, and just in time. 'Peyton Place' went belly-up soon after.

  Still Gio hung on... and way too tightly.

  As a rich businessman, Gio held out hope of our 'full blown sexual affair' for many years. He was unaccustomed to failure. He made it abundantly clear—ad nauseam—there were no strings attached to any of his gifts; that his generosity was for his pleasure and made him happy. He refused to allow me to repay him for anything he bought, even when I adamantly insisted. I would write him checks; he would tear them up. So I accepted the gifts, as much to please him as to please myself. He never stopped trying to 'get' me, and I never stopped saying 'no'.

  His taking on the role of the chastising and over-bearing father, while still doing his level best to 'entice' me never ceased to amaze me. Is that any way to beguile your hope-to-be lover? He never seemed to get it. But that’s OK, he wouldn’t have succeeded anyway no matter what.

  Sir never made me feel inferior, like Gio tried to do. Sir always made me feel grandly and uniquely special, above all others, smart and beautiful, and most of all, desired beyond words. With Sir, I was a queen. For a supposedly 'brilliant' and 'successful' businessman, Gio was certainly clueless where romance was concerned. Oh, he’d occasionally tell me how passionate I was, how my 'clit was the largest and most sensuous' he’d ever sucked (yes, he really did say that), and he’d tell me, rarely, I looked attractive, but the way he continually 'for my own good' tried to hammer me into the ground otherwise just got old. Good thing I know what I am (and what I’m not), or this man might have bruised my ego.