Marketplace

by Laura Antoniou

  Angie, my wife, was... is... the best. She was a Rhodes Scholar. She wrote this series of papers on the effects of violence on kids, and they were published all over the world. She was invited to speak in Northern Ireland, and we all went. I was so proud of her.

  And in the meantime, I went to the city every day in my suit and tie, and I... well, I basically sold toys to over-age kids. You know, you’ve probably seen catalogs from my company. Gyroscopes made from space-age metals. Computerized bar guides. Neon artwork. Hand-carved desk accessories from some country where workers only get paid thirty-five cents an hour. We targeted those catalogs to households in the richest neighborhoods, and we sponsored expensive research into gentrification so we could find all the yuppies in any given town within five days of their signing a mortgage. As senior vice president in charge of marketing, I had my finger on the pulse of every American man who was earning three times as much as the government thought a family of four should live comfortably on.

  At home, I tried to be active in my family’s life. I went to school plays and softball games. I even went to PTA meetings for a while. I... we... always tried to do things with the kids on the weekends, and I always remembered birthdays and special days. And I had my own stuff, my hobbies. I played a little football in school, so I coached this local teenage team. I went to the gym.

  And I was the unhappiest man in the world. Because I had the biggest, dirtiest secret. I had a mistress.

  And it wasn’t like all the other guys, either. I mean, they had lovers on the side. Women who worked with them, or women they met at bars after work, or even their own babysitters! But I had a mistress. A Mistress. And... and I paid her. To see me. Once a week, every week for over two years.

  Don’t get me wrong. I... loved her. But she was just too important to be able to see everyone who wanted to see her. I mean, she was famous. Really, if I told you her name, you would recognize it immediately. She’s even been on TV. And she really didn’t have a job, so she would charge men for what they needed. I never thought of it as a fee, really. It was more like tribute. To my empress, my goddess. The money didn’t mean a thing. But what she did to me was worth all the money in the world.

  I guess I’m starting in the middle, aren’t I? Well, my life wasn’t very interesting until then, I guess. Except for this huge secret I had, that was always there. I can remember being thirteen years old, and smuggling this dirty magazine into my room and jerking off to a picture of this woman in thigh-high leather boots. But I never talked to anyone about it. Never! Until I met my first Mistress.

  What had happened was I went to this chic party in one of those trendy clubs, some remodeled church or something. I can’t even remember what it was for, but my company had these tickets because we sponsored the appearance of one of our boy-genius inventors or designers or something. My wife had actually gone to a few of these things with me, but she opted out of this one because she said it sounded loud and obnoxious. I guess it was one of the few mistakes she made in her entire life.

  Because she didn’t go, I spent most of the night just kind of standing by the bar and watching things. You see, if she had been there, we would have walked around a lot, talking to people. Everyone liked to talk to her. But by myself, I could just fade into the background, drink until the room got fuzzy, and then try to sober up enough to get home by myself. Instead, there I was by the bar all night. And that’s how I saw them.

  This guy kept coming to the bar and buying one drink. He was dressed a little warmly for the night, with a turtleneck sweater and a jacket, I remember. He’d buy the drink and almost dash back into the crowd, like a linebacker who has the ball. And then he’d give the drink to this blonde woman, and stand next to her. He never had a drink of his own. And he never spoke to her. She would be talking to someone else, turn to him, and off he’d go for another drink. He would light her cigarettes, too, but he didn’t smoke himself.

  They were so obvious, I couldn’t bring myself to believe it for at least two hours. Instead, I watched them. I watched him, the way he stood behind but next to her, attentive to her every gesture. I watched the way she flicked ashes onto the floor, carelessly close to his leg sometimes, and how he never moved out of the way. People would sometimes greet them, and he’d shake their hands, but never really participate in the conversation.

  By the end of the evening, I knew I had to meet her. I wandered close to them, close enough to eavesdrop on more than one conversation. By the time I was very close, my palms were wet. I had to keep rubbing them against my pants leg. I was so nervous! What I was going to say became a kind of cruel game my mind was playing. People passed me by and I couldn’t say who they were, or even whether or not they said hello to me. It was like the whole room had shrunk to me, that woman, and her male companion.

  Finally, I was close enough to actually look like I was interested in the conversation. And this I remember well. She was talking about a fashion show she had gone to, where the models were dressed in fantasy clothing, like leather and lace and rubber. The people around her were amused and titillated. I thought my heart was going to pound its way out of my chest in another second. When a break in the conversation came, I stuck my hand out and said, “Hi! I’m Robert. Sounds like you go interesting places!”

  I’m sure I must have had the sickest-looking fake grin on my face. Even as the words left me, I felt weak in the knees. I must have looked and sounded like the worst kind of moron.

  And do you know what she did? She looked down at my hand, and put her cigarette to her lips. I thought she was going to leave it there and shake with me, but instead, she took a long draw and put her hand back down. I was left holding my hand out like an idiot.

  “Not as interesting as the places you should be going,” she said calmly.

  I could have died. To the snickers of the people around me, I put my hand down, and tried to match them with a laugh of my own. But it was useless. I was already beaten. I couldn’t stay, but I couldn’t walk away.

  I didn’t try to engage her in conversation any more. I just faded slightly into the background and continued to watch her, this time from up close. It may sound strange, but I was happy just to be like that. I felt like I was orbiting her. And then, suddenly, she made some kind of gesture to the man next to her, and he passed me her card. Before she left for the night, she said to me, “Call me on Monday evening at 6pm.”

  I went home feeling like I had cheated on Angie. But I couldn’t bring myself to throw the card away. I opened the window of my car while I drove up the expressway, and I actually held it outside for a while, letting the rushing air blow against it, but I was really helpless. I put it in my business card case.

  I stayed awake all night, next to the body of my faithful, loving wife. The mother of my two great kids, and the woman I promised to love, honor and cherish for the rest of my life.

  You see, even when we had gotten married, I still had fantasies of powerful, controlling women. Even on our wedding day, as I stood in front of the minister, I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could take the vow to obey her as well? Wouldn’t it be great to have her put a gold collar on me instead of a gold ring? But Angie was... is... a strong believer in individual strength. She could never have stood for the kind of man I really am.

  I called the Mistress on Monday, from my desk at work, promptly at six. She told me to come to a certain address by seven, and hung up.

  I called home and told Angie some story about late meetings. She took it in stride. Business was going through the roof, and I was an important man.

  Two hours later, I was crawling naked across a bathroom floor, begging to lick the rim of a toilet seat.

  I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. I was a heel. A jerk. A bad husband and a poor father. But how can I possibly explain how fulfilled I felt when this woman I had only met two days before put a chain around my neck and told me what a weakling I was? How can I put words to it? It was so right! I was really home! Th
is was what I should have been doing all along. I was perpetuating a huge fraud on the world, masquerading as a good man, a husband and father and hard worker. Deep inside, I knew, and she knew—I was nothing but a weakling. A pathetic shadow of a man.

  I made time for her every week. I told Angie that I was spearheading a special program for accelerated training for regional managers, or something like that. And every Monday night, I would go to her East Side home. I’d take off all my clothing in the hallway and crawl into her presence. Then, after a while, she would recognize my presence and begin my training.

  It was all designed to make me suffer for my audacity. You see, according to my Mistress, this charade of mine was insulting to every woman who lived, and I deserved to be punished for it. I agreed, and I looked forward to every correction she offered. When she beat me, I cowered and shrank into the floor. When she had me shackled and tormented with tiny metal clamps all over my body, I cried like a four year old who lost his parents at the mall. I was shameless. Sometimes, she would have some other slave present to watch what was happening to me. I used to think that those times were the worst, because she would be even more vicious and cruel. But I was still ignorant and selfish then. I didn’t know what true suffering was.

  She would assign me books to read, and then quiz me on their contents the following week. That was hell, because I didn’t have anywhere I could hide them except for my office. I began locking my filing cabinet, and my secretary became annoyed. But I had no choice. I couldn’t bring them home, could I? Finally, I bought a cabinet just for the things my Mistress made me accumulate, and started a collection of pornography, sadomasochistic literature, and sex toys. And I kept everything right in my office, right under all my framed pictures of me with famous people, my diplomas, and my community recognition awards. I was an even bigger sham than before.

  After she got to know me, my Mistress began to slowly change my training. I was still going to be punished regularly, but now, she was going to begin to make something out of me. I was so happy! At last, I was going to be molded, trained and fashioned for a woman’s pleasure! I was eager to receive this training. I was so hungry for it, I didn’t realize what it might mean until it was much too late.

  One of the first things she did to teach me my place was fuck me. Oh, how she drew out the act! First, she beat my ass until it was so tender I cried when she just tapped on it. Then, she brought out her collection of... dildos, I guess, fake cocks of all kinds. And she made me kiss all of them. And, and... lick them. And then she asked me to choose the one that would take my virginity the way men had ripped it from women for thousands of years. The first three I picked were all unsuitable. For the first one, she put heavy clamps on my nipples. For the second, she put a leather parachute around my balls. It hurt like hell! It had little pointy studs lining the inside. For the third, she put a terrible black hood over my head. It had a removable gag and blindfold, which she put on the side. But even without them, the whole thing felt like my head was in a tight cage. Finally, I chose one she approved of.

  Then, she sent me into the bathroom to clean myself out. She never watched. Doing it for the first time, with a hood on, and the parachute swinging between my legs and those clamps on my nipples, was a terrible, terrible experience. She had to send me back. I didn’t know the first thing about how long I had to wait, how much water I should use, or anything. She was very, very angry with me. When I finally came out, she told me that because I was so inept, she wasn’t going to fuck me at all. I had to grovel for over thirty minutes, begging her to do it, before she relented. I must have looked like a great big shaggy dog, whining and squirming on the floor with my ass high in the air, waiting for her to open it. By the time she got ready, I was crying a river of tears.

  She put the blindfold on me, snapping it onto the hood with loud snaps. Then, she produced the gag that went with it. I couldn’t see it, of course, but she told me all about it. It was shaped like a cock head. She told me that she was going to use my mouth after my ass-pussy, so I better get used to having it filled. And then she pushed it into my mouth, and snapped it on. Thank God I could breathe through my nose, because that thing stretched my mouth so wide, I could barely breathe around it.

  And then, she beat me again. When my ass was so sore that the flicking touch of one of her nails made me screech into the gag like a cat in heat, she opened the cheeks of my ass and slammed her cock into me.

  It was then that I came to the greatest understanding I will ever receive in my entire life. For all the agony men have caused women through the ages, for all the rapes, the wedding night horrors, and the terror we inflicted on them just because we saw them as weaker, men like me deserved to suffer. Even as I screamed a muffled cry of anguish and pain, I cried for all the women I had possibly harmed in my life.

  Including poor Angie.

  Angie noticed that I seemed sore the morning after my Mistress used me sexually. She expressed concern. Did I have a back problem? Was I getting a cold? I told her that I pulled some muscles out of whack in a tougher than usual gym routine, and she seemed to believe it. I had taken care not to be naked in any well lit room with her for the past several weeks, so I thought she probably didn’t suspect that I had any marks to hide. And actually, I would have never had the kinds of marks she would have understood.

  How wrong I was. She found blood spots on the sheet, probably about the same time I found them when I happened to look down while in my elegant executive washroom. When I came home that night, she confronted me about them. Bleeding hemorrhoids? she asked, her face full of concern. Did I see a doctor? Why didn’t I tell her?

  That night, I realized I couldn’t lie to her any more. I took her aside, in private, and began to tell her what kind of a man she had really married.

  The divorce came shortly after that. Not only didn’t I contest it, but I insisted that she get everything. The house, the car, everything. After all, nothing I could give her could ever erase the shame of having been married to a wimp, to have thought you loved him, that he was a good, strong man. I didn’t even argue when she had her lawyer tell me that she didn’t want me to have unsupervised visits with the kids. It hurt, sure. It hurt like hell. But I could see her reasoning. Who would want a pervert to have access to their kids? She was a great mom, very wise. Very strong. Why should her kids be subjected to me?

  But it still hurts. I go see them when I can, and I send them cards and presents all the time. And Angie agreed not to tell them what I really am. She and I tell them that we just had grown-up disagreements, and that we still love each other and that we both still love them very much. That’s the right thing to do, I guess.

  I moved into a studio in the city, near where my Mistress lived. I told her that she could have greater freedom to do as she wished with me. The first thing she did was order me to shave off all my body hair. And the next time I arrived and stripped, she had an outfit ready for me. It was black and white, with a short little skirt and a white ruffled apron. It was French maid’s uniform, made for a man like me. When I put it on, I felt like I was putting on my real clothes. From there, I went to high-heeled shoes, make-up, and cock and ball restraints under everything. I even wore them to work. She had a locking belt that held them on, and sometime she would lock me into it for a few days at a time. While I wore it, I couldn’t piss standing up. I had to sit down, like a woman. And then there were the days when a belt locked a butt-plug in me, and I had to call her to get permission to remove it to, well, you know. There’d be times when I was leading a big, important business meeting with a fat plug up my ass and my cock locked in a little steel cage, and no one there had any way of knowing.

  Then, she began to invite her friends over to laugh at me, and help with my training. She loaned me out from time to time, to different women, all mistresses like her, who would torture me and laugh. She would take me to strange, underground clubs, I guess like the ones that Sharon used to go to, and she’d show me off. Sometimes, she�
�d make me lie on the floor, and she and her friends would flick their cigarette ashes onto my body and dig their heels into my flesh while they talked and gossiped.

  Of course, she still had a lot of other slaves, who each had their own special times with her. If our rivalry became too obvious, she would set up sessions with the offending slaves and make them do awful things. Once, she thought I was not understanding enough of her time constraints, so she set up a session with another one of her big sissies. She made us oil ourselves up and wrestle for her entertainment. Anytime it looked like one of us was winning, she would stand over the dominant one and beat him with a carriage whip until he cried out and relaxed his hold. The match seemed to go on forever! I remember feeling so exhausted that I couldn’t fight one more second, and then the other slave pressed me down. Because he won, he got to... my Mistress told him to... use me.

  While he did, she stood over me and told me how much of a woman I really was, how much I enjoyed being used like one. And I knew she was right. Before he was finished, I had made a mess on her floor.

  She made me lick it up. And then she used me too, first in my mouth and then in my ass-pussy.

  Before too long, I didn’t know who or what I was any more. Was I a man, or a woman? Did I have a life of freedom and responsibility, or was I a slave? I couldn’t quit my job, because then I couldn’t afford to buy my Mistress the trinkets and clothing she liked, and I couldn’t afford to bring her tribute. But at the same time, it got harder and harder to concentrate on my job. All I wanted was to be with her. Or just to be near her! Finally, one night, I begged her to decide for me. What should I do?

  She told me that if I wanted to be with her full time, I would have to give up the thing that made me so repulsive to her. My cock. My nasty thing, as I had learned to call it.