The Scarlett Letters

by Jenny Nordbak

  When they got pregnant, I was pissed. I liked the idea of a new sibling and I wanted them to be happy, but I felt like they maybe should have mentioned to me that they were even considering expanding the family. It wasn’t exactly an accident. Being an angsty teen, I wrote them an angry letter informing them precisely how unhappy I was with their conduct. It wasn’t the reaction they had expected, and things got even more tense.

  She gave birth to my half brother just before my senior year of high school started. They called him Danny, and with his baby charm, he made me fall in love with him and forget all of the anger over his conception.

  Looking at it now, I think it must have been the hormone swing from pregnancy or postpartum depression or just the overwhelming stress of being a new parent, but shortly after Danny’s birth, things between Eleanor and me reached a new level of crazy. I was accused of breaking into their house and tapping a flashlight on their antique headboard to leave small damaging marks as some sort of bizarre act of rebellion. I didn’t have keys to their house. They had a security system that I didn’t know the code to. But I had somehow used my criminal mastermind powers to break in … and my crime of choice was damaging an antique headboard. Made a whole bunch of sense. It was so absurd I actually laughed. Why bother applying for scholarships when I had mad ninja skills and could just rob people instead? They were understandably not amused.

  The next major accusation came with a phone call from my dad. I had just finished a rehearsal at school when he called. I answered with the usual pleasantries, but he cut me off immediately and said, “Jenny. We’re at the hospital. Eleanor has cut her hands on the glass you put in her hand cream and we need to know what we should be testing for.”

  I started to cry.

  “Dad? Are you serious? I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t underst—”

  “Not interested in hearing that right now. Just need to know the extent of what you’ve done.”

  I couldn’t get another word out over my sobbing. He hung up.

  When I had stopped panicking long enough to think through what was happening, I went and found a younger teacher who I was close to and explained what was going on. I was terrified the police were going to show up at school and arrest me and I needed someone to know what was happening who could be my advocate. I was rattled, but the magnitude of it hadn’t sunk in for me yet. As an adult outsider, she was able to see the situation much more clearly and knew how deeply wrong it was.

  “Jenny, you have to stay away from there. I think she’s sick and from what you’re telling me it has been escalating. I’m worried that if you don’t stay away, she’s going to do something to harm the baby and find a way to blame you for it.”

  That seemed a little overdramatic. This wasn’t a Lifetime movie after all.

  Talking to my teacher had allowed me to shift the burden I had been carrying on my adolescent shoulders to an adult authority figure, and it felt good to surrender control to a grown-up. Underneath my teenage swagger, I was overwhelmed and out of my depth, but I never would have admitted it. I trusted her and followed her advice. I didn’t see or speak to my dad or Eleanor again and the accusations stopped.

  I grieved for years. I had lost a parent because he had chosen his other family over me. Not only that, but he actually believed me to be the person Eleanor had portrayed in her wild stories, capable of callousness and cruelty. I went through a brief spell of wondering whether this was what crazy people felt like. Maybe I had done the things they said I did and I just didn’t remember them. Was I dangerous? Did I need help? Working through those thoughts was terrifying, but I kept reaching the same conclusion: It wasn’t me. There were no periods of time I couldn’t account for or any other warning signs in my behavior. I didn’t have access, and on the occasions in question I knew exactly where I had been and who I was with when I was supposedly committing deviant acts. I should have been reassured, but if it wasn’t me, then it was her, and that didn’t make me feel any better. It must have been even harder for my dad to be in the middle of it.

  4. SCARLETT

  With some distance and some time, I began to heal and move on from it all. I started college at USC, loving the freedom and fun of student life. I tried to act like my peers, experimenting with relationships and casual sex. None of it was particularly satisfying, but I was too scared to push any boundaries. And now there I was repressed, frustrated, and insecure—and just as terrified of it all as I had been as a teen.

  Scared or not, I had resolved to probe these questions, so I dug through the Internet, desperate to find a way to understand and accept what I had been blocking out in any of my sexual experiences.

  After sifting through heaps of porn and lots of disturbing awkward-cat-lady BDSM fan fiction (you can’t unread a story about Dumbledore spanking Hermione), I stumbled upon something intriguing: a working dungeon in Los Angeles. There was evidently a place of business not ten miles from where I lived where women worked professionally as Dominants and submissives. It was a house of fetish that catered to adult desires without being a brothel. It was a dungeon that also happened to be called the Dungeon.

  I read through all of the pages and profiles with fascination, wondering who works in such a place. Then the banner on the side of the page caught my eye.

  “Now interviewing subs, Switches, and Dommes. No experience necessary.”

  What better way to learn than to do? It was the universe calling my bluff.

  She seemed to whisper, “Here it is, your chance to do something wild and forbidden.” I didn’t think. I just picked up the phone.

  When a real woman answered, I was shaken back to reality. I stuttered my way through an explanation of why I had called and hung up the phone with an interview scheduled at six the following evening.

  I sat on my bed, mind racing. What the hell had I just done? Was I really going to go? I knew the answer was yes before the question had even finished forming in my mind.

  I struggled with the question of what to wear to the interview so much that I actually called back to ask. I couldn’t very well ask my mom for advice. The lady on the phone explained that the Dungeon keeps an extremely low profile, so I should wear whatever I would wear to a normal job interview and nothing that would raise the eyebrows of the neighbors. The term dungeon, to me, implies a menacing stone building, but in reality, this dungeon was an unassuming house in a mostly residential neighborhood.

  Walking in, I was totally confident in my pencil skirt, blazer, and Mary Janes. Once inside, I felt matronly and prudish. Lady Caterina was busy when I arrived, so I had been seated in the interview room to wait. The girls who were working flitted past the open door like curious butterflies assessing the new prospect. They were dressed in a scintillating array of lingerie and costumes. Shiny leather and latex hugged their curves and fishnet stockings left flashes of bare thigh beneath scandalously short skirt hems.

  An alluringly androgynous woman with a black faux hawk and equally dark eyes strode into the room, wearing a leather minidress and impossibly high boots. There was a challenge in her eyes that I didn’t yet understand. She looked me over with a smile that hinted at something secret and then began rummaging in the wooden chest on the far side of the room. Once she had turned her back to me, I couldn’t help but stare at the slit up the back of her dress, which reached her waist. And as she was currently bent over, I had a stunning view of her black thong and perfectly shaped derriere.

  She didn’t even turn around when she said, “Are you checking out my ass?”

  Lady Caterina saved me from having to answer. She entered the room and swatted the girl on the behind.

  “Mistress Erin, stop flirting with the new girl!”

  Mistress Erin chuckled and winked at me as she left.

  Up until that moment, I would’ve said that, without question, I was strictly heterosexual. I had never even considered being with a woman. Now I had an undeniable crush on a Dominatrix named Erin. My heart was flutt
ering and I was blushing like a schoolgirl who had been asked out for the first time.

  I was confused and out of my element when Lady Caterina, an older woman who looked like an archetypal bohemian with completely white hair, perched on a stool across from me and started working through a list of questions over the top of her glasses.

  It is hilarious now to remember how naive I was, but I confidently bluffed my way through the whole thing. When it seemed that I had answered all of her questions favorably, the tone shifted and she focused on explaining the mechanics of working there.

  We took a tour of the Dungeon and as we went from room to room, she reviewed the rules and what would be expected of me. I began to notice that there was some understood flexibility between the legal rules that were posted in every room and the unspoken rules of the Dungeon. Rules such as no penetration and no exchange of bodily fluids were fixed and fireable offenses. Not to mention felonies. But there was an understanding that a client was allowed to be fully nude and could orgasm as long as we didn’t assist. In other words, I can’t stop him from doing it, but I can’t be the one stimulating. Panties were never to be removed. Toplessness was at our discretion. Some of the nuances of the rules would take me months to understand, but the core of it all was to protect us from the law and from potential exposure to disease. For instance, technically we were not allowed to interact with a client’s genitals. But I could kick him in the balls with boots on and it was acceptable, assuming said gentleman was expecting ball torture of course. Caterina did her best to talk me through what I would encounter and how to handle it, but most would have to be learned through experience.

  Every room we walked through had a different theme and the attention to detail in each would have made Disneyland proud. There was a space for almost any fantasy I could come up with, and I’m sure a number that I couldn’t. The themes varied from a menacing dungeon like the one I had initially pictured, complete with stone walls and medieval-looking torture racks—to a fully equipped classroom. There were cages and crosses, medical tables and frilly couches. Implements and erotic posters adorned the walls. I felt dark and naughty just being there. And I liked it.

  There was an entire hallway dedicated to implements and toys that could be taken into a session. Rope in every color imaginable was neatly coiled and hung next to paddles, whips, floggers, chains, ball gags, gimp masks, blindfolds, and a vast array of items whose purpose I could only imagine. It was overwhelming, but intriguing.

  I was struck by how immaculate absolutely everything was. It was clear that everyone adhered to extremely high standards for hygiene.

  Nothing about the place felt dirty or wrong. After a little while inside the walls of the Dungeon, it was easy to forget that the outside world even existed. There were no feelings of guilt or shame here, no preconceived notion of normal. It was a place where pleasure and fantasy were sacred.

  I left feeling electric and energized.

  I got the call the following afternoon to let me know I had been hired. The only catch was that I would have to start as a submissive since I didn’t have any training in domination, even if that was where my proclivities lay. That meant I would need to be the one receiving spankings, being tied up, and role-playing as the meek little schoolgirl when necessary. I wasn’t excited about that idea, but it was still a challenge and the end result would be the same. On a logical level, it made perfect sense that I couldn’t just walk in and start dominating people without any concept of what that meant or how to do it.

  They wanted me to start on Monday. I knew I wanted to keep it a secret, but I felt that I needed to tell someone what I was up to or I was going to explode. The obvious choice was my roommate, Amelia. We had lived together for nearly four years, and we always supported each other.

  At first, she was stunned.

  “What the hell is a dungeon?”

  “It’s a similar idea to a brothel, except no sex happens there and it specifically caters to fetishes.”

  “So will that still make you a prostitute?” she asked with more excitement in her voice than she probably intended.

  I had to laugh. “That really depends on your definition of a prostitute. Technically, I won’t be doing any traditional sex favors for money, so no. But at the same time, there are acts that have an overall sexual connotation, even if they don’t fit the normal bill, so in that sense, yes. I think the real question is whether I’m comfortable if someone thinks I’m a prostitute regardless of technicalities. The answer is yes. The only difference between a prostitute and one of the girls who’s sleeping with a new guy every weekend is that one is smart enough to get paid for it.”

  “Does Wes know?” she asked without meeting my eyes.

  “No.” I hesitated. “I didn’t want to tell him before I knew whether I got the job, but now I don’t know what to say.”

  “Kinda seems like it’s now or never. It’ll only get harder once you’re doing it. Are you actually into this … stuff?”

  “I think I might be. And that’s part of what I want to find out.”

  She tactfully changed directions with, “Is it even legal? What if you get arrested?”

  “From what I can tell, it falls in a gray area. I mean, the Dungeon has been there since the eighties and no one has gotten arrested, so it must not be too bad. I think as long as I follow the rules and don’t do anything stupid, the risk is low, but I’ll admit it’s a possibility if the cops decide to crack down or something. Every time I do a session, I’ll have to decide whether I’m okay with it. I think this whole situation is going to be about evaluating risks and deciding how far on the edge I’m willing to go before it becomes too much.”

  “What if someone tries to rape you?”

  “That could happen anytime. We live in the fucking hood. Girls get raped at frat parties or on their way home from a night out, but that doesn’t stop us from going. It just means we try to be smart about it. Similar idea here, but I actually think it’s less likely to happen at the Dungeon for a few reasons. In theory, there are no drugs or alcohol at play. It’s in a secured building with cameras and lots of witnesses, so it’s a pretty sure thing that they would get caught and be prosecuted. For most of these guys, this is the one safe place for them to get their outlet, so they don’t want to fuck it up or they’ll never be allowed back. And I’ll only be taking clients I’m comfortable with and laying the ground rules for the session ahead of time, so I can be careful. But again, yes, I admit it is a risk.”

  “What would you do if your mom found out?”

  “Drive my car off a cliff. I don’t know. I don’t see how she would find out.”

  Amelia shrugged and shook her head. “Fair enough. I wanna see the Web site!”

  As we laughed and clicked through all of the pictures and profiles, I felt a weight being lifted. Secrets can be such a burden.

  We spent the weekend shopping for scandalous new outfits. I was in the car with her on our way back when Lady Caterina called to find out what I wanted my name to be. I had given it some thought and decided that I wanted to be Thalia, named after the ancient Greek muse of comedy.

  “Thalia? Yeah, that’s not going to work. We’re dealing with men here, and men are dumb. Keep it simple; something they have heard before and can pronounce.”

  I was totally unprepared. It hadn’t occurred to me that she would reject my choice.

  “Okay. Can I think about it and call you back?”

  “I really need an answer now. The Webmistress is about to leave and Lady Leah said it had to be up on the Web site today.”

  “Okay, two seconds…”

  I covered the phone and shrugged at Amelia. “She said Thalia won’t work and I have to pick now. Ideas?”

  “Diana?”

  “Boring.”

  “Caroline?”

  “Lame.”

  “Natasha?”

  “Already taken.”

  “Marilyn?”

  “Taken.”

  “Mu
fasa!”

  “Not helpful.”

  “Destiny?”

  “Stripper name.”

  “Scarlett?”

  “Lady Caterina, what about Scarlett?”

  “Scarlett it is.”

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but my alter ego had just been born.

  5. TICKLE ED

  I awoke in the early morning hours of darkness on Monday with the immediate knowledge that today marked a delineating point in my life. There would be a before today and an after today. This morning I was a bright, successful recent college grad walking a typical path in life that would make any parents proud. With that thought, though, I was reminded that I didn’t have parents anymore. I had a mom. And the typical path had left me hollow and frustrated. The next time I lay down to sleep in this bed, I would be a different woman in ways I knew I couldn’t yet imagine. I would be a bright, successful recent college grad with a dark secret. I would be a sex worker. My stomach danced in circles at the thought. But from the nerves and that knowledge, a wicked smile appeared. I could do this. It felt right.

  I made it through my work day at my vanilla job, and quietly left a little early to make the drive up to the Dungeon.