Definitely slowly, very slowly. Just thinking about it made my nipples stand at attention.
“So what, you’d want to order death to do you slow like you order everyone else?”
Stereotypes. One might expect better from artistic, feminist circles. I know better. “Not at all. I’d want it to be the one time where I wasn’t in control.”
Breathe. In and out, in and out. Focus, centre, that’s it, girl.
I turn the blow dryer on the damp fishnet, reminding myself it’s uphill from here. Five minutes of peace, but then I’ve got Alex, not the damn idiot who just threw up on my knees.
I broke the golden rule with Alex months ago: never, never get attached to a client. He broke the rules first anyway, coming to me when he never really wanted to be dominated, when he wanted to have a battle and win. Trouble is, in all the time it took to get him to stop glaring at me and trying to squeeze my ass and to start licking my boots and kissing my rings, I got a little attached to the guy. It’s a funny thing about a lot of these people: they come begging to be dominated, ordered around, the whole wash, and the truth is, most of them want to be me. Maybe that’s what got me so much about Alex, that he wasn’t afraid to show it.
It didn’t hurt that he had money to burn and the most gorgeous ass I’d ever seen to carry his wallet around on.
I roll the stocking back on, examine my face in the mirror, look for the little lines around the red lipstick, under the eyeliner, knowing they’re there, but choose to live yet another evening in denial. That’d make me good old (emphasis on old) Christina Marla Mendoza, and Ms. Mendoza never really got us very far. Besides, it’s Mistress Tina who has to answer the door, and there’s no one here to get it but me when it rings.
And ding dong, what do you know. Maybe I was really meant to be a psychic.
Breathe, honey, in and out. Say your mantra: I am the Mistress, and I must be obeyed.
I am the Mistress and I must . . . answer the fucking door. I must answer the goddamn door.
Look through the peephole, God knows who it could be, but there he is. Look over that sweet pout, those green eyes, that body you know is twenty years younger than yours, even if no one else would. If there’s a God, his name is surely Doctor and you don’t go see him when you have a cold, either. I often wonder if liposuction is considered a sin or a salvation by the Hoover people. Only a client, Chris, and don’t you forget it.
While you’re at it, unlock the goddamn door, huh?
Unlocked, and I walk back, settle my ass on the stool; waiting, watching. He comes in, looking at the floor, and for a moment it almost breaks my heart I broke him in this well. Just a second of that gaze would knock me flat, and I’d love every minute of it, even for the loss of face it’d cause.
“Mistress Tina, how may I serve you?”
So, here I am, and I’m thinking. You could knock me flat on my ass for starters, I ponder, grab me by my hair and fuck me senseless while I pleaded with you to stop, for starters. You could make me come more times than I wanted to, suck my cunt even after I ordered you to stop, and drive me freaking nuts with the agony of an overstimulated clit and a million dead brain cells, but I don’t say that, don’t ask for that. This guy is a client.
Instead I ask him to shine my shoes, kiss my fingers, kneel at the stool and sing my praises. This is work, not play.
While he’s doing all of this, of course, I imagine he’s doing what I want him to be doing, I’m organizing my third dresser drawer in my head, figuring how I can get both to lunch and to the sale at Betsey Johnson tomorrow and still have time to get my nails done.
While he’s doing all this, of course my mind starts to wander and I’m thinking about this morning with the coffee klatch, I’m thinking about dying slowly, I’m wondering how sweet it could be to have to surrender, to have no choices, to be laced to this stool with nothing to do but die.
And I’m dripping wet just thinking about those ropes around my ankles.
“Tie my feet to the chair.”
There’s a long silence. Oops, I crossed a line. Regardless, I am the Mistress and I must be obeyed, for crying out loud.
“I said tie my fucking ankles, slave. Now.”
There is that scurrying sound (I know this one well), and then the ropes move slowly around my feet. His fingers should be trembling. His fingers aren’t trembling. I should hear his breath breaking, but it’s as even as if he were doing dishes. I can almost see a smirk on his face.
“Tighter. I want my toes to tingle.”
The fibres tear into my skin as I pull my ankles to see if he’s done it. He’s done it. He could push this stool back and I’d fall. If I tried, I could stop the fall with my hands, but I wouldn’t be able to get up by myself unless I united the binds. He could near do anything he wanted to do me right now, and he’d be in control. But then, I’m in control even if I change the rules and there isn’t shit he can do about it.
“Stand up. Look into my eyes.”
Another moment of silence: I don’t breathe, I don’t blink, I don’t say it again or reach for my crop. I let it hang in the air until I know it stings harder than any whip could.
He stands, lowers his eyelashes, and he looks, deep. I am assaulted by this bright green gaze, fire behind the pupils, hot breath on my upper lip, the scent of him. I can hear his nostrils flare. Silence is a wool coat after a cold downpour; heavy and damp and stifling. He leans forwards; I can feel the tremor between our lips. I have never once kissed this man. If I leaned a quarter-inch closer, I could, and it’d be exactly what he wanted, for me to fall sway, lose my hold. I could and I’d be able to feel that half-open mouth all over mine, and God knows it’d be what I want.
His hand is on my knee.
“Leave,” I tell him.
I am heavier than strong silences.
Riding the subway, late at night, but it’s busy nonetheless. There must be a million people on the train. The lights from the top of the car are flickering on and off; I am annoyed by this, annoyed by the clatter of the children in front of me, annoyed by the incessant display of affection of the couple beside me. Love and affection makes me nervous and neurotic. I know this because my therapist has pointed it out enough times, I’ve taken to writing it in the memo section of each check I dutifully sign off to her. I am annoyed, but that doesn’t keep me from watching.
They both need a shower, I think, and the girl needs a trip to her stylist to get rid of those split ends really badly. I contemplate telling her this, decide not to, my eyes drawn past the hair to the hollow between her breasts where I watch her lover’s hand wantonly go, in plain view of anyone on the train, including me. I can hear his smirk, I’m suffering some sort of déjà vu, but his fingers pull out a pink nipple from a half-buttoned sweater and roll it between them, pinching it hard as he catches my eye.
I don’t look away; I suppose I’m too seasoned to care. He turns and whispers into her ear and she smiles, leaning down, biting the button from his trousers (which are fabulously cut, I’m thinking potentially Armani, but probably some knock-off) as she winks at me. I stare back, hoping she isn’t issuing some kind of invite, since I’ve never been real big on trains and, to top it off, whatever my proclivities may be, sudden threesomes with two people who aren’t my type when I’m off-duty just isn’t on my menu. Maybe she’s not, maybe she is, who can say, but if she was she got over it fast. I seem to be the only person on the train who notices she’s got her hands wrapped around his cock and her lips poised like an arrow in a quiver. I seem to be the only person on the train who can hear him telling her what to do in a voice that isn’t his, in a voice that is distinctly mine. No one else is seeing his hands pulling her hair back and forth, sliding her mouth up and down the length of him as the train rumbles underground and the lights flicker. I’m the only one hearing my voice from his mouth ordering her to slide her hand under her skirt and slip her fingers inside her warm cunt, the only one seeing her smile as the tears flow from her eyes, the on
ly one who sees her lift her lips from between his legs, smile at me through running mascara and say,
“Drop it.”
“Drop it?” As I’m asking this, my handbag falls to the floor (my prized red Coach bag which, as it vanishes, I remember easily ran me a cool six bills). As the train turns, I watch as a thousand plastic cards fly out through the now open doors, and she says it again.
“Drop it.”
Then my shoes are gone, then my coat, and rings scatter in every direction. Lipsticks, hairbrushes, my whip, crisp green bills are floating out the door, but I can’t move. My eyes are glued as she sucks him harder, as he pushes her head violently, as she moans, sliding her fingers back and forth through the thatch I can barely see, my voice barking orders beyond my control.
“Drop it,” she says once more, through lips covered in come, and I watch my own hand fall away, and pieces of my hair fly off like uncaged birds, and they both smile at me as my skin sheds, and my bones begin to clatter against the windows like xylophone pieces, and I remain, but everything, everything is gone, and now she speaks in my voice instead of him as she flutters into the air out into the darkness of the underground tunnel.
“Now you’re free.”
I have this dream three nights in a row, and it’s identical, nothing changes, not even what I’m wearing or the faces on the train. So, I take up drinking again. I’ve got news for Freud: tequila is stronger than the subconscious.
“Why?” he asks. I answer with my whip, sure, straight and sharp as a thousand knives, and he cries out and slaps a hand over the welt on his shoulder. I don’t need to remind him it isn’t his place to ask questions with anything but a single flare of leather.
He ties the ropes without questioning again, smart boy, even though he isn’t being particularly nice about it. His fingers are rough around my wrists, and the knots on my ankles were tied tight enough to make my toes tingle. I watch the whip fall from my hand and onto the floor.
There is something strange and ironic about this: my being bound and completely in control. He sits there on his knees, like a dog deprogrammed from attack training, the fury still in his eyes, but he waits on my word.
I envy him, and that is truly surreal. In some way, I realize, I want as badly to be as broken to him as he is to me, but that isn’t how I played the game, so that just isn’t possible.
In some way I’m sure would be over-analyzed by all of my cronies and delved too deeply into by my therapist, some part of me just wants to (drop it) let it go, and in another bigger way, I hate him for having that fire in his eyes that makes that clear, and I want to see him suffer, just like this, perched between my knees, my legs spread wide open, cunt gaping, with no permission to touch it, no matter how much the bulge in his pants says he wants to.
“Stay put. I’m going to take a nap. You can leave when I’m asleep.” I smile, and it is so false, I swear I can feel my teeth rot.
Thank God for booze. I sleep, maybe not safely, but soundly.
Shit. Dammit.
I try and kick myself for this, only to wind up on the floor with a reverberating elbow.
Shit, shit, shit. It’s dark and the ropes are too tight, and I am a fucking idiot. Slick, Mistress, forgetting to tell him to untie you first. If there was an award for worst performance in a leading role, I’d be fondling an eight-inch gold erection instead of these knots.
I file through my brain, flip past thoughts with my fingers. He’s not supposed to be back here until Friday. I’ve got one client tomorrow, but he’s iffy and he’s new and he doesn’t have a fucking key. The phone is . . . where the hell is the phone? What day is it? It’s Monday. Dammit, I am going to starve to death and, to top it off, I have an appointment tomorrow it took me six weeks to get.
Isn’t this what you wanted? I hear myself say, ordering myself to shut the fuck up immediately with little success. Okay: breathe in, breathe out. I’m going to go back to sleep, and when I wake up, I’ll have this whole situation under control.
That’s bullshit, and I know it, but I’m going to sleep anyway. If I don’t, I may die of ennui.
I am in a circus ring. The auditorium is packed with people filling their mouths with popcorn and pink sugar-candy, their fingers sticky with it, pieces of it on their teeth as they cheer. There are three lions circling me as I flail my whip in the air and push at them with a stool. Saliva drips from their jaws, and their roaring bellows, echoes in my ears. I feel a trickle of sweat float down my neck between my breasts pressed tight together in the corset. A cage door locks.
I see their faces: one of my father, the same look he always had after he’d been drinking and my mother was long asleep, another of my ex-husband, his eyes as terrible as they were when he found out about the affair with Leslie. The third has Alex’s green eyes, and his white teeth, which I see as he grinds them together, advancing at me. I am barking out orders, but they advance all the same, and I pass my gaze over the crowd, feeling nervous, cracking the whip on the dusty ground. I hold the thick handle between my sweaty fingers, feeling my hand tremble over it, wielding it like it were Zeus’ thunderbolt, throwing its thin, sharp tail at the animals. It only stifles them momentarily: they cry out, they roar louder, pad closer, circle more tightly.
A face in the audience catches my eye, waving, smiling, mascara on her cheeks, looking at the whip with a sonorous expression. “Drop it,” she mouths, blowing me a kiss: I lose my hold and Alex the lion catches the whip between his teeth and tosses it outside the metal bars.
They advance, I move backwards, trip over the stool, feel the cold iron on the back of my neck, hear the audience howl, see them gape like ambulance chasers.
A set of jaws bites into my calf, and the lion that is my father sniffs the blood on Alex’s jaws, laps at it with a long tongue. They are hungry, my heart is beating, a million people are watching me lose control. My ex-husband’s teeth sink into my ankle, and I start to cry, sliding down to the ground against the chilly cage. There is a loud round of applause, and the tears come harder until I cannot hear anything but my own sobbing and pleading. A long lion-tongue laps at the salt on my eyes, another set of teeth sinks into my thigh. I can feel pooling blood run along my leg, feel the scratchy tongue lap it up as another mouth sinks into my breast, blinds me with the pain of the hard bite and the ripping of my skin, and the pleasure of the slow licking across my wounds. They lick up blood and salt and sweat as the audience leans forward in their seats, hushed.
Strong teeth sink into my neck, growling as Alex’s mouth clamps on my cunt, and I am stricken with a mixture of shame, pain and happiness as my vision blurs and I come, roaring as soft-clapping fills the auditorium, falling away in a pool of my own blood to the rhythmic sounds of tongues that feed on my dying body.
My mouth is as dry as sandpaper, I’m strangely damp with sweat and cream; sticky. I slide open one eye surreptitiously, bleary in the invading sunlight; see the tight knots from last night still there. My feet are a fairy-tale ingenue, set to perpetual sleep.
It must be Tuesday. Crap. I have a thousand things to do, I have a sale I have to get to, I have to get to the bank, pay the credit card bills that lay in a pile like a grotesque hill of caterpillars, I have to call the cleaning woman, I have to – shit. I have to get out of these ropes. Little did I know I had a goddamn boy scout for a client. That’s what I get for not asking questions.
I fold my fingers into themselves, slide my wrists back and forth, up and down so slowly. I should know how to do this, I do know how to do this. I vow when I do get out of this I will use my hands to slap myself silly for being such a fucking idiot. My head is throbbing from frustration. It may be a caffeine-withdrawal headache, or it could be that chemical imbalance my mother was always so certain I had.
I am this close to crying after a couple hours of useless wiggling and pushing, I’ve only made the knots even tighter, and I hate myself for being upset about this, for putting myself in this situation in the first place. Feet pad by the do
orway, trailed by ghosts of conversation, and I’m this close to calling for help, but I can’t. What the hell am I going to say, and besides that, they avoid me like the plague, and I’m sure they’ll just attribute my screaming to one of the many others I’ve ever-so-politely asked them to ignore in the past.
Fuck. I slide back into sleep. It seems like the only productive thing to do.
I wake up, sure something is growling in my flat, discovering it’s only my stomach. I can’t remember the last time I ate. I know I drank lunch on Monday, that extra two pounds on the scale tugging on my hair, I never have breakfast, nor do I have dinner, so it must have been that pasta salad on Sunday with the red peppers that just were soggier than a Kleenex at a funeral, as far as I was concerned. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday . . . two days. Not so bad. My stomach needs to get a backbone, I determine. Besides, it’s what I always wanted: a diet I couldn’t cheat on. I just have to make it to Friday.
I could swear the corset has gotten tighter, the room smaller. I’m being neurotic. I’m beginning to understand what people mean when they swear they will die of boredom. I’m sure they have no idea how awful it really could be. I try and replay in my mind the last time I was this close to getting what I wanted, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it.
I’m not coming up with anything. I do not find myself in this situation often, thank God. Come to think of it, I’ve ordered my life so this can never happen, so that not only my hobby, but my profession circulates around getting exactly what I want, exactly when I want it, regardless of what the hell anyone else wants. This shouldn’t be happening.
This isn’t what I wanted. I honestly can’t believe there are idiots who pay me to feel like this.
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