I remember now. How poetic, now I should remember, face pressed into the carpet to avoid the glare from the windows, this goddamn stool on my back like an addiction.
I must have been fourteen. I think it was thirteen, but I’m not altogether sure. Somewhere between twelve and eighteen there was some sort of rift in that infamous time-space continuum that made all of those years into a long surrealistic episode right out of a Wim Wenders film. Luckily, I stayed awake through most of them, which is more than I can say for my experience with Wim Wenders films.
Summer Camp, upstate, 1980. That awful camp my parents sent me to every year just to prove we were wealthy and almost white enough to afford it, with every debutante known to man prowling around the grounds, most of them away from their parents for the first time. Stupid bitches. First taste of freedom and half of them spent most of it blowing off the junior counselors. I was the only spic there, and with a name like Mendoza, nobody gave two shits which family in Germany my father came from. I was a spic, plain and simple. I was also the only one there smart enough to know giving head to fourteen-year-old boys didn’t get you the nights out and liberty; eating out the head counsellor did. Besides, Jennifer was prettier.
The price to be paid for that of course was that everyone hated me with a vengeance.
I woke up one night to giggling, found myself tied to my bunk being poked at by Adriana-Stewart-Jones (of the Bing-hampton Stewart-Joneses, as was pointed out enough to make you homicidal), who had a lock on my bare nipple with her fingers tight enough to bring tears to my eyes. The whole squadron of Winters, Schwartzes and Windsors were in attendance, flashlights in my eyes, the putrid scent of adolescent venom in the air.
“So,” Adriana jeered. “We’ve got ourselves a real live lezzie, here, girls.” I remember thinking then that she could have a house in the Hamptons if she wanted when she grew up, but that disgusting nasal voice had her branded a Bronx hairdresser no matter what she did.
I managed a laugh. “I’m not a lesbian, you idiot.” Tried to wriggle from the brassières that tied my hands and ankles, but the hands over them got in the way.
“Bullshit,” she said. “Jane followed you and Jennifer last night and watched you stuff your face between her legs for half the night, and besides, we all knew it anyway, freak.”
“I’m not a lesbian, you idiot.” I said again, flinching as she pinched at my nipple, watching an acrylic nail hit the floor.
“What the hell would you call it then, dyke?”
“Opportunism.” This bought me about a minute of bimbo-time. Not long enough to get out, and there was no way I was going to get through that throng of society’s finest anyway.
“Whatever. You’re a lezzie in my book, and that’s all that counts, bitch. Jane told me what she saw, and I know what I know. I think we ought to find out for ourselves, don’t you, girls?” A ripple of nervous laughter erupted into a fullfledged war cry. I felt my stomach turn. I watched as the queen bee undid her front-hook and wiggled out of her cutoffs with a jeering grin.
“See?” she called out. “She’s staring at my tits. Lez.” She leaned forwards and shoved her breasts in my face, overripe with the scent of Loves’ Baby Soft and Hawaiian Tropic. “You like my tits, Tina? They as good as Jennifer’s?”
The laughter rippled again, and tears of shame stung my cheeks. I bit the nipple near my lips, hard, and she screamed.
“That bitch bit me! You little shit!” Her hand cracked at my cheek, but I could feel her breath more shallow, feel her heart beating faster. The throng moved closer. My fists curled up into themselves, cold and hard as rocks.
“Give it to me, Lindsay,” she squawked, grabbing an object from her comrade’s hand. “She liked it at Jennifer’s, she’s going to like it here.”
Shit.
Jennifer’s vibrator whizzed into action, cradled in the hand of Leona Helmsley in training. I kicked with my feet, only to bring on another raucous row of giggling and laughter, and it didn’t do shit except to cause two of the bunch to climb onto my feet. Adriana crawled over my stomach, wielding the thing like a weapon, grinning over her shoulder, the grin I can only see beyond her ass poised inches from my face floating in the air like a hallucination. I could smell her cunt from there, musky with sleep, sweaty with girlish nervousness and the adrenaline rush of inflicting suffering on someone else. Close enough to smell, too far to reach.
The rest all swims in and out in flashes: roars of laughter, hands on my hands, hands on my feet, Adriana’s crotch swaying back and forth in front of my face, the vibrator rolling over my cunt by unskilled hands that didn’t even know where to put it. I shouldn’t have come, I shouldn’t have been able to, I didn’t want to, I tried so hard not to, but those hands were everywhere. The thing was whirring, the scent of girl-sweat filled the air, I was helpless. I had a cunt inches from my face, felt it drip once onto my neck. I was helpless, I was watched, I was crying quietly with shame, silent as a stone, and I completely got off on it.
I even stayed quiet when the other counsellors were marched into the cabin and found me, laced like a holiday turkey, Jennifer’s vibrator stuffed deep between my legs, salt staining my face. I stayed quiet when Jennifer ended up fired. I stayed quiet when I laced Adriana to a table in the woods and watched as Jennifer licked her clean, while I watched tears streaming down her cheeks, and listened to her moan, saw the venom in her eyes as I stared at her, unflinching, knowing she knew what I knew, and knowing she completely got off on it. Just like me. I never broke my gaze, not even when I slipped my tongue between Jennifer’s legs, and she slid her face between mine. I stared like an ambulance chaser as Jennifer slid her clit back and forth on Adriana’s mouth. Never broke my gaze, not even after Adriana’s little boyfriend came to see the show and I rode the asshole until he thundered, pubescent hormones in a frenzy watching his girlfriend and fucking me, and I came with his hands full of my brown spic tits, silent and staring and smiling at that little bitch, even as we got dressed and walked away.
She never said a goddamn word about it either, and at that moment my love of being helpless got lost in my love for making someone else suffer.
I might be awake. I might be asleep. There is an itch on my back and goddammit, I can’t scratch it. I’m thirsty, I’m hungry, it’s too damn dark in here too see. I might be in a room, I might be in a womb.
I decide I am asleep. My body follows suit.
There is ringing in my ears, too loud. I shake my head, trying to exorcise sound, the ringing continues. I’m sure I am going completely fucking insane.
It won’t stop. I’m dizzy. Ring, ringing.
Telephone.
Oh, my God, the phone. I twist to look for it, my eyes dry as sandpaper, and my limbs feel like lead pipes. I inch around the floor a speared seal, hear the rasp in my throat that was supposed to be a scream of annoyance, hear my voice filling the room.
“You have reached 212–6549. You want something, or you wouldn’t be calling. Say please and I might call you back.”
“Tina.”
Alex. Oh, God.
“I came, but you looked so sweet sleeping all tied up, I didn’t want to disturb you.”
You bastard.
“You can get the phone, Tina.” I can also get a million diseases I never will, you goddamn-idiot. Where the hell is it?
“Just look by your hands. It’s right there.”
I looked across the carpet at the thing. Too bad I busted my ass moving over here. Get back to the phone, across the carpet, have to go slow, can’t feel my damn fingers, click it on, roll down.
“You sonofabitch.” I sound like shit. My throat hurts.
“You don’t sound good . . . thirsty maybe. I’ll bring water on Friday.” Friday. It’s – what day is it? Wednesday? There is a silence on the other side. Friday, two days, oh, God.
“Alex!” More silence. “Alex!”
“Why did you want me to tie you up and leave, Tina?”
“Get over here and un
tie me, now. Now.”
“You’ll answer me first, and in case you haven’t noticed, you’re hardly in the position to order me, or anyone, for that matter, to do anything . . . Mistress.” Sonofabitch.
“You didn’t answer, Tina. Nothing to do with the conversation you had with Liz on Sunday, perhaps?”
How the hell did he – shit.
“I’ll be over in an hour.”
End of conversation. That bastard.
* * *
48.
49.
50.
51.
52: 59, 58, 57, 56, 55, 54, 53, 52, 51, 50, 49, 48, 47, 46 . . . I can’t decide if this is nausea or excitement. It might be homicidal frenzy.
Counting minutes until I’d meet him out back behind the dumpster in high school, counting times I’d run that brush through my hair waiting for the phone to ring, hating it and loving it all at the same time; forgetting about it completely when it was over.
Key in the lock, door a crack open, hand around the latch. My lungs rasp with the sigh of relief that echoes in my ears.
Hand in front of my eyes, lifts the lids, a tongue clicking over lips.
“You thirsty, Tina?” Blurry face in front of my eyes. Alex’s voice. I nod my head.
“Vision blurry, feeling nauseated at all? Maybe a little bit tired?”
I try to speak and nothing comes out, clear my throat, start again. “Untie me, you bastard.”
Calm, deep voice, fingers on my wrists. “Fasting hypoglycemia, at a minimum. You drink before you started this game? Not the best idea. Dangerous games you like to play, Tina.”
The heels click away, I close my eyes again, relief tittering on the edge of a ramshackle bridge.
The faucet runs, turns off, the feet pad back, the hands slide behind my head, put the glass to my lips. Water: I pull a mouthful in ravenously, and it fills my mouth like toxic waste, burning my throat, and I’m this close to vomiting as I spit it out on the floor.
He tugs on the ropes at my ankles; my skin itches furiously at the pressure.
“Tell me you don’t like this. Go ahead, lie to me and tell me this isn’t what you like. What was it she said? Bound, slowly, on the verge of orgasm. Is that right?”
“How did –?”
“Twice a week, 4:00. She talks about you quite a bit, not surprisingly. You’d be amazed, Tina, how many women entertain notions of dominating, at how fascinating they find you and others like you. Amazing to me what they perceive you are, and how the men who see you are.”
Confusing, this talk.
“The only people who know anything about what happens in this town are therapists, Tina.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
Jesus fucking Christ: a wave of common sense. I’ve been dealing with a goddamn shrink. Maybe I really am a masochist, not a sadist, after all.
“You’re a fucking shrink?”
His hands tugged at my hair, his fingers pulled a nipple, his lips were in my ear.
“At night, when you sleep, you are most likely little Christina Mendoza, at lunch with the Stepford Wives, you can be Chris, scare them all with your prowess, with your red lips, with the power they think you have and they don’t; when you work you are Mistress Tina, to be obeyed and never denied. If you have a scalpel in your hand, you’re a doctor, a paintbrush, you’re a painter, a whip, you’re a Domme. Costumes, names, roles, Tina . . . some of us, like you and like me, can play more than one.
“I’m not a shrink now.” His hand slid down my cold chest, slid between my legs, I quivered in fear and then in pleasure as the hard pinch I anticipated delivered a soft circling over my clitoris that made my head spin.
He licked my ear, whispering, fingers circling, another working slowly in and out of my cunt. I bit back sound, bit back breath.
“I am whatever you want to call me: Master, Father, Angel, Demon, God. But whatever you call me, right now . . . slave, I’m your salvation, and I’m exactly what you want, and I’m all you have.
“I put my trust in you from the first time I came here. Now you have to return that trust. Really, you don’t have a choice.
“Really, you don’t want one. Do you?”
Adriana’s ass over my face, too far too reach, close enough to smell.
“Do you?” He slid his lips down over the corset laces, through the thatch under the garters, teeth on my lips, tongue sliding between, lapping juice from his fingers as his mouth locked over my clit, and a voice that must have been mine said: “No.”
My tongue felt like a piece of felt in my mouth. I might die here, like this, I think I could starve to death, feel my throat dry out like a spoiled piece of fruit, tied up like a victim, under someone else’s hand, under someone else’s power, with the walls spinning like this, unable to move.
I could die like this, completely out of control.
A moment of fear, a moment of anger, another of shame, and my skin is on fire, turning fast, and pulling the air in is impossible. Panic. This isn’t what I want . . .
“Alex.” It rings out, a cobweb of hushed, panting sound.
“Yes . . .” I feel the tip of his tongue move with infinite slowness, dragging over my skin, making me shudder.
“This isn’t . . . I want it to go slow.”
I can hear him smirking. “Who asked you to speak?”
The flare of anger and pride that rises up burns out as quick as a match blown out by surrender.
“Alex . . .” He cuts me off.
“You may speak.”
“I want it to go slowly. And I . . .” His tongue flickered over my clit again, sharp as a knife. I bite my tongue, but I can’t really feel it, all my sensation is where his mouth is.
His voice is soft. “Yes . . .?” I can hear myself smirk.
“I changed my mind. I don’t want to die like this.”
“I wasn’t about to let you. Not after I finally broke you, Tina.”
Broke me – I . . . oh, fuck it.
“There’s something else.”
“Yes?”
“I do actually want to come.”
His voice got stern, teeth on my clit, room spinning. “You actually want to come . . .?”
I know this game.
“I want to come, now, please . . . Master.”
I can’t hear him smirking any more, but I can feel it, a soft smirk wrapped around my lips, working a rush of frenzy and expiration from my skin, a smirk that mouths, before I allow myself a different death than I anticipated:
“Yes . . . Mistress.”
Demeter’s Garden
Catherine Sellars
A Cautionary Tale for Plant Lovers
Ian Ramsay first became acquainted with the botanist, Dr Demeter Pride, through his work as a buyer for a chain of north eastern garden centres. He had to inspect some new varieties of indoor-flowering lilies that she had been working on. She was apparently something of a recluse, choosing to live alone and work from home. Few had ever been privileged enough to visit her house and garden. The strange plants populating her large Victorian terrace were her only society.
When Demeter opened the door to her honoured guest, he was immediately struck by her air of restrained fertility. She was taller than average, full-bosomed, with what his mother would have described as breeder’s hips. There were no straight lines to her form; she was all curves. The pot of trailing jasmine that she carried wound around her figure to further accentuate its voluptuousness. A crisp white shirt and full skirt could not disguise her physical opulence, and the blue ribbon in her hair was unable to contain its glossy abundance.
She had led Ian through the house. Each room was its own continent with a carefully controlled climate. They voyaged through the desert in her back bedroom, the rain forest in the bathroom, to the tropical paradise of her conservatory. As they moved through the house she tapped thermostats, and checked sprinkler systems, stooping to pick up fallen leaves and stopping to congratulate favoured plants on their blooms and foliage. In th
e kitchen she disentangled herself from the jasmine’s embrace and offered Ian tea with toast and honey. The honey was from her own garden. She called it rent from the bees that lived there. Ian had asked her if she had baked the bread herself and she had laughed, asking him, who did he think she was, Jane Asher? It was at that moment, laughing and eating honey with her in the walled privacy of her beautiful cottage garden that Ian had made up his mind to marry her one day.
One warm evening in July, Ian entered Demeter’s garden uninvited. Blooming with health and glowing from hours in the sunshine, she was gathering roses, taking the strain from the laden branches, but she dropped the flowers in surprise at Ian’s sudden arrival. The urgency of his approach caused her to take a step back, and then another. He moved towards her, his mouth watering, his eyes wide, and he grabbed her, like a hungry man grabbing a piece of ripe fruit.
Demeter fell down before him. On the flower bed he spread her legs, and found her lips amongst the lavender and savoured their ambrosia, then released her bosom from her blouse and to let her breasts spill over his arm. The weight of their bodies crushed their couch of flowers, releasing a wonderful scent with each fervent thrust. Ian ground Demeter like barley and squeezed her like grapes, releasing her juice till he was drunk with pleasure. The moon was high in the sky before Ian took leave of her naked body. He left her in a state of exhaution and disarray, searching for her knickers amongst the hollyhocks.
Returning from their honeymoon, they found Demeter’s garden in full bloom. Lavender bushes hummed with perfume and bumble bees. The pergola groaned beneath the weight of huge bunches of grapes and enormous rose blooms. The clematis garlanding the trunks of ornamental fruit trees were in full flower. The gem-like blooms shone in the shade of their drooping branches, laden with apples, plums and pears. Moths and butterflies fluttered between lilac, laburnum and honeysuckle, while sparrows and thrushes took turns at singing or bathing in the marble bird bath at the garden’s centre. As they sat amongst the verdant splendour, fanned by balmy summer breezes, they discussed their plans for the future. She spoke of children, of many children, but Ian had his career to think of. He could not allow family commitments to interfere with that. And then of course, there was the cost. They had very different priorities, but agreed to compromise. They would discuss the matter again in a year or two, and in the meantime, Demeter would have to get herself sorted out. So she agreed to visit her doctor and, as a cloud threw the garden into shade, the conversation ended on a sigh. Walking back into the house, Ian noticed a limpness in the rose-blooms and felt that there was a sulkiness in the way that the clematis closed up their flowers for the night.
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