New Animal

by Ella Baxter

  ‘Look at me,’ I say, in a voice that is quite frankly so dominant that I almost jerk into a forward roll. I am startled by my commitment. This must be how method actors work: just fully inhabit the role, no questions asked.

  I twist around until I’m crouched on the stage like a sexual gargoyle, but I’m still slipping in minute inches across the stage. I’m not sure if I have the thigh strength to lunge up, in a kind of martial arts jump, so instead, I keep sliding until I am on my stomach, looking up at him.

  ‘Bring that chair into the middle of the room and sit on it,’ I say, which is difficult because all my weight is resting on my abdomen.

  Carl strolls over to the metal chair and drags it into the middle of the room before sitting down, straight-backed, one hand placed neatly on each thigh.

  I roll off the platform and stand, resisting the urge to brush myself off. I wander over, baring my teeth; I’m not sure what else to do with my facial expressions. I circle the chair, waiting for an idea to come.

  He looks up from under his eyelashes. ‘Anyway, it’s nice to meet you,’ he says, extending a hand to shake.

  I slap it away. ‘Shut up.’

  ‘I guess I’ll just get ready then.’ He bends down to untie his shoelaces.

  As I watch him slide his feet out of his shoes, I make a hazy plan to sit on him like Tanya sat on Steven. I lift my leg over his lap in a forty-five degree can-can kick, before landing face to face in a straddle. I sit for a moment, angling my head to avoid the stale breadiness of his breath.

  ‘Easy does it,’ he says.

  I imagine Tanya in the other room munching on salted nuts while watching me on the security footage. Are they recording this? I signed a lot of forms without reading them.

  I grind my pelvis into his lap and arch my back while focusing vaguely on the polished handle of the door. I absently pinch his earlobes while thinking there really should be a list stuck to the wall in each room. The orientation didn’t give me a repertoire to draw from. There is a level of expectation flowing out of Carl, which I’m trying to manage as the seconds tick by incredibly slowly.

  As if on cue, I feel blood gush out of my vagina and stop briefly at the crotch of the leotard before steadily seeping through. I accidentally clench in response and a large glob of it begins to sink into the fabric of his pants. Holy shit. I am losing it. I forgot to change the tampon I put in last night. What no one tells you about grief is that your memory is completely short-circuited, and life becomes just a series of surprising incidents. I should write a book about this. I should tell people how far you travel from the self after grief hoists you out of it.

  I need to get the tampon out or I could go into toxic shock. I pull the crotch of the leotard to one side and tear the stocking until there is enough room for me to push a finger inside myself, finding the edge of the spongy tampon. I tug on the string and it falls out, the colour of dark grapes. It swings between us, and I fling it into the corner of the room. I can’t backpedal from here, so, just like Steven, I lean into the theatre of it all and push my fingers inside myself, coating them in more inky blood. I hold my hand up to Carl’s face and we both study it. Carl pulls away from me, but I lift my finger to his face and paint a moustache on his upper lip. I paint tears falling down the sides of his cheeks. He squeezes his eyes shut as I coat my finger again and paint over his eyebrows, one up and one down. On the tip of his nose, I leave an inky red dot. Like a sad menstrual clown, he continues to sit forlornly in front of me. I wipe my finger clean across the top of my thigh, and it dries into an itchy streak through the fishnet. I want more than anything to wipe it off.

  ‘The blood might be a bit much,’ he says.

  I cup his chin and look into his eyes. ‘I’m the boss.’

  ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’

  I motion to the vinyl-covered massage table in the room.

  ‘Lie down face first.’

  Carl springs over to the table and arranges himself on top of the bed.

  I hop up onto the table and straddle his back. He emits a faint wheeze.

  ‘Move,’ I yell at the back of his head. ‘You’re my horse.’

  I knock on his skull with my fist, and he begins to rock his body forward and back.

  ‘Faster!’ I scream, as his sweaty torso makes sucking sounds on the bench below. I thump up and down, actively riding his sacrum until my thighs start to burn. I drop my weight heavily onto him as he continues to rock. Oh my good god, it hits me: I have become the man on the horse. I am at one with my earlier visualisation; I have embodied the scenario at last.

  ‘Pony is getting tired,’ Carl puffs despairingly.

  ‘Onward!’

  I bounce heartily, swinging an invisible sword through the air above me, and let the voices of one thousand men on horses roar out my mouth: ‘Ai, Ai, Ai, Ai, Ai!’

  All the rocking has made me need to piss, and I check that there’s a drain in the room before letting the stream of urine fall across his back. The strong-smelling liquid rolls off his body in rusty streaks and I gaze at it in wonder, because I really don’t remember drinking that much water.

  Carl lets out a sharp cry.

  ‘Do you consent to this?’ I ask, checking in with him, remaining present.

  ‘Not really … I mean …’ He sighs. ‘It’s okay.’

  I look to the ceiling for new inspiration. How long has it been? Fifteen minutes? It would be rude to ask him the time already. What to do next? What to transition into?

  ‘Lie on your back and grab hold of your knees,’ I say, improvising.

  Carl slides off the table and lowers himself to the floor via a series of considered movements which I suspect indicate knee problems. He kneels while holding on to the chair, then swivels while stabilising himself with two hands on the floor, before dropping into a sitting position with his legs loosely crossed. He rolls onto his side, stretches his legs out, until he is finally flat on his back.

  I stand off to the side, wondering how to hog-tie someone. I guess there’s no formal way in regard to knots; it’s more about positioning. I jog over to the buckets in the corner of the room and select some lengths of rope.

  ‘I’m going to tie you up.’

  ‘Alright,’ he says doubtfully.

  I tie his hands together, and then bind them to his knees. The knots seem a little clumsy, which is embarrassing, because he probably knows proper defence force knots. I’m not sure how to communicate the final posture, but it would be good if he folded over a little more.

  ‘Look at me,’ I say, using three fingers to slap him on the head. ‘Do you love this?’ I ask. Kneeling over him, I can see how much blood is stuck in the hair follicles on his face.

  ‘It’s alright.’

  ‘Which part?’

  He looks around the room. ‘The setting?’ His eyes focus on me. ‘You?’

  There’s a sudden commotion as the door is thrown open by Tanya, who is clutching her forehead with both hands.

  ‘Off!’ she barks at me. ‘Get off! We’re so sorry, Carl; she’s new.’

  A middle-aged woman appears behind her, looking equally stressed.

  I frown at them both while unfolding from my low squat. They have broken the fourth wall here—and I did check the room had a drain before committing to anything. I look at Carl for support, but he’s asking Tanya for a towel.

  ‘I need one too,’ I say.

  ‘Bronwyn, get her out of here,’ Tanya says.

  The second woman glares at me. ‘Follow me, you fucking lunatic.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Bronwyn’s office may have originally been a supply closet, judging by how small and windowless it is. There are piles of paperwork on the desk, surrounded by open folders and crumpled receipts. Next to a potted fiddle fig, there’s a flogger dangling from the corner of a framed Certificate II in Management.

  ‘You have to shake your fig,’ I say.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Fiddle figs like to
be shaken daily—it helps them grow.’

  She puffs out her cheeks as she exhales. ‘What you did to Carl was out of line. You’re lucky this industry is so unregulated, otherwise we could be sued.’ She hangs her head while making a series of dots on a piece of paper in front of her, then drops her pen and leans back in the chair, pushing her palms into her eye sockets.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ she says.

  ‘Was it the blood?’ I say, slowly realising that I provided a lot of content for just one session. I could have done less, and the disappointment of getting it wrong sits in my gut like a stone. I’m sure the shame will come; not right away, but sometime later, and I dread it already.

  ‘What part was too much?’ I begin to cry. I am perched on the very edge of the office chair, so as not to get it dirty, but my legs are beginning to ache, and I feel suddenly very naked. I cross my arms over my body to hide myself.

  Tanya walks in, wrestling open a packet of wet wipes which she hands to me, motioning towards my legs, and I clutch the packet to my stomach.

  ‘Carl will be okay, but he isn’t very happy. All that blood is very triggering for him,’ she says.

  Bronwyn nervously tosses a small box of staples from hand to hand. ‘If you want to be a good domme, you need to work very hard at not taking advantage of vulnerable people. Did Tanya tell you it’s an art form?’ She looks at Tanya, who nods enthusiastically.

  ‘It is an art. Like karate. Or chess.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but don’t we dominate?’ I ask. ‘Isn’t that the play? The performance?’

  Tanya answers, ‘Yes, of course, but there’s a line where it can become too much for people.’

  ‘So we are just doing what the sub wants, then, not actually directing the scene ourselves?’ My tone is ruder than I intended, but I’ve learned that if you want to fix it, you have to keep going in the same tone, and then gradually lighten it. It’s far weirder to stop and say, Sorry, that was rude.

  Bronwyn chimes in, ‘It’s simple! You pay your membership fee, tell them they’re naughty, stamp on their fingers, then send them home.’

  I scrunch up my face. ‘Does anyone agree on what we are doing here?’

  ‘Well, it’s all to do with feminism, obviously,’ says Tanya. ‘And sex, and power.’ She nods. ‘And community spirit.’

  A severe-looking young woman appears behind Tanya, who turns to acknowledge her. The woman’s make-up has been expertly applied, and I have immediate respect for her: she’s worked hard to blend that well. She looks like a beautiful river duck masquerading as a human. Each eyebrow is a thick arch, and each eyelid a half-moon of shimmer. I see pure poetry on her face, and I find myself leaning forward to get a closer look at her. A wave of jealousy curls inside me, before a small decision replaces it: I will just slowly transform into a version of her. Some women are just so gorgeous that they cause a sea of ripples in the feminine current around them.

  ‘Ah, Vlad, this is Amelia—the new girl,’ Bronwyn huffs, letting the box of staples drop onto her desk. ‘Amelia, this is Vlad. She’s one of our more experienced dommes; she’s been a member here for about five years.’

  ‘Since the eve of my eighteenth birthday,’ Vlad says cheerily, and the sentence hangs between us all.

  Vlad looks at me casually, while I gaze back at her, trying to analyse the colour on her cheeks. It looks like nectarine with flecks of gold, but I can’t tell for certain in this lighting.

  ‘Welcome to the family,’ she says, and I realise it’s her bone structure that’s creating a lot of the drama.

  ‘There are a few of us out back waiting for a debrief, if either of you is available?’ She looks between Bronwyn and Tanya.

  ‘I am,’ I say. ‘I would love to have a bit of a tete-a-tete.’ I wipe my cheeks and start to stand, ready to finally experience this elusive aftercare.

  ‘No,’ says Bronwyn. ‘You’re done for the day.’

  I leave the clubhouse, cleaning myself with the wet wipes, and dropping them on the floor behind me as I go. By the time I get to Jack’s car I have used them all, and I leave the empty packet on top of a white Mazda, which, out of all the cars parked out the front, seems the most likely to belong to Bronwyn.

  In the driver’s seat, I grip the wheel and look at the asphalt of the road, the gutter and the trees dotted evenly along the street. I never feel like I’m truly away from home until I’m looking at suburban streets that I don’t know the name of, or sliding on other people’s cleaning residue in the bottom of unfamiliar showers. And I never really feel homesick until I see how difficult it is to create a different life somewhere else entirely.

  Vlad walks down the driveway towards the car, and I press the button to lower the window.

  ‘Hey, look, we’ve had a quick talk, and we think it might be good if you experience being a sub, so you know the expectations of each role better.’

  She rests her chin on the window. ‘What do you think of coming back later tonight and having a go at that?’

  ‘With Carl?’

  ‘No, no,’ she says. ‘Carl’s tired now. Tonight you’d be with Jay. He’s very experienced. You can feel what it’s like to be a sub, and then re-create that energy with your own subs.’

  ‘I have tried it, and it was painful.’

  She laughs. ‘It’s the worst! But you have a little more to learn until we can let you loose on the other members. We don’t have so many that we can afford to have you frighten them all off.’

  I consider her offer. ‘I’ll do it,’ I say, ‘but only to prove a point.’

  ‘No, really, no one needs you to prove anything—it’s just about developing your skills,’ she says.

  ‘Okay, I’m in. Tell Tanya I have the gumption to come back.’

  ‘How about you go and get cleaned up, and then come back whenever you’re ready. I’m here until late—maybe we could hang out a bit before you start.’

  ‘That sounds nice,’ I say. ‘My mum actually died this week.’ I stare straight ahead, unsure why I feel the need to share this information with everyone.

  ‘Yeah, I guessed something must’ve happened.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You have that look.’

  She raises her eyebrows at me. ‘You know, I used to come here four or five times a week, caterwauling like a she-devil at the back door, wanting to rope people up, bind them and gag them, the whole thing. I don’t know if Tanya told you, but the stain really high up on the wall in the slave chamber, that’s from me. I worked through a lot of issues in there.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, this place saved my life.’

  ‘I want it to save mine.’

  ‘Well, you can’t ever do what you did to poor Carl again.’

  ‘I actually think he was into some parts of it,’ I say.

  She shakes her head. ‘He wasn’t.’

  The sky is violet as I drive away, my new clothes pinching in all the wrong places. I wonder if I should call the Widow Maker and tell them my tampon is in the corner of the room, or whether they will find it themselves. I can’t decide which scenario would feel less awful. I feel hot and sick with shame the more I unpack what I did to Carl. My cheeks flush as I remember his face coated in blood.

  I arrive home and let myself in the front door. ‘It’s just me,’ I call out.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Amelia,’ Jack says, sticking his head out of the study door. ‘What the fuck are you wearing?’

  ‘Oh.’ I look down at my Marquis outfit.

  He opens the door wider and scoots out, still seated on his office chair.

  ‘This’—he gestures to my outfit—‘is a deep cry for help.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I say, wiping away a few tears.

  ‘Oh, honey muffin, don’t do that,’ he says, which makes me howl.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he says. ‘Let’s sort this out.’

  He scoots the chair back towards the study, then gets up and walks off.

  I hover in the hallway, not sure w
hat to do next.

  Jack leans out of the laundry door and throws me a towel. ‘Go and have a shower and then join me in the kitchen.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I say, thankful for a direction.

  A house can feel very big or very, very small. At first, it felt small. I couldn’t move in case I bumped into him. Both of us were bloated by grief. Now, I don’t want to be far from him. I call his name when I re-emerge from the shower.

  ‘What did you say?’ I hear him yell back from the kitchen, and I have no idea what I said; I just wanted to hear his voice and know he was near.

  There are two mugs of peppermint tea on the table, and four photo albums, and he has already pulled up a chair for me next to his.

  ‘I don’t really know how to help you right now, but I had a think, and I want to remind you of who you are, and who you came from.’ He taps the stack of albums. ‘Because I think you might be trying to get away from those things, because of your sadness, which is so uncomfortable that it’s almost unbearable—but I promise you, running away from that sadness is like trying to run from your own shadow.’

  He slides the first album over and opens it, pointing to a photo of Simon as a chunky baby having a bath in a bucket.

  ‘He hated the exhaust fan in the bathroom. He would cry every time it went on, so we would either hose him down on the deck or pop him in a bucket. He loved the bucket, but you can see what a big baby he was. The buckets would often split, and there was a point when we had to stop using them.’ He squints at the photo. ‘This would have been one of his last buckets, I think.’

  He turns the page and points to a photo of my mother swaddling me in a crocheted blanket. She is gazing into my smiling face as she folds one corner of it over my body.

  ‘You loved being swaddled, couldn’t stand having your arms and legs flailing about. If you were wrapped, you would be happy enough to lie on the floor near my feet when I wrote, but I could never get the tension right. Your mum was the expert: she knew just how to wrap you so you felt nice and held but not too squeezed.’