by Vina Jackson
‘Ah.’ I looked up at Neil. We’d only just received the first course and it seemed terribly rude of me to bow out now, though I could really have used the money from an extra shift. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I’ve got plans tonight.’
She huffed into the phone. ‘Nothing you could move around? I really need you. I’d be truly grateful, Lily.’
‘Actually, I’m with a friend.’
‘Oh,’ she said. I could hear the grin in her voice. ‘By all means, bring him along. I’d be delighted to meet your “friend”.’
I grimaced. She would eat Neil for breakfast and I shuddered to think of what he might think of her. If he’d thought that my relationship with an older man was weird, I couldn’t imagine what he might think of the club and its inhabitants in their various states of dress and undress.
As if he knew that I was thinking of him, Neil waved his chopsticks in front of my face again.
‘Hang on,’ I said into the handset, taking a small measure of pleasure in the knowledge that She would be fuming at the interruption.
‘If you have to go to work, Lily, it’s OK. I understand,’ Neil said.
‘No, really, I—’
‘Honestly. We can finish the sashimi and come back another time for the other courses.’
He wiped his mouth on the napkin and called the waiter over again to ask for the bill.
‘Lily,’ She hissed into the other end of the phone. ‘Bring him with you.’ The phone went dead. She had hung up before waiting to hear me agree.
She’d spoken loudly and I knew that Neil had been able to hear most of the conversation from across the table.
‘You’ve been called into that club you work at?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. Someone’s called in sick.’
‘I could come with you. I haven’t had a night out in ages.’
I sighed. ‘It’s really not your kind of place.’
‘How do you know? And why can’t you just give me a chance?’ he replied angrily. ‘You’re always so pissed when people make presumptions about you, Lily, but you do the same thing to other people all the time.’ He stabbed a chopstick into a stray piece of ginger and bit into it savagely.
‘Fine,’ I said, convinced that as soon as he set one foot in the place and looked around he would make a bolt for the door and I wouldn’t hear from him again. Probably for the best, too. If he couldn’t handle it, then maybe we should give up pretending to still have anything in common and just put our university friendship behind us and move on.
She looked as harried as I’d seen her when the taxi pulled up outside the club and she met us at the door. The Fox and Garter, another club in town that masqueraded as a pub with a dungeon hidden beneath it, had closed early due to a power failure and so it was extra busy tonight with all the punters who had come to us to continue their evening.
Neil’s eyes widened as he took in She’s sleek crimson catsuit, matching top-hat fascinator and higher-than-high heels. She was dressed as a ring master tonight and carried a whip by her side. Her arm was relaxed, but there was something about her manner that promised that the whip was not far away from cracking even when she was leaning nonchalantly against the wall seemingly without a care in the world.
‘Well, hello, Lily’s friend,’ she said to him in her best Jessica Rabbit voice, running her eyes up and down his body as if she owned him.
I bristled at her approach and took Neil’s hand in mine as we stepped inside.
‘Oh,’ She said, raising an eyebrow at my gesture. ‘Like that, is it?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘It is like that. Come with me, Neil,’ I added in the most authoritative tone I could muster and led him into the cloakroom.
His eyes darted here, there and everywhere as he caught a glimpse of the busy bar area and the people within who were dressed in all manner of costumes that all seemed quite ordinary to me now, but which were probably overwhelming to him. There were men in corsets, frilly skirts and high heels; women in military uniforms or lingerie; both sexes in latex body suits, and some with masks as well. Several women were topless and there was the obligatory man wearing just a cock ring with his flaccid penis bouncing as he walked.
‘You’re going to have to change,’ I said to him abruptly. ‘You’ll stand out like a sore thumb in that.’
‘OK,’ he said meekly.
I unbuttoned his waistcoat and then his shirt. The fabric felt pleasantly rough beneath my fingers and without even meaning to, I found myself running my hands along the stiff cotton and fumbling with the buttons for longer than strictly necessary. He held his arms out as I slipped each garment off his shoulders and onto a hanger and then hung them on the rail.
Neil didn’t move a muscle. He was like a doll, allowing me to move him back and forward as I wished. I hesitated before I moved down to his belt. The leather strap felt warm to the touch, in strong contrast to the cool metal buckle. Dagur had once let me bind his ankles together using his belt strap and I immediately pictured Neil in the same position, face down and lying uncomfortably on his erection while I ran my finger into his arse. The thought excited me and I fought to bring my mind back to the present. This was Neil, not Dagur, and I was at work, and any minute now he would panic and make a run for it.
‘Are you wearing underwear?’ I asked him in the most unfeeling and casual tone that I could muster.
He nodded.
A spare pair of the hot pants that She’s slaves wore lay on the shelf behind me. They would most likely fit Neil, but I didn’t want to see him in a pair of pants that said ‘She’s slave’. He didn’t belong to her.
His boxers would do. They were designer-branded, black and forgettable. I looked him up and down. He had definitely been working out. Or maybe he’d always been built this way and I’d just never noticed. His naked torso was not at all unpleasant. The bulge in his shorts was unmistakable, but he was a man, and the place was full of women in skimpy clothing. I didn’t take his response to heart and no one in the club would be offended by his erection if it didn’t shrink by the time we reached the bar.
Neil was a fish out of water and clearly had no clue how to behave in the sea of flesh that surrounded him, so I took him by the hand and led him down to the dungeon. I wasn’t worried that Neil would do something inappropriate like gawk creepily or reach over and grab a stray breast that fell into his line of sight, as he was far too shy and well-mannered for that. But with his baby-faced good looks and air of innocence, he would be like catnip to She’s troupe of dommes who were lined up and leaning against the bar like lionesses reclining at a waterhole, sleek and relaxed but ready to spring into action at any moment and only too eager to initiate a newcomer into the pleasures of a riding crop.
‘Richard, thank God you’re here,’ I said to the Dungeon Master. Tonight he was shirtless and wearing a leather kilt with half a dozen pockets, each one containing a tool of the trade. It was the first time that I’d noticed he had a silver barbell through each of his nipples. He hadn’t previously struck me as the type of guy who would sport a nipple piercing. He was short and bordering on fat, but had thick biceps and having seen him in action I knew that he had a fierce strength in his limbs that belied his gentle expression. Most of the experienced dominants – the ones that Liana would call ‘good doms’ – had a similar air of softness with a steely core beneath it. Those who were confident in their own power had no need to swagger around the club and show off their assertiveness or ability to suspend a willing sub from the ceiling at every opportunity.
‘I’m always here for you, Lady Lily,’ Richard replied. He’d started calling me Lady as an affectionate term of endearment ever since the night a few months ago now that I had ridden She’s slave, Stuart, across the room on a saddle. Since then I had been learning more and more of the arts of domination and was particularly proud of the fact that I could surprise a room full of people by swinging a bull-whip longer than I was.
‘What’s that?’ Neil asked, pointing at the pinw
heel that poked out of one of the flaps on Richard’s skirt and was glinting menacingly in the light. Curiosity had got the better of him.
I removed the instrument from Richard’s pocket and held it up to Neil’s face. He’d turned white.
‘It’s a pin wheel.’
‘Looks like a mini pizza slicer. But sharper. Doesn’t it … hurt?’
I had wondered the same thing the first time I’d seen a Wartenberg wheel, a device originally used to test nerve sensitivity in skin that had been abandoned by the medical profession in favour of more modern techniques and subverted by kinksters as a sensation sex toy. It was a particularly evil-looking device with a seven-inch-long handle and twenty or so radiating sharp pins at one end, but unlike most of the other implements that looked much softer than they were in reality, the pinwheel was much less evil in practice than it appeared. She had demonstrated one to me by rolling it over Grayson’s skin after she’d flogged him. He had gone into spasms of delight, shivering and shuddering and moaning with each line that she drew across his hot skin. I’d loved watching the crisscross pattern that bloomed white and red and then faded, like a road map of pleasure and pain across his body.
Richard grinned from ear to ear.
‘Not when it’s used right,’ he said. ‘I’m sure the lady here would be happy to demonstrate.’
‘I have to work,’ I cut in, shooting Richard a fierce glance that I hoped indicated I wanted him to shut up. ‘I was hoping you might keep an eye on Neil while I’m stuck behind the counter.’
Neil stared at me and then back at Richard. ‘I can look after my—’
‘Please, Richard,’ I said, ignoring Neil’s request for freedom.
‘No problem. I’ll keep him safe for you,’ he replied.
Neil paled further at the notion that his safety might be in question, but by then I was well and truly late for my shift and too impatient to reassure him.
‘Great,’ I replied, and fled back to the front door with one final glance at his soft tanned skin and the snug fit of his boxer shorts.
It was one of the busiest shifts that I’d worked since I started at the club, and I didn’t have a chance to check on Neil until we were closing up and Richard delivered him to me at the front desk.
His face was flushed and his eyes dilated.
‘That was amazing,’ he said, waving his arm wildly to flag down a passing black cab.
He had the slightly rabid punch-drunk look of someone who has just been tied up or spanked and I felt a stab of annoyance at Richard for not keeping a closer watch on him.
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Did you try anything?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘But there was this girl that he did this stuff to and the way she looked …’
His face had taken on the far-away, dreamy look that Liana got when she was talking about what it was like to experience submission.
The driver tooted impatiently as Neil swung on the door loosely and stared at me.
I panicked.
‘I think I left my jacket at the club,’ I said. ‘Go on. I’ll get the Tube.’
His expression turned from pleasure to confusion. ‘But you’re wearing your—’
‘I’ll call you later, OK?’ I interrupted.
I turned and ran.
Neil had returned to his old self by the time that I eventually relented and started answering his calls again. I wasn’t sure what it was about his interest in the fetish side of my life that made me feel so uncomfortable, but I was pleased to find that he seemed to have dropped the subject and things between us were back to normal, other than the fact that every time I heard his voice the vision of him near naked in his boxer shorts with a pin wheel running over his body assaulted my mind.
My strange dreams hadn’t subsided either, and now featured Neil instead of the hog-tied Japanese waiter who had filled the nocturnal images that had haunted my sleep for the few weeks after we visited Miyama.
Besides my restless nights, life was peaceful and time continued to fly by in a regular mix of days at the music shop and evenings at the club without any unusual episodes. I had been taking advantage of the ebb in my social and romantic life to complete as many shifts as I could and, despite my low wages, my savings had grown to a tidy sum. I took great satisfaction from watching the balance on my bank statements increase and carefully filed each crisp statement into my desk drawer as they arrived.
It had been a quiet evening at the club and I was changing back into my civilian clothes when She put her head around the corner of the staff changing room.
‘Lily, can you give Gray a call? He wants to talk to you.’
I must have looked quizzical because she reassured me.
‘Don’t worry. Nothing weird. Just a project he’s begun that you could help with.’
At least someone was expressing some form of interest in me. It had been ages since I’d heard from Leonard, while Dagur was overseas on a three-month tour with the band and was no doubt busy fending off the amorous attentions of exotic foreign women following every gig. I hadn’t expected Dagur to call, message or send me postcards anyway. It wasn’t his style.
I nodded.
I was uncertain about facing Grayson again on my own in the wake of our improvised threesome and that ambiguous photo session that had somehow ended up with me straddling him wildly, inadvertently pulling the lid off my hitherto dormant tendencies to dominate men. Somehow I wasn’t quite reconciled with that new part of me yet. Yes, it attracted me and awakened a distinct fire inside, but on the other hand I still liked to be with men and be made love to in a traditional manner. Both instances provided me with pleasure.
I rang him the next evening, but was unable to meet up for at least a week as I couldn’t take any days off at the music store and, on the few evenings I wasn’t part-timing at the club, I just found myself too tired to budge from my sofa or my bed, recharging my batteries after weeks of hard work. Grayson didn’t appear overly concerned and assured me that it could wait. It was something long term, he said.
We agreed on an early evening when I would travel to his East End studio straight from Denmark Street.
‘Will She be there?’ I asked him, out of curiosity.
‘Is that what you all call her?’ As if he didn’t know.
‘Yes.’
Grayson chuckled.
‘No, the fearsome Ms Haggard will not be in attendance,’ he said. ‘She’s catching up on her accounts at the club, I daresay. But you don’t feel we need a chaperone, do you, Lily?’
‘To keep me from spanking you?’ I queried.
The roar of his laughter triumphantly rumbled down the telephone line.
‘Has She been giving you lessons, by any chance?’ Grayson ventured jokingly. ‘Anyway, I’m willing to take my chances,’ he concluded.
As I moved briskly from the autumnal chill rising from the nearby river into the warm building where Grayson both worked and lived, I loosened the thick grey cashmere scarf Leonard had bought me on Kalverstraat in Amsterdam and wiped my nose with a tissue. The cold had been biting outside. One of Grayson’s assistants was busy tidying the studio floor from an earlier session, crumpling long sheets of paper, rolling up an assortment of rugs and methodically picking up random props and locking them up in a tall metal cabinet at the other end of the photographic space.
‘Drink?’ Grayson proposed.
‘Just a coffee,’ I suggested.
Grayson hailed his assistant and asked him to prepare the espressos and he left the room. All the main lights were off and we sat in one of the comfortable leather sofas against the far wall, with just a lone spot illuminating the circle of darkness we had taken refuge in.
‘How’s Dagur?’
‘I shrugged ‘I don’t know.’
‘What’s up?’
‘He’s on tour with the band. Won’t be back for a few months; it’s a long one. Anyway, I hadn’t seen that much of him before he left because he was busy rehearsing some new material.’
>
‘So you were never really an “item”?’
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ I replied. ‘I don’t think rock stars are all that keen on domesticity.’
‘Pity,’ Grayson said.
‘Why?’ I wondered if he was hoping to arrange another threesome.
‘I’m looking for musicians.’
‘What for?’
‘A new project I was hoping you could help with.’
‘I’m all ears.’ The tall, thin assistant handed us our coffees and silently slipped away. Shortly after, I heard the front door close.
‘I’m always busy,’ he sighed, ‘but lately it’s mostly been commissions. Well paid, of course, but not ultimately that satisfying,’ he explained. I noticed he hadn’t added any sugar to his espresso, unlike me who added sugar cubes into the coffee like a ship drops an anchor. ‘It’s been ages since I’ve done anything personal.’
I nodded. That was the problem with all the artists I knew, musical or otherwise. Either they had no money to enable them to do what they wanted or they had all the money in the world and no time for anything other than pleasing the masses.
‘There’s an important gallery in Southwark, with a branch in New York, and they’ve been at me for a long time to come up with a theme for a solo exhibition but I couldn’t quite focus on the right angle, the subject. It could also be expanded into a book. The last one I put together was six years ago.’
‘The walls in the rain?’ There were prints on the far wall. They were striking, bleak, but somehow full of light.
‘Yes, that was it. I could come up with more of the same, I suppose, but this time around I’m determined to concentrate on people. Not portraits, as such, but bodies. Something more personal.’
I remembered the passion in his eyes as the session that had so conveniently been interrupted by She’s arrival had progressed, long before the original excuse of trying out some of his new equipment.
What could he possibly be thinking of now? I couldn’t imagine anything more personal than our last photo session. And I knew I hadn’t signed any form of model release at the time. However brave I was, I could just imagine my parents’ faces if they came across nude photos of me. I swallowed hard, even though my curiosity was well triggered.