Eighty Days White

by Vina Jackson

  Her pale cheeks were flushed and a healthy sense of radiance spread appealingly across her face. She genuinely appeared happy, so unlike the last time we had met when she had been so visibly torn and anguished.

  ‘I left him.’

  ‘Your Brighton dom?’

  She had always refused point blank to reveal his name.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. He sounded like a dickhead. But why Amsterdam?’

  ‘It was as good a place as any,’ she replied. ‘I once had a pen pal here when I was still at school and I had fond memories of the place. And it’s cheap and easy to travel to London.’

  ‘How long have you been here already?’

  She considered. ‘Just over four months.’

  I was taken aback. I knew we had fallen out of touch while I was still preoccupied with my own discoveries and minor adventures, but it just hadn’t felt that long. What sort of friend was I?

  ‘Time flies, eh?’

  ‘Certainly does.’

  She took a sip from her cup of herbal tea. Out of habit, I’d opted for coffee. It felt uncommonly bitter and lukewarm to my tongue. Liana was looking at me intently, as if about to burst into confession. I kicked my shoes off under the table. Distant strains of music ebbed and flowed in the distance, although the coffee shop didn’t have a jukebox or the radio on, and the thump of the bass fading in and out felt like the beat of my heart on standby.

  ‘Things just kept getting worse,’ Liana explained. ‘With the guy in Brighton. I know I’m submissive and I like to be dominated. But there’s a difference, you know, between being a sub and being a doormat. Between being a dom and being an arsehole. And this guy was an arsehole. It just took me a while to work that out. He was very charismatic and I so desperately wanted that level of intimacy that I’d shared with Alyss, before him, and so I did things that I wasn’t comfortable with, thinking that if I pleased him enough I could make it work.

  ‘But eventually I realised that he didn’t really care about me. He liked a power trip and having a pretty young girlfriend and that was it. So I dumped him. But I had to leave, to make sure that I didn’t get pulled into it again. Some things are intoxicating, even when you know they’re bad for you.’

  My mouth opened. I was curious to hear all the sordid details and to relate them to my own situation, although I also knew they would affect me badly if she disclosed them. Liana was my friend and I was angry that she’d been hurt, but the dilemma sounded all too familiar as I was still in the process of assuming my own dominant nature and understanding the dynamic of how it affected my relationships with men.

  I knew that I didn’t really care about most of the subs that I beat at the club and I knew that they were aware of that and got off on it all the same. Sometimes I felt terribly guilty about hurting them, even when they begged me for it. I wondered whether I would be able to hurt someone that I truly loved, or if I would want to hurt someone that I loved even more than those I didn’t care about. Push the physical extremes even further to increase the emotional extremes. I longed for the sort of bond that Liana described. The sort that She and Grayson shared, and Lauralynn and her unknown man. But I feared what would happen if I got it. What sort of person I might become.

  Sometimes, when the men I was domming were so servile and ridiculous and begged for me to punish them, despite my efforts to the contrary I couldn’t help the scorn I felt as I played with them, superficially wounding their bodies and their feelings, degrading them even as they pleaded with me to push them even further. But, inside, I was waiting for the day when I would have an emotional connection with one man, when there would be life beyond the play, the scenes. These men were part of a crowd, anonymous. It was the day one of them would turn out to have a face that would prove a turning point.

  ‘I understand,’ I muttered. ‘I hope I do, Liana.’

  ‘I wanted to be used and he used me,’ Liana continued. ‘I now realise that’s all I was for him. A conduit for his cruelty, his sadism. Some people like that sort of thing, even long term, but I’m not one of them. If he’d ever said certain words, expressed some kind of affection, showed me that deep down he cared for me as a person and not as piece of fuckmeat, I would have continued, believe me. That’s the way I am. It wasn’t what he did, but the lack of feeling behind it all. The lack of aftercare. I kept waiting for things to change. But I knew that day would never come.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I told him I’d had enough. He didn’t take it well. But I swore to myself I would never see him again, even as he kept mailing me, phoning me, assuring me I would come back to him in the end, that I needed him more than he needed me.’

  ‘Didn’t you meet him originally through your work?’

  ‘Yes, that really made it awkward.’

  ‘It must have.’

  ‘That was part of the reason I left. I stayed away for weeks, even though I felt so damn empty inside. I met a couple of other men, also doms, of course, online. The first one was a dead loss, another chancer, but the second one whom I met at the Pelirocco – you know that boutique hotel on Regency Square where the barman used to prepare those crazy cocktails? – I really felt was different, even though it was brief. He was so warm, caring …’ She drifted away, her memories floating to the surface and clouding her eyes.

  ‘It didn’t work out?’

  ‘No.’ She returned to the present. ‘I liked him. A lot. But I think that, in his own way, he was as mixed up as me. Uncertain of his role. He undressed me, but sort of panicked when he saw some of my bruises … Nothing happened.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘There was no point in crying my eyes out, I reckoned. So I took a decision. I gave in my notice at the solicitors the following day, cleared my meagre bank account and almost tossed a coin. I was thinking maybe Paris or New York. I don’t speak a word of French and the big Apple was too far, so I ended up here in Amsterdam. Where everyone speaks English!’

  ‘I think canals suit you,’ I said. ‘You seem happy.’

  ‘I am,’ Liana confirmed. ‘It’s a lovely place.’

  As she lowered her gaze, I realised she had only told me half the story.

  I couldn’t help but grin. It had nothing to do with her submissive nature, I thought, but Liana was not the sort of girl who spent long between men.

  ‘You’ve met someone else, haven’t you? I can see it in your smile.’

  ‘I have,’ she confirmed, all shyness washed away from her features.

  I was glad for her. But I had to ask.

  ‘Another dom?’

  Her look was impish.

  ‘Dom,’ she said firmly. ‘I’d never date any other sort. But – how can I put it? – the right sort.’

  ‘You’re incorrigible.’

  ‘I yam what I yam,’ she said. It was a joke the two of us had long shared, what Popeye the Sailor Man always said.

  ‘Oh yes you are.’

  ‘He’s coming round tonight,’ Liana said. ‘I’ll introduce you.’

  His name was Leroy, and he was an American guy who had moved from New York to Amsterdam to finish his Ph.D. in Philosophy. His mother was Dutch, so he spoke the language, and he’d always wanted to try a stint in the Netherlands.

  ‘Everyone’s got to go back to their roots at some point,’ he explained. ‘Otherwise I think you can’t really know for sure who you are, can you?’

  Leroy was just a few years older than us, but in the way that men had of maturing a little later, he seemed about the same age. He was unexpectedly short, especially for someone who was half Dutch. Liana had previously always dated tall men. But he was stocky, and fit, as most people in Amsterdam were, from all the cycling. His father was Nigerian and the combination of heritages had given Leroy a beautiful bone structure and full mouth. There was something innately sensual in his appearance and the way that he moved. Height aside, I could see why Liana fancied him.

  ‘So you two met online?’ I asked, as Leroy stirred
the deep pot of aromatic meat stew. He had a nice arse, I noticed, as he bent down to swing the oven door open and check on the garlic bread.

  Liana and I were sitting at one end of the long wooden trestle table in the kitchen, each sipping a glass of red wine. She followed the line of my gaze as I appreciated Leroy’s pert buttocks and winked at me.

  ‘Not bad, eh?’ she mouthed at me as he was distracted keeping an eye on the food.

  Leroy turned to respond to my question.

  ‘Yep,’ he said, ‘online. It’s the only way, really, if you’re looking for someone on the scene. Trying to work out if someone is kinky otherwise is fraught with danger.’

  I giggled, imagining how that conversation might go down on a first date. The wine was starting to go to my head.

  ‘We met, we clicked,’ Liana said, raising an eyebrow at me to hint heavily that the connection hadn’t been purely conversational, ‘and the rest is history.’

  Leroy spooned the food onto dishes and brought it over to the table. He set the plates down in front of us and returned with his own a moment or two later.

  ‘Shit!’ he cried, just as he finally sat down. ‘The garlic bread.’ He leaped up again and pulled the oven door open in the nick of time.

  Questions that I was dying to ask bloomed on my lips and then faded away before I could summon the courage to ask them.

  Why? I wanted to know. What was it that drove us to seek these extremes of human connection? I doubted that there was really an answer to that question. I’d asked the same of She and Lauralynn and both of them had said basically the same thing in reply. Some people are happy in the shallow waters of life, others like to ride the rapids. Some people like chocolate ice cream, others like rum and raisin. It’s just the way people are built and nothing more to it than that.

  Watching the two of them together, I couldn’t deduce much more than that they got along well and were both happy. There were tiny gestures – things that might well have existed between any ordinary couple but which held an extra weight when I saw them occur between kinksters.

  The way he rested his hand so heavily on the small of her back when they stood alongside each other in the kitchen. The grace with which she so naturally slipped down onto the floor in front of him and rested her head on his calves instead of taking the seat alongside him when we moved into the living room and I observed how he gently stroked her hair with such tenderness.

  I was only staying for a few days, but settled into life with Liana in her Amsterdam flat as if we’d never been apart. We both agreed that if we closed our eyes we could easily be back in Brighton at university again. In some ways, we’d changed and grown so much that we were barely the same two people at all, but in other ways we were still the two girls exploring the Lanes and getting tattooed together on a whim.

  Liana was still new in her job so hadn’t been able to take more than a day off work during my visit so instead I came down to the flower market in the mornings and informally helped her out. The heady scent of the flowers reminded me of the night of the ball and the tropical scents that had pervaded the air and I felt an eerie sort of peace working outdoors with my hands. It was such a contrast to the dark corners of the club or even the confined and brightly lit space of the music store.

  Leroy didn’t visit again for the next two nights, though I knew that he and Liana texted each other often. He wanted to give her some space, he’d said, so that she could spend time with me. But her phone lit up frequently with his messages and with it her expression.

  It was the day before I was due to depart when, out of the blue, Liana asked me if I would like to watch them making love.

  ‘I know the last time was traumatic for you,’ she said. ‘With Nick. And I wondered if you’d like to see it for yourself, what we do. So you can understand. And know that I’m safe.’

  I was standing in front of the refrigerator at the time, drinking orange juice straight from the carton and nearly choked on my mouthful. It was the first time that Liana had ever acknowledged what had happened on that night, or that I’d even seen her have sex before.

  Liana patted me on the back.

  ‘Serves you right,’ she said, ‘for not using a glass.’

  ‘You want me to watch you having sex?’ I asked weakly.

  ‘Yeah,’ she replied casually.

  ‘I’m not sure what to say. How … ?’

  I wanted to ask if she thought I’d be involved. Was Liana looking for a threesome? The last time, with Nick, had been shocking, but the situation had arisen naturally and it had been clear at the time that I was only an accidental bystander. This was different. And I’d disappeared before I’d had to speak to either of them in the morning, so I hadn’t had to endure any awkward moments.

  ‘You want me to watch?’ I asked again, dumbly.

  ‘Watch. Not get involved. We won’t even notice you’re there.’

  I wasn’t sure if that made it better or worse.

  Of course, I’d seen all manner of things at the club, and the ball, and during the time that I’d spent with Lauralynn and She. I’d seen entire roomfuls of people fucking or domming and subbing. But Liana was an old friend, and it felt so much more intimate with just the three of us.

  My skin crawled at the thought. Yet I was curious. More than anything, I wanted to watch Leroy. To see how a couple behaved together and to imagine what it might be like for me if I ever met someone that I felt that way with.

  ‘OK then,’ I said.

  ‘Great!’ she replied, breezily, as if she’d just issued me a dinner invitation and not a promise to watch her and her man copulating.

  It was a bad time to visit Amsterdam’s disappointing Sex Museum, which was a quarter of the size of the one Leonard had taken me to see on one of our Paris weekends. When I saw the giant replica of a penis that was bigger than I was and the various representations of sex through the ages, all I could think about was Liana and Leroy and what I was in for later. My mind in imaginative freefall, I took a few bridges too many and ended up near Leidseplein, having lost my bearings and had to carefully retrace my steps.

  When the allotted hour finally arrived, I was pleased to see that Leroy looked as nervous as I felt. Or was he just excited? He’d arrived at Liana’s with a duffel bag that made a dull thud when he lowered it down onto the wooden floor in the living room.

  ‘Heya, Lil,’ he said. ‘How you feeling?’

  ‘I’m good,’ I replied with false cheer.

  We skipped dinner. I was too nervous to eat. Leroy said that food would make him fall asleep. And Liana was worried about gagging. I winced at the thought.

  It was Leroy who finally started things off. Liana suddenly went quiet and her expression took on a questioning quality as if she was waiting for something to begin, as I was.

  ‘Come,’ he said. She stood up from the table and began walking down the hall to the living room. She moved as if she were on a lead, or being operated by remote control, although she was in front of him. I trailed uneasily after them, not sure what to do with myself. Not for the first time, I wished that there had been some kind of etiquette manual for how to behave in these sorts of situations. In school science lessons I’d learned how to put a condom on a banana, which had proven no use at all. What I had really needed was a lesson on what to do when your best friend asks you to watch her fucking. Why was it the most difficult scenarios in life that always came without an instruction booklet?

  ‘Shall I put on some music?’ I asked. I was barefoot and the wooden floor was cold against my feet. I wanted to go and find some socks, but didn’t. It seemed an inappropriate time to think about laundry.

  ‘No,’ Leroy replied. ‘She likes the sounds.’ They hadn’t begun yet but immediately a pornographic soundtrack began to play in my head, bodies slapping wetly to the backdrop of an improbable ‘oh, oh, oh’.

  Liana had gone silent, and began to sway very gently on her feet. Her eyes were closed. Leroy circled around her like an animal
stalking its prey. It was as if all the tension that had left her body had gone into his and he was coiled like a spring ready to pounce. I sat down on the couch. They’d forgotten that I was there already.

  He kissed her, in just the same way that I had kissed the ballet dancer at the ball. First, he encircled her throat with his hand in a protective caress. She relaxed her head back as if she were offering herself to him. Then he raised his hand and softly stroked her cheek, before wrapping his fingers into her hair and pulling her neck back with one hard, sharp tug.

  Though they were almost the same height, he seemed to tower over her by virtue of the way that he bent her to his will. Her mouth opened and she made a mewing noise like a kitten. He growled and planted his lips on hers in the sort of manner that suggested he was only moments away from tearing at her flesh. She kissed him back like a child searching for food from its mother’s breast.

  ‘Turn around,’ he said softly.

  She was so eager to respond to his command that she spun too quickly and almost lost her balance. Leroy caught her with a steadying hand.

  ‘Pull up your skirt.’

  Liana’s hands shook and her movements were imprecise and clumsy, as if she’d just had a glass of wine, but eventually she managed to gather together the vast swathe of flowing fabric from her long, bohemian-style skirt and bunch it up around her hips. He stood back and watched. Let her stand there untouched. Made sure that I had a perfect view of her naked arse. She wasn’t wearing any knickers. I guessed that Leroy had instructed her to go bare down there.

  ‘Touch your toes,’ Leroy said. ‘As low as you can go.’

  Liana stretched down until she managed to find a position where she could rest her hands on the floor a couple of feet in front of her as if she was in the middle of an awkward downward dog.

  Her angled stance made her already long, thin legs seem even longer. She was built like a wading bird. Bony, but with a natural grace to her and the firm curved backside of a dancer, although as far as I knew she had never danced.