Three Sides of the Coin (Catherine I)

by Lennon, Carole J

  When he went in for surgery for the broken arm, she called Mike back. “Some people will go to unbelievable extremes to avoid going to Cleveland." He declared after offering to take the meeting solo.

  "It was a close call, but Steven thought it better to take one for the team, rather than expose me to the Lake Erie Flu." She explained, but he did not believe her. "You don't believe in the Lake Erie Flu?" she asked.

  "No, I don't believe Steven took the fall on purpose. If I did, I'd make you go to Cleveland as punishment. But I wouldn't be surprised if he would do it. He'd do anything for you. You are a lucky woman. Give me a call and let me know how everything goes, but I am glad to hear he’ll be okay.”

  This went through Catherine's mind as she waited the two hours for Steven to clear surgery. She thought about what her life would be like without Steven. She thought about all the years they had spent together, how he always was careful to lift the toilet seat, and put it back down again. She thought about him washing dishes, opening doors and waiting while she changed outfits. He adored her and it showed.

  In his hospital room as he lay sleeping, she looked at him and held his hand. She loved his hands, how gentle they were with her, how powerful they could be, but yet gentle with her. She pressed her lips to his hand and he stirred. He turned his head and opened his eyes just a little. "Am I in heaven?"

  "No," She said, "You are here with me."

  "What's the difference?" He mumbled and drifted off to sleep.

  It was this Significant Emotional Event that led Catherine on her quest to become the perfect sadist. Perhaps that is a bit extreme. If sadism is cruelty for the sake of seeing someone else suffer to one's own delight, then strictly speaking, Catherine was not of that ilk. However, if sadism can spring from an effort to give someone else solace by making them suffer for their own quest of contentment, leading one to find a streak of joy in seeing someone they love endure the pain they dole out, then Catherine definitely fit.

  It may seem like splitting hairs, but here is the difference. Catherine never enjoyed seeing small animals or children, or even innocent adults suffer pain, and often would go out of her way to reduce that suffering. She even managed to make Richard, the Dick, stop along a busy Houston freeway to pickup, adopt and mend an injured and abandoned dog. And she would never have enjoyed torturing even the vilest of prisoners. However, for Steven, she realized she would be willing to put away her queasy feelings and find it in her heart to abuse him, as he wished.

  But Catherine was seldom impulsive, despite evidence to the contrary. Times where she seemed to act rashly were either founded on ideas and concepts that she had thought over many times in advance, or fit the philosophies of her life. "What's the worst that could happen?" Was often the last statement before flinging herself into taking on a new project, like opening a wall to install a window, or pulling all the sheetrock off a surface.

  "What are they going to do? Steal your lunch money or come to your door and take your kids?" would precede asking for a deep discount on some product or service.

  So it was a change of philosophy that occurred here. She loved Steven deeply and knew him to be a good man and realized that his wants were not unreasonable, merely unconventional. All that was left now was her research. And research meant reading books and articles and asking questions. So, with all things ticklish at this point of her life, it meant asking Mike.

  The following week found her talking long distance each day with Mike, between trips to the hospital to first look into the rapidly mending Steven, taking him home, then to various therapies, follow-on doctor visits, x-rays and pharmacies, and then trips to bookstores for books on "Loving Domination," and all things Anne Rice. She also got Steven to admit to a stash of porn that Mike insisted she would be able to find, "They all have fantasies and every fantasy has a picture. People get rich making visual aids for these hidden fantasies. Women may get off on thinking about hugging, but men get off on pictures. You'll learn a lot about him by seeing what pictures he enjoys looking at."

  Here is where it started to change so much for her. Steven not only had pictures of imperious women looking down on bound men, whips in their long fingered hands, red lipstick looking erotic and yet, unattainable; but he had stories and letters to the magazines, torn out and stapled, long since dog eared. And here she found herself easily standing in those high heels, red, occasionally, but mostly black lingerie or leather, or rubber. The red stripes across the men's backsides got her sexually aroused. The letters that seemed most dog eared were letters where the women would 'force' the men to dress in emasculating female garb and force him to prove himself to the female domme. It struck her as impressive that the men who wrote these letters were invariably in love with their spouse and found their lives improved by the actions. And the more rare, but fairly frequent letters, written by the women who now controlled their husband’s sex lives, were equally loyal and delighted.

  It was also fascinating to her, that there were so many different iterations on the theme of female domination. She quizzed her captive audience on his preferences, making it clear that she was going to consider his likes, but it would all be up to her. Because these inquisitions that she performed were with his private bits open to her manipulations, there was no doubt to what excited him. It was if she had her own Wonder Woman Golden Lariat of Truth. She found herself enjoying this power and found he was open to cross dressing, but not publicly; that he was desirous of humiliation, but only in private and only with her; that he fantasized about being bound, and spanked, but he did not know how far he was willing to go. She began to form ideas of how this was all to fit their lives. She realized that they would need to fill contrasting lifestyles. She always knew that he would come through in the clutch, be the man of the family, always providing; and that she would always be the one to make sure the little things would be done around the house. But now she knew that he would have to sometimes feel helpless and gain the release that came with that; and that she would have to have him pamper her and allow him to serve her and do household chores that she would normally take on. So she started to plan on buying him a sissy maid outfit and imagine him on his knees washing floors, or swirling around the house vacuuming. Since these were tasks that she dreaded, this would work out nicely. And as a bonus, she found herself getting wet, thinking about taking a crop to his backside if he did not vacuum to her satisfaction. This could work out very nicely, thank you!

  Chapter 6: Mike-3

  I was surprised how quickly Catherine took me into her confidence and how open she became with me. I regard this as a flaw in my judgment. In retrospect, the clues were all there.

  One of the first times we went out for lunch, she did something that absolutely stunned me. Now Catherine is non-malicious and as gracious a person as you will find anywhere. That comes across straight away. However, at this particular meal, Catherine embarrassed the waitress, a young girl with braces, obviously nervous about them as she smiled quickly and suffered from a forced close mouth in order to do so, as she took our order. Catherine looked up, about to order a salad of some sort and asked, "How long have you had your braces?"

  "Six months," was the nervous, startled reply. Catherine looked back down at the menu and ordered her salad and handed the menu to the flustered girl. I ordered a sandwich, paying a lot more attention to the poor girl, who nevertheless dropped my menu, aggravating her embarrassment.

  "Why did you do that?" I hissed at Catherine, leaning forward after the waitress left.

  "What?" Catherine replied with genuine curiosity.

  "Don't you realize how mortified she was?" I asked, stunned that someone as smart and self aware as Catherine didn't realize what had just happened.

  "All I did was ask how long she had the braces. There was nothing embarrassing about that." And she meant it. Having spent many a boring 'company family day ' function with the two of them, I discovered many things about both Catherine and her husband. Since I, obviously had no fa
mily to bring and they had little desire for mixing with strangers for Steven, (as nerdy uncomfortable as he could be), and for Catherine ("Why would anyone think I would want to spend even more time with people that I really don't care much for when I see them at work?"), we became consistent reliable wallflowers observing company politics and learning more insights about each other. And I learned more about what made them such a strong couple and interesting as people.

  But back to lunch! For Catherine, and even her husband Steven, ignorance was a choice. For them, choosing not to know was an option they never wanted. Their intellectual curiosity was as great for any couple I had ever met. It meant nearly an exponential increase in intellectual capital between them. I saw them in a trivia contest where they just ran away with the event. Steven seemed to know something about everything, and what he didn't know, Catherine was able to either tickle the retrieval system, or come up with the fact herself. He had a memory and she had a storage and logic system. I remember him telling me that the best way to keep a secret from Catherine is to tell it to her. He said that she was all the time trying to make sense out of everything and would take disparate pieces of data and connect them. A rattle of plastic, by him, in a bathroom, while she lay in bed, led to the shouted question, "Do you have a headache?" Plastic rattle meant pills in a bottle, and since he only took aspirin, and only at night, and only occasionally, and since she only took aspirin for headaches, then he might have a headache. Of course, with all the home improvement projects that he took on, it was as likely as not a bruise or bump that he was easing, as he almost never suffered from headaches.

  On the secret front, if someone was going to tell her something, it wasn't worth remembering as with all retrievable information, it was reproducible. Why memorize a phone book, dictionary or encyclopedia? But once someone hid something from her, then she burned that into her hard drive. There were more than facts at stake, there was a motive system that would affect other bits of data, and other information flows. This was information that could not be ignored or left to chance like mere data bits.

  "I worked in a dentist's office when I was in high school, so I was merely interested in how long she had to go before they would be removed. It tells me how badly her teeth were originally. At six months, her teeth weren't too bad, so there wasn't a very interesting tale there. End of story."

  "But couldn't you say something like that to her? Not the uninteresting part, but that you worked in a dental office and it was professional curiosity. That way it wouldn't look like you were trying to embarrass her."

  "Why would she be embarrassed? She is doing something to make herself look better. That's good. There's nothing embarrassing about that." She said, head cocked in wonder.

  "She's a teenager!" I exclaimed, "There's no better reason to be embarrassed than that! Weren't you ever a teenager? Weren't your teenaged kids ever embarrassed about anything?"

  A look of awareness came over her as she glanced over at the girl placing our order into the kitchen. "I see. I'll probably need to be a bit more kind to her."

  But that was Catherine, aware and unaware. It was part of her charm. You never knew which one would show up each day. But this relentless openness to new data, to new questions, implied a trust in the data sources. But trust, in Catherine's mind was contingent on where it came from. Obviously, the waitress could lie about how long she had possessed her braces, but what difference would that make? But a client would need to be brutally honest about their desires and impressions or our designs would go all wrong. And, in this regard, Catherine's forthright approach was a huge asset to our company. It is a fact that people respond to what they see. If they see honesty and frankness, then they will give it. People seemed to spill their guts to Catherine, more so than me. Certainly, that is my own fault. The wonderful part about being a perceived closet gay is that no one expects a straight answer out of me. The fact that I was never seen with anyone, male or female in a social setting was attributed to my "closeted" status. I knew people thought I was gay because I was subject to fairly common offers from men. My reply was always that "I was seeing someone," and that allowed me to slip off the hook quite easily.

  It was never a lie, as I was looking straight at a person (them) when I made the statement. But it was taken that I was sneaking around at night leading some sort of assumed debauched life. Despite the fact that all of that was in their imagination, they saw my life as at least a low level lie. The consequence was that I was, in some way, untrustworthy.

  Catherine, I finally figured out, had a three tier structure to her trust circle. On the outside circle, most all of the population existed with a default setting of untrustworthy. Just inside that was a much smaller circle of friends and acquaintances of known trust, and inside there was the very tiny circle of family. That inside circle brought the wonderful assumption of truth and value. She would do anything for these people and would die for them, I imagine. You definitely want to keep that circle small. I believe my inner circle has me in it, and you are pretty close to being done. The middle circle followed the Russian aphorism that Reagan like to quote, "Trust, but verify." These people were taken with a grain of salt. Where the inner circle was "trust everything,” the second circle had to earn the respect every day and risked being thrust back out into the outer circle if they ever let her down. And I assume if she had a motto for the outer circle it would be "Distrust, but verify."

  In this regard, she was quite unlike her husband. Steven gave everyone the benefit of the doubt and wanted to think the best of everyone. It always amazed Catherine whenever he said something negative about someone, because she knew he wanted the world to be a happy and positive place and felt distrust made the world unnecessarily dark. For this reason Catherine loved him, but thought him a fool, and worked to protect him from himself.

  What was a surprise was how happy a person she appeared. Despite her cynical nature, she took a gleeful approach to the world. She was never bitter or a downer. Even her rants on some "pinhead driver" who cut her off in traffic sounded more like a comic evaluation than a diminished life.

  So, I believe, now, the reason I came to find myself either in her inner circle, or right on the edge between the inner and middle was that she needed me at that particular moment in her life.

  The topic of sex is usually fairly easy to discuss in the abstract, and indeed, people love to do so. Watching other people involve themselves in sex, when the people are not close acquaintances, is fascinating to us. We have plenty of television shows, magazine advertisements, and blockbuster sexy movies to document that. But there is a solid barrier to the discussion when we are discussing sex and ourselves or our close inner circle. Despite the open talk on 'Sex and the City,' I do not believe most women and almost no men would discuss their own sex lives with their spouses among their best friends. Not unless they just wanted to brag. But most problem solving in this arena needs to involve people who know both parties. Those knowledgeable folks, however, have to be 'safe.' They can't be someone who would betray the confidence of either party, nor can they be someone who can profit from the knowledge, nor can they be someone who could ever make either of the two young lovers uncomfortable. Obviously, this makes the list of confidants very small and maybe non-existent.

  So despite my status as inherently untrustworthy, due to my assumed 'closet' lifestyle, Catherine either trusted me, because I did not seem to lie about her imaginations of me, or because she needed me to be there for her. But I knew, as I know the sun will rise in the East, that sooner or later I would have to give a piece of myself to her, to deserve the trust. This is an art form for those of us with tiny inner circles. In marriages it might be assumed, in love it should be unconditional, but for those of us with a tiny inner circle, this is quite difficult.

  In Hamlet, Ophelia's father has a soliloquy about "To your own self be true and it shall follow as the night upon the day that thou cannot be false to any other." I always liked the flow of that. I need to be ho
nest to myself. I admit, I have a thing for Catherine, but I also admit, she is likely too much woman for me. She would ruin my world. She would have to be too big a part of it for me to keep at what I love to do so very much. I could never commit to her, and she'd need a commitment. But I think I could grab a piece of her life. I could tear off a chunk at the heel of the loaf, something no one else wants or needs, and keep it for myself. That was my goal here and I am neither proud nor embarrassed by it. I am who I am, and to that end, I am true to myself. I was delighted to be trusted by her.

  Also in that same soliloquy, he says: "Neither a lender nor a borrower be." I know about that. I have long observed that people who owe you debts resent being beholden. You have to let people pay off their debts, or you will get yourself into trouble. And they need to pay off in kind. A lot of do-gooders make mistakes here. They love doing for others and don't allow any payment because it would "Minimize their helping the miserable." Of course, the poor miserable resent the hell out of the do-gooders for running off with their pride and refusing any repayment. That forces the recipients of all this good-doing to start to convey some evil act or intent from the generous souls trying to get to heaven on their hard earned misery.

  So I knew that pay back would come. I, somehow, would have to pay Catherine back with some sort of secret knowledge of me, or some sort of personal data that would put me at risk should she ever divulge it. So what to tell her? I figured I'd take Steven's observation to heart and tell her straight out so she would forget it. Unfortunately, most juicy, risky data carries such an impact that it seldom falls off the radar screen. But that was in the future. At this time, I was thinking that the thing I shall share is my semi-blue blood heritage. It is juicy without being memorably scandalous. It is even understandable. The real risk might be that she realizes that I am willing, and even more importantly, good at lying.