Spanking Dee-Dee

by Fabian Black

  “He hasn’t though.” He gazed at me sadly. “I’m getting old, Simon. I want to find someone before it’s too late. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “You’re not old. You’re like Peter fucking Pan. You haven’t aged a day, and of course I don’t mind. You’re my best friend. I want you to be happy, but I’m not sure this is the way to go about it. Where do you propose to hold these,” I indulged in some air quotation marks, “interviews?”

  “Here, in the apartment.”

  “No way!” I shook my head, appalled. “No way, Dee-Dee. You don’t invite strangers to come to your home. Show some common sense. You meet in public at first. In a coffee shop, a bar, or outside with plenty of people around to see you, and you tell me places dates and times. Promise?”

  “I promise. It does make sense I suppose.”

  “There’s no supposing about it. You have to play safe at this game. I know you don’t like them, but you can buy a cheap pay as you go mobile phone, so you can keep in touch with me. We’ll go to Tesco one evening this week and get one.”

  “I love the way you spend my money,” he grinned, adding, “and the way you look out for me.”

  “Someone has to.” I stretched my arms above my head. “Seeing as I’m up I might as well have breakfast. I’m going into college this morning to make a start on reorganising the workroom ready for classes starting on Thursday. Why don’t you come with me, give me a hand?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve got things to do.”

  “Like staying in to submissively wait for an alpha male to mail?”

  “You can mock.” His brown eyes shone a soft reproach at my teasing. “I’ve got a good feeling about this, you’ll see.”

  “I see already. I see you lied about your age for a start.”

  “Everyone lies about their age on forums like this. It’s a kind of required etiquette. Someone who claims nineteen is actually sixteen and barely legal. A man who says he’s forty is forty-four and so on. Anyway I haven’t lied much. Twenty-eight is the new twenty-five these days.”

  “All the same.” I wagged an admonitory finger. “Lying is naughty. If your alpha male does show up there’ll be trouble.”

  He returned my finger gesture with one of his own. I grinned and patted his face and then made my way back to my own apartment.

  I decided to have a hot shower if only to try and wash away the stirrings of unease I was beginning to feel about him launching an active quest to find a man instead of waiting for a man to find him. I doubted anything would come of it. As I’d told him, most men would be put off by the nature of the ad, and those who weren’t were likely to twist his words and make them mean something else. It worried me. I didn’t want him getting hurt.

  Once my ablutions were complete and I’d dressed I set to work making breakfast. I grilled rashers of thick bacon, scrambled eggs, made toast, squeezed orange juice and perked fresh coffee. I’ve always been a great believer in breakfast. It’s almost a religion to me, which is more than it is to Dee-Dee. He’s an atheist when it comes to the first meal of the day, well, not so much an all out non-believer as agnostic. He demands proof, as in the form of someone making it for him.

  I duly phoned to let him know proof of the existence of breakfast was ready and waiting on the altar of my kitchen table and he’d better hurry up and worship before it vanished. He didn’t need much persuasion. He never did. He was ripe for conversion.

  We worshipped in companionable silence. Dee-Dee preoccupied with his quest to find the man of his dreams, who was a creation of fiction in my opinion, his uncle’s fiction more to the point. One of the things I’d learned about Dee over the course of time was the depth of his obsession with those early stories and the patriarchal relationships they portrayed. In his fantasies he put himself in place of the heroines who were swept up and over the knee of a handsome strong dominant man, who had a heart of gold beneath his stern exterior.

  I’d lost count of the animated discussions we’d had on the subject. The outcome was always the same. He refused to acknowledge his uncle had had a fetish, and he did too. He’s adamant he doesn’t have a kink. He insists he has a standard and a goal, not a kink.

  Sipping strong dark coffee I studied him in the white light of the fledgling day. In his advert he described himself as having brown hair, actually his hair is much more complicated than that, a hypothesis confirmed by the sun shining through the window highlighting its varied shades of copper and gold. It has a tendency to stick up at the front in a sweet little quiff.

  His nose sports a little bump on its bridge, the result of being broken by a malicious football when he was twelve. It’s barely noticeable, but he has an unconscious and rather engaging habit of rubbing it whenever he’s in deep thought, as he was now.

  “Dee-Dee.” I put my mug down. “Are you sure about this ad business?”

  “Of course.” He reached for a piece of toast from the rack. “I wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t. I have to cast a net if I want to make a catch.”

  “Do you really believe it’s going to bring you what you want, or what you think you want?”

  “I hope so. I’m tired of waiting, Si.”

  “It’s a risky way to land a fish, Dee.” I cleared my throat in preparation to deliver what I knew would be an unpopular opinion. “I know you think Anne’s lifestyle is a game, but at least it’s an honest game with clear perimeters. It has designated rules and codes of behaviour. If you want a man with dominant tendencies then you need to look for him in an environment where the dynamics of power exchange are understood and appreciated. It will be safer than inviting the uninitiated to apply for the job.”

  He gave me a reproving look. We’d had conversations like this before, lots of them.

  “You know I don’t want a Dungeon Dom, Si.” He wagged a triangle of buttered toast at me. “The trouble with you is you don’t understand.”

  “What don’t I understand?” I buttered a piece of toast.

  “Me that’s what!”

  “What’s to understand, Dee-Dee?” I looked at him solemnly. “You’re a sweet kinky man who needs a kind kinky boyfriend who will smack your arse just for the sheer fun of it without wrapping it up in false precepts. I think your obsession with your uncle’s idealised heroes and your refusal to accept you have a kink is to do with your mother. You don’t want to be anything like her, so you reject anything that might even remotely tie you in with her, such as being turned on by spanking. Maybe because you see her as having rejected you.”

  “Was the Daily Mail giving away free Psychology Degrees today then? Makes a change from free pop CD’s I suppose.”

  “You know I’m right.” It was my turn to do some toast wagging.

  “No, you think you’re right, there is a difference, and I don’t know why I bother coming here sometimes.” He leaned over the table to kiss my cheek, “apart from the fact you serve a great breakfast. Thanks, Si. Do you mind if I use your shower? I painted a portrait on the tiles in mine last night. I don’t want to wash it away yet, plus I’ve got no hot water. I forget to put the emersion on.”

  I nodded, unsurprised by the portrait admission. I’d gotten used to his quaint and quirky ways. “Leave those clothes outside the bathroom door. They need laundering. I’ll put them in with mine later.”

  He went off to shower. I cleared the kitchen table and then gathered his discarded clothes and shoved them in my washing machine. He’d been wearing the same shorts and top for over a week. They were due a wash. It meant he’d run out of clean clothes and was behind with his laundry, a sure sign of preoccupation. I should have guessed he was brewing something.

  While he showered, singing at the top of his tone-deaf voice, I washed up the breakfast pots pondering on the advert. I was convinced it wouldn’t yield fruit in the form of his ideal man. No man alive could possibly match the macho matinee idols pressed into the pages of his uncle’s books. But what if it did? The thought made me uncomfortable. Friendships shifted
when love came on the scene. It had with Tony. I saw less of him and when I did see him the emphasis was different, because even when Ruby wasn’t physically with him, she was there spiritually, in his thoughts and in his conversation. I didn’t mind. I liked Ruby. She had become a friend too, but in a shared way. The friendship I’d had with Tony was diluted a little, split between him and the woman who was now a part of him.

  “Penny for them.”

  I jumped as Dee-Dee’s voice sounded from behind me. I hadn’t heard him come into the kitchen, too lost in thought. Turning I smiled at him. “You done? Did you put your towels in the hamper?”

  “Yep.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of my bathrobe. “What were you thinking about, Si? You looked sad.”

  “Did I? I don’t know why. I was thinking about my new classes. I’m looking forward to them.” Grabbing a tea towel I dried my hands.

  “Are you sure you’re okay.” His eyes searched my face. “Do you need a hug?”

  “I’m fine, but a hug is always welcome.” I held out my arms and he came to me, wrapping his arms tight about me. He smelled of blue shower gel, ocean fresh. “Come on.” I patted his back. “I’ll come downstairs with you. I want to have a look at your shower art. Put your shoes back on, or you’ll get your feet all dusty.”

  He gave a wide smile. “You know, Si, you’re like the mother I never had.”

  “I’m practising for being a godparent.”

  As luck would have it Mrs Royston appeared in the lobby just as Dee-Dee and I came down the stairs. She frowned when she saw him dressed in my robe. It was by no means indecent, reaching to his knees.

  “For heaven’s sake, man. Must you parade around half naked?“

  Dee-Dee had gotten bolder where she was concerned. He even attended residents meetings with me and faced her out. He looked at her in a considering way. “Would you prefer me to be fully naked, Mrs Royston?” He made as if to undo the robe.

  She let out a shriek. “I’ll report you to the residents committee, if not to the police. It’s not right. A lady of my age shouldn’t be subjected to sights like this in her own home.”

  “Sorry, Mrs Royston.” I hastily opened the fire doors and shoved him through them. “His shower is out of order. He was using mine.”

  “I don’t know why you two don’t move in together, you’re virtually joined at the hip as it is.” She gave me a dark look and pulled open the lobby door stomping out into the morning sunshine.

  I playfully swiped the air in the vicinity of Dee-Dee’s backside. “You shouldn’t tease her. She has no sense of humour.”

  “Not where I’m concerned anyway. It’ll give her something to moan about at the next residents meeting. She enjoys a good moan. I’ve done her a favour by giving her an excuse to have one.”

  We got to his apartment and he led me to the bathroom, pulling open the screen door on the shower cubicle with a flourish.

  “Nice.” I put my head on one side to admire the full length drawing of, well, Dee-Dee’s full length. The title said it all ‘Man Masturbating in Shower, a self-portrait.’ “It’s good, just one thing.” I flicked a finger at the shower wall. “What medium did you use?”

  “Not my own shit,” he grinned, “if that’s what’s worrying you. It’s soil from the potted fern on the window ledge mixed with a bit of spunk.”

  “Glad to hear it, I think. I’ll get my camera and photograph your self-abuse for posterity. It’s too good to wash away unrecorded.”

  “But that’s the point of it, don’t you see, Si?” He looked at me earnestly. “It’s what you do after masturbation, you wash away the evidence.”

  “I’m still going to photograph it. You get dressed. I’ll be back in a mo.”

  I ran upstairs and grabbed my Nikon, hurrying back to his place before he had one of his impulse moments and sluiced the shower tiles down. He hadn’t, and nor had he dressed. He was still in the bathroom clad in my bathrobe, brushing his teeth at the sink, a faraway expression on his face. I took a series of photographs of his unorthodox artistry though I doubted they would do the real thing justice.

  “Have you got any clean clothes to put on?”

  He shook his head, still staring dreamily into the mirror.

  “I’ll drop in a t-shirt and some shorts of mine before I go into college, okay?”

  “Okay, thanks.” He spat out toothpaste, rinsed his mouth and popped his toothbrush back in the holder before lifting up the lid on the toilet seat.

  It seemed a good moment to leave the bathroom. I went to check his laundry basket in the utility cupboard. It was overflowing. I loaded up his machine and put it on a cycle, gathering the rest of the stuff to take back with me and put in with my own washing. It would clear the backlog and give him clean clothes to wear for the rest of the week.

  By the time I’d done he’d moved from the bathroom to his bedroom and was sitting at his computer, checking to see if his ad had brought any responses. It hadn’t.

  He was still sitting there when I returned with the top and shorts for him to wear.

  “I’m going into college, Dee.” I tickled the back of his neck. “Don’t sit here all day. Get dressed. The stuff is on the bed. I’ve put a load of washing in for you. Make sure you get it out on the line when it’s done. It’ll soon dry today.”

  “Will do, Si.” He dragged his eyes away from the screen to smile at me. “I’ll make dinner tonight, seeing as you’re working.”

  “Let me guess, pizza and salad?”

  He was unabashed, used to my affectionate teasing about his stock in trade dinner menu. Dinner with Dee always consisted of ready made pizzas and pre-washed pre-packaged salad. He liked pizza and salad and made no apology for it.

  “And red wine, seeing as you’re not teaching tomorrow. I’ll get some ice cream too, for afters, good stuff from Pacittos with chocolate flakes.”

  “Sounds delicious.” I made to take my leave, but halted as his computer pinged arrival of a new email.

  He gave an excited squawk. “I’ve got a reply. I’ve got one.”

  “Open it then, let’s have a look.” I stood behind him, looking over his shoulder, as he opened the email. His disappointment was palpable as he read the short message in response to his elegant and voluble ad. It was from someone called Dave452

  ‘hi there, would u be interedted in a 25 year old male who is willing to bend u over his knee and give u a spanking? I love being domanant and telling a man wat to do but am not over forceful :)’

  “How can I give authority to a short tongued man who can’t even spell dominant, Si?” He looked at me, dismay writ large on his face. “I don’t think he’s read the ad properly. Where did I say I wanted to be spanked and told what to do?”

  I patted his shoulder. “I take it you won’t be inviting Dave for an interview then?”

  “No.”

  “You have to expect things like this. People see what they want to see in contact ads. Dave is obviously interested in spanking and probably sex, so he’s read the possibility of those things into your ad. Don’t lose heart yet.”

  I left him composing a polite note of decline for Dave452 and set off for work.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  After parking up in the college car park I walked across to the railings to view the river. The college was fairly new, built on reclaimed dockland. I’d landed my teaching post in its opening year. It was an amalgamation of several older colleges transferred from various small sites. Town rejuvenation they called it, though how moving colleges out of towns leaving derelict buildings behind and forcing people to travel further could be called rejuvenation was beyond me.

  However, it was a pretty location, and peaceful too, especially as there were no sixth form students standing and sitting in gaggling peer groups. The summer classes hadn’t yet started. The only personnel on the premises aside from me were a few maintenance staff.

  Leaning on the railings I gazed at the broad deep river. The sun dropped beads
of light upon it. I watched them sparkle and dance upon its rippling back. If Dee-Dee were to paint the scene he would depict the river as a living thing, quasi human, hermaphrodite, a long fluid body with flexing muscle and sun-kissed skin. It would be beautiful, like him. The thought came to me as clear as crystal. He was a beautiful man, inside and out.

  A soft breeze rose from the river, lifting my hair. It was pleasant, cooling the heat of the sun. I closed my eyes and listened: to the gentle wind, the lapping of water, to bird and insect noises and the omnipresent burr of distant traffic. Reopening my eyes I gazed up and down the river, focussing on an elegant flotilla of white swans and then on a single rowing skiff sleeking through the water. The rower’s bare arms beat like wings as he worked the oars.

  Turning my back on the scene, I gazed at the college building, made predominantly from glass. The sun struck shafts of light on the massive panels, deflecting them towards me, blinding me, but then I’d always had a proclivity for blindness, especially when it came to love. I used it for self-protection figuring what I couldn’t see couldn’t hurt me. Words once spoken by my friend Ian came to mind. He’d said you couldn’t decide whether or not to fall in love. It happened without your permission.

  So when did it happen? When did I fall in love with Dee-Dee against my will? I searched my feelings, but they left me none the wiser. Perhaps the process began before I’d even fallen out of love with James. Was it when I first set eyes on him sitting cross-legged in the rain? When he bounded out into a thunderstorm to help a stranger? When he turned yellow eyes on me and grinned in delight at my startled reaction? Perhaps it was the day we walked in the park and he suddenly cried and said he didn’t know why he was crying. There was a sadness imprinted on the air. He wasn’t sure if it was his or someone else’s, but it was there and had soaked into him.

  I faced the fact head on. When and how did not matter. I was in love with Dee-Dee.

  I thought back to the day we’d had sex, as I frequently did. It had become a masturbation aid, despite my best efforts not to allow it to be. I’d thought it was alcohol induced rebound sex and that’s why it didn’t feel right. I was mistaken. It had been a moment of truth revealed too soon, certainly for me. I had rejected the challenge to my mantra of ‘love isn’t for me.’ It was safer to retreat than forge ahead with something at odds with my self-prescribed life plan.