he fog has cleared up today, burning back over the park and bridges to the ocean. The past three days have been gray and yesterday the mail didn't come. This morning the fog was wrapped around the radio towers on top of Twin Peaks, flattened all the way down Eureka Valley, so from my windows even the 17 Reasons Sign on Mission Street was obscured. I left my blinds open and stayed in bed with a book until almost noon. I didn't even try to do anything this morning with the fog like that, not even the dishes in the sink.

It takes almost an hour for me to get from my house in San Francisco to Mountain View, a suburban silicon town south of the city. I park my small car on a tree lined street, away from the center. It's Saturday afternoon, sunny and hot and distinctly quiet on this road. She'd said her name was Alix and I lean against the box. But it's impossible to know for sure. Nobody uses their real names anymore.

"You're late," Alix says to me. She looks just like her picture, which I had deliberately not looked at too closely. A round face and large hips. Flaming red hair. Spanish perhaps, or Italian. "Are you going to come in or not?"

"Sorry."

I follow her through the vestibule into her living room where we both sit down on a coffee brown two piece couch. It's well organized, nice dishes in a glass breakfront, plants near the windows. There's a bowl on the coffee table with nothing in it. "So this is my house."

"It's a nice house."

"It's boring."

"It's nicer than my place. I live in a studio."

"I got it in the divorce. Do you smoke?"

"No," I tell her. "I don't smoke."

She puts a cigarette in her mouth and waits so I lean forward and grab her lighter from the coffee table and light her cigarette for her. "I got the house in the divorce," she says. "I'm tired of pretending to want things I don't want and waiting for people to tell me what they want, hoping that maybe our desires match. I'm running out of time for that. We only have so much time, you know?"

She leans back on her couch. The shades are up and spears of light puncture the living room. "I agree with you totally," I say. "I've been in a closet my whole life."

She crosses her leg over her knee, the heel of her shoe pointing at me. "The last guy I dated was this great looking Norwegian. He looked like Thor with long blond hair and I'm just hoping that he likes to be hurt. Of course he doesn't. Waste of time." I nod my head. "So why don't you tell me what you want," she says.

"Well it's like I said in my ad..."

"I want a real man, OK. So while we're playing, if we play, then I'm in control, fine. I mean, I like to hurt people, I just do. And you like to be hurt, which is why you're over here. I think people can be honest about their desires. But don't ask me to dress you in women's clothes. I'm not going to sissify you. If I wanted a woman I'd be a lesbian. Don't think I don't get offers. No strap-ons either. I'm not going to use a strap-on on you. I want somebody who is masculine, but who wants to be hurt."

"I want to be hurt," I say.

"Well, I hope so." She moves forward and stubs out her cigarette. Takes another one from the pack and lights it herself. She's wearing the same velour pants that she was wearing in that picture. Whenever I find myself in situations like this I start to second guess myself, question what I'm doing here. She's sizing me up now. "Why don't you take your shirt off. You can hang it over there, by the entryway. You might as well take your shoes off while you're there."

I put my shoes near the door, hang my shirt on a hook next to a fur jacket. I take my socks off and stick them in my shoes and return to her in just my jeans.

"Come here," she says and I slide across the couch toward her. "No. On the floor. Kiss my shoes. Good. The heels. Suck on the heel. There. Just a little bit. Use your tongue. Now say thank you."

"Thank you."

"Thank you what?"

"Thank you Mistress."

"Maybe we should go to the bedroom."

My father has left me, in the basement of our house in Chicago. He's handcuffed me to a pipe and I am miserable. "Don't break that pipe," he's said before leaving. I can see the bush outside from where I'm sitting with my arm over my head. The basement is heavy with dust. I'm waiting, afraid to do anything as simple as break the pipe. Anyway, it's all over. Eventually he returns, saddened, his cheeks sliding from his face. Mother has only just passed away. We blame each other for that. I blame the screams, the constant noise. He's slipping the key into the cuffs. "Get out of here," he says, the shackles falling from my wrist. "Get out of here and don't come back."

It's a small bedroom with a bed a dresser and wall full of mirrored tile. Alix ties me to the bed using basic laundry rope. She wraps the rope around my ankles, spreading my legs, pulling my feet toward the end of the bed. "Do you like to be tied up?" she asks.

"Yes," I say.

"You have to tell me what you want. Don't expect me to know what you want. I'm not a mind reader you know." She's tying my arms above my head. I worry that the knots are not secure, and that I'm not helpless. I worry that it would be possible for me to escape. "Do you want a blindfold?"

"Whatever you want," I say.

"What did I tell you? You have to communicate." She looks at me spread naked on her bed and shakes her head. Then she looks at the bedroom door which is still open. She bites her lip like she's considering leaving.

"Please," I say quietly turning my cheek into the bed. It's just a whisper. "Do whatever you want to me. I don't want to know."

"But you have to tell me. You don't even know me. I need to know what you're into. What are your limits? What if I peed on you?"

"Please," I say. "Please."

She takes her clothes off, stripping down to red underwear and a red bra. Her skin is a pale orange and rolls of fat hang around her waist contrasting her legs which are thin and long like a bird's. "Lift your head up." She wraps the blindfold around my eyes but I can still see a vein of light beneath it. "I was honest in my advertisement. You obviously were not. I said very specifically I wanted someone who could communicate. Someone who knew what they wanted. You clearly do not know what you want." I feel her nails pinching my nipples. Hard. And then harder.

"Ow. Ow. Ow! Ow! Owowowo! Please. Please, it hurts. It hurts."

"Please what."

"Please mistress."

"So that's too much for you?" I don't answer her. I keep my mouth closed. Then she slaps me. "Is it? Is it or isn't it? How impossible for you? Do you know how to talk?"

"I don't know mistress. I don't know."

"Well you're going to have to." I feel the weight of her shin against my throat, her hand on my chest, the sheet moving beneath me and then her body on my face. She's taken her underwear off and I'm surrounded by the smell of her. I can't breathe except when she lifts off of me. "Get your tongue in there." I stick my tongue out gingerly and feel a pain shoot up my stomach from between my legs and she is bouncing on top of my head. "You're going to have to do better than that. Make yourself good for something before I kick you out of here. Minus your clothes. Come on!" She squeezes hard between my legs and pushes against me, grinding her whole body into my face, rolling her body over me in waves, the weight of her body, the smell of her ass and her vagina, her large buttocks along my cheeks, the extra skin there, and the soft patches.

It's cold, and I can breathe again. She's tied my balls and penis with rope. "I'm going to fuck you," she says. My face is sticky with her. My face is covered in her smell.

"No," I say trying to effect a measure of calm. "It's not safe. We have to have safe sex." She forces her underwear into my mouth and a first layer of panic washes across me. She pinches my nose for a second and fabric brushes the back of my throat and I cough. I feel her putting the condom on me. I try to focus on staying hard. I have no interest in sex. I think of the pictures of the women I look at on the internet, muscular women fighting on rubber mats, sitting on each others faces, matchbook holds. Usually the women are still wearing leotards. I think of one video clip, my favorite, where the wrestler straddles the other woman, pulls her legs up toward her shoulders, then lands an open hand slap between the other girl's legs. I think of being raped by a group of transexuals with large penises and enormous breasts, beaten and overpowered and held down against my will in a hotel room above a bar on Polk Street and walking home with a bloody lip and a black eye afraid to tell anyone what I've done. Or just one thin Asian woman with a strap-on, putting lipstick on my mouth, taking me from behind gently, whispering in my hair, her arm around my chest and another between my legs, holding me like her submissive female lover. I think of these things to stay hard for Alix while she rides on top of me, desperately riding over me and then stopping.

"What are you doing?" she says. She climbs off of me. Her hand whips across my face and I whimper into the underwear. She's straddling my chest. "What are you worth? What are you doing here? Are you dysfunctional? If you can't get it on with me you can't get it on with anybody. That's why you have to go online to meet women. Try to meet women on the personal ads."

"You're killing her," my father says. He's standing in my room. My arms are over my head, everything is broken, even pieces of the wall are lying on the floor. His face is burning and covered in perspiration, sweat peeling into the violent lines along his forehead. "You're killing her the way you act." He's stopped screaming now, and I'm shivering all over, his voice still vibrating through my body. He's wearing his uniform, the long stick dangling from his belt, badge pinned against his jacket. My mother is paralyzed on the couch, still awake but unable to say anything. The woman who will soon be my stepmother inhabits the kitchen, a floating grey mass.

"What kind of person has to do what you do?" she says, hitting me again, and then again. Then grabbing my hair. "Tell me. Tell me! Say something. This is worthless, this thing lying here. This is worthless. You will never make anybody happy with this and you'll never be happy yourself. You will be lonely till the day you die." I feel the moisture gathering beneath the blindfold. The tears moistening the cloth fabric. The room is so hot. "I'm supposed to feel sorry for you now? You're pathetic. Why did you come here?" I open my mouth but only make small, animal sounds, and it's stuck with long strands of spit. The tears come long and fast now, and the moans and cries. It seems endless. I feel like I could cry forever, choking. I feel the weight of her on my chest, the comfort of the ropes keeping my limbs apart. I feel her climbing from me. Her feet on the floor, her hands stroking my stomach and the air rushing into my mouth and nose. "It's OK," she says. "It's OK."

It's just like she said in her ad. Dacryphilia, arousal from tears. I want to make you cry. I wanted to meet her for this reason. Your tears are precious to me. It feels so good to cry. Everything bad runs out of me in the tears that run down my cheeks, over my ears, soaking the bed beneath me. I feel the rope going slack on my arms and then my legs.

"That's better now."

I pull my legs into my chest, my elbows to my knees.

"Come on. It's over." I tighten into a ball. "Come on. Oh fuck." I hear her leaving, walking from the room. I stay in my own darkness, my body turning over, the sheets building up along my edges. It's a while before she comes back and I've gotten cold. "Get out."

I unstretch. Stand in front of the bed, stuck between the bed and the wall trying not to touch the glass, pulling my jeans on. "I'm sorry," I say.

"I was honest in my ad. I can't stand liars."

"I'm sorry."

"You're sorry." She looks away from me, exhaling. She's dressed in a sweater and sweatpants and her hands are on her hips. "You're selfish is what you are." I follow her to the front where she watches me put on my shoes and then my shirt. "You should just say: sissy boy, into infantalism, shy. Looking for mommy."

"But I wanted to cry," I say.

"I'm a person too, you know. I'm not a bad person. I don't deserve to be taken advantage of and have my time wasted. What did I ever do to you?"

The sun is still burning horrifically across the south bay hills and the looming billboards. Coming back into San Francisco I pass the construction and metal mess around the airport, the greasy water of the bayshore, and the giant sign just before the city: South San Francisco, The Industrial City, standing in large steel beams against a dull green hillside. And the ribbon of the highways and all of the people on them, the Transamerica Building poking through the middle. Couples in cars. Everybody going somewhere. Sometimes I just feel terrible.

 

[END]

© Stephen Elliott 2003