y wife, Zoe, tells me I have a submissive personality. She’s
right.
It’s a freezing October evening and I should have brought
along a coat, but an hour ago it wasn’t high in my priorities.
I left the house like a bullet, Zoe’s wrath the gunpowder.
“Don’t you come back ‘til you’re a real man. I mean it, you son-of-a-bitch.”
She did, too.
Now I’m walking through the lamp-lit streets of Northgrove,
heading downtown to see Mistress Shade. I’m minding my
own business, trying to untangle this figurative ball of string,
when this jaywalker appears out of nowhere and steps into my
personal space, disturbing my concentration.
“Hey!” I yell after him. “Hey, you there.”
His head starts to swivel round but snags on something. Without
moving his lips, I hear a female voice come from his general
direction. It sounds… this is crazy, I know, but it sounds
like Anne Heche, the movie star.
He starts cursing and clawing at the buttons on his coat. I’m
watching him, thinking John Hurt in Alien. As it happens, the
voice does seem to be coming from his chest area. I can’t
take my eyes off him. It’s not every day you witness someone
giving birth to a Hollywood actress.
For the moment, my problems are forgotten.
“Mister, is there something I can do?” Call Emergency
Services? Call her agent? But he can’t hear me. He’s
wriggling out of the coat, he’s throwing it onto the ground,
he’s crouching and feeling around for something, but can’t
seem to find it. Agitated, he starts stamping all over the coat
while a muffled Anne Heche (I’m convinced it’s her)
bleats on. I can’t make out a word she’s saying I’m
so dumbstruck by his strange behaviour.
Then something crunches underfoot and Anne’s voice is
cut off.
Aborted.
always wanted a title. Something grand, something important-sounding.
Be careful what you wish for. After tonight, I’ll be known
as The Premature Ejaculator of Northgrove.
“Don’t you come back ‘til you’re a real man,” she said.
But how will I know when that is? Besides, what is a real man,
anyway?
I can hear her answer in my mind. “Typical. Shoot first,
ask questions later.”
he man leans against the tree, sweat-drenched, chasing his
breath. His coat lies on the sidewalk like a trampled rug.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He nods so vigorously I can barely step back in time to avoid
droplets of sweat landing on my shoes. A bad thing. I’m
no OCD-sufferer, but I have my habits and preferences. I think
best when I’m out walking and I can shut out the world.
I shut out the world by looking down at my shoes as I walk. I
won’t get far into my thoughts with some stranger’s
sweat on my shoe tips. I’ll be too busy thinking about
how it got there in the first place. A bad thing, indeed.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Did you yell out just then?”
I nod.
“What did you want?”
“Was that Anne Heche?” I ask, changing the subject
and, I hope, the source of blame for this incident.
“Oh, that,” he says, blushing. “Yeah… um,
that was her. Sorry. It’s kinda embarrassing.”
“I’m really curious—what happened?”
He tells me he’d been listening to an audio book on one
of those old dictaphone machines, the sort that take standard-sized
tapes rather than micro-cassettes.
“Mp3 players,” he says. “That’s all
stores seem to stock these days. iPods. iPod Minis, iPod Nanos.
We can’t all afford that kinda stuff. And ask for something
that plays tapes and they look at you like you’re from
another planet. Anyway, I found this old thing in my attic. You
can listen to it with earphones, but the playback’s in
mono, and if the wire gets pulled out of the socket… well,
you heard it, right?”
“Anne Heche,” I say, smiling.
He shrugs, embarrassed.
Something still confuses me, though.
“I have to ask. Why’d you get so angry?”
istress Shade is a dominatrix, confidante, and oracle. I pay
her to treat me with complete disdain, listen to my most private
and potentially embarrassing thoughts, and to guide my life via
stern instruction and the crack of her whip. It’s like
a marriage but with trust.
She carries out these duties professionally and, as one would
expect from a woman in her line of business, without mercy.
Her card literally fell into my hand one day while I sheltered
inside a public phone booth from a rain shower. Believing it
to be kismet, I barely hesitated before punching the number.
It’s not cheating. Not really. For starters, we never
have sex. What she does is allow me to feel the way I want to
feel without making me feel guilty for feeling it. I can be submissive,
I can be a little weird, but mostly what it comes down to is
this: she grants me “the freedom to be a slave.” And
that is precisely what it said on her card.
I call her from the payphone across the street to make sure
she is alone and available to dispense some abuse and advice.
“What kind of sorry excuse for a man are you?” She
is intent, it seems, on starting without me.
“Actually, Mistress Shade, that is what I’m here
to find out.”
’m down on my hands and knees inside the apartment, stripped
to my vest, shorts, and socks, wearing a studded dog collar,
and cleaning the points of Mistress Shade’s boots—black
thigh high stretch numbers with six inch heels and two inch platforms.
They taste a little funny tonight. Perhaps she spilled some of
the Black Russian from her glass, the stem of which she holds
tweezered between a thumb and forefinger.
“You know what he tells me, Mistress Shade?” I say,
having told her about my strange encounter earlier. “Why
he got so angry? He tells me he’s one of those frustrated
writers. Like that’s a good reason to create a scene.”
She smiles down at me with a red lipsticked mouth. Around it,
her face is powder-white.
“Continue,” she says.
“It got pretty complicated after that, Mistress. Apparently
the dictaphone was an old Christmas present from his folks. Seems
he had some ambition when he was a kid. Then he discovered the
world didn’t have much need for him. He tried to laugh
it off, but I could tell he was really serious.”
Mistress Shade takes a sip from her glass.
“Let’s see if I’ve got this straight—this
dictaphone his parents bought for him was supposed to help him
with his writing, and then in turn his writing was supposed to
make him somebody?”
“That’s how I understood it, Mistress, yes.”
“But he was using it to listen to stories written by other
people.” She frowned. “Usually I’d go in for
that kind of thing—it’s humiliation, it’s hope
biting back, the old switcheroo—but in this case it’s
quite, quite tragic. A broken dictaphone symbolising a young
man’s likewise broken dreams…”
“Begging your pardon, Mistress Shade, but it’s dumb.”
Her voice drops two octaves. “Is that so? What happened
next?”
“Nothing, Mistress. I left him to pick up the pieces.
These goddamn wannabe writers and artists, they expect the world
to change to suit them but they ought to change to suit it.”
“Spoken like a true submissive,” she says, scratching
me behind the ear with the tip of her riding crop.
“You’re damn right, Mistress Shade. It’s the
only way to be. Or so I believed until tonight.”
“Ah,” she says. “At last we arrive at this
eencie weencie problem of yours.”
“I need your guidance, Mistress. Desperately.”
“Keep licking and let me think, you pathetic snivelling
pile.”
She’s really something is Mistress Shade. A real pro.
Hard to believe she only does this kind of work as a sideline,
for the extra money it brings in. By day she’s a social
worker.
“I give her flowers, Mistress. And chocolates, too. I
even buy her spontaneous romantic gifts. Isn’t that what
it’s all about? I mean, that’s what women want from
us, right?” I’ve uncorked something inside me, and
now I need to get it out. “We eat out every two weeks.
We have sex on Saturday nights and occasionally on Sunday mornings.
Good sex, too. She even lets me be on top sometimes. And here’s
another thing—we’ve been married twelve years and
I haven’t forgotten a single birthday or anniversary. Not
one. But it seems that isn’t enough anymore. She told me
tonight she wants me to start taking charge, be a real man.”
“Done?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Why aren’t you licking?”
“Sorry, Mistress.”
“I think it’s time for the peanuts.”
Ah, the peanuts.
First, she lines them up: a dozen or so along the couch back.
Then I sit cross-legged on the other side of the room while she
flicks them towards my open mouth.
I believe my peanut obsession began last year after Zoe and
I returned from a vacation in San Diego. We’d been going
through some marital problems, quelle surprise, regurgitating
the same old one-sided arguments, when Zoe decided that a change
of scenery might inspire her to come up with some fresh new ones.
We visited the world-famous zoo. I remember we stopped to look
at some Tamarin monkeys. This one in particular seemed as interested
in us as we were in him: he moved close to the glass partition
and sat there on a branch munching a large nut literally inches
from my nose. He seemed so content, while I… I wasn’t.
Later, during the drive back to the hotel, I kept running it
through my mind. Who was really watching who back there?
“It’s simple really.”
Flick.
“It is, Mistress?” I ask, the peanut rebounding
off my left cheek.
“You love your wife, don’t you?”
“Yes, Mistress, I do.”
“And you want to continue your marriage, correct?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Then you need to change. She says you’re too submissive.” Flick.
Flick. One peanut shoots over my head, the other ricochets off
my chin. “Actually, I tend to agree with her there.”
“What do you suggest, Mistress?”
“I never suggest, pig, I only command. And I command you
to do what your wife says and stop being submissive.”
“But isn’t that a contradiction, Mistress?”
“The problem is you’re a giver just like me. And
when we give, people take. When we give more, they take more,
until eventually we have nothing left to give. And still they
take more. See how it is?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure I understand the point you’re
making, Mistress.”
“What do I have to do—spell it out? You need to
stop giving and start taking instead. You have to be a man.”
“But that’s exactly what I’ve been trying
to tell you, Mistress. I don’t know what that means. The
distinction is a little blurry these days. Men are more like
women; women more like men.”
“I understand this is confusing to you, but ask yourself
this: what is the point of being in touch with your feminine
side if, because you’re a man deep, deep down, you cannot
understand it? Your wife doesn’t appreciate that part of
you, so I say cast it aside. Be a lion not a kitten.”
“A lion you say… alright, I’ll do it!” Then
I’m up on my knees, surveying the territory around me,
seeing beyond this tiny apartment a rolling African veldt. “I’ll
be a lion. The king of my jungle.”
“Mistress,” she prompts.
“What? Oh, right. Mistress. Sorry.”
“You forgot another right there, peewee.”
“I did?”
“And there’s another, shitsack.”
With incredible accuracy she flicks another two peanuts directly
at my eyes. It stings… and they weren’t even salted.
“Call it even,” she says. “Let’s walk
some more, okay?”
She clips the dog leash onto the collar around my neck and with
a firm tug we’re off doing circuits of the couch.
“Why did you tell me about that guy you met earlier?” she
says. “The frustrated writer.”
“It was a strange story, don’t you think, Mistress?”
“Oh, indeed yes. And very interesting also.”
“Mistress?”
“Hmm?”
“Is there something on your mind, Mistress?”
“I’m considering my angle of approach is all.”
“I don’t follow you, Mistress.”
She stops parading me around the couch, turns and executes a
long, meaningful look back along the leash, slowly arching an
eyebrow at me. She plucks them with such military efficiency
that one look, one sickled brow is overkill: not only do I get
her point but I’m deeply ashamed I opened my mouth in the
first place.
“Heel.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
After another four circuits, we stop and she commands me to
sit.
“Good boy,” she says. “Now answer this question.
Why does our writer friend listen to those stories?”
“He enjoys them, Mistress?”
“I don’t believe he does. If he enjoyed listening
to them why did he smash the tape player? Seems to me like a
classic case of pent-up frustration.”
“You sure, Mistress?”
She tugs on the leash. Hard.
“It’s part of what I do, of course I’m sure.
Maybe you should have offered him my card.” She laughed.
I can’t resist. “You’re right, Mistress. For
a writer he did seem to lose the plot a bit.”
“Yes, very droll. But suppose he was listening to that
story tape as a way of self-punishment…”
“Go on, Mistress.”
“Why did you come here tonight?”
It dawns on me.
“Mistress Shade, you’re not comparing us, are you?
Me, to that—that writer?”
“Who’s a good wittle doggie?”
“But why, Mistress?”
“Because you both lead unfulfilled lives. Because you
are both self-destructive. Because you both believe you deserve
punishment for your… shortcomings.”
“If you’re referring to what happened between my
wife and I, Mistress, I can assure you it’s never happened
to me before.”
Mistress Shade threw back her head and laughed. “I must
be doing something right because you’re sounding more like
a man already. Anyway, here it is: we punish ourselves by associating
with the very thing we secretly crave but do not or cannot have.
For him, it’s words, stories. For you, it’s right
here in front of you and it’s sitting at home, too. It’s
domination. It’s control.”
“Domination and control, eh? Not exactly words you’ll
find in my dictionary, Mistress.”
“Oh, but they are,” she says. “You’ve
just repressed them. What we need is a way of bringing them back
to the surface.”
“To be honest, Mistress, I think you’d need a map
and a drilling crew.”
“No, a kitchen knife should do it.”
“What?”
“Stay a sec, I’ll be but a moment.”
She drops the leash and strides into the kitchen. A moment later,
I hear water rushing into the sink, but not much else.
“Everything alright in there, Mistress—?”
No reply.
Screw the nomenclature. “What’s goin’ on in
there?”
Her grinning face pops out from behind the doorjamb. Suddenly
I don’t feel like the dog in this relationship anymore:
she is; I’m the wide-eyed rabbit looking up into it’s
jaws. “Do you want to be fixed or not?” she asks.
I see too many teeth while she’s talking. She mistakes
my stunned silence for concurrence. “Okay, then I’ll
get back to it.”
“Back to what?”
“If you’ve no desire to be a man there’s no
point walking around with those between your legs, is there?”
“What?”
“Relax,” she says, disappearing back into the kitchen. “I’ve
done this kind of operation before.”
“It’s time I was going.”
“But we’re not done here yet,” comes the brusque
reply.
“I really ought to be going. This—this isn’t
fun anymore.”
“Too much reality for you, huh? Just like a man.”
She emerges from the kitchen holding up a glass of amber liquid.
“A couple of these down your neck and it’ll be over
soon enough.”
The collar I have already pulled off. I gather my clothes, scatter
a handful of bills over the rug, and then head for the door of
the apartment, attempting to dress myself en route.
It happens so fast, as though I’m on autopilot. My mind
is left behind, playing catch-up, running and rerunning the previous
hour, searching for reasons and answers, while my body has already
passed the elevators and put two flights of stairs between me
and that apartment.
Above me, a door opens with a bang and rattle.
“You want to know what makes a man?” Mistress Shade’s
voice reverberates down through the stairwell, surrounding me. “It’s
living with the delusion that you’ve somehow got control
over your life when there’s no such thing. That, and the
threat of losing your balls.”
Outside, I fasten the last button on my shirt and fix the collar.
It’s almost like I never went up to that apartment, like
it never happened. Almost. I fall against the first tree I reach
as I struggle to chase down my breath.
I wonder why I chose the stairs and not the elevator when the
stairs were clearly much harder work. The answer is simple and
yet it surprises me: it would not have been enough. It would
not have been enough to wait around for an elevator that might
not arrive in time to get me safely out of there. I’d needed
to do everything I could to escape, even if that only meant pumping
my legs and taking three and four stairs at a time. I did that.
I had control.
Sweat drips from my face, splashing on my shoe tips; but I could
care less. Thinking is overrated, anyway.
Mistress Shade would say it was the man in me finally making
an appearance.
[END]
© 2005 Steven J. Dines - Contributor's
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