Certain Requirements

by Elinor Zimmerman

  “There must be others.”

  I chewed on my lip.

  She shot me a glare. “Undress. And then tell me.”

  Slowly, I unbuttoned my shirt and let it drop to the floor. I unhooked my bra and let it slide off my shoulders. I was barefoot already, like I always was in the house, and wearing just a flouncy little skirt. When I reached to take it off, Kris grabbed my wrists and began binding them with rope. She tied them together with the rope strung above me.

  She slipped a finger between the rope and my skin to check. When she was satisfied, Kris moved a chair in front of me and sat with her hands folded behind her head. “Now, you’re going to tell me what I want to know and I’m going to play with you, and if you’re very good, I might even let you come. But you need to keep talking until I tell you to stop.”

  I gulped and closed my eyes. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Yes, you do.” She reached up under my skirt again to run a finger against my wet lips. Then she plunged inside me, pumping briefly before pulling out and tracing my wetness over my thighs.

  “There is one other,” I said. Kris moved her hands up my torso to tug at my nipples. “I’m in an outfit like this one, a little skirt and a button-down shirt, and I’m walking by an alley. This hot butch starts calling out to me, sort of menacing, and I stop, and I realize that all her hot butch friends have me surrounded. They push me into the alley. The first one, the leader, slaps me in the face. She says I’m going to get what I deserve, and she rips open my shirt and throws me against a brick wall. All the buttons pop off. I don’t have a bra on. There are five or six of them, and they are all staring, and then the leader tells them to help themselves, and they all start groping me at once. I can’t even tell whose hands are on my breasts, or my ass, or in me, because it’s everyone at once. All these mouths and hands on me, and then the leader undoes her jeans, and they force me to the ground. I give her head while I’m on my knees in this alley. The others are still touching me, hitting me. After I make her come, she lets them all fuck me, use me in every way they can think of. Sometimes I beg them to stop, but they just make me come.”

  “How does that fantasy end?” Kris rose and stood behind me, squeezing my ass with both hands.

  “At some point, I’m getting fucked from behind and have someone’s pussy or strap-on in my face at the same time, and I always come, and that’s when it’s over.”

  “You like the thought of someone having control of you and over other people too, of someone dominating all of you.”

  “As a fantasy,” I said.

  “As a fantasy.” She walked to the closet and came back with a paddle. Kris hit me swiftly over my butt and the back of my thighs for a few minutes. Then she set the paddle aside and raked her short nails over my stinging flesh.

  “What else?” she said.

  “There’s just one more, but it’s silly.”

  “I’m not laughing,” she said.

  “Sometimes, I think about a room full of beautiful women, and we’re all naked and oiled up and we’re climbing into something like a giant inflatable pool without any water in it. There are a dozen of us. Around the edges, there are people who’ve paid tons of money to watch us. All of us in the pool start wrestling and laughing and playing with each other, and going down on each other, and touching each other. We’re having fun and coming and everyone is lost in a sea of this, of our bodies together. All the while, we’re getting rich, because these people are paying for the show, and they want to touch us so desperately, but they can’t. They can only watch.”

  Kris eased three fingers inside me and I moaned. “I love hearing what you think about.”

  “It’s not things I’ve ever done. I’ve never even told anyone.” I rocked against her as best I could.

  “Would you want it? If I could make those fantasies come true, would you want them?”

  “Maybe.” My breath got faster.

  “What if I could give you just the part underneath it? Where other people can see you, and I’m in control of you and who gets to touch you? If it were somewhere safe, and with just one other person, and you knew I’d take care of you?”

  I was coming on her hand. “Yes,” I exclaimed, from the proposition or the orgasm I wasn’t sure.

  Afterward, when we were lying in bed, she asked me again if I might want to explore my fantasies in real life.

  “Yes,” I answered, surprising myself. “But slowly.”

  “Of course.” She stroked my cheek. “We can go to a play party and see how you feel just watching, or playing in public.”

  I nodded. “And you’re going to be at the show?”

  “Yes.” She kissed me slowly, then looked at the clock. “Shit, I’ve got to go. I lost track of time.”

  I looked over. It was after ten. “We’re going later every night.” I smiled.

  “Yeah, and I’m getting behind on work.” She threw her shirt back on and hopped into her pants.

  “You’ve been working all day and it’s late. How can you possibly have more work?”

  Kris gave me a peck on the neck. “I promised I’d get back to someone tonight. It’s just a few emails.”

  I wanted to tell her she was working too hard. But I wasn’t her girlfriend, and I’d already put enough pressure on her to come to my show. Kris was an adult, I told myself. She could work as much as she wanted. We didn’t tell each other what to do.

  Chapter Eleven

  We went to a play party on a Friday night the following week. It was a queer party for all types of queer women and trans and genderqueer people. I was expecting people all dressed in leather and collars, but it wasn’t like that. There were a few people in leather and some were naked, but mostly the people at the party looked like, well, queer people I might see anywhere in San Francisco. Except that some of them were making out and/or flogging each other.

  Kris was dressed in dark jeans, boots, a black T-shirt, and a leather jacket. She’d picked out my clothes as part of our play the night before, the red dress I’d worn when we met, and heels. A few people eyed us as we entered the party. Heavy fabric hung on the walls, and there were couches and chairs scattered in the various rooms. Kris greeted some people and introduced me. Everyone was friendly, in the way people are when they’re meeting a friend’s new girlfriend, but no one seemed to be hitting on us. Still, I felt shy, almost unable to talk.

  “You okay?” Kris squeezed my hand.

  I murmured that I was, but I was overwhelmed. I heard low moans through a wall, and the sound of leather slapping against skin. I wasn’t sure I was ready for it all.

  “Let’s just walk around for a while,” she said. Kris led me around through a maze of softly lit rooms. I caught glimpses of strangers touching each other and talking, laughing. We stopped in a room where a large wooden cross was set up. A woman with a shaved head was draped over it, her bare chest pressed to the wood and her wrists bound to the edges of it. Someone behind her whipped her in a steady rhythm.

  Kris sat in a chair facing the pair and pulled me onto her lap. She rubbed her palm over my thigh. “Do you like seeing this?”

  I nodded. My throat felt dry.

  She turned me around to straddle her. “I’d like to have you, right here, with all these people around. Do you want that?” She reached up and tweaked my left nipple through my dress. She’d told me not to wear a bra.

  “I don’t know. I feel shy.”

  “Shy like you don’t want to, or shy like I should push you?”

  My breath sped up. “Push me,” I gasped.

  “No one will notice us. Everyone is busy with each other. Let me have you,” she said.

  I took a deep breath and nodded. Kris slipped the straps off my shoulders and pulled the front of my dress down, exposing my breasts. As she played with my boobs, I ground myself on her thigh. I listened to the other couple in the room, the thuds of the whip and the whimpers and sighs and groans from the couple. Kris whispered that I had to do this, s
aid that she was orchestrating the whole scene, that all eyes were on me, that she was going to pass me around. I closed my eyes and imagined for a second that it was true, and as I did, I came with a shout, yelling out. When I opened my eyes, I saw Kris looking up at me, smiling. I looked around and saw that for a moment, the couple was looking at me too.

  I pulled my dress up. “How are you doing?” Kris asked.

  “W-whoa,” I stammered. My neck felt hot.

  She got me some water while I watched the scenes around in us in a daze. I couldn’t believe I’d done that, but I felt sort of proud too.

  Kris and I left soon after. She took me to a diner and bought us French toast. “Did we go too far?” she asked.

  I chewed. “No. I’m just…It surprised me how turned on I was,” I said.

  “Was it worth trying?”

  “Oh, hell yes.”

  “Do you want to do something like that again?”

  “Yes. Yes, please.”

  “Let’s get on that.”

  My stomach fluttered. Kris and I discussed possibilities over the next few weeks, but didn’t plan anything. I was focused on preparing for my performance with Sasha.

  When the night came, I spotted Kris in the crowd. Her arms were folded over her chest, her mouth was just friendlier than a frown, and I’m pretty sure she had earplugs in. But she was there.

  * * *

  With how well everything was going, it was no surprise that Kris and I agreed to continue our arrangement. The week after my show, Kris and I went to one of the BDSM clubs in the city to play and to meet Kris’s friends Eric and Derek. The couple had been together for years, had always been heavily involved in BDSM, and often had subs that they dominated together. “We’re both doms at heart,” Derek said. I had trouble telling them apart at first, both of them white men in their forties with similar buzz cuts, warm smiles, barrel chests, and equal dedication to the gym. Eric had kind, dark eyes and Derek had twinkling blue ones, but from a distance, I was never sure.

  When we met, they were hanging out eating jelly beans. After we talked for a while, they excused themselves to cheerfully string someone up in some elaborate suspension bondage. They were easy to talk to, and I found their arrangement fascinating. They had two or three subs at any given time, but at the end of the day, they came back to their apartment to just one another, like any other happy long-term couple.

  “I really like them,” I said on our way home.

  She grinned. “I’m glad. They’re some of my best friends.”

  I was glad to finally see that Kris had friends of her own. Though it wasn’t part of our arrangement, I did worry that she didn’t seem to have a social life. Seeing her at a couple of play parties and meeting Eric and Derek, I could see that wasn’t the case.

  In the weeks that followed, we fell into a nice routine of Friday night play parties. We played or hung out with her friends at the party (especially Eric and Derek), or if we were invited to, we watched wildly creative exhibitionist scenes. We didn’t involve anyone else when Kris and I played, though we flirted with the idea in conversation sometimes. I wasn’t quite ready for it because I was afraid of upsetting our equilibrium. I’d found a balance between work, friends, and my adventures with Kris, and a dream career that was coming together before my eyes.

  The only hiccup in November was Thanksgiving. John and I had been organizing anti-colonialist Thanksgrieving dinners since the first year we met, complete with elaborate vegan main dishes (John), homemade pies (John), tons of sides (John), and weird handmade paper decorations (me). This sometimes included a turkey, brought by committed carnivore guests since John was a vegetarian who kept our oven meat-free. Once Ollie came along, our celebrations started including excellent wine. Tons of people always came over. We’d even hosted John’s family once, though usually he or both of us went to their much more normal celebration after our own. I’d never been able to afford to fly home for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, and being home for Christmas always won out. The only year of my adult life I hadn’t shared Thanksgiving with John was my freshman year of college, when Amanda and I spent the day eating pizza and watching sci-fi movies. My own household was never the most traditional when it came to Thanksgiving (my dad was the one who taught us to call it “Thanksgrieving”), but still, the prospect of being all alone for the holiday was overwhelmingly depressing.

  Meghan and Bill were off to Bill’s parents’ for the holiday. Sasha’s parents had bought her a ticket home to the East Coast. John and Ollie were, of course, on the other side of the country. Way too late in November, I realized I had nowhere to be.

  Part of the reason I’d forgotten to make plans was that Kris hadn’t mentioned it. The Sunday before Thanksgiving, we’d just finished up our afternoon session when she said we’d, of course, adjust the week’s schedule for the holiday.

  “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” I asked as she got dressed.

  “I’m going over to Eric and Derek’s place. They have it catered every year. It’s great. What about you?”

  “Um, nothing, actually. I sort of forgot it was happening.”

  “You’re not going to see your family?” She sounded surprised.

  “No. Thanksgiving at my house is mostly an opportunity for everyone to get drunk and talk about genocide.”

  “Wow, your parents must be really interesting people.”

  “They met as PhD students. Political, Chicano PhD students in the late seventies. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Not even remotely. But you really don’t miss them over the holidays?”

  I shrugged. “Sure, but I’m going to see them for ten days for Christmas. My sister and brother-in-law come with their kid. We go to my abuela’s with all my cousins and tios and everyone. It’s a whole thing. Thanksgiving, not so much.”

  “Huh. So what are you going to do for Thanksgiving then? Relax around here?”

  I must have looked as miserable as I felt, because after a long, awkward silence, Kris said, “I could see if there’s room at Eric and Derek’s, if you want.”

  Was spending a major family holiday with her live-in roommate submissive really what Kris wanted? Probably not, but I couldn’t fake a lack of interest. “Could you?”

  “I’ll call them today. I bet they can squeeze in one more.” She said it so kindly I almost wept.

  “Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  I was so grateful that Kris didn’t bring up the possible boundary blurring in the situation I didn’t even ask another question about it. Of course, that meant I was more than a little nervous when the day rolled around. What would a kinky Thanksgiving entail? I’d literally never seen this couple outside of a play party, and I had no context for them with their shirts on. Despite Kris’s urging, I had never attended a munch, a non-sexual, non-kinky get-together for folks into BDSM. I wasn’t interested in hanging out with people just because we had the same sexual interests if there was no possibility of sex. I’d never hung out with kinky people as a platonic group before.

  Kris assured me that I should treat it as a normal Thanksgiving. She took care of bringing some wine, and I put on my favorite velvet thrift store dress and went along for the ride. Eric and Derek’s condo was gorgeous. They even had a view of the Bay out one of the massive windows.

  Both of them were dressed in pressed slacks and polo shirts. It was a little jarring to see them both looking like accountants. Kris had dressed up like she was going to work, complete with a tie and a V-neck sweater, and I felt like the only person who was dressed for a silly party. They were hosting two other couples, all men in their forties and fifties styled much like Eric and Derek. In addition to being the only person in a dress, I was the only one there in my twenties, the only person of color, and it seemed the poorest person in the room by far. I felt even more nervous than I had when I thought everyone would be wearing leather.

  Thank goodness that just as the wine started flowing, the doorbell rang.


  “That must be Ray!” Derek said and went to buzz the person up.

  “Ray’s our new boi. ‘Boi’ with an ‘i’ mind you. ‘They’ and ‘them’ pronouns,” Eric explained.

  “What on earth?” said Teddy, one of the guests. “I can’t keep up with you guys.”

  “It’s so fun!” Eric added. “I’m learning so much. Plus, they’re gorgeous.”

  “I don’t know how I’ll do talking about somebody as ‘they,’” said Jeremy, Teddy’s partner. “The grammar is going to kill me. ‘They’ is plural.”

  “You get used to it,” Eric assured him.

  “Excuse me for saying this, but I thought bois with an ‘i’ and that sort of pronoun…situation were lesbians,” Teddy said.

  “Not always! Ray’s flexible. Flexible about their own gender, flexible about the gender of their partners.” Eric dropped his voice to a flirty whisper. “Generally flexible.”

  The guys laughed. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Eric’s description, but as soon as I saw Ray, I knew that “gorgeous” was the right word. Ray was androgynous, both handsome and beautiful, with high cheekbones, short stylish dark hair, and the sort of lean body that looked good in everything. Ray had olive skin with freckles, and Ray’s gender, ethnicity, and age were ambiguous. I had no idea if they were twenty-something or Kris’s age. What I did know was that they were wearing a denim button-down shirt with ripped up, paint-splattered gray jeans, and I suddenly felt a lot less alone among the impeccably ironed grown-ups.

  Ray was greeted by a chorus of hellos, including my own quiet welcome, and they answered, “Thanks for having me.”

  “You are by far the cutest one these two have brought around,” said Ron, one half of the other couple at the table.

  Ray blushed a little. “Thank you,” they said, and pulled up a chair between Derek’s seat at the foot of the table and my own.

  “I’m Phoenix,” I said, sticking out my hand.

  Their hands were warm and soft, and so was their smile. “Ray.”