“Is that right, Slut?” Daddy shoves a bag of ropes into my arms and whispers into my ear. “I want you to go into that party, find us a place to set up and play, and disrobe. I want you to stretch, have two cups of water nearby, and be waiting in slave position by the time I’m out of the restroom. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sir.”
With a smile I walk purposefully into the recreational hall where the party is being hosted. It’s a multipurpose building with a large room that reminds me of a junior high gymnasium.
I quickly spot an open corner with a freestanding suspension stand. I navigate, dripping, through the leather and latex clad dominants using whips, floggers, canes, and paddles on one or more submissives who are bent over furniture, nude or in lingerie, asses exposed for pleasure and pain. Throughout the room pulses a current I love: the deep exchange of power, sensation, and energy that exposes vulnerability, trust, and fearless presence in the moment.
I have just a few minutes to get ready. I place Daddy’s rope bag on the outer parameter of the suspension rig, untie my dress, allowing the silky fabric to fall to my feet, and fold it and place it beside the rope bag alongside my heels. It is all a part of the scene. My service and psychological submission to Daddy has begun before he is even present in the room. I kneel down, legs spread, and expose a tuft of red pubic hair and pink, glistening wet cunt, then fold my arms behind my back. Face forward, eyes twinkling, staring past a sea of onlookers, a childlike grin on my face I wait with great anticipation for my Daddy.
Daddy approaches me from behind and slams his hands down hard against my back, nearly taking my breath away. I let out a deep moan, surrendering to his touch, and exhale in pleasure. Daddy steps in front of me and grinds my face into his pants; I can feel his cock harden. Then he gently kicks my cunt with his bare foot, “Up, Slut.”
I stand up and to attention, though I am weak in the knees from a long day.
“We only have twenty minutes left to play so I’m gonna make this quick and dirty. Is that alright with you, Little Girl?”
“Yes, Daddy. That sounds perfect. Thank you, Daddy.” I close my eyes and smile with sheer joy at having twenty minutes of play all to ourselves. He quickly wraps his ropes around me, like an extension of his body, holding me close. His hands and ropes grasping my breasts, pushing into my ribs, squeezing the air from my body as Daddy tightens the ropes and hoists me off of the ground. He secures the ropes around my thighs to the overhead point in the suspension structure, relieving some of the pressure from my ribs, and I am able to move around in the ropes, in the air, exploring the spots of greatest tension and shifting my weight to those spots until the tension is released. I take in a breath and exhale when the touch of Daddy’s hand comes down strong on my ass and thighs.
Breathe, in and out, breathe. I trust my Daddy. He is here to guide me to my physical limits and will take care of me when he brings me back down to solid footing. Daddy lets go of the rope and steps away, allowing my suspended body to spin a compact aerial pirouette. I relax, releasing the building tension in my body and surrendering to the volition of the dance. The momentum propels my body forward, and I feel completely in the moment and connected to Daddy.
Once the ropes and my body come to a stop Daddy swings me toward him, pulling me into him by my nipples. I smile in ecstasy.
“Push me higher Daddy, higher!” I exclaim, melting into James.
We walk back to the hotel in the crisp cold night, just before 11:00 p.m. The rain has stopped, and as we walk I catch a scent of tree leaves on the wet wind. The smell conjures a blissful memory: my father and I raking leaves when I was a child in Ohio. Orange, yellow, golden, and brown by autumn, the leaves would pile up in and around the tree swing that my dad built for me, a sturdy piece of two-by-four suspended from the tree by thick, scratchy ropes, to hang onto as dad pushed me higher and higher. Dad would rake the fallen leaves around my swing and around the tree, then we would dive into the enormous pile of crunch and color.
I’m not sure if I started off kinky or not, but I always knew I didn’t want what other girls wanted. My mother wasn’t always open to conversation about sexual identity and feminist pornography. A devoutly religious and traditional mother, the idea that sex is shameful was planted in my head at an early age. It’s hard to say what came first: the desire or the realization that my fantasies were forbidden. Either way, the pressure I felt to be good, to be clean, to be chaste, wound up compounding the excitement I felt imagining an alternative. As a young girl, I did what I thought I was supposed to do: I avoided confusing relationships with boys and took refuge in the safety of female playmates. As a preteen this cycle of shame and subversion led me to want one of the most alternative lifestyles I thought a young woman could want: other women.
I thought sex was rooted in evil and would lead a young girl down a path of destruction and desperation, ultimately severing all ties to family. It was a choice: sex or family; sex or a career; sex or respect; sex or education; sex or success. Sex didn’t go with anything, and I was terrified of it. I wouldn’t even say the word out loud. “It” had the same fear attached to it as “Satan” or “fuck.” In the safety of my own bed, with the door closed, buried under covers I would privately explore my sexuality, and slip away into fantasies. It felt like it made everything better.
Sometimes I would fight the urges, but eventually they overcame me and I had to let go. I would dream of kissing the girls on the cheerleading squad—the girls who laughed at me in the hallways as they passed. They felt so perfect and so unattainable. I embraced the discomfort I felt in their presence; I reveled in the humility that became eroticized in my shame. I thought, perhaps, if my lips met hers and my hands found their way along the small of her back, I, too, could grasp perfection.
Then there was a golden-haired goddess who ditched classes and smoked clove cigarettes, hung out at coffee houses past curfew, and rejected perfection and sameness. We would lie under the covers in her bedroom, and I would inhale the smell of her hair—a subtle perfume of jasmine—and she seemed perfect and safe. She was a friend, a close friend, with whom I could share stories, awkward moments, and feel comfortable mutually discovering our morphing bodies. Back in my own bed, when I closed my eyes, she became more than a friend, and I explored the feelings of ecstasy I could bring by touching my own body. When I imagined fulfilling fantasies with my peers, I could feel their skin rubbing up against mine, soft and juicy like a peach, and I thought I could almost taste them.
My dad didn’t fit into that colorless world either: white picket fence, two and a half children, nagging wife. He sought illicit one-night flings and after-work rendezvous with escorts. He found his escape with Cilla, a young prostitute with whom he fell in love. As a young married man, my dad had dreams of going to college and traveling the world, but they were extinguished by domestic hopelessness. He felt he had to escape if he was going to find belonging, happiness, and pleasure. I had only just begun to understand his choices years after he left and set out on his journey, when I began exploring my life as a teen. I came to respect and even admire him for his choices. I wasn’t sure exactly what my journey in life would be, but my father’s lifestyle gave me hope that alternatives to nontraditional family dynamics and atypical relationships did exist.
At 6:00 a.m. my alarm clock went off in Loveland, Ohio. I fumbled to halt the annoying loud beeping; my eyes heavy and not yet open. The beeping was a reminder that it was time to go to school and, in an act of defiance, I slammed my hand down on the snooze button. Pink roses sprawled up the wallpaper in my perfect princess bedroom. Dorothy and her friends from Oz looked down on me from a framed, limited edition print, and my Cabbage Patch Kids and My Little Ponies stood guard as I slept. My bedroom was a holy space, anointed with the purest of intentions. I tried to think clean thoughts, but I was just entering junior high school, and already having wet dreams.
I rolled over in bed
, smashed my face into the mattress, and pressed a pillow down on my head to block out the sounds and lights of reality. My favorite stuffed animal, a gray bunny that my father gave me for Easter when I was nine and had the chicken pox, was stuffed between my legs. I rubbed my clitoris on the hard plastic bunny nose and face, closed my eyes and disappeared into a then misunderstood world of pleasure.
Beep Beep Beep Beep.
“Ughhhh!” I groaned, emerging from my cocoon to the ear-stabbing sounds of my alarm clock. I quieted the obnoxious beeping and removed my stuffed bunny rabbit from between my legs. My mouth had fallen open, drooling, interrupted mid-orgasm. This is a word I did not yet know, but a sensation I was familiar with all the same. I was always petrified that my mother would walk into my room while I was “cuddling” with my bunny, and that I would be kicked out of the house for the thoughts that ran through my head.
I opened my closet and pulled out my Girl Scouts uniform: white button-up shirt with green vertical stripes and the GSUSA logo, khakis, and a royal blue sash full of badges and pins that I earned. I had recently graduated to Cadet, the second highest-ranking placement girls can achieve in Girl Scouts. I felt a sense of belonging in the Girl Scouts that was missing at school. They accepted me and made me less fearful of the adult I was becoming. It was a Wednesday, which meant I went to my Girl Scouts meeting directly after class, and then Dad would pick me up with my brother and take us to dinner. I always looked forward to Wednesday dinners with my Dad: big bowls of chili spaghetti from Frisch’s Big Boy or chili coneys from Gold Star Chili Parlor. It still felt special to sit down with him and talk about our days at work and school. I felt like Daddy’s little princess when he tucked me into bed before heading back to his apartment in Madisonville—the dicey area of Cincinnati that Madison Tree Service called home—an area that Mom preferred we not visit.
I can still hear my mom running up and down the stairs of our two-story farmhouse as I buttoned my shirt and slipped into my fifties-style saddle shoes. I found them at a thrift store a few weeks before and used some of the money I earned working landscaping with Dad to purchase them. Mom was buzzing about the house, collecting my brother’s homework and ensuring that it was packed away in his backpack, when I walked out the door. He had developmental challenges and required more time and attention from my mother. She packed our lunches in the kitchen, while I watched her from the stairwell. Grabbing the kitchen phone in a flurry of manic energy, she aggressively dialed Dad’s number.
My curiosity got the best of me so I quietly slipped up the stairs to pick up the phone in her bedroom and listen in. The first couple rings went unanswered.
“Damn it Richard, pick up!”
“Helloooo,” a voice sounded in my ear, and a stab of jealousy and unease raked across my body like hot coals. The voice on the line was not my father’s. It was a woman’s voice. Someone I had never met. I knew that my dad had another life outside of the days he shared with us, but since my brother and I weren’t part of that life, I blocked out its existence. This crossover between our lives was confusing. The secrecy—we had only once met any of my dad’s girlfriends and only once visited his apartment—made his life outside of our family unit seem shameful and dirty and brought uncomfortable feelings that turned my stomach and filled me with fear and anxiety. I didn’t want my father to change; I wanted to keep the dad of childhood nostalgia alive in my mind.
My mother barked into the receiver in emotional hysteria, “Who the hell is this? Is this another one of Richard’s whores!? Put Richard on the phone now!”
The woman barked back, “Bitch!”—then faded into the distance. “Richard, I’m going to put on some coffee. Do you want some, Daddy? I’ll make it sweet and dark. I know you like it like you like your women. Oh, and your bitch of an ex-wife is on the phone.”
As I listened to my dad’s morning unfolding I wished he were a part of my morning ritual, that his laughter filled our house. I wanted to laugh with my dad, too.
Finally, my dad’s strong, comforting voice became audible, “Yes, Gail, what is it? What do you want?” He sounded annoyed and exasperated.
“Very cute, Richard. Is that a new whore that you have answering your phone?”
“What is it, Gail? I need to get ready for work. Are the kids okay?”
“Well Richard, I just wanted to call and remind you that today is Wednesday. Tina has Girl Scouts after school and you will need to pick her up from her leader’s house. Do you remember where Trish lives? Do you have that address? Fourteen-hundred Maple Drive, it’s off of Guinea Pike. Reo will be at the house after school and he has tutoring and therapy so you will have to see him another night.” Mom spoke in an emotional staccato that made me visualize my father listening to her berating tone from his messy bachelor pad apartment, clothes strewn about on cheap, sparse furniture, fridge full of Coca-Cola and ketchup packets.
“Okay Gail. I’ve got it. Anything else?” he mumbled. I pictured Dad sitting at the kitchen table while a woman in a robe cheerfully made coffee and kissed him on the cheek lovingly. Maybe she had a closet full of wigs, some with caramel colored hair, pixie cuts and bouncy curls, and maybe she had the complexion of rich ebony.
“No, Richard. That’s it. I’d just really appreciate not hearing your little slut’s voice when I call you about the kids.” My mom was still emotional and tender, eight years after their separation.
“Just call me on my cell phone next time. I’ve got to go.” Dad’s voice disappeared, leaving a single note ringing in my ear.
A nervous and unpopular kid at school, I used my fantasies as an escape. When I was in situations where I found myself unable to breathe, I disassociated and transported myself to another world in my imagination, a place where I felt safe. I avoided the lunchroom. Instead, I hid in a corner in “the commons,” an area of our junior high school between the crowded hallways and the lunchrooms that was usually occupied by misfits, losers, and geeks. I sat alone, in an attempt at making myself invisible, and recalculated my grades in each of my courses on a daily basis. Classwork was the only way I could find logic and direction in a life that felt very out of control.
Keeping my eyes cast down, I used to watch the shoes of my fellow classmates pass by. Girls in their first pairs of heels—training heels—clicking by echoed the sound of seconds passing on the clock. These girls and the neat, clipped sound of their shoes on gray vinyl stirred reckless desires in my adolescent brain. To me, those shoes represented control and power. As they clicked through the hall I ignored the girls’ nasal, snide remarks by listening to their feet marking time—a comforting rhythm that drowned out the sounds that caused my unhappiness.
On the school bus, on my way to my Girl Scouts meeting from junior high school, I stared out the window at the suburban, cookie-cutter vista. I already knew I didn’t belong, that I needed to escape. Wads of crumpled paper, paper airplanes, and spit wads constantly flew in my direction, coupled with profanities. The cacophony of words and voices echoed in my ears, and left me with a blank expression and practiced stoicism. I never looked at their faces, but their voices melded together in a barrage of squeaky teenaged boy snickers that attempted to permeate my consciousness.
“Hey. Hey you, fat ass! I know you hear me ass face! What do you think you are, better than us? Can’t talk ass face? She probably shoves Twinkies up her ass.”
“I’ll shove my Twinkie up her ass.”
“Gross! I wouldn’t rape her if someone paid me.”
“I know you hear us, fuckin’ dork.”
A text book flew by my head but my eyes stayed vacant, removed. My mind found a safe space somewhere beyond where I physically was in that moment. I was a natural target: a bookish, introverted redhead with braces on my teeth and a face full of freckles, blemished with acne.
“Why would you touch her with your book? This fuckin’ book’s infected now.”
“Yeah. It’s p
robably all stinky and smelly. Dude, she got grease AIDS all over it.”
“What’s your address, ass face, so I can fucking piss all over your front door?”
“Check out her uniform! What are you, eight years old or something?”
“Is she a retard? A retarded whore! Ha ha yeah!”
I inhaled deeply and exhaled a fogged up circle onto the cold bus window. I imagined myself older and beautiful, with long, flowing, fiery hair, and a body that got attention from the boys and girls that I desired. I dreamed of groups of uniformed boys at boarding school fighting for my affection, make out sessions with girls with golden locks who wrote poetry, and latex-clad women returning ‘home’ to me, so I could bathe their bodies with my tongue: sweet blood, salty flesh, bitter cunt.
The bus arrived at Trish’s home, only a few miles from my school. A friendly, upbeat honest woman, Trish was our Girl Scouts leader and her daughter, Amanda, was in our GSUSA troop. To me, Trish seemed fearless. She was always exposing us to new adventures and activities. We learned how to sculpt and use a kiln, ate fresh coconut, and went on nature walks where we identified plants, birds, and trees behind Trish’s home. I had been in the GSUSA since my dad left. The girls in the troop made me feel safe, an early version of chosen family. Trish had a big, beautiful home on a large plot of land and a pool that had a diving board and slide. The property was covered in trees and blackberry bushes, and we would often pick berries from the bushes for a snack. This afternoon we were learning knots; I was working toward an outdoor skills badge to add to my sash. The lesson was also intended to prepare us for our upcoming overnight camping excursion, where we would be required to secure a line of rope for laundry, suspend our clean dishes from mesh bags, and secure tarps to protect our exposed belongings from morning dew or rain.
Each girl had a skein of rope in her hands. The bristly fibers felt comforting between my fingers, prickly perfection that made me think of working with my dad on the weekends at Madison Tree Service. I couldn’t wait to show my dad my newly acquired knot tying skills. I smiled, thinking about how proud he would be, paying close attention to Trish as she lead us step by step through the basic square knot.
Daddy Page 4
