by Kojo Black
“Fuckin’ hell, Tomato! It’s you, isn’t it?”
There was probably a space of a second or so in which Lee could possibly have denied all knowledge, could have made a comment of polite indifference and walked away, but even then he knew, on a deep and despairing level, that it would be useless to do so. Martyn had never been the type you could overcome by pretending indifference or ignorance of what he was talking about. The asshole had always been far too determined to have his bit of fun. And before Lee could begin to frame the first sentence of dismissal, the familiar heat had spread across his face and down his neck and he’d blushed deeply red in the most self-betraying manner he could imagine.
It was all over for him then. He’d sometimes wonder, in subsequent months and even years, if that shouldn’t have been the end of his exploration of the world of kink, right then and there.
Martyn attached himself to Lee for the rest of the evening, merrily regaling just about every one of Lee’s friends or acquaintances with tales of their schooldays, most of which were exaggerated or twisted to make Lee look stupid. He had never been a genius, but had not, in his estimation, been anything like the dickhead Martyn was now portraying. And, of course, pretty much every conversation Martyn started carried the extra taint of the fucking stupid nickname they’d all found so hilarious all those years ago. Lee Rosso: red by nature, red by name, always has a face of shame! At some point, he had fleetingly remembered Amanda and her rant about “pet names”—no wonder he hadn’t ever been inclined to go down that route with her.
It still might have made no difference, or been forgotten after their single encounter, but Martyn hadn’t just been the photographer for the website. The bastard was writing the copy as well as putting up the pictures, and three whole paragraphs of the piece were given over to “My old schoolmate Tomato, never would have thought he’d turn out to be a pervert.” Martyn hadn’t gone as far as sneaking a picture of him, of course. The photographer obviously knew the limitations under which he was obliged to operate, and had not suggested that Lee pose for him, not even with his face concealed. Enough people had heard Martyn talking to and about him for word to have spread, and that was all it took.
Lee submitted, he had no choice but to do so. Names have power, Amanda had said and, with no other option, he would embrace the power of this one. Tomato at school had been the butt of every joke, Tomato the kinkster would not be. Having previously only lurked on web forums like KinkSters and avoided any adult-orientated stuff on Facebook, he signed himself up to those fetish sites that allowed a user name, calling himself Mr. Tomato. Online, he discussed books and music, and BDSM protocol, and ventured an occasional apposite joke. He never, ever whined and always stayed well out of the periodic ruckus that exploded when some male newbie started objecting to the dearth of single women on the club scene. Other people, he thought, liked him well enough but it slowly dawned on him that the persona he’d adopted was getting in the way of his own potential gratifications. He was jolly, he was friendly, he was self-deprecating, and somehow he felt less and less able to put himself forward on the infrequent occasions when a House Domme or another woman who was in the mood to play with multiple submissives made it known that she was ready for willing victims. From time to time he would attempt to make his wishes known to someone he found attractive, but found himself being politely, kindly, almost unknowingly rebuffed. Slowly, very slowly, he began to turn bitter.
He fought against it, or at least he fought against making it obvious to others. He did his best to restrict how much online time he spent in the type of forum filled with other men protesting about being friend-zoned. He wanted to retain his humanity, and hold his awareness that no woman owed him a hiding, a sexual encounter or even a conversation if she didn’t want to engage with him. He didn’t blame women for his situation, he blamed himself. From time to time, though, he tried too hard and the rebuff was sharper, more crushing. He barely even blamed Martyn Stock any more. He’d built himself a trap and now he was in the jaws of it, and would remain there forever.
His fantasies grew darker: no longer did he dream of beatings that shifted from pain to pleasure, but of endless frustration and embarrassment. Sometimes he was forced to serve as a footstool or even a seat, ignored and forbidden to speak while all around, other slaves had their wishes gratified in some form or other. From time to time, he imagined blundering into someone else’s scene or tripping over as the whole of the room turned to laugh and deride him. He began to be scared of inadvertently offending or outraging other people, and controlled his own behavior to the point of finding every night in a club more of an endurance test than a source of pleasure.
He met the woman who would change his life on one of the nights he had decided to make a determined effort to enjoy himself. He would be polite and friendly, would avoid brooding in corners, would also steer clear of the clusters of single men who spent most of their time complaining to one another about the lack of women, even when there were lots of women on the premises. He had not been to this particular club before; it was relatively new and the reviews board on KinkSters bore several positive comments.
The evening got off to a reasonably good start, as he ran into a couple he had gotten to know slightly in his—and their—early days on the scene, but hadn’t seen for some time. Catching up with their news enabled him to relax and enjoy a relatively ordinary conversation. Even when some other acquaintances of theirs came to join them at the large corner table they had obtained, he still felt unusually comfortable. The main subject under discussion was a notoriously bad book about BDSM, on which everyone had an opinion, whether they had read it or not. Lee, who had read nearly all of the supposed BDSM classics, began to enjoy himself as the good and bad points of various fictional floggings, restraints and erotic tortures were debated. People came and went at intervals, but the only one he really noticed was the petite but imposing woman with the exquisitely elegant clothes. He thought he remembered her from the almost-swingers event at Renegades, but he couldn’t be sure and didn’t feel confident enough to ask. She was older than many of them, he thought, and perhaps that was why she had chosen an almost Victorian style of outfit rather than something shiny, tight and revealing. She had on a white blouse with an open, lacy collar and a dark brown leather corset, and she wore several large rings. Her hair was quite long, and she had left it loose rather than pinning it up in the sort of antique style her outfit might have suggested. Perhaps she did that because it was so striking: mostly a dark gray but with one paler streak that might or might not have been natural. She said little, but he was aware of her listening intently. Lee wondered if she had a slave or submissive with her that evening, as everything about her made it clear she was dominant. The talk turned, at some point, to erotica writers’ choice of pseudonyms, a subject Lee found interesting almost despite himself, and at this point the gray-haired woman joined the discussion more directly.
“Using a pseudonym doesn’t mean you’re ashamed of what you write, it’s more about making a statement about your work. It’s only become complicated now that authors are supposed to sell themselves along with their stories. Why shouldn’t you pick a glamorous, romantic name if you’re writing about passion and excitement?”
Lee knew he’d never quite looked at the subject of names in quite this light, and sat back a little, turning over his thoughts so he didn’t suddenly say something crass and stupid. He did his best to be discreet while he gazed at her, knowing that he wanted to know more about her.
From time to time, he noticed that she was looking in his direction, even studying him, and he actually began to consider approaching her directly. Then a big bearded man with two subbie girls on leads came over to the table, calling out greetings to the people sitting on the far side of it, which meant that everyone reshuffled to accommodate the newcomers, and by the time it was all sorted out, not only had the direction of the conversation irrevocably changed, but the woma
n in the corset had gone.
He spent most of the rest of the night in the manner to which he was more accustomed: wandering from the bar to the dungeon to the edges of the dance floor and back again. He tried to tell himself he was not really looking for her; that he didn’t know her and there was no reason to suppose she would have any interest in interacting with him, but he kept on scanning the club, hoping for a glimpse of her pure white blouse. Surely that alone would make her easy enough to spot among the black rubber, leather and PVC that most other people were encased in. Little by little, his enjoyment of the event began to fade, and after a while he decided to head for home before he could spoil his own night any further. While he was waiting for the cloakroom, he saw her again, now with a black sheepskin coat over the white blouse. She had a silver-topped black walking cane, he noticed, and couldn’t help asking himself if it did double duty across a deserving bottom from time to time. He tried not to stare in a manner that might offend her, but she noticed him anyway, and paused beside him.
“You’re very well-read,” she said, and then she touched his arm lightly and moved away. Even when he’d been waiting twenty minutes for the night bus, he imagined he could still feel the imprint of her long, slender fingers on his skin.
There had, about a year ago, been something of a uproar on KinkSters when someone was trying to make contact with a particular individual by posting a description and demanding to know if anyone had and could provide a phone number, likely location or “at the very least” an email address for the person concerned. Lee thought that it might not have turned quite as vicious had the original enquirer had the sense to appreciate, when reminded, that not everyone wants to be tracked down by online randoms, certainly not by those who display enough entitlement to describe an email address as “the very least” they could be given. Still, remembering the amount of venom that had splattered over the discussion made him very wary of posting even the most tentative online inquiry as to the identity of the mature, elegant dominatrix with the walking stick. He did not, after all, know her name, which would make it difficult to claim any kind of proper acquaintance with her. He contented himself with fantasizing about her, dreaming up various scenarios in which she had him in restraints of some kind or another and thrashed him soundly, or otherwise tortured him into a state of unbearable ecstasy. He alternated between searching KinkSters and other fetish-related websites for anything which might conceivably be a mention of her, and leaving his laptop switched off in favor of re-reading selections from the more literary of the erotic novels he had accumulated over the years and remembering the tone of her voice when she had praised his taste in books. He was profoundly convinced that he would see her again, but superstitiously aware that there must be steps he needed to take before it could happen.
He went to a couple of munches, he went to a couple of clubs, and there was no sign of her. He told himself, repeatedly, that there would be some kind of cosmic indication, that he was being made to wait until the time was right. Then one night she was there, and he initially wished with all his heart and soul that she hadn’t been.
The club had been uncomfortable for him from the start. Though Martyn Stock had never reappeared on the fetish scene, there were enough people who had read the piece and absorbed the mean, short-sighted attitude it epitomized to make certain clubs, on certain nights, hotbeds of an unhealthy type of sex-related suffering. The reminders were almost continuous: you are not beautiful enough, wealthy enough, cool enough, your desires are contemptible. All the things you might want are on display but you can’t have them and shouldn’t even presume to want them. Though he had been to this club before, more than once, the atmosphere on that particular night was a toxic mixture of the arrogant and the desperate, and Lee, longing both for the mysterious gray-haired woman and for something—anything—to relieve his loneliness, found himself blundering about like the worst sort of loser. Eventually, he found himself next to a pretty girl in an exquisite silver latex catsuit, jostled against her by the crush in the corridor. She wore silver stack-heeled thigh boots and carried a short single-tailed whip, which he accidentally bumped with his arm.
“Back off,” she snarled at him, but her expression was more amused than angry, or so it seemed.
“You could punish me for bumping into you, if you like,” he blurted. He cursed himself for saying it as soon as the words were out, and would have apologized, but she turned away with a disgusted sigh and said, not to Lee but to the nearest other people, “This place is just crawling with short, fat wanky men, isn’t it?”
He backed away, scrambled away, pushing through the crowd, face burning with shame. Finding the door which led out to the smoking area, a small yard with a broken patio heater and a tarpaulin stretched between two walls to keep the rain off, he stumbled outside because it was easier than trying to fight his way to the main door. Unusually, the area was deserted, and Lee made his way to the high metal table in the far corner and slumped against it. After a while, hating himself and everyone else, he began to kick the central pole that held the table up. And then he began to cry.
“What’s the matter?” The voice was familiar, but for a moment or two he couldn’t bring himself to look up and see who was addressing him. He had a terrible feeling he knew, and she was the last person he wanted to see—or rather, to have see him in this state. He thought that if he remained still and quiet, the speaker might take the hint and leave him alone. Then he would compose himself, get his coat, go home and give it all up for good. But it occurred to him that, at any moment, someone else might come outside and catch him blubbering like an idiot, and that was enough to make him raise his head. There she was—of course it was her. Tonight she was wearing midnight blue, a long tailcoat over tight trousers tucked into boots, and her hair was in one thick plait over her shoulder. Her face showed infinite patience as she repeated the question.
“What’s the matter?”
She came right up to the table and rested her elbows on it, propped her chin on her hands and looked at him expectantly. Lee took a long, shuddery breath and told her. Not just about the incident with the girl in silver, but the whole miserable story, because there was no one else to tell and he couldn’t bear to keep it to himself anymore. He told her how he knew he was giving off the wrong signals and making a fool of himself, but he didn’t know how to change and felt like a failure. He told her that he wasn’t a pest or a creep but was terrified he might turn into one. And he told her that he was going to go home, delete his KinkSters account and forget about the fetish scene.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” she said. “I think I can help. I think it’s a matter of perception.”
He walked back through the club, one pace behind her, matching his steps to hers. The lead she had him on was not very long, and probably not particularly strong, being only a thin strip of leather. He was very careful not to snap it. She had produced the collar first, and then the cuffs, and only when he had put them on did she bring out the lead. He did tell her that he had never worn one before and she gave him a brief outline of how she expected him to behave once she had fastened to the steel ring in the front of the collar. He had been worried that he might be clumsy and trip over or bump into her or something, but people tended to get out of her way without her even needing to ask. Some of them looked him up and down, some of them looked at her, but if anyone’s gaze was hostile, he didn’t notice it.
The play space was not particularly big and, at that stage of the evening, not particularly busy. A small group of people had gathered around a wooden rack to engage in some kind of sensory play with a bound and blindfolded figure that Lee couldn’t see well enough to ascertain the gender of, and a giant of a balding man had a slender, red-haired woman wearing nothing but hold-up stockings tied to an A-frame in the furthest corner. He was teasing her with a spiked wheel though there were marks on her thighs and rear suggesting he had previously caned her.
/> Lee’s current mistress, as he was beginning to think of her, led him to a set of stocks and unclipped the lead from his collar.
“It would get in the way,” she observed, and tucked it back into her bag. She spent a moment or two just looking at him, assessing him, and he felt his skin prickle into goosebumps. He had heard others say, from time to time, that a gaze has weight, that you can feel when someone is looking at you, but he had never fully understood what they meant until then.
She lifted the upper bar of the stocks and ordered him to bend over and put his head and his hands in the appropriate places. When he complied, she lowered the bar and locked it in place before pulling his PVC shorts down to his knees and running the palm of her hand lightly over his bare backside. Her skin was soft, and felt slightly cool against the flesh of his ass. His cock stirred, and he tensed his muscles, not sure if he should control himself. He wasn’t sure he could control himself, but he decided to try.
There was music playing in the dungeon zone, something quieter and more sedate than the usual electronica and vintage house that this club, like most others, favored for the dance floor. It was at a low enough volume to make it easy for him to hear every word she said.
