by Zoe Brown
Getting across the roughly twenty-five blocks that separated us by taxi took just under a half hour. And when I stepped under the tarpaulin-draped scaffolding outside of the building’s front entrance and pushed my way in through the old, oaken double-doors of what had previously been one of the city’s finest wine bars, my long, tan trench coat and crimson scarf fluttering slightly in a misty breeze coming off of the Bay, I walked into a cloud of cakey white dust that seemed to float on the air and a cacophony of nail hammering, power-sawing, drill-whirring activity. More than half a dozen contractors and workmen (and workwomen, too) were at their tools, driving away at the goal of turning a three-quarters-of-a-century-old wine bar into a feminine, chic, modern boutique. One of the contractors working closest to the front entrance glanced up at me from underneath a hardhat and a dust-covered pair of goggles as I entered. In his hands, he was holding large power drill, and at his feet were several varieties of bundled cabling: electrical contractor, I assumed. “Hey! Hey buddy!” The man called out to me, apparently concerned that I might have gotten lost before stepping into the building, “There ain’t no bar here anymore.”
“Um, yeah, I know!” I shot a bemused smile back at him, shouting back to be heard over the noise of all the power tools. I stepped over a handful of cable bundles in front of my feet and plowed through several more clouds of floating cake dust, “I know! I’m here to see Violetta!”
“Who?!” The big man shouted back at me, frowning with a look of confusion. He must not have heard the name right. It was really loud in there.
“Violetta! Countess Cardona!” Several long, lonely years after the dissolution of our own relationship, Violetta had met, and then, after a lengthy courtship, married a unlikely young nobleman from the Catalonian coast. She’d confessed to me years later that falling in love with Rodrigo had been a bit like falling out of love with me, only in reverse. ‘We were hardly great friends in the beginning, and I could never have imagined wanting to get intimate with him,’ she’d once joked to me about the rather big-eared, pug-nosed, funny-looking husband that she’d first encountered at a Fashion design affair on the island of Santorini. The two of them had both arrived simultaneously from Barcelona, and after an initially contentious public spat, they’d been horrified to discover that they’d both booked passage home on the same cruise-liner. ‘We fought and we argued all the back across the Mediterranean, to Spain. We fought about politics in the Aegean, we fought about business ventures in the Tyrrhenian Sea, we fought about Catalonia along the Côte d'Azur, we even fought about dinner plans in the Balearics – but at the end of it, when we finally got home to Barcelona and we had no more reason to see one other anymore, we discovered that we had spent so much time arguing together that we had rather quite grown enamored with each other. We fell into bed laughing about the absurdity of it all that afternoon and I’m still not entirely sure that I’ve woken up yet.’
The man with the big drill still didn’t seem to be able to hear what I was saying, but that no longer mattered: “ASHTON!”
At the sound of a high, clear voice calling to me from up above, I glanced up to the second-floor balcony that ringed around the center interior of the old bar and grinned profusely when I caught sight of a short, beautiful Catalonian matrona with long, shining chestnut hair that flowed in waves down over her right shoulder She was wearing an elegantly long, flowing black skirt and a loose, wide-belted white button-up that was open to just below the top of her generous cleavage. She had bangles on her wrist, hoops in her ears, and her face was both bright and beautifully made up. She was every bit as lovely and as radiant at fifty-three as she had ever been.
“Violetta!” I grinned back a her, waving her down towards me and indicating the door with a tip of my head. “You look fantastic! Let’s get brunch!”
✽✽✽
A hop across the street brought us to Bancarella, one of the three Emporio Rulli locations in the Bay Area, where we each picked up a couple of delicious Italian pastries and a warm cup of chocolate frappé. We walked briskly down towards the Bay, laughing and reminiscing as we caught each other up on our individual lives. From Violetta, I learned that her daughter, Carlotta, who was now roughly half our respective ages, was following her father’s path into Catalonian politics, advocating for increased regional autonomy and a greater expression of self-rule.
“I’m sure her father would be proud,” I told Violetta, while we crossed over Steuart street and stepped onto Embarcadero Plaza. After crossing The Embarcadero a minute later, we swung right onto San Francisco Bay trail and breezed past the Port of San Francisco in the direction of Pier 14. “I’m sure she still misses him terribly.”
“As we both do,” Violetta murmured agreement, glancing out onto the Bay on our left and grinning at the fog-brown waters. We moved onto the railing pathway that stretched from Pier 14 down to Fire Station 35, taking our stride a little easier once we were as far removed from the bustle and hustle of the crowd as we were likely to get in the Bay Area.
“How’s the new boutique coming along?” I took a bite out of the large, wax-paper-wrapped glazed cinnamon roll that I held in my left hand, and then offered to tear off a piece for Violetta. The lovely woman at my side waved the offer away with a smile; she’d always been a swifter eater than myself, and she’d finished both of her Banana nut muffins before we even reached the waterfront. Now she was just leisurely sipping from her frappé, as we strolled along the nearly-deserted public walkway that straddled the shoreline. “Looks like a great location.”
“Well, thank you,” she answered after another sip of her drink. “Louisa assures me that everything will be ready to go in advance of the Gala – you are still coming to that, are you not?” The short, five-four woman with the faintly-lined but still glowing and radiant face narrowed her eyes accusingly at me. “You never R.S.V.P.’d, or told me whether you were planning on bringing anyone along with you.”
“Well, that’s, actually,” I reached up with the hand that was holding my own cup of Italian chocolate coffee and gently scratched an itch on the back of my head with one of my knuckles, “Kind of up in the air at this point.” I felt a low-level electric current of nervous excitement start running through me as our conversation finally started to come around to the reason why I’d asked to see her this morning.
“Oh?” The bright-eyed woman walking along beside me narrowed those same eyes inquisitively at me. “What is it, Ashton? What are you all worked up about? Why haven’t you returned any of my phone calls this month, and why have we run all the way out here, along the San Francisco Bay? To get out of the ears of eavesdroppers?”
I blew out a breath, and then glanced over at my friend. “I really am sorry for not returning your calls earlier, Vi.” I screwed up my face and took a deep drink of the almost-too-hot Italian chocolate coffee, feeling the burn as it went down my esophagus. As I lowered my cup again, I felt it trembling in my hand. “I’ve been having some trouble lately, finding a meaning to it all.”
“‘It all?’” Vi probed for more clarification, raising an eyebrow at me.
“Life. Work. My hobbies. My…” I laughed, self-deprecatingly, and grinned rakishly, “‘love life.’ It’s all been feeling really… empty lately. Meaningless.”
Violetta laughed softly and rolled her eyes. “Darling, you just turned Fifty. I think you’ve just described the emotional crisis of every young-at-heart Quinquagenarian in the Western World, myself included. ‘Oh, dear, I’ve pissed away my youth hunting success, chasing tail, and letting the things that really matter in life pass me by so that I could enjoy a few more thrills. What am I to do with myself when the party finally ends?’ Well, you know, there are some people who might argue that we have had rather a bit more of ‘a good thing’ than anyone really deserves in one life.” She winked suggestively at me and bumped her shoulder against my upper arm. “Possibly several ‘good things?’”
I chuckled, but shook my head remonstratively at her. “Nuh-uh, Vi
. Don’t talk about yourself like that. You didn’t let anything ‘pass you by.’ You had Carlotta, and her father…”
The slightly-older woman walking along beside me nodded, grudgingly, and smiled. “Well, yes, I suppose that is true. Had you, too, more than a few times. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t yearn for things that put fire in the blood anymore. I may be fifty… something,” she fluttered fancily at me, laughing and twirling about, “but I still feel like I’m in my thirties, or my forties! I’m still young-at-heart, Ashton! I still want to live! And you can, too!” Violetta fixed me with a look and elbowed me gently in the side, “Don’t want to chase after tail anymore, or carve up companies for their millions, or strap yourself onto experimental rockets anymore? Fine! Don’t! But what do want to do? What puts fire in your blood again, Ashton? What have you discovered?”
I smiled, tightly, and felt a shiver of naughty thrill run through me at her words. I could already tell that deciding to talk to Violetta had been the right choice. This was the woman who had introduced me to ‘The Secret Cabinet’ of erotic art from Ancient Pompeii, after all. The woman who had taught me more about sensual pleasures and self-discovery through sex than I could ever have managed to pick up on my own. She was one of the world’s most celebrated designers of women’s sensual and erotic undergarments. She, better than anyone, understood the pursuit of one’s fantasies and one’s desires, and how important those pursuits could be to achieving a full and complete understanding of oneself, to accepting oneself completely. If anyone that I knew might possibly understand what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it… it would probably be her.
“Vi,” I muttered slowly, finishing my cinnamon roll with one last bite and tossing the bunched-up bit of wax paper in a bin as we were passing. “…I discovered something recently. Something about myself. Something I want to try, or something that I need to try, maybe. Something… sexy, and fun, hot, and exciting, but taboo…” I winced and shrugged, feeling Countess Cardona’s eyes on me as the giant-bow-and-arrow-embedded-in-the-ground shape of the monumental centerpiece within Rincon Park slowly grew larger in front of us. “A lot of people wouldn’t understand.”
“What people?” Violetta probed inquisitively, arching an elegant eyebrow at me.
“Old-fashioned people,” I started fishing around for examples, “Conservative people – religious people. Business people. Moralists.” I shrugged and summarized: “Boring people.”
“Well, now I am even more intrigued. Tell me more.”
I laughed, biting down on one corner of my lower lip and shaking my head, feeling my hands trembling inside of my coat pockets, my cock beginning to stiffen inside of my pants. Oh fuck, here we go…
I had just started to open my mouth, begun forming the words, even, when Violetta suddenly cut me off and interrupted me before I could speak: “Wait!” She cried out, suddenly startled, grabbing ahold of my right arm and leaning into me, staring into my face with a wide-eyed and intrigued expression. “Are you planning on experimenting with Submission!?”
I jerked back and stumbled away a pace, shaking my head and gaping at her. “Wha-huh-WHAT!?”
“You know: Submission!” She hissed excitedly up at me, her eyes glowing with enthusiasm. “A man who wears submits, sexually, to powerful, dominant women? Formally or otherwise; I’ve always thought underneath all of that manly bravado and masculinity that you might be very happy giving up control for a while, now and again, that you might even actually secretly crave to be allowed to submit, for once in a while, to give in and just enjoy yourself, just let yourself be happy, letting someone pleasure you for a change, instead of constantly fighting to be the best, to be the most successfully, the most powerful, the best lover—” she shrugged and cut herself off mid-sentence.
“… Huh.” I said dully, shaking my head at the shorter woman walking along beside me. I was stunned. I had no idea that she’d ever thought me capable of such a thing, or had imagined that I might be hiding desires like that, desires that were so at an odds with the very deliberately-constructed powerful, successful, suave hedonist playboy persona that I’d been cultivating throughout the years. I mean, this was the woman whom I’d believed knew me better than anyone else, and I wondered, for a moment, how she could have gotten me so wrong.
But then I paused for a moment longer, and I wondered something else, thinking back to my explosive, sensual, erotic fantasies from the weeks leading up to today. About giving in to a big, powerful, strong, seductive man, about letting him take me, about letting him have me, and pleasure me, and make me his woman. I suddenly wondered – was she really wrong?
Glancing back down towards my friend’s face, I saw that Violetta was still watching me, gazing up at me with excited eyes, although her keen enthusiasm was beginning to dampen the longer my silence drew on. She was clearly starting to worry that she might have gotten me wrong, and that, possibly, she might have even just offended me. I still wasn’t quite sure myself exactly how near or far from the mark Violetta’s guess had been, but wanting to relieve her anxiety, I mustered up a parched little laugh and ran a hand through my hair, blinking my eyes with some amazement. “I had no idea you thought that about me.”
“Ashton, my love, I sell people lingerie for a living. Very decorative, very feminine, and sometimes very naughty lingerie. I cater to the sexual appetites of some of the world’s most beautiful, most-tasteful, most-elegant… and most-stinkingly-wealthy women, and I’ve had to learn how to read their fantasies in order to help them make the kinds of decisions that allow them to express their own desires, their own sexual reflections, as we say, desires to feel beautiful, feminine, dominant, submissive, sensual, powerful, or sexually confident. I’ve developed quite the open mind and quite the eye for others’ sexual and sensual pleasures, even by Continental standards these days. You are one of the world’s most celebrated hedonists and sexual debauches. I’ve been curious about your exploits for quite some time. I could never quite reconcile your relentless pursuit of meaningless casual sexual exploits with your profound admiration and affection for women, until I guessed that it might be tied in, somehow, to your constant need to prove yourself to be the biggest, best, baddest man around. I thought that maybe, just maybe, if you could learn to let that go…” Violetta smiled tenderly at me, and stroked one soft, gentle hand across the side of my face, “You might actually find the happiness and the freedom, in a bit of submission, now and again, that you’ve been chasing all your life. I just couldn’t imagine what it would take to break through that wall of … ‘dick jousting,’” she stuck out her tongue and made a face. “What it would take for you to discover yourself that way.”
Once again, I was shocked. Hearing my oldest, dearest friend put the conundrum that I’d been wrestling with the last few weeks so clearly and effectively into words that actually broke down the mentality and the psychology behind it all was… amazing. Of course, she was missing one little important element of the whole, but… well… I guessed that there was no reason not to let her in on the missing piece that she’d apparently spent years looking for.
“Vi, I …” I shook my head, scrunching up my face again. “I mean, of course, that makes sense. But, no, I’m not…” I shook my head, and then frowned, the thought suddenly occurring to me, “Hang on, ‘Countess Cardona,’ if I remember things correctly, you were the one who originally debauched me; so if we’re going to ask ‘Dirty 20 Questions,’ are you…?”
The dark-haired beauty walking along beside me laughed, but then reluctantly shook her head. “Oh, well, perhaps a little bit. From time to time. My favorite female lover, Dominique, she says I am a ‘power bottom.’ I have never had a problem asserting myself in own my bed with my sexual partners, as both you and my late husband well know, of course, but, unfortunately, I do seem to have rather a large problem not being the center of attention all the time during the proceedings.”
I snorted, “Hah, tell me something I don’t know,” and ducked a swat.
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We reached the shadow of the monumental artwork in Rincon park and took a seat on one of the low, backless ‘benches’ at the edge of the grass. A cool, misty breeze was still coming off of the Bay, so we both huddled together, side-by-side inside our respective coats, for a little extra warm. A handful of people passed by in front of us, going either direction up and down along the shores of the Bay, but they paid us no mind. I had the privacy I’d needed, now, I knew. I was rock hard inside of my pants now, too, and whenever I took the time to glance at my hands, I could see that I was visibly starting to shake. It was time to tell Violetta what I’d brought her here to say.
“Violetta,” I began, softly, gritting my teeth against the slight chill, “if I told you that I wanted to do something that most people would say was… absolutely crazy, do you think, maybe, you could try to understand?”
My old friend laughed and cuddled closer against my shoulder, teeth chattering as she sipped her coffee for a few dregs of warmth. “Darling, you rode a prototype rocket ship into low-orbit on a dare, with nothing but a handful of space blankets and a life-vest for safety equipment. I understood that.”
I laughed, too, and shook my head. I didn’t believe her. “No, no you didn’t.”
“Of course, I did!” She retorted, butting her head against my shoulder. “As I said, you’ve always had to prove how manly you were to everyone, most of all yourself. Had to show everyone that you were the best, the strongest, the bravest— almost got you killed during that ridiculous street-fighting obsession of yours, but of course you couldn’t resist the chance to risk everything for an opportunity to prove to yourself how you had the biggest dick of them all—”
