by Alison Tyler
The table was commissioned by a local artist and is made of a huge slab of black glass. How cool that would feel beneath my naked skin. The mere thought of it made me wrap my arms around my body, protecting myself. From what? From my fantasies?
Anthony would work slowly, unbuckle his belt with easy motions, pull it free from the loops and then stand where I could see him, fingering the worn leather and watching me. Waiting for my reaction.
What would my reaction be? I wouldn’t beg him to go easy on me, because I didn’t want him to. I would close my eyes, lower my head and wait for fantasy to become reality. For a brief flicker of time, I considered rushing after him, taking hold of him and spinning him around, saying, ‘Do it. What you just said. Do it. Every part of it. Do more! Do what the man did to the girl in those pages.’ But if I couldn’t say the words by myself, all alone with my thoughts, how could I say them to Anthony?
After several moments, I picked up the pages he’d left for me, started to read them, then stopped once again. I looked at the clock, then walked to the door of my office, and turned the lock, not in the mood to be disturbed.
At least, not until Nora called.
Chapter Fourteen
Over a late lunch at the Queen’s Road café, I confessed everything to Nora. Confessed to her what I could not make myself reveal previously. I told her everything because I knew she would offer help, not judgment, guidance not glee. Well, maybe a little glee. This was Nora, after all. Nora, who has a room in her club called Slave to Love, filled with assorted bondage devices, all coloured hot pink, many trimmed with marabou. A whip is so much less threatening when made of pink leather. That’s Nora’s philosophy. Who’s afraid of a pink ping-pong paddle? Not Nora. That’s for sure.
‘Anthony said he wanted to tie you down?’ my best friend asked, her eyes shining brightly at the thought. She had on casual clothes today – casual for her – decked out in an all-white outfit that was splashed all over with colourful graffiti. It looked like actual graffiti, as if an artist had stood her up against an abandoned building, and sprayed both her and the wall behind her. I could make out parts of swear words in the shimmering blues, purples and oranges. Her hair was done in multicoloured streaks, to match the outfit, and she had a silver boom-box charm dangling on a heavy chain around her neck. I felt as dull as a female peacock sitting next to her.
If Anthony were to see the two of us sitting here together, which one of us would he choose?
‘Just casually,’ I explained, closing the door on the thought of competing with Nora. ‘He simply tossed it out there.’
I shut my eyes as I remembered the way he’d spoken to me, and instantly saw myself captured, bound to a four-poster bed with Anthony standing above me, presiding over me. Or was a four-poster not the sort of thing he was thinking of? Did he mean something more along the lines of the story, with a hair ribbon around my wrists and my own torn clothing holding me in place?
‘Tell me exactly what he said,’ Nora insisted.
I opened my eyes and looked at her. She was practically salivating at the thought. This story could have been pulled from Nora’s own life. Never had I been able to come to her with an X-rated tale like this one. Of course, if Nora had been the narrator, then the scene would already have taken place. She’d have been bound and cuffed, and would be describing the sensations in great detail to me, her willing audience of one.
‘He said he’d have to tie me down and give me what for.’ I took a deep breath. ‘You know, for making him wait the other night. But he might have been kidding.’ I was lying to her. ‘No, I don’t think he was kidding, actually.’
Nora looked directly at me, but rather than offer words of wisdom, she simply said, ‘God, he’s sexy, isn’t he? I was so impressed on Friday, the way he handled seeing your ex up there with Gwen. Most men wouldn’t have dealt with that situation nearly as well. They would have been jealous or angry or gotten all puffed up on testosterone. He simply seemed concerned about your feelings.’
‘He didn’t have to do anything, though. You did.’
She grinned, relishing the thought. ‘It was perfect, tossing them out of the club, banning them for life. I’ve never had more fun. Byron just kept hissing at me that he’d always hated me, and Gwen looked a bit crestfallen that she couldn’t come back.’
‘Thanks for doing that,’ I told her. ‘You didn’t have to.’
‘Of course, I did. You’re my best friend. I can’t have your enemies at the club. But I can have your friends. Why don’t you ask Anthony to come back? You two can make your own movie in our Cinéma Vérité room. I think you’d look stellar up on the screen – and you do, too, don’t you? When you let your fantasies go that way. Admit it, Eli. You do.’
I half-nodded, not wanting to admit that she was right. This was a difficult concept for me to deal with myself, let alone to anyone else. But Nora knows me. She remembers the wide-eyed way I’d taken in the scenarios we’d witnessed at the underground clubs in Europe. She understands what those visions did to me, how they lingered. We haven’t discussed my own fantasies all that often, but Nora doesn’t need me to put them into words. That’s why she’s so good at running her clubs. She’s almost magical that way. She knows what people want, what they crave.
‘Don’t be ashamed,’ Nora said. ‘You have to know how many people like that sort of thing. We’d never have a Cinéma Vérité room if people didn’t want to show off for an audience, or a Slave to Love room if people didn’t want to tie each other up. I think you should experience everything there is to try. If you like it, great. If you don’t, that’s fine, too. You just chalk it up to experience and move on. Be a trisexual.’
‘A what?’ I asked, unsure that I’d heard her correctly.
‘A try-sexual. That means you should try everything at least once.’
‘So you really like being –’ I didn’t know how to put this delicately ‘– being tied up? Or tied down?’ I asked. I was having such a difficult time saying the words. I’ve always known the power of words, but in the past I thought I had more control over them than they had over me. I guess I was wrong.
‘You know me,’ she said, ‘I like a lot of things. I like being bound. I like being spanked. I like switching and being the boss if I’m with the kind of lover who brings out that side in me, or completely submitting if I’m with a dominant partner. That’s why I’ve been playing with both Dean and Travis lately. Dean is a dom, through and through, as you could tell the other night. Travis likes to give himself over to me. Best of both worlds, if you know what I mean.’
I noticed that the two upscale-looking women at the table to our left had stopped talking and were staring at Nora with expressions of half-interest and half-disgust. My best friend might have noticed, as well, but she quite obviously didn’t care. Nora’s like that. If you want to eavesdrop on her, that’s fine, but you’d better not try to judge her. She won’t take it. In fact, she’ll become even louder, even more obscene in her descriptions.
‘It sounds as if you have a guy who’s ready to play,’ Nora continued. ‘I know I told you to consider not sleeping with him right away – or, at least, to make sure that you were really ready first – but once you do hit the sack, you should definitely take advantage of the situation. When are you getting together again?’
‘Tomorrow night. He’s going to give me the latest portion of the journal.’ Anthony had left this message on my voicemail after our morning interaction.
‘Where are you going?’
‘His place.’
Nora’s eyes widened appreciatively. ‘No dinner and a movie. No dancing. Just wham bam.’
‘He invited me. He’s going to make me dinner while I read the final instalment of what he’s done. He mentioned something about Italian food.’
‘He cooks?’
I nodded. ‘I guess.’
‘The man has a killer accent, an unbelievable body, is a graduate from Oxford, can drink mixed drinks without getting sick,
and he can cook?’ Nora was incredulous, and apparently a little bit jealous.
‘I haven’t eaten his food,’ I said, ‘but he claims to be a whiz in the kitchen.’
‘But you don’t really care about that,’ Nora teased. ‘You only want to know if he’s a whiz in the bedroom. And from the things he’s offering you, it sounds as if he’s definitely experienced.’
I felt flustered, and suddenly I had a need to confess the rest. ‘I did this bad thing today,’ I said. ‘And actually, I did the same thing Friday, too.’
‘Do tell,’ Nora prompted, all ears.
‘Not totally bad, I guess. Not evil, or anything, but not like me at all.’
Nora waited, interested and ready. Like I said, it’s not often that I have stories for her. In general, she is the one with the audience. She seemed to enjoy our role reversal.
‘I read the pages he gave me, and then I locked the door to my office, and …’
‘At work?’ Nora asked, understanding immediately, as I had known she would.
‘At my desk.’ I paused. After that, I’d hardly been able to do anything. I had sat in my chair, staring into space, until Nora had called and I’d gotten the idea to invite her out for lunch. ‘What’s happening to me?’ I asked her now.
‘My little girl’s growing up,’ Nora crowed in mock delight. ‘She’s turning into a real woman.’
‘I’m turning into a real slut.’
‘Perfect. I’m sure that’s just what Anthony wants. Most intellectuals, at least the ones that I’ve had the pleasure of being with, prefer their women to be sluts in the bedroom.’ Nora sighed. ‘Although I have to tell you one thing. This is the most intricate method of foreplay I’ve ever heard of. He’s translating ancient pornography for you and it’s getting you off. I can hardly believe it.’
She’d just named my total fear. ‘What if it’s not true, Nora?’ It horrified me to admit that I’d even had this worry, but if I couldn’t ask Nora about it, I was out of luck. There was nobody else.
‘Which part?’
‘What if he’s making this stuff up to entice me?’
‘He’s wooing you with ancient Greek pornography,’ she said with a sexy smile on her face. The thought of what he was doing quite clearly delighted her. ‘I’ve heard a lot of come-ons in my time,’ she said, ‘but never something as intricate as this one.’
‘But maybe,’ I continued, ‘he’s making up modern pornography to try to get me into bed.’ As soon as I said the words, I looked away. I felt as if I were being unfaithful in some way to Anthony, and I also felt brash for believing that he might do this. That I might be worthy of him taking the time to make up such a detailed fantasy.
‘And it was kinky?’
I flushed. ‘It was for me.’
‘Tell me.’
I bent over my bag and pulled out the papers, then handed them over to her.
Nora took a moment to skim the first few, and then started to laugh. ‘He wants to tie you up, Eli. Just like in the manuscript. He’s said so. He’s going to pop your cherry.’
‘I’m not virgin.’
‘To this stuff you are.’
I couldn’t tell her she was wrong. Nora knows me too well. But maybe he did want to tie me up and maybe that had been his plan from the start. I cleared my throat and said, ‘Maybe the journal is only a series of boring letters, or political rants, or tales of gods and mortals and the Oracle at Delphi. Or, what if it is a journal, but it was written by some chaste young virgin who’s never had sex, who hates the thought of it and lives until old age without ever experiencing the sins of the flesh? What if Anthony’s just concocting the whole thing to get me all hot and bothered?’
‘Christ, are you suspicious,’ Nora said, finally understanding. Then she paused, pondering it. ‘That would be a totally elaborate thing to do. He’d have to research the fuck out of ancient Greece in order to fool you, wouldn’t he? And you only just found the manuscript last week. There’s no way that he would have been able to do all that research in that short a time period, would he?’
‘So far there haven’t been too many facts woven through it. He could have gotten any of them from the profiles on our exhibits. Plus, the stuff today was way out there.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’re getting into hot girl-girl sex. I mean, I know all about Sappho, but this stuff is on fire. It’s X-rated.’
‘Like?’ Nora asked, wanting examples.
‘Like naked bodies and sweat and suckling and licking, and contests about the prettiest body parts. You’re right that Anthony said that he had done research on it, that he had found items in our library that back up the text. Still, I’m just not sure about some of this other stuff.’ I didn’t look at her as I said the last part. ‘Come on, Nora. What do I do?’ I was practically wailing now. ‘What if he’s just making it all up to get me into bed?’
‘I don’t believe he’d do that,’ Nora said, finally. ‘I like Anthony. I mean, I know I don’t know him all that well, but he was a real trooper at the casting call. I liked the way he ordered that last drink, the Party Girl.’ She considered the situation, for a moment. ‘But if you’re really unsure, why not take a page or two and have someone else translate it for you. Someone who you’re sure doesn’t have any sort of designs on you.’ Nora hesitated. ‘But not someone too straight, in case it is pornography. You don’t want to shock anyone and have the person tell your bosses what you’re really doing with your time. I mean, aren’t you supposed to be working on an Angel show?’
I leaned back in my chair. ‘Good idea. I’d never have thought of doing that. It’s sneaky and underhanded.’
Nora beamed, happy with herself. She didn’t take either of those words as insults.
‘But I really have to know. I mean, Anthony’s writing these things down that totally meld with my fantasies. Tie me up, tie me down, make love to me outside.’
Nora leaned forwards in her chair, as if ready to drink up every word I was saying. This was the type of conversation she lived for.
‘If he’s making it up to get me into bed, I need to know.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I actually need to know before tomorrow night.’ I thought about it for a moment. ‘That’s just not going to be possible.’
‘Postpone the dinner for another day, then,’ Nora suggested, pleased with the idea. ‘Whenever you make a potential bedmate wait, it drives the person extra wild. If Anthony is being a good little boy and translating the stuff honestly, he’ll be totally out of his head with lust by the time you arrive for the date. If he’s lying, then you’ll be able to figure out a way to get back at him, like invite him to the Slave to Love room and put the cuffs on him. Plus, now you can still go shopping with me tomorrow night, like you promised.’ Nora put on her pout, which made her look extra charming. Our waiter did a double take when he brought over the check, clearly captivated by Nora’s pretty face.
I nodded. ‘It’s a plan. I’ll photocopy a few pages and give them to Marcia. She’s only average at ancient Greek. That’s why I didn’t use her in the first place.’
Nora gave me a look, then said sarcastically, ‘Of course, that’s why you didn’t use Marcia.’ She snorted, unable to help herself from jabbing at me. ‘What a total lie, kiddo. You’ve wanted Anthony for three years. I’ve never waited that long for any man in my life.’
‘Still, Marcia and Anthony had a rather publicised flirtation last spring,’ I said, thinking out loud. ‘She had a crush on him, and he didn’t respond as she’d have liked. There were bad things said, but never to anyone’s face. Gossip spread. Ever since then, there’s been intense rivalry. If he found out I went to Marcia behind his back … I don’t know what he’d do.’
‘Don’t let him find out obviously,’ Nora said. ‘Or don’t do it. And let your mind get the better of you. Can you handle not knowing?’
I shook my head. I couldn’t. I had to find out for real if Anthony was being honest with me. ‘It doesn’t matter how g
ood Marcia is. She’ll at least be able to tell me if it’s sexual.’
‘But be sure you really want to know,’ Nora said softly. ‘Maybe that’s not the real issue.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Maybe you don’t want Anthony to be a good guy. Maybe you don’t think you deserve someone like him.’
‘That’s not true. Why are you saying that?’
‘Sometimes, you think you’re living vicariously through me, don’t you?’
I was silent. Was I? Had I always been. I didn’t have an answer for her.
‘You’re not,’ she insisted, her green eyes bright in the blazing light. ‘I’m the one living vicariously through you.’
‘What are you talking about, Nora?’
‘You’re the one who’s stable. You’re the one always in a solid relationship. You’re the one with the happily ever after.’
‘And you’re the one who read Byron’s blog. You know that happy ever after doesn’t exist.’
‘It might. If you’d give Anthony an honest chance.’
ThePinkFedora.blogspot.com
Halloween is here at last – or almost here. Forget counting the weeks, we’re now counting the days. In fact, it’s nearly time to count the minutes. The Pink Fedora’s annual Halloween Masquerade Ball begins at 10:00 on Halloween night. At midnight, we’ll announce the contestants chosen for Bijoux Network’s new You Can Leave Your Hat On reality show. A show that will be filmed live in the Pink Fedora!
Oh, you can guess how excited I am! Twelve gorgeous and lithesome bartenders-to-be will be signing up for the ride of their lives. Only one can win. Judges include myself, of course, and Vlad, our former beau of the bar. We will have two guest judges each week, as well, from top chefs to top models. You’ll have to tune in to see who we’ve invited.
