Geek Actually Season 1 Omnibus

by Cathy Yardley

  But she was getting tired. She’d changed into her Pikachu pajamas ages ago, and she kept yawning and had made a show of getting up and plumping her pillows like she was getting ready for bed. Tyler simply wasn’t taking the hint.

  Finally she said, “Hey, did you ever hear back from your roommate?”

  Tyler pulled his phone out of his pan-flute shaped case. “Oh.” He made a worried face. “Looks like my battery’s gone dead.”

  “Well, try calling him from the hotel phone,” she suggested.

  “Good idea.” He picked up the phone on the side table and Elli went to brush her teeth.

  When she came back he was just hanging up. “He’s not answering.”

  “Well, I’m tired,” she said. That was pretty firm and clear, wasn’t it?

  “Me, too. Really exhausted,” he said, stretching his arms toward the ceiling. “I didn’t realize it was so late! No wonder. You really have a whole room to yourself this time?”

  “Really,” Elli said, trying to avoid saying why. “It just worked out that way.”

  “Lucky, lucky,” he said, a funny, almost wistful smile on his face. He rubbed his eyes.

  He really did look exhausted. Elli thought about it. Plenty of times, she’d been the one who ended up crashing on someone else’s floor or couch or an empty bed space if there was one. Lots of people had helped her out when she’d gotten stuck. For once she was the one with the room and the ability to help someone else. “Well, look, it’s a really big bed. If you can’t get into your room you can crash here tonight,” Elli said.

  “Aw, Elli, you’re the best,” Tyler said. “Could I grab a quick shower too? Under these fur leggings I got pretty sweaty at the dance earlier.”

  “Sure! There’s like a million towels in there.” Elli got under the covers as Tyler went into the bathroom. What a nice guy, she thought as the rushing sound of the water for the shower lulled her straight to sleep.

  MICHELLE

  Michelle dreamed. There was a menacing buzzing sound emanating from under the ground, loose sod under her feet. She held a shovel in her hands, poised to strike. The next time she heard it, she saw the bulge of the earth, as if a creature were moving under the sod. She smacked the shovel onto the ground but a swarm of bees flew out and attacked her.

  She woke with the scream stuck in her throat and her phone practically vibrating off the nightstand. So that’s what the buzzing noise was. Who the hell was calling her at five in the morning? She reached for it, wondering what emergency could be happening. Her mom? Christina? Taneesha’s doxing?

  It took a few moments for her bleary eyes to adjust. The entire lock screen was full of alerts. Texts, emails, missed calls. Mistress Buffy. An unknown New Jersey number.

  She sat up, wondering if Tim had gone to the hospital or something like that. I told him he might have a concussion!

  She started playing the voice mail. The most recent one was from Mistress Buffy.

  “Hi, yeah, Misha, look. The last thing I need is this kind of drama in my life, okay? I’ve had enough. I’ve been up all night arguing with these people and I’ve had it. I’m turning off my phone and getting some sleep now. Can you believe they want me to resign from the leadership committee of Dommes of New York over this? I’ve tried to speak up for you, but this is your mess. You fix it.”

  Michelle blinked. What the hell is going on?

  The answer slowly clarified as she read the irate emails stacking up in her inbox—from some ex-girlfriend of Tim’s, from the hostess of the party, from board members of DONY, and the forwards she was receiving of the discussions taking place in various groups on Fetlife.

  They were talking about her like she was an ax murderer.

  You’re a menace to the community and to yourself, wrote one woman under the username MistressAnima, who had messaged her on Fetlife. Looking at the woman’s profile, Michelle saw that she had newly listed someone named TimTamSub as “under her protection” in the “relationship status” field. TimTamSub’s profile had several recognizable photos of Tim.

  If her intention wasn’t to harm, then she was at the very least criminally negligent, wrote a poster in a group that Buffy’s email linked her to. And the party’s hosts, the owners of the apartment, and the bad top are all equally to blame.

  What the fuck, was Tim all right? She searched frantically back through the messages. The earliest voice mail, which had to have come right after she’d gone to sleep, was from him.

  “Hello, ma’am, sorry to disturb you, but I really feel I need to say something about tonight. But you’re not picking up so, um…” And then he hung up.

  That was it? Because she didn’t pick up the phone in the middle of the night, she was a menace?

  Don’t these people sleep?

  Michelle checked the time stamp on the voice mail again, then clicked through Tim’s Fetlife activity until she hit pay dirt. Maybe a half hour after he’d left her that message, he’d posted in a sub men’s group:

  I had a bad experience tonight and wanted to tell someone about it, so I’m posting here. This is to warn you all that sometimes the Domme of your dreams is really a nightmare.

  Michelle felt her guts twist reading those words. Was I really that bad?

  His next few paragraphs described the party much as she remembered it: Buffy’s birthday cake, the display of the single men, the group spanking.

  And then a Goddess stepped up to me, a tall Woman with a stern look. She was displeased with the cake in my hair and wanted me to cleanse myself for Her use.

  Michelle turned on the light and moved to her laptop so she could keep reading the wall of text that followed without crossing her eyes. She contemplated making some coffee, too, but maybe that wasn’t a good idea. She couldn’t even decide. Tall? He thought I was tall?

  I was so excited to be chosen by Her that I stifled my worries. Mistress Anima taught me when I was in Her service that a dominant listens to both my spoken and my unspoken desires. But tonight I wasn’t listened to at all.

  Michelle felt a horrible sinking sensation at the same time she thought, What? What does he mean I wasn’t listening to him? He was the one begging me to hit him!

  What followed was a slightly embellished but not totally inaccurate description of the caning scene.

  I feel like a bad sub even though Mistress Anima keeps telling me not to blame myself. But I’ve always tried to give myself one hundred percent to the desires of my Goddess. I never thought that would mean She would push me to the point of harm, but I thought I was ready to accept it if She wanted that. In the past She has always stopped short of that point, but this was a new Goddess I had not played with before. I thought She was testing me. When She struck me so hard on my balls that I blacked out, I knew I had made a terrible mistake.

  Wait, if he was unconscious, how could he know he had made a mistake? Was he just an unclear writer or was that what he really meant?

  I wanted to give one hundred percent of myself to Her but now I regret it. It will be a long time before I can give myself to a Goddess again without fear.

  Oh, God, that’s heartbreaking. Michelle hadn’t felt any fear from him at all at the time, just annoyance.

  Then she read the comments on the post.

  TimTam, so sorry that happened to you. Did She ignore your safeword?

  Tim’s reply:

  She didn’t give me a safeword. I didn’t say anything. She pushed me beyond my limits but I didn’t know She was going to do that.

  Michelle felt a flare of anger. That wasn’t exactly true. He was making it sound like a boundary-pushing scene or something like that, but he had been the one begging her to hit him harder, to go farther, to do more. Even if I had remembered to give him a safeword, would he have used it?

  It didn’t seem likely.

  There were dozens and dozens of comments, mostly expressing sympathy or outrage. Farther down, the commenters had started arguing with each other over protocol, and things spiraled out o
f control from there, with some arguing on the hypothetical domme side and some taking Tim’s side, but with no further replies from Tim himself. A few were from Mistress Anima, stoking the fire. Like the children’s game of telephone, by the time the end of the thread was reached, almost none of the posts had any resemblance to the actual situation, and yet they were vilifying Michelle.

  Damage control. That was the only thing she could think of. Her brain clicked into damage control mode. She reread the original post and the other messages in her inbox and email. They were all blowing everything way out of proportion. The only way to get this back to reality would be if Tim posted a retraction. Or at least a clarification. Or maybe Michelle could post an apology herself but make it clear that her fault hadn’t been not respecting his safeword. It was all a misunderstanding, sure, but it took two people to make a miscommunication, didn’t it?

  One thing was certain. Posting anything without talking to him first would only throw gasoline on that fire. She texted him.

  Tim. This is Michelle/Misha. I got your voice mail. How did you get my number? From Mistress Buffy? I’m so sorry about what happened tonight. Please call me now if you’re up. I really want to talk about it and I’m sorry I missed your call.

  She had typed sorry I was asleep but then thought that might come across as callous and replaced it with just sorry I missed your call.

  She was composing an email reply to Mistress Buffy when her phone rang. It was Tim.

  “Hi,” she said, keeping her voice low out of habit, as if someone might be asleep in the rumpled, empty bed beside her. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, sounding tired.

  “Okay, can we stop with the ma’am stuff? I think we need to talk on the level.”

  “Um, if that’s what you really want, ma—uh, what should I call you?”

  “How about Michelle?”

  “Okay, Michelle. I’m fine, Michelle.” Every time he said her name, though, it sounded like a title.

  So much for talking like two real, reasonable human beings. “You said in your voice mail there was something you wanted to say?”

  “Oh. Yes. I changed my mind, though, Michelle,” he said evasively. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

  “Bothered me?” Was he playing dumb on purpose or was it lack of sleep that was making her irritable now? “What bothers me is that you went on Fetlife and accused me of crossing your boundaries, and now people are waving pitchforks and torches in my direction.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention to involve you at all. I didn’t use your name.”

  “You didn’t, but people know who it was! Meanwhile, Mistress Anima, whoever that is, is sending me personal messages calling me a menace to society, and Buffy’s about to ban me from the group because people are saying her defending me is the same thing as her hurting you herself! What the fuck is going on?”

  “Oh—oh, God, none of that was supposed to happen, I promise, Michelle. That’s not… I just wanted to warn people not to do what I did.”

  “Can we talk about what you did, though? Tim, you begged me to hit you. So I did. How was I supposed to know you didn’t mean it?”

  His submissive demeanor cracked just a little. “Mistress Buffy told Mistress Anima that you were new to the scene, but I didn’t think you were so totally clueless. With all due respect, Michelle, it’s really common knowledge that when a sub shouts no no no they mean the exact opposite.”

  “Yes, I know that,” she said, gritting her teeth. “But you weren’t shouting no no no. You were begging me to hit you harder.”

  “Well, the same principle should apply, shouldn’t it?”

  “Wait, you’re saying no always means yes, and therefore yes always means no?” Michelle’s head spun. Maybe I’m still dreaming and this is a nightmare.

  He cleared his throat. “Mistress Anima says I need to learn to speak up for myself.”

  “And this is how you do it? Throwing the blame on me?”

  “Um, you were the top? Who else should I blame?”

  “It takes two people to communicate, you know.”

  He made an indignant noise. “I cannot believe you’re blaming me—blaming the victim. So typical of women like you. Ma’am.”

  “Don’t you ma’am me!” Michelle gripped the phone tightly, trying not to raise her voice and only succeeding in keeping it to a low screech. He is so infuriating!

  She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself, reminding herself that he was the one who had been at physical risk and that he might be acting perfectly normally for someone who felt traumatized. “Tim, seriously, please. Drop the act. If I’m actually going to learn from this, if I’m going to do better and not hurt people in the future, I need you to be real with me.”

  She heard his long sigh. “What act? You mean my submissive man act?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Ma—Michelle. It’s not an act. I am a submissive man. And you asking me to ‘drop the act’ is… very invalidating of my experience.”

  Oh, shit. I am in way over my head here. “I’m not saying don’t be yourself. I want you to be honest so of course I want you to be yourself.” She was backpedaling and she knew it, but her damage control centers were firmly in command. “I guess what I’m trying to say is… can we talk about this like friends?”

  There was a long silence, during which Michelle heard her heart beating in her ears. Then he said, “If you mean hypothetically, yes. Would you do what you did to me to a friend?”

  “If that friend asked me to do it, yes. Well, now maybe I wouldn’t, because now I know it would be too much. But I really thought I was doing what you wanted, Tim. I really, truly thought you wanted me to hit you harder. I misread you, and that’s my mistake, and I own that. But my intention was to do what you wanted.”

  His voice was small. “Oh.”

  “Can you tell me… what you did want?”

  Again the silence before he spoke. “I wanted to be able to submit to you with total abandon. So I wanted you to do whatever you wanted. So if you truly wanted to hit me really hard, okay, except now I find out you didn’t even want to hit me hard. You didn’t even want to dominate me, apparently. The domme has to be the one who sets the limits, don’t you see? The sub can’t be truly submissive if you’re going to take things beyond safety.”

  Michelle’s head hurt. That made sense, and yet it still didn’t really add up. People still needed to be responsible for themselves, didn’t they? The fantasy of being a “total sub” and the reality of people playing were two different things… right? But this was a guy who insisted he was so naturally submissive he couldn’t talk to her like a peer.

  I can’t tell if I’m being gaslighted or if I’m just so defensive about the whole situation that I can’t see his point of view.

  “The reason we can’t speak ‘on the level,’” Tim went on, “is because we’re already in a power imbalance. Just wishing you could give me back my half doesn’t make us equal again, and doesn’t make me have equal responsibility. It was still your job to hear me—or to ignore my requests if I was asking for something too dangerous.”

  Okay, that made sense. “Are you really hurt, though?” she asked with a timid squeak.

  “Not seriously, I hope. I mean, I have this goose egg on my forehead that I’ll have to explain at work now. The… rest of me seems like it’ll recover.”

  The only thing to do was apologize. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” She felt a sudden lump in her throat, the sting of failure catching up to her. “I’m sure my inexperience was the b-b-biggest problem.”

  “Oh, ma’am!” He sounded truly pained now. “Please don’t cry! I’m such a bad submissive.”

  God, so we’re both failures? “Do you accept my apology or not?”

  “I do, ma’am. I do. I didn’t mean to cause trouble for you or Mistress Buffy. I’ll have to make it up to her.”

  And what about me? Should I ask
him to post a retraction? Or a clarification? Or should I just let it drop?

  Michelle didn’t know what the next step should be. Other than to hang up. “And please tell her and Mistress Anima that I apologized to you and truly didn’t mean you any harm, at least?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Good night, ma’am.”

  Good night? Michelle thought as she got back into bed. It’s already morning. The predawn light turned the buildings outside her window a pinkish gray.

  When she couldn’t get back to sleep, she put on a pot of coffee and began writing a long email to Richard and Felice, asking for their advice. Writing had always helped her to focus and organize her thoughts, and now, as she relived both the evening’s events and the conversation with Tim, she found herself by turns angry, sad, and confused.

  By halfway through her letter, she wasn’t sure anymore whether she was writing to Richard and Felice or if she was writing to herself.

  But even if he’s gaslighting me or just making stuff up to win the argument, she wrote, if I’m going to take this as a learning experience, I guess I should focus on the three things he said. I can’t make us equals just because I want us to be, I should have listened to him with the knowledge that I had much more power in the situation than he did, and afterward I shouldn’t have tried to invalidate his arguments or his identity just because it would make me more comfortable.

  She stared at the words on the screen, goose bumps crawling across her shoulders as she realized what Tim was telling her—you didn’t listen to me, you’re not hearing me, we’re not on the level no matter how much you wish we were—sounded a lot like Aditi. Which meant the admission she was making to herself… was very much the apology she owed to her friend for not listening, not acknowledging their power imbalance as editor/writer, and misusing that imbalance to make herself comfortable instead of addressing Aditi’s actual problems.

  Well, shit.