The Delicious Torment

by Alison Tyler

  Yet I hadn’t guessed that what he needed might not be only me. He might need Alex, too.

  That night, Jack and Alex sat up in the living room talking. I could hear the lull of their voices, but I didn’t eavesdrop. This was theirs. All theirs. I didn’t bother trying to write—what would be the use?—and I didn’t bother trying to sleep. Not for a long time. Instead, I refolded the clothes in my drawers, reorganized my lipsticks, my nail polishes. Played my all-time favorite songs to put myself at ease. Basically, I did all of the tricks I always do when my mind won’t shut up.

  I had come late to this game. That’s what I understood the most. I’d been waiting for the secrets to spill naturally. I was trying to do things right for once.

  Early on, when I’d moved in with Byron, I’d read a poem he wrote. It was in his journal, but the journal was open on his desk. It was clearly about me, my black hair, my being nineteen. And it was beautiful. I wish I could remember the words today. When I told him how much I loved it, he turned on me. Yet again, I had done something to disappoint and to displease. Every one of those types of interactions had kept me from pursuing the truth between Jack and Alex.

  And now, they were out in the living room….

  The liquor helped. It made me feel warm all over. I drank straight from the bottle, reveling in the sensation. I am, at my heart, vice afflicted. I enjoy liquor from a pocket flask, the thrill of getting a tattoo on a whim. I take great pleasure in not getting enough sleep, but then waking my body with too much caffeine. Ultimately, the drink made me unable to continue my puttering devices because I was causing more havoc than I was fixing. And then, when it was too late to call it late any longer, when it was early, the bedroom door opened, and Jack came in.

  He looked worn. Not sad. Not demolished. Not demoralized. But worn. And he sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed one hand over his face and down along the strong line of his jaw, and I could hear the scrape of his palm against his evening beard. He looked at me, and he seemed to easily assess my own status. I was drunk. Drunker, probably, than Alex had actually been earlier in the night.

  Jack laughed. Not mean. Not caustic. Not bitter. He laughed, as if this were icing on his cake. Par for the course, given the way his evening had ended up. He came over and took me in his arms and kissed me. Hard. Just kissed me. I can hear the sound of his laughter in my head. I can feel his lips on my own. I can see the room if I close my eyes tight. I can feel the beating of his heart against mine.

  There was gentleness in his eyes as he tucked me into bed. There wasn’t sadness. I wasn’t scared. There was only tenderness, as he bent to kiss my forehead.

  Still, I tried, tried to ask what had happened. What was going on?

  “Sh, baby,” he said.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t meet you tonight,” I said, focused, as ever, on what I’d done wrong. Should I have gone to the restaurant after all, at least showed up to make sure Alex had made it? This was an easy infraction to apologize for in hindsight. “I’m sorry I made you worry.”

  He shook his head. “Sleep it off. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  In the morning, Jack played nurse to the two of us. Alex had fallen asleep on the sofa, and Jack had covered him up with the soft poppy-red blanket. He left coffee next to Alex, but didn’t wake him, and brought a cup down the hall to me, where I sat in bed wishing the room wouldn’t sway quite so much.

  “I have to go to work,” he said, and when I looked at him, I realized his strength once more. How much sleep could he possibly have gotten? An hour? Two? And now he was off to work, where he would have to be completely focused on life outside of our twisted realm.

  “Talk to Alex when he gets up. He’ll fill you in. I’ll try to stop by at lunch, but I don’t know…”

  He kissed my forehead, stroked my hair.

  “Tell me it’s all okay,” I begged, remembering in a landslide everything that had happened the night before.

  “It’s all okay,” he assured me. “At least, it will be.” And he was out the door.

  I slept most of the morning, and when I got up, Alex was out on the balcony, wearing a white T-shirt and the rumpled pants he’d had on the previous evening. This in itself was shocking. The old Alex would have pulled out the iron from the guest-room closet and done a necessary touch-up before allowing himself to be seen. The new Alex seemed perfectly satisfied to be wearing yesterday’s clothes as he watched the cars rumble by on Sunset Boulevard.

  I stared at him from the doorway, and then walked outside barefoot to join him.

  “If your head feels anything like mine, than you have my apologies,” I said.

  “I’m the one who owes you an apology.” Alex looked over at me and smiled. It was weird to be alone with him. The last time we were alone he’d asked if I could love him. The last time we’d been alone, I had whipped him. He seemed to be recalling the same images, because he shook his head, looking half-embarrassed, half-unsure.

  “Jack said you’d tell me….”

  Alex sat down at the little table, and I took over his spot, leaning against the railing.

  I didn’t know what Jack had actually meant. Was Alex going to tell all the secrets I’d wondered about from the start? Or was he only going to tell me what had happened the night before? I stared over at Alex, but I didn’t hurry him. Clearly, he’d talk when he was ready. When he was, he said, “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”

  “What wasn’t?”

  “My little confession.”

  “Confessions never happen the way you think. Or the way you’d like.” That’s the truth, isn’t it?

  “For a while, I imagined something else. Jack between women. The two of us talking. And me saying what I wanted to say.” He stared at me. “Then you came along.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “I’m not blaming you. Don’t think that. I only mean, you were different. Jack’s been with loads of girls over the years. But he’s never moved one in before. I guess the thing is that he’s never been really serious.”

  What was Alex saying?

  “I waited, at first, to see if something else would happen. If you would flee. Not many people could take that sort of intensity, you know? From the start. He was testing you, I think. Letting you know what it means to be with him. See if you could handle the whole deal. And you kept hanging in. Holding your own. Then that night, the other night, when he let you watch…that’s when I knew I had to say something.”

  I understood in a flash what he was talking about. Letting me see Jack whip him. “Had he done that to you before?”

  Alex looked away. I was trained from years of journalism classes and working on newspapers to always keep the subject talking. But maybe it was better if I let him talk. If I didn’t ask questions, he would be able to continue at his own pace. Yet when he didn’t immediately keep going, I couldn’t keep silent.

  “What did you talk about last night?”

  “I resigned, you know. I told him I couldn’t work for him any longer. Not like this. Not as some third arm, to reach out and touch you when he wasn’t there. To spank you, or paddle you, or fuck with you, and then leave.”

  For the first time, I wondered what Alex did afterward? Where did he go when he wasn’t with the two of us? After he used a belt on me, did he find some other person in a pub—boy or girl—to act out the rest of his aggression on? Or did he search for some nameless Dom to take care of him? Jack had thought Alex was with Juliette. Was she his favorite surrogate? The one he submitted to, the one he craved?

  “Jack’s an odd duck,” Alex said. “He’s at a place in his life where he doesn’t want any bullshit. That’s why he behaved the way he did with you right away. If you were playing, he wanted to know. If you were one of these girls who needed a spanking over her fantasy Daddy’s lap, he would have sent you on your way. He doesn’t want a normal life. He doesn’t want the American dream. He’s got everything he needs professionally. He’s decided to create the world he wan
ts romantically. I think for all these years he’s been looking for someone like you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Not only a sub. But someone smart. Someone who has her own world, as well. You write. He likes that. You’re going somewhere, which means you’re not relying on him to entertain you 24/7. You’re not a princess.”

  Maybe Jack and I had gotten to the same place at the same time. When I left Byron, I’d said good-bye to all those things I’d thought I was supposed to have. Supposed to want. The station wagon and the house in suburbia. The dinners at the in-laws’. The brunches at the country clubs.

  “He was tired of the dating merry-go-round. Starting from scratch each time. So for a while, he’s simply been going to Juliette. Playing there, where he knows he can find what he wants. Every once in a while, he’s hooked up with a girl for a little bit longer, but none of them captivated his interest the way you did.”

  This was all fascinating. But I still didn’t understand where Alex was going to fit in.

  “I’ve been there the whole time. Since I was in college. I’ve been watching and learning. Doing everything I could to assist him any way he needed. Look, Sam, I didn’t love him from the start. Don’t think that. I was mesmerized by his world. It meshed with the things that I liked. But I had no idea it existed on the level that Jack takes things to. I was fine being the assistant in the past. The hired help. Because who else lives a life like this?”

  I thought for a moment. From my experience in L.A., nobody really does live that American dream. Byron’s father had left his mother for a lover, then left his lover for another, constantly trading up. Or down. But Jack was different. He wasn’t doing things on the sly. He wasn’t putting on a false front of a happy home life and then searching for his fantasies down back alleys. He wanted the back-alley life instead of the happy home life. Was that what Alex meant?

  “Jack always made sure I was taken care of. If he went to the club, he found someone for me, as well. If he had a girl home, he brought a second one. Or—every so often—a boy.”

  Alex looked at me, as if wondering whether he’d see judgment in my eyes. But really—I’ve worked in salons and beauty-supply stores since I was twelve. Half of my friends are gay men. I had no problem with Alex being gay—or bi—I wanted to know the relation to Jack.

  “It was kinky and decadent, and for awhile, there were drugs, as well.”

  Another pause, but I just shrugged. Byron’s best friend Beau had been a drug dealer for years before giving up cocaine in favor of a more stable job. I’d arrived at the very tail end of the drug years—but I’d heard the stories. Byron and his second stepmother getting high on coke at his older brother’s wedding. Besides, Brock was a dealer, too. Strange that a nice girl like me would constantly find herself on the fringe of that world, but there you go. I’ve never done hard drugs—but I was in no position to frown at Alex’s tale.

  “I think he got tired of the chaos,” Alex continued, “and he wanted something stable. Twisted, you know. Still dark. Still hard-core. But stable.”

  I nodded.

  “And he found it in you, and for the first time, I was jealous. I had always been number one for Jack, even when he was with someone else. Nobody came close to having what you have with him. And it made me realize how I felt, and what I wanted….”

  “But what do you want, Alex?”

  “A place.”

  Like I’d said. A point in the triangle.

  “What does that mean?”

  He was the one to shrug now. “Honestly? I don’t know. But Jack said he understood. Jack said we’ll work it out.” He beamed at me. “He said he couldn’t imagine life without me…without either of us. We’ll work it out. That’s what Jack promised. And you know, I’ve been at his side all these years, I have to trust him.”

  Alex stared at me, obviously wanting me to comment. To respond. “Can you?” he asked me.

  Yesterday’s query was could I love him. What was today?

  “Can I what?”

  “Can you trust Jack?”

  That was easy to answer. “Yes.”

  “And can you imagine something else. Something different. Something more?”

  Could I? That was simple, as well. “Of course.”

  Byron had shattered my image of what happy home life was meant to be. Jack was offering new visions for me to experience. New ways for me to travel. And with all my heart I knew that I was ready for the ride.

  Chapter Twenty–Eight:

  You Can’t Always Get What You Want

  After that, we stood there together, in silence that is never really silent. Los Angeles can’t shut up for a fucking minute. There were the regular sounds of the traffic and some random helicopter, and construction going on somewhere around the neighborhood. But Alex and I were quiet. For a long time.

  I tried to imagine what Jack’s plan might ultimately have been. Was he always looking to incorporate Alex in this way? Jack seemed far too smart to me to believe that he thought Alex was never going to crack.

  And yet I believed that Jack was never going to crack. I believed in Jack’s strength the way some people believe in God.

  Because I’m a person who craves motion, I could only lose myself in the revelations for so long. When I needed more coffee, I headed inside. Folded the blanket that Alex had slept under. Straightened the remnants of the talk from the night before. I got showered and dressed, and picked up my notebook, planning on working from home in case Jack really did get time off for lunch.

  Alex left to retrieve the car from the valet lot at the bar he’d been to the previous night. He was a lot like me in some respects. He couldn’t stand to be idle, either. And he had no real vision of leaving Jack’s employ. In all respects, Alex wanted more. Not less.

  I was hard at work by the time Jack came home, and when he walked in, he smiled. Working is a good sign for me. I can’t write if I’m upset. The same way I can’t eat when I’m angry, or depressed, or nervous. Seeing my pen fly across the pages assured Jack that I truly was accepting the situation. He set down his jacket and came to my side, pulling the notebook from my hands, speed-reading what I’d spent the past hour creating.

  “It’s good,” he said, placing the notebook on the table, rather than handing it back to me. “Fast paced. Energetic. I like that.”

  I thanked him but still waited for the rest. He had to know what an unusual morning I’d had with Alex. I expected him to comment on the situation in some way. Jack pulled my legs over his lap, sitting so relaxed with me on the sofa.

  “I didn’t plan it,” he said after a few minutes. “You should know that.”

  “Which part?”

  “Any of it. I didn’t plan that you would be the way you are. That I would need you here with me. That knowing you were here would make the rest of my life fall into place. I didn’t plan that you being here would drive Alex over the edge. And generally,” he continued, “I plan everything.”

  I knew this to be true. From the careful black-and-white décor in his homes to the military precision of his closet, Jack kept his whole world in line.

  “At first,” Jack said, “I was waiting. I hoped things would go smoothly, but I had no idea. You definitely were rebounding. That was easy to see. And I didn’t want to scare you off or anything, but I didn’t hold back.”

  Exactly what Alex had said. It had all been some kind of twisted test from the start.

  “And when you rose to each challenge, I became more intrigued. More sure of my decision. I didn’t stop for a moment to think about how Alex was feeling. He’s always been behind what I do. But he has a different emotional makeup than I do.”

  Was that Jack’s way of saying Alex was weaker, or that Alex was more human? Alex had feelings? Where Jack was generally colder. Less swayed by emotions than by facts.

  “But what does it all mean?” I asked. “Where… I mean, how…?” I didn’t really know what I meant. Was Alex going to move in with us? Was he J
ack’s other love?

  “I think acknowledging the situation was what Alex wanted. The start, anyway. He knows there are ways that I feel about you, that I’ll never feel for him. I think he knows that, anyway. He’s not going to sleep in our bed, if that’s what you’re wondering about. You won’t be the filling in some sex sandwich. At least, not every day….”

  I liked the image that immediately rose to the front of my mind.

  “It’s not something you can fix in a day. You understand that, right? We’re talking long haul. So the real question is, are you willing?”

  “Willing…”

  “To try. To do something different. To be someone different.”

  “Different from what?”

  “From anyone else. From all the other cookie-cutter people that you meet. From the girl who told you on your first day at college that you weren’t going to have any friends if you didn’t join a sorority. From your boss at the salon who said if you didn’t become a born-again, you wouldn’t get into heaven. Are you ready to close the door on all those other people’s beliefs and rules and live the way you want to?”

  Jack had an excellent memory. Both of those stories were true. So in a way, I already was doing what he was asking. By being a pornographer, I already was breaking most people’s rules of conduct. But Jack wasn’t talking occupation. He was talking lifestyle.

  “Could you go out to dinner with both of us, feel Alex’s hand on your leg under the table, feel mine caressing your face where everyone could see? Could you leave arm in arm with both of us and know that people thought you were…”

  “A slut?” I interrupted, playing.

  “An anything. Anything that they thought. What I’m really asking is whether you can forget about what other people will say, what other people want from you, and focus only on what I want?”

  “Yes, Jack.”