by JR King
I should have done it.
Peter—Pete to his friends—was the right mix of conservative and modern-cultured. Blond, azure blue eyes, and the sort of indestructible bone structure you’d agree selling your soul for in a heartbeat. Though I liked him, his fine blonde hair, his pretty boy patrician face, his lily-white complexion, and his snotty accent admittedly accounted for a bore at times. Peter had a B-type personality; I was A all the way. Mainly, he looked like a quintessential WASP. Everything about his appearance reeked arrogance, elitism, garden parties, debutantes dressed in monogrammed sweaters, dirty martinis at the clubhouse, and stuffy old money. He was over five foot eight, with broad, corded shoulders, thick arms and legs that were carved with muscle; in essence a ubiquity of the stereotypical led-by-his-penis jock.
Summer was almost behind us; no more masquerade balls, enigmatic strangers chasing me, wafts of chlorine and charred meats. I was looking forward to winter, that smell of candied apples and spice filling up the streets. Peter walked me home after school let out, and we were sitting on my bed at my grandparents’ house when he initiated the conversation. He was so handsome and sweet and gentle, I kept telling myself to take courage so he wouldn’t dump me. I wasn’t all for sex, but I felt lucky. Lucky that Peter had chosen me. Not a bungling idiot, he was a star quarterback. We only fooled around from time to time. My strict religious upbringing withheld me from doing more without the fear of God’s wrath coming down on me. I wasn’t a stupid virgin; teenagers experiment, masturbate, and explore their limits. I didn’t do any of these things because orgasms weren’t worth an eternity in hell. In hindsight, the idea that some deity could be bothered to punish an individual for what they chose to do with their body seems ridiculous at best. My grandparents were out and I wanted to please Peter. Impress him.
He neither forced the matter nor himself that day.
Maybe it was the uncharted territory.
Three days later, it happened.
Peter and I sat in taut silence as I watched him spread out what looked like two types of tobacco. I asked him, “What-cha doing?”
“I’m going to mix in tobacco with a little pot. Belongs to my mother’s new hubby. I thought I might roll a couple of joints for us before my buzz gets too high.”
I was in a quandary as to whether or not he kidded about being buzzed, and of course I tacitly powered through, even though I wanted to butt out. I just didn’t want to seem like a goody-goody.
“Who are you?” I lightened the mood with a snicker and a goofy smile.
He smiled good-naturedly and, in a voice low and rich like molasses, he said, “An adventurous guy hiding in plain sight.”
With the mixture spread evenly in two rough shapes of a cigarette, Peter reached for the silver colored rolling paper press. In two shakes of a lamb’s tail he rested a gossamer sheet in a crease between his thumb and middle finger, forefinger resting in the crease to hold it down. Using his free hand, he delicately transferred the tobacco on the paper, starting with the end he was holding it with. After evening out and picking apart the lumps with the tips of his fingers, he took hold of the paper with his other hand and molded the proper shape of a joint between paralleled fingers.
Peter grinned like a cat that ate the canary. “Voilà.” He pinched off the clumped bits sticking out of the ends and folded the paper in to narrow a hole at one end. “Lightweight stuff.”
Oh, what the hell, don’t be standoffish, I said to myself, accepting what he held out at me with an extremely limp wrist. Rarely did I act impulsively; every move was evaluated and debated. Momentarily distracted, I drew too deeply on the joint, regretting it as my eyes watered. I went about it the wrong way. Breath tickling against my ear, Peter stroked my back to dispel my cough. Once it passed, I took a smaller puff and stood in control. Or sat in control.
Peter asked, “Like?”
A flare lighted up my veins. “Like.” It wasn’t correct. I wasn’t the least bit enjoying smoking pot. I did it to show Peter I was a good sport.
Apparently unimpressed, he said, “Uh-huh.” Every nuance of his face had turned lugubrious.
Light on my heels with ballet flats, I hopped up and smoothened the frilly fabric of my polkadot motif Kay Unger dress that swirled widely around my long legs. I went to the glass and grid-motif balcony. The evening breeze floated the sweet waft of jasmine toward me, spotlights in a fountain glimmering like miniature moons in water. The light from the fountain cast an electric emerald glow over the courtyard pavement.
In the golden, tasseled shade underneath the awning of a nearby townhouse, a couple was frolicking. I didn’t know if time was standing still or accelerating. At some point it became irrelevant. One bottle of wine became two, the dizzying lights began to seem natural and, a woman’s husky, sultry voice over electronic music filled the room. From time to time, the throbbing, percussive beat startled my pulse. The dimmed lights cast Peter’s face in shadow, but somehow I could see him clearly. I studied him like he was a prized diamond. I appreciated the scruffy jaw, the intense eyes, and the messy hair. At some point his hand was resting on my knee, and at some point it began to feel exciting. I felt safe when we sat cuddled on a sofa in his parents’ living room, right until he reached back and pulled my arm around his waist. Then we were kissing, he was on top of me, his hips pressing into mine, kneeing my legs. His one hand kneaded the swell of my poorly developed breast as the other one held me down.
He was hurting me, pressing the air out of me, bruising my bony hips. When he yanked the hem of my dress up my body, I didn’t feel lucky and wonderstruck anymore, and he sure as hell had ceased to be the handsome quarterback. He kept on kissing me in a slipshod way even after I’d stopped, and now I could smell his saliva over my mouth. He no longer carried a sweet musk on his tongue, just bad breath. It’s funny how something as sweet as a kiss can become horrible within the blink of en eye when the other party stops participating.
I never fought him. Looking at the vaulted ceiling that was decorated with thatched patches, feelings unverbalized, my eyes began to stream. Peter was enjoying himself even as I was stiff like a mummy. There were no traces of humanity in the act, it looked more like a sequence from a nightmare: if I were a corpse Peter wouldn’t have noticed the difference. To his credit, he did have a condom packet in his pocket. Having employed the prerequisite bit of latex for his bad cause, he pushed my legs open with one hand, his nails scratching me as he pulled my underwear out of the way. I couldn’t get away; his body held me in a grip that ensured my legs were wide open, and any fighting reserves I had were obliterated into nothingness from smoking cannabis.
“Let’s get this over with, I figured it’d be like this. Fucking Christ, you could’ve given me head since a year! You never initiate, you’ll always be a frigid bitch.”
Penetration arrived with no warning. It all happened so quickly—like a cloud passing before the sun, a streak of lightning in a storm, a shooting star in the night sky—that I felt encumbered. My body stretched and my skin burned when he entered, his thrusts sharp and burning. Felt like he was going to rip me to shreds. I turned my head to the side and cried earnestly. It hurt a lot, just like I’d anticipated, but it wasn’t the penetration that broke me. The sense of my wisdom’s futility, the realization of my generalization, that’s what broke me. I knew I was straitlaced, I just hadn’t expected him to call me out on it.
“Open your fat thighs and look me in the eyes,” shouted Peter. “Elena, look at me!”
I made the effort, shuddering and shaking. My breath came to a stop, looking at him, his gaze inches from mine. I’d even expected my body to save me from myself, but it never did. No matter, a lubricated condom ensured he could shove into me, mercilessly bruising me. I was in pain as I quivered on the hard flesh inside me. I felt a jolt, and then many more before it all faded into a kind of flattened exhaustion. Yep, just like that, it all went flat, dead. I didn’t care having him inside me anymore. I turned my head to the side and s
tared at a chest of drawers beneath the huge mirror mounted on the wall. Time is one weird, undecipherable bitch, I thought. When you want to savor something it seems to end too quickly, but when you want something horrible to be over it takes an eternity to end. I blamed time for stretching and elongating my torture.
Peter finished minutes later and pulled out of me with a ridiculous post-rape kiss, and while disposing of the spent condom he said, “This won’t work, Elena. You could’ve resisted a little, fought me—make things interesting. I wish I’d listened to the guys when they told me that magnificent girls like you are always cold bitches.”
He looked proud, as though his worthless act had done me a favor of a lifetime. Hardly necessary, but still, he didn’t even bother with apologies and recriminations and pleas not to tell anyone.
Straightening my skirt, I stood up. I saw a few hundred-dollar bills on the side table, stacked beneath my slouchy handbag. I stared at them naively. Indignation filled me when I counted them and understood what this was. To pawn off his guilt, my own boyfriend had paid me five thousand dollars for taking my virginity.
“Take it, El,” that’s what he said afterward.
“Drop dead, Peter,” I barked, gnashing my teeth. I left the money and staggered toward the front door. Again, in hindsight, I regretted my decision. I regretted many things. Realistically, I wished I could relive the moment, to fight him. Just to show him I had fire in me. That I had something worth making him feel he’d lost everything after dumping me.
My brain told me that everything was completely and utterly my fault. Because of Peter, I started keeping a diary—a fortunate outcome. Even if there was little love lost between us, I covered for him in seamless fashion. I never bothered telling anyone the truth. I was smart enough to know that doing so would hurt me far more than him; too many undying fires to count, it was my cross to bear. Reactionary people would doubt a star quarterback had paid me after raping me, or worse, they would pity me. Maybe even place blame on me for not being quick on the uptake…and smoking pot. And my grandparents, well, they would both reach for the gun safe that had one too many short guns.
From the get-go, I’d been anxious about going back to school. It felt like I’d failed everyone who bothered to befriend me. Guess what, I was no longer shy and insecure. What’s the point of peer pressure, social angst, and the tamping down of raging insecurities that congress with teenage life? There’s all that dreaded crap, and then there’s life. No longer interested in hanging out with the popular crowd, I played WoW with the nerds.
*
“El?” Grandpa stood beside the bed, glowering at me, his patience crackling like sparks. It was the good cop-bad cop routine. “What happened out there?”
“I started…like this diet I read about online.” Were there an Olympic event that involved not contracting the muscles of the face, I would have topped it with honors and gotten my face on a cereal box.
A flicker of surprise crossed his face before the World War of body talk began. As he laid it on thick with patronizing condescension and that fleeting you’re-crazy look, I wished Switzerland were nearby. I’ll spare you the details.
In retrospect, a guardian angel must have been watching over me, because Peter had left for some backwater city in Europe. What the eye doesn’t see. General depressing things aside, I went on to graduate from High School with honors, and then I left Boston.
Alexander Turner
The PR Guy
Now is the part where I have to tell you I liked inflicting pain and you stop liking me—if you liked me a little to begin with. I had a penchant for S&M, not the lifestyle. Don’t expect contracts and collars and condoning humiliation.
The very same week after the encounter with Peter, and his subsequent elimination, my father gave me my trust fund back. It came together with a fortune he’d stashed away in Zürich bank accounts, and ownership of a multi-pinned empire of properties on the Upper East Side and Meadow Lane, Aspen, Indian Creek, Beverly Hills and Brentwood, and those were just the ones within the US.
But not before attaching a condition.
Both flight attendants had wavy dark hair and wore it loose, a hairstyle that I appreciated. Think hair pulling. I dismissed the taller one because she had bangs, a mutilation that I hated. Why would a girl do that to herself?
“Mr. Turner, won’t you please have a seat? Mr. Parkman is running a bit late.”
“What’s your safeword?”
Splotches of color flagged the crests of her cheeks. “Apple.”
“Apple it is.”
Keep your shirt on and mellow out, I had her consent. I agree with you, this is definitely not a Nicholas Sparks novel in the making. I handed out punishments like candy on Halloween. Also, remind me to send this girl the latest Apple devices.
A silver zipper ran half the length of her dress’s back; an Armani turtleneck sheath dress in black. I didn’t tear it downward like a brute.
“Nice uniform. Don’t move.” I brought my hand around her. It trailed upward along the line of her spine until my fingers found her dress’s zipper. Holding the cold metal tab between my thumb and forefinger, I pressed it deep into my flesh as to glue it on skin. I began descending my hand with careful deliberation, taking the zip with it in a slow crackle. Felt like my own back had interlocked teeth, opening up to let the beast out.
She stood stock-still as the zip reached its perigee. “Step out of it, and your underwear. Then, hold my waist.”
Most likely because she’d held her breath, she let out a squeaky moan. Once she stood naked before me, I took her shoulders in my hands, guiding her closer, pressing her against the hardness of my chest. With no preliminaries, I brought the palm of my right hand down against her bottom with a crack. I was dominant and hard each time I slapped her ass. Arching her back, she clutched my shirt tighter. I hit her with veracity, spanking in such a manner that I felt the sting of every stroke on my palm. When her cheeks flushed, I paused to stroke her aching flesh.
“Does that hurt?”
Half-expectantly, half-maturely, “Yes…h-hurts…a lot,” she breathed in a low pitch on my clothes.
My hand hovered over her buttocks. “One last time, I don’t read lips. I need an intelligible answer.”
She perked up noticeably. “Yes, sir, it hurts a lot.”
I cracked the flat of my hand down against her ass harder, which brought about a gasp of surprise-pain in her. “You can take it.”
“I’ve made no mistakes,” she pleaded, anxiousness pouring from her voice.
Spanking was simply a surefire way to let my brain unspool the tangles that build up over days. There was no disguising the sadistic edge to my voice. “This isn’t a punishment.”
“Why are you spanking me?” She gasped and exhaled richly at the next slap, her perfectly red-lipsticked mouth forming an O of surprise.
I smiled, pursing my lips. “Why do you think?”
“You like it?” She asked this throatily.
Her reaction earned her a soft, playful smack on the bottom. “That’s right, pet. I’m spanking you because it pleases me to do so.” I withdrew my hand. “Get dressed and go find your colleague. She shall serve us while you wait in the bedroom.”
I watched her put on her clothes, enjoying the sight of my handprint on her behind, and the creamy sheen of juice that ran down the insides of her thighs. Glistening diamonds of perspiration lined her spine, pooling in the hollow dimples above the fine curve of her ass. I grinned. Sitting down would sting like a dozen of bees. That pink little bottom of hers looked so good, I wanted to fuck it.
Later.
It wasn’t often that I flew accompanied, but on the flight back from the South of France, I had company.
I watched the man enter, rummaging in my mind for his first name. Never mind the slim cordovan Gucci briefcase, the black luggage tag on his Louis Vuitton carry-on had a fractional jet card, meaning he leased a private jet for limited hours. It also meant he wanted one
but couldn’t afford it yet.
He waded toward me, offering his hand with a winsome smile. With his out-of-season tan and the few creases at the corners of his eyes, I deduced he rarely sunbathed without sunglasses.
I shifted the tumbler in my hand so we could shake. I seized his hand with alacrity and shook it with a firm grip, but not bone-crushing, three-second rule, proper eye contact, one pump before release.
With a soft, smooth Kentucky drawl, he said, “We meet at last, Mr. Turner.” His hand remained nestled in mine. The clasp was strong and neat, despite the dampness.
I tilted my head, looked at him with a suspicious expression. “Let’s dispense with the Bondesque formalities.”
He took the seat opposite mine, crossed his legs, and spoke studiedly. “To be frank, I play my cards close to the vest. I don’t work on squirrely reputations. I’m doing this for him. Keep in mind that I’m working behind the scenes for the senatorial candidate in Illinois, he needs to be elected on November 2nd.”
“The Obama guy? He’s senator—future material?”
“Swings and roundabouts, I’ve eight months to find out what he’s all about. As you can appreciate, working with politicians is my priority, not playboy billionaires who stick their dick in every pink and plush pussy that has sufficiently wetted. Not to mention you’re a son of a bitch who has anger issues.”
Meet Jerry. My newly appointed publicist who worked for a global think-tank in Washington DC. Another one of my father’s private jets had picked him up from Kosovo, where together with the UN and the EU he calmed the sizeable social unrest that beset the country. A harbinger of good things to come, even if I must say so myself. Candid to a fault with clients and disturbingly diplomatic with the media. He was raised in the South, tall, blond, cover-star handsome, and, this may or may not come as a surprise; he was courtly with women. Southern boys are a different kind, aren’t they? Inbred gentlemen who’d perfected the art of handling women as if they’re handling fine-grained porcelain.
