Manties in a Twist

by J. A. Rock

  Dave kicked off the meeting with, “So Cobalt’s closing.”

  “Don’t remind me.” I folded my arms on the table. “Now my mom’s always gonna be at Riddle, so I’ll never be able to go there again.”

  Miles shuddered. “I say good riddance.”

  “Why’s it closing?” Gould asked.

  Dave played with a Bobby’s Discount Dentist pen, clicking it over and over. “Cobalt is closing because it’s the moldering diaper on the Unabomber’s rashed behind.”

  Gould snatched the pen from Dave and tossed it aside. “Yeah, but they have free snacks. Like, old-school stuff—Nutter Butters. Fun Dip.”

  Miles looked at him sharply. “We all need to stop being so snack-motivated. The phalluses of every man in that club have taken a ‘fun dip’ in innumerable orifices.”

  I nudged Ryan and spoke in a low voice. “Write this down for a concept: dirty picture book called Isabelle’s Innumerable Orifices.”

  He snorted. He’d been texting with Amanda since we got here, and I kept catching the others giving him looks of disapproval. Which was frustrating, because come on, it wasn’t like they never played on their phones during meetings. But I kinda wished Ryan would try to make a good impression.

  Dave leaned back. “Cobalt’s status as the Bates Motel of BDSM clubs aside, I don’t know if you guys caught the story going around about the woman who was raped there last year? Gould, I know you heard. Kamen?”

  I shook my head.

  Dave continued. “Okay. Well, she sent us a message specifically asking if we could use the Sounding Board to open a discussion on the ‘two DMs must agree to intervene’ rule that some clubs have in place.”

  Gould nodded. “That’s Cobalt’s policy?”

  “Yep,” Maya said. “Some clubs, including Cobalt, have a rule that two dungeon monitors have to agree to intervene if a scene looks unsafe or nonconsensual. In the case of the woman at Cobalt, her dom had her tied down and was fingering her, even though they’d negotiated no sex. I guess one DM saw the scene and thought at first she was, like, in ecstasy rather than having a panic attack. Once the DM got suspicious, she had to go seek out another DM. And by the time both DMs agreed to stop the scene and see if the woman was okay, the rape had been going on for a while.”

  Gould shifted. “So what’d they do to the dom once they figured it out?”

  “Nothing.” Dave sounded pissed. “She didn’t feel comfortable calling it rape in front of the dom, and she told the DMs she was okay, just a little overwhelmed.”

  “The house safeword there is red,” I pointed out. “Couldn’t she have said that, and no one would’ve been confused?”

  Dave glared at me, so I knew I’d said the wrong thing. “Bottoms aren’t always in a headspace to be able to safeword. And if something traumatic was happening to her, it’s easy to understand why she didn’t say red.”

  “Okay, sorry.”

  Most of the time I just let other people tell me what was okay to say and what wasn’t. One time I was commenting on the fact that Miles, despite being a total nerd, is, like, a chocolate motherfucking stallion, whose skin makes his teeth look amazafreaktron white. Dave explained to me why I’m not supposed to think Miles is hot based on his skin, because it’s objectifying or whatever. But I never quite got that. Because Miles’s skin is, like, the best, so why can’t we talk about it? Also, Miles told me it wasn’t a big deal—he was glad he was hot and black, and he loved his teeth.

  It’s just messed up is all, because you’re allowed to say you like blonds, or you think big lips are the best kind of lips, but you’re not allowed to say brown skin is hot? I wouldn’t care if someone was like, Pale skin gives me a huge boner. But Dave said that was because I’d never been oppressed.

  “So,” Miles prompted. “This is going to be a discussion topic?”

  Dave refocused. “Yes. The woman’s not looking to press charges. She just—”

  “You know what the dungeons ought to do,” Ryan interrupted loudly. “Ban penetration from public play spaces. Lots of states do it.”

  “Dude.” I nudged him and whispered, “You’re talking in shouty caps.”

  Dave was staring at Ryan with his mouth slightly open. “As I was saying. She wants us to talk about the two-DM rule on the Sounding Board. Because, as her experience shows, waiting until two DMs agree means an assault might go on longer than it has to.” He paused. “And if a scene is, like, life-threateningly unsafe, a few seconds can make all the difference.”

  Silence.

  “With Hal,” Gould said slowly, “we saw how long it can take one DM to notice something’s wrong.” He glanced at Ryan. “And that violations can occur without penetration.”

  Ryan set his phone down. “I just think if bottoms can’t take more responsibility for who they play with and how, then the rule makers need to take a more active role.”

  I seriously thought Dave was gonna explode. But Gould was the one who spoke up. “If that’s a way of saying Hal—”

  “It’s not about Hal. That’s the thing, you guys. If we want this group to have a wider reach, then it can’t just be about this one experience you all had. We’ve got to be ready to talk about the issues objectively, without letting emotions rule us.”

  I tried to step on his foot or something, but it was too late.

  “I like how you include yourself in ‘us,’” Dave said. “Because you obviously feel so much emotion about Hal’s de—”

  Ryan just talked right over him. “Even the tough issues. Even the stuff that makes us uncomfortable. We need to be able to consider all sides, and to disagree.”

  Dave nodded, shrugging. “You know what, I’ll give you that. Good point.”

  I closed my eyes for a second, relieved. Ryan loved to debate—I’d seen him take sides he didn’t even agree with just to keep an argument going. And Dave was a wild card—sometimes when he fought with someone, it was like those dogs that snap at each other for a minute, then a second later are wagging their tails and licking each other’s butts. And other times it was ugly and went on and on.

  “Anyway,” Miles stepped in. “Back to our topic. And yes, we are going to use our experience as an example. If Riddle had a two-DM rule, and if Michael had noticed Hal that night, I presume he would have had the sense to realize that the rule doesn’t apply when someone’s life is in danger. Because the minute Bill left Hal alone, that ceased to be a ‘scene,’ and became instead gross negligence.”

  Maya and Dave were having a conversation with their eyebrows. Gould was staring blankly at the table, which I kind of imagined was what he did when he was fantasizing about chainsawing someone in half. But when no one else spoke, he looked up. “So what’s the argument for the two-DM rule? Just privacy?”

  Maya sniffed and rubbed her nose. “Uhh. Yeah, I think. I’m not sure why there’s a debate. Isn’t it waaayyy worth the risk of briefly interrupting someone’s headspace to make sure someone isn’t getting assaulted?”

  Miles raised his eyebrows. “A lot of people wouldn’t agree. In an intense scene, fucking up your headspace can ruin the whole thing.”

  Dave shrugged. “Who cares? If you’re gonna play in a public place, you’ve got to be prepared for the possibility of headspace invasion.”

  Maya nodded. “And in a space where most pairings are male/female, it’s better safe than sorry. Which is why I kind of agree with Ryan about rule makers maybe needing to get more involved, but—”

  “God,” Dave muttered, “have you seen Riddle’s new entry contract? They couldn’t get more involved unless the DMs stood there and personally rolled the condoms on you.”

  “—but I don’t agree that banning penetration’s the answer,” Maya finished.

  Miles leaned back. “Probably most boundary disputes don’t even involve penetration.”

  “Why male/female pairings specifically?” Ryan asked Maya.

  “Because in general guys have more trouble respecting boundaries than women do.”<
br />
  “Uh, not to sound like a total douche, but: hashtag NotAllMen.”

  “Dude, don’t be that guy.” I knew from a bunch of Sounding Board discussions why it was shitty to use “NotAllMen,” and I kinda couldn’t believe Ryan would go there.

  Maya gave him a you dipshit look. “I said ‘in general.’ Finger Bang has been running events for over a year now, and their event committee says they’ve had zero reports of sexual assault at all-female kink events. In fact, their biggest complaint is that nobody can get any action at the play parties because the women are all politely nibbling snacks in the corner instead of going up to one another and being like, ‘Please pound me into next week.’”

  Dave whistled. “Sounds like a blast.”

  Maya laughed. “I’ve heard it’s better than it used to be. But my first play party with them a few months ago, oh my God. Zero playing until, like, an hour in. No fucking until two hours in. There really are differences in the way men and women play. And there really are differences in the way queer people and straight people play.”

  “Uhhh, no kidding,” Dave said.

  Maya rubbed her nose again, more vigorously. “But, yeah, that’s why I thought it was so great when you suggested hooking the two groups up in the first place. Because the Subs Club is doing an awesome thing, talking about rape and abuse in the kink world. But you’re a bunch of guys. And it feels a little like you’re taking over an issue that mostly affects women.”

  Ryan looked right at Maya. “Guys can also be raped. And we understand why this is an important issue. Nobody owns rape.”

  I elbowed him. “She’s just saying we need more perspectives. You felt the same way. You liked our club, but you thought we needed to consider the dom’s perspective, or whatever. Because we were all subs.”

  “True.”

  Maya stank-eyed Ryan a little. “There’ve been women’s groups talking about these issues for decades, but we don’t get as much traction because it’s easy for people to dismiss us as hairy-armpitted Feminazis who cry rape every time someone brushes against us in a public space. Like, honestly? It kind of infuriates me how people are willing to listen to you guys when you talk about it.”

  “Not totally.” Gould was almost too quiet to hear. “When we started, we got a lot of backlash.”

  “That was your review blog,” Ryan pointed out.

  Dave shook his head. “The review blog was just a springboard that let people express the, uh, like, broader sentiment that we didn’t have any right to be complaining about abuse in the first place. Or that we were creating injustices where none existed.”

  “All right,” Maya said. “Genderalizations aside, we should definitely open the two-DM topic up for conversation. I’m happy to kick it off.”

  “So it would behoove us to find a DM to participate in the discussion,” Miles suggested. “And tops as well. We can ask the tops about whether they’ve ever done a dubious-looking scene in a public play space, and if so, how did spectators and/or DMs react? And we could ask the DM to share stories of scenarios that were tricky to gauge.”

  I scratched some gunk off the surface of the table. “That sounds awesome possum.”

  Dave cleared his throat. “Do you think Michael would participate as the DM?”

  Michael was the DM who’d been on duty the night Hal had died. Dave almost never talked about him. Dave blamed Bill, he blamed GK and Kel, and he blamed Cinnamon. But he never shit on Michael for not noticing Hal was in trouble, and I could never figure out why. I mean, I wasn’t pissed at Michael either, just because I kept thinking how awful it would be to be him. Like, you’ve got this whole club to keep an eye on, and you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and miss the one serious thing that happens all night. Fuuuuck.

  Miles looked at Dave. “I don’t know how we could ask him the question I just posited without seeming vindictive.”

  “I’m not being vindictive,” Dave insisted. “I just figure he of all DMs has an important story to tell. I mean, when I first heard about DMs, I pictured, like, the Buckingham Palace guards. These people whose only job it was to stand at the periphery of a scene and listen for a safeword and not move even if you kicked them in the nuts. Then I started going to Riddle and realized they were just volunteers who like hanging out and talking to people.” He paused. “So maybe Michael tells the Sounding Board about, just, a night in the life of a DM, or whatever. Help us figure out what the challenges would be and how it’s possible to fuck up.”

  “He would get crucified on the Sounding Board,” Gould said. “Let’s ask Regina.”

  Dave gave in, kinda grumbly, and then said, “So this segues nicely into our next topic: the kink fair.”

  Maya perked up. “Working title: Kinkstravaganzapalooza.”

  Dave high-fived her, then faced the rest of us. “So we’re shooting for maybe June of next year to make this thing happen. And Maya and I were trying to think of ways we can address safety as part of the event without it sounding like . . . you know.”

  “Do we know?” Miles asked.

  Maya jumped in. “Like, we don’t want to have some trifold board with construction paper letters that’s all, ‘Step One: Be Aware of Your Surroundings.’ We want something fun, but accurate.”

  Dave nodded. “We talked about putting on skits, but we’d want serious actors. Actors who would move the audience to fucking tears. Meryl Streep and Daniel Day-Lewis star in Why Pre-Scene Negotiation Matters.”

  Maya nodded too. “Maybe some interpretive dance.”

  “Or juggling.”

  “But we couldn’t get DDL or Meryl. And we can’t dance or juggle.” Maya gave a what can you do? shrug.

  “Soooo, we’re back to square one,” Dave admitted.

  I glanced up from a game Ryan and I were playing where we rubbed the sides of our thighs together under the table. “I could write a song. People would just think it was funny or whatever, a song listing off all these BDSM safety rules. And then at the end one of you could be like, ‘But seriously, this shit is real.’”

  “I support the safety song.” Ryan put an arm around my shoulders.

  I put my arm around his shoulders too. “Yeah. This is Team Safety Song right here. We’re on this like guac on ribs.”

  Gould gave a single nod. “Team Safety Song is pretty damn adorable.”

  Dave sighed. “You two are so cute it’s gross.” He didn’t sound like he meant it, though. “I’ll bet you do all kinds of weird shit that would totally ruin my impression of you.”

  I got kinda freaked for a second, like maybe I’d leaned over too far at some point and the guys had seen that I was wearing lady underwear. “We’re just doing the regular stuff.”

  “Yep,” Ryan confirmed.

  Miles looked all sly-like. “What’s ‘the regular stuff’?”

  I cleared my throat. “Uhhh . . . flogging. Bondage.”

  “Hand—” Ryan glanced at me “—cuffs.”

  “—jobs,” I said at the same time.

  “Handcuffs, handjobs.” I nodded. “Lots of hands.”

  Dave tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “You guys are into something really weird, aren’t you?”

  Ryan and I shook our heads.

  “Nope,” I said innocently. “We’re just a normal couple, doing laundry in a legit laundry room and arguing about what to get at Geegs.”

  Dave frowned. “Jigs?”

  “Geegs.”

  “What the fuck is Geegs?”

  “It’s what we call Giant Eagle.”

  “Oh my God, you two are such nerds.”

  “Are we? Or are we masters of adulting?” I leaned forward. “Here’s a little herb hack for you. You know the cashier with the orangish-blond hair, Cary? Well, she’s super proud of herself for finally figuring out what cilantro is. So when she sees it, she doesn’t check the PLU number to see if you got the organic kind or the regular. She just enters the PLU for the regular. So you can get the organic stuff for sixty-nine c
ents instead of ninety-nine.” I turned to Ryan, high-fived him, and sang, “Then you’re not eatin’ pesticiiiiiiiiiiides!”

  Dave stared, trying not to laugh. “Herb hacks? Who are you?”

  We talked a while longer, and then when things were winding down, Dave looked right at Ryan and said, “I’m really glad you made it to a meeting, man.”

  That made me so incredibly freaking happy.

  Ryan grinned. “Me too. I always forget how fun you all are together.”

  Dave nodded. “We’re super fun, and the best of friends. Like the Baby-Sitters Club.”

  “I had to watch that movie eight hundred times with my little sister when I was younger. Which one of you is Dawn?”

  “Is she the blond one?” Dave glanced around the table. “I think we all want to be Dawn.”

  Maya raised her hand. “I do not want to be Dawn.”

  “Though Stacey’s blond too. And she’s the smart one, so I guess that’s Miles. And Gould’s totally the shy one—Mary Anne? So I’m Dawn. And Maya, you’re the one who gets added later—Abby?”

  Ryan grinned at me. “And Kamen’s Claudia. Because he’s creative.” He ruffled my hair and looked back at the group. “So who’s Kristy?”

  Dave made a face. “Nobody wants to be Kristy. She’s too controlling.”

  We all stared at him. “You sure you’re Dawn?” Gould asked, grinning.

  Dave mock-sighed. “I’m not controlling. I’m just a born leader.”

  “It’s okay,” Maya said. “Kristy is actually an astute and assertive businesswoman who doesn’t take shit.”

  “Well that’s me all over. Not the astute and assertive part, but businesswoman, for sure. You should see my collection of professional blouses.”

  That made me press my legs together for a second. Which was weird, because I’d gone my whole life seeing women’s clothes or hearing about them without getting boners. Why all of a sudden was a blouse the world’s most exciting thing to me?