by J. A. Rock
“It’s dark,” he said. “Weird and dark. You’re using awesome images.”
He’d been spending a lot of time over the past few days with his laptop and the digital sketchpad for his art program. He got on another kick about Seattle. Then about Austin, because he said the music scene there was perfect for me, and plus it was dog-friendly, so if we got our own dog, we’d be able to take it everywhere. Except now he was thinking we should get a cat instead, because they were less work. I just kinda tried to nod along when he said stuff like that. I really hated to think about moving. I tried to make myself interested in it. But the truth was, moving sounded like the getting-pissed-on of vanilla life.
“What do you think about that?” I asked Collingsworth one morning after Ryan had left for work. “Would you ever want to leave this city?”
He just panted and drooled on the floor.
I gave him my toast crusts and stood to get the guitar.
Got restless as soon as I started playing.
So I put the guitar down and practiced kneeling instead. Practiced spreading my legs and pretended I was waiting for Ryan to give me orders. Then I started thinking it was weird to practice feeling submissive, so I stood up and cleaned the kitchen and tried to figure out what the fuck was wrong with me. Even at work that evening, I felt weird. Like it suddenly occurred to me how many years I’d been doing the same exact thing at the Green Kitchen: Chop vegetables. Chop meat. Break down displays. Talk to Hannah about where to set up stations. Joke around with everyone—same jokes we’d been making forever.
Why was I so content with ordinary shit unless I was with Ryan? That night, when I got up for some midnight Fruit Roll-Ups, I looked across the kitchen and into the front hall at the well-dressed hare painting. Imagined it hanging in a different house, someday. In Seattle or Austin. Or else in a storage unit while Ryan and I went off and, like, Peace Corps-ed or something.
I thought about how my dad had lived in this city his whole life before his separation from Mom, and then he went to Oregon and made a new home. People changed—houses, careers, friends . . .
Changing from jeans to a dress for a few hours felt amazing. Moving from my little studio into an apartment with Ryan had been awesome. Getting a dog would be the shit. Everything else was hard for me.
“Fuck it,” I whispered to the well-dressed hare. “If I have all these things, and they’re the things I want, then why do I feel weird?”
The hare didn’t answer. Probs because he was never gonna change. He was always gonna be well dressed and smug as fuck about it.
I punched out a piece of Fruit Roll-Up and fed it to Collingsworth. Ate the rest and reached into the box for a new one, but it was empty.
Weird wasn’t bad. Different wasn’t bad. Not always.
I made up my mind that the next opportunity I got to do something totally crazy, something that didn’t seem “like me” at all, I was gonna do it. Like if I saw a brochure for skydiving, or that kind of paintball that’s based on the Hunger Games, or even for fucking knitting, I was gonna be all over that shit.
“Get ready for the new me,” I told the hare. I tried to dramatically spike the Fruit Roll-Up box into the trash can, but it hit the edge and fell on the floor. So I picked it up and put it in nicely, and then Collingsworth and I went back to bed.
“Let’s go to Riddle,” I said to Ryan Friday night while we were making out on the bed. I only had a halfway boner, which was surprising, since normally I got hard if Ryan so much as fist-bumped me. I figured we could break out any of our costumes and props and get a party raging, but I was in the mood to go out.
He wrinkled his nose. “Now?”
I kissed his disgusted wrinkles. “Yeah.”
“Bleh.”
“Why? You loved it when we went a few months ago.”
“I mean, it was fine. I just don’t like clubs much.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re loud and crowded. And guys don’t play with dudes who look like me. Or they assume I’m a sub.”
“Aww. Then carry, like, a quiver of crops and canes on your back, and if anyone thinks you’re a sub, pull out a crop and beat them.”
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. He glanced over at it.
I grabbed his wrists, laughing. “Uh-uh. You love me more than texts. Say you love me more than texts!”
He grinned at me. “It’s not a text. It’s this real estate alert thing I signed up for.”
“Real estate?”
“Yeah, it just lets me know when there’s new apartment listings in certain cities.”
“Dude.” I let go of his wrists. “You do realize we have almost a year before we can go anywhere. If we even go anywhere.”
“I know.” He was still breathing hard from the making out. He arched his back. “Relax. I’m not signing any leases. I just like to look. My dad looks at cars online all the time, and it’s not like he buys them.”
I still felt a little strange about the whole thing, but I took his wrists again, trying to smile. “So, Riddle?”
“If you really want to go, I’ll go.”
“We could try the sex sling,” I reminded him. “That’d be fun, right?”
Really, I was kinda lonely, which made no sense because I had Ryan and my friends and my coworkers. But sometimes I needed different people. People were just . . . I got why they sucked, but they were so fucking awesome too. You had to figure, when you chilled with someone you barely knew, you learned about their life, you both told stories or talked about some TV show or whatever, and you connected. And, like, that was fucking cool that you could go from being just two people out of seven billion to having changed each other’s lives for a hot minute. I kissed Ryan again and humped him a tiny bit.
He gazed up at me, breathing hard. “Will you wear panties?”
“Uhhh, are people gonna see them?”
He squirmed under me. “Uh-huh.”
Heat rushed to my dick. “I’ll wear panties.” I braced my hands on either side of his shoulders and stared down at him. “Which ones?”
“Surprise me.”
I got up. He went to the bathroom, and I went to the underwear drawer. Rummaged under all the boxers and briefs and boxer briefs until I got to the panties—a small stack of them, folded neatly. We had quite a collection now.
I decided on a pair of light-pink cotton hipster briefs we’d bought at the mall the other day. I didn’t just choose them because they were less conspicuous— Though, okay, maybe I was kinda nervous about openly wearing women’s underwear in public. But I liked that they gave me a different feeling than the lace. Lace was sexy. Lace was for when I was a slut, a bitch. Cotton was cute. Cotton was like, How crazy would it be if Ryan and I went to this dungeon full of torture stuff and just ended up doing kind of a sweet scene?
One time, I was in Riddle and this woman wanted to watch her husband give me a handjob. He was this straight dude, and he was trying to be all butch about it—you know, like, Oh I just do it because it’s what the wife likes. But she was so cool and fun that I wanted to help her out. So I sat on the padded table in one of Riddle’s playrooms, and this guy started jerking me off. I expected him to be really awkward and terrible at it, but I mean, he was gentle as a fucking fawn, if fawns gave handjobs, which—gross. And he wasn’t bad looking either, so here was this hot straight dude giving me pretty much the pleasantest hand-j of my pre-Ryan life, and whispering things like, “That’s it. Let go for me. Let me see you come . . .” like we were lovers.
And my eyes were about bugging out of my head, because I hadn’t expected dirty talk, and it wasn’t even dirty talk anyway, it was sweet talk. He petted my hair and drew patterns on my chest, and she was watching and saying stuff to her husband like, “Be good to him. Make sure he likes it.” And she was saying stuff to me like, “Tell him if it’s not good enough. Tell him what you want.” But it was totally good enough, and I got off hard. And he just wiped me up and went back to being that obnoxious type of guy who but
ts into every conversation and, like, probably Dutch ovens his wife on their anniversary morning. But he also gave me this big hug that made me kinda tingly.
I’m just gonna throw it out there that he probably wasn’t that straight, but I didn’t care. If he said he was a straight guy who just really liked making his wife feel good by making other guys feel good, I believed him.
My friend Girltoy, who’d been watching, came up to me later and said she’d never seen me do anything that “lovely.” Said anytime she saw me in a scene, I was either doing something goofy or else having loud sex.
I guess the whole point of that story was that maybe I wanted to do something a little lovely again.
I pulled on the pink underwear. Arranged my dick so it was tucked down and to the right. Faced our bedroom mirror and then turned to see my ass. The cotton stretched over my ass, just barely covering the whole thing. I could see the shadow of my crack. I glanced down at my front again. The material was thin enough that if I started pre-splooging, you’d be able to see the wet spot, and—
“Have you seen my gold tie?” Ryan called from the bathroom. “With the anchors?”
“I used it to tie the screen door open the other day while I was groceries-ing. So it’s probably still out on the deck. I’ll get it in a sec.”
I hurried up and put my jeans on, so he wouldn’t see what underwear I’d picked.
He stepped out of the bathroom wearing a light-blue dress shirt and khakis that were almost just a little too tight over his butt. His hair was combed and the shirt was, like, flawlessly ironed. I immediately wanted to jump him.
“You used my tie for that?”
I was still staring. “Are you dressing like a lawyer for me?”
He smiled, finger-combing his hair. “You said you like me when I’m formal.”
I put on my T-shirt. “People are gonna stare at you.”
“Mmm.” He stepped up behind me and dragged his fingers down my back. I shivered. “Not as bad as they’re gonna stare at you when you take your pants off.”
I hopped the bullet train to Bonertown.
We kissed again, then drove to Riddle. I debated texting Mom to make sure she wouldn’t be there tonight, but since Cobalt wasn’t closed yet, I figured I’d take my chances rather than, like, have my mom be aware of my sex plans for the evening.
Regina was at the front desk, and her hair was like a giant volcano—this pointy-ish stack of black with red streaks running down the sides. “Kamen!” She came around to give me a hug. “Long time no see.”
“Heeeyyy.” I squeezed her and lifted her up for a few seconds.
She stepped back when I put her down, and looked at Ryan. “And I’ve seen you a couple of times before, but I can’t remember . . .”
“MonsterMeg,” he said.
“MonsterMeg. Welcome. Are you a member, or . . .?”
“He’s my guest.” I got out a ten and slapped it on the counter. She gave Ryan the guest contract to fill out and took his photo ID.
She turned back to me while Ryan was initialing. “I heard Dave dropped his membership.”
“Oh, uh, yeah. He decided to take a break from the clubs for a while.” It wasn’t really a lie. I just didn’t want to mention that he’d decided to take a break because he hated GK and Kel.
“Well, we miss him.”
“Yeah, he’s . . . Maybe he’ll be back someday.”
“I hope so. I love him—he’s so funny.” She took Ryan’s form. “Thanks!”
We walked away from the desk into the lounge. “You go by your Fet name here?” I asked him. I hadn’t remembered that.
“Yeah. For public stuff. You don’t?”
“Nah. Dave and Miles tried to at first, but now we all go by our real names. It’s too weird when people are talking to me and calling me, like, Jocksub36.”
He nodded. “I’m still . . . Confidentiality, man. I’m kinda paranoid.”
I grinned. “So, MonsterMeg. Where to?”
He nodded at the largest room. “Let’s check Chaos.”
Chaos was loud—tons of people, and the music was always overkill in here.
I saw Gang Spank in the middle of the room. Gang Spank had started coming to the club a couple of months ago. He was this skinny—I mean supermodel thin—twink kid with dark hair that fell over his eyes and legs that were like rails. He’d find a group of people who wanted to spank him, and then he’d just let them pass him from lap to lap while his ass got redder and redder. And he was like a friggin’ eel. Sometimes even strong guys couldn’t hold him down. He made all these noises I’d thought were fake at first, but he made so many of them that maybe they were a legit expression of what he was feeling.
Dave had seen him one night and had gotten pretty eye-rollish about it, but I think he was jealous. He only played with D now, but I’ll bet before that, he would’ve died for the chance to get gang-spanked.
Tonight, Gang Spank was wearing tight briefs, the kind of shamrock green you’d expect from, like, bridesmaids’ dresses. And the woman whose lap he was on kept yanking the briefs down and spanking him eight million times super fast and then yanking the briefs up again. Then she’d do it again. And Gang Spank was moaning like he was getting drilled. I could hear him over the music.
We crossed the space and went into Refinement, the second room. It was quieter, but still pretty crowded. So we moved on to Tranquility, the room where Hal had died. BellaSade stood at the door—after Hal, GK and Kel had started stationing DMs at every playroom, instead of just having one or two walk around the club. I said hi to her, but friendliness wasn’t really BellaSade’s jam, so she just nodded.
The room was empty, so we put up the guard rope and sign. The rule with Tranquility was two scenes at a time, quiet scenes only, and you didn’t come in if there were already two couples or groups doing scenes. Dave was always saying how they ought to get rid of the bench Hal died on because it was creepy. But I liked the bench. I think it would have made me feel weirder if they’d just, like, tried to erase all traces of what had happened.
Ryan glanced at the bench and seemed about to say something. He knew how Hal had died, but he hadn’t known Hal personally. And he wasn’t very involved in the scene scene around here, so he didn’t care that much about the politics of Bill coming back and all that. Which was kind of nice in a way, because this was the first time I’d been to Riddle in a while where I hadn’t had to listen to a rant from one of my friends.
I got to work clipping our sling to a frame that looked like a giant spider.
I took my shirt off. Then, really slowly, facing away from Ryan, I took off my pants.
“Nice. Choice,” he said behind me.
I stood there for a moment. Let him come up behind me and feel my ass through the cotton panties. “You like?”
He slid his hand around and ran it over the front, stopping to squeeze my balls lightly through the fabric. He stepped even closer, so I could feel his dress pants against my thighs, and his shirt and tie against my back. “I really like.” He kissed my left shoulder blade, and I relaxed back against him, letting my eyes close.
A moment later, they flew open when a voice said, “Well, someone went to a sale at Forever 21.”
We turned. Cinnamon stood in the doorway, staring at my underwear. She wore a brown spandex bodysuit, dark-brown leather harness, and another harness-y thing around her head. Brown high-heeled boots and brown gloves. Her red hair was braided, and when she turned slightly, I could see a long red tail attached to the seat of her unitard.
I glared at her. “You’re interrupting us.”
She looked at my panties again. “Interrupting what, exactly? A gay Nanny Diaries reenactment?” She unclipped the rope and walked in. “I just came to see if the room was free. Looks like there’s space for one more scene. So once Stan gets back, he and I will get started.”
I glanced around for BellaSade, but didn’t see her. What was the point of multiple DMs if they weren’t gonna stay put?
I turned back to Cinnamon. “Why do you even play in here? Don’t horses live outside?”
“Ha-ha.”
Ryan, who’d had the misfortune to meet Cinnamon when we came to Riddle a few months ago, joined in. “Yeah, what happens if you have to shit? Do you just do it wherever, like a real pony?”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “I don’t know. Better watch where you step.” She glanced at the bench. “I’m surprised you can still play in here, Kamen. Isn’t it kind of morbid?”
I was so shocked for a second that I couldn’t answer. Had she seriously just gone there? I thought about pushing her. I wouldn’t even have to do it hard—just enough to knock her off-balance in those heels. And then I could pretend to the DM it had been an accident.
“I can play here,” I said coldly.
She made a pouty face. “It was sad the other day when you ignored me at the bar. I was going to tell you something important.”
“If you have something to say, say it.”
She shook her head. “No. Now that I think about it, it’s probably none of my business. Or yours.” She tapped her foot and sighed, glancing around. “Where’s Stan? We’ve got a lot of practicing to do.”
“For what, one of your horse shows?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“So what, your rider dude puts all that stuff on you, and then you just walk around the club?”
She gazed at me coolly. “Stan is my handler, not my ‘rider dude.’ And being in the pony headspace takes lots of effort. What I do here is only a fraction of what I do in the wider pony world.”
“You compete with other weirdos?” I didn’t think it was cool to make fun of other people’s kinks, but in that moment I really wanted to hurt her feelings.
She smiled and slid her gaze down to my panties again. “Takes one to know one.” She tossed her braid. “I’ve got PetPlayFest coming up at the end of the month. I’ve been best in show two years running now, so I hope the competition’s a little stiffer this year. I like to feel challenged.”
I snorted. “Trotting around in circles must be tricky.”
“There’s quite a bit more to it than that.” She rubbed her gloved hand against her side. “I compete in grooming, dressage, and cart racing. Dressage takes years of practice for ponies, just as it does for bio horses.” She looked me over. “You wouldn’t stand a chance.”
