dominatrix

TW: Adult content and adult language.

I’ve known Ted for less than a month, and he’s already putting me in one of his crazy BDSM fantasies. He says the words, please be my dominatrix, so casually, I inhale them like cocoa powder on tiramisu. It triggers a gag reflex, but I know he’d probably get off on it, so I smile instead.

“You’re silly,” I say. I try to sound playful, as if a man old enough to be my grandfather asking me to dominate him sexually is totally normal. But I’m flustered. My skin’s gone all blotchy and red with heat. Suddenly, the bookshop’s crowded room feels empty, like it’s just Ted and I. Great. The poetry reading hasn’t even started.

“Really?” the old man says. “Silly?” Then, he tells me about his huge ego. He actually says, huge ego. I can’t help it. I imagine the wilting zucchini in my fridge, the small one. Now, I’m laughing so uncontrollably I choke, convulsing so hard I knock over an open can of La Croix on the floor next to me. I don’t even offer to help clean it up for fear he might get a free glimpse of my ass in a skirt he’d already tried to slip a hand up. What’s silly is knowing I can snap the old man’s arm quicker than I snapped my sunglasses in half on the way here, yet I’m still sweating, clocking the exits on each side of the room.

Mindy was supposed to come to this poetry reading with me. She was supposed to be my buffer in case Grandpa Ted showed up. I call him “Grandpa Ted” because the only thing missing from his high-waisted slacks, fedora, and scarf get-up is a walker. On the drive here, Mindy cancelled. Kid stuff, so I couldn’t even be mad. But now, squished in the middle of tightly packed fold-up chairs, I feel abandoned. For a brief second, the woman next to me looked like she caught sight of his predatory vibes and wanted to wing-woman me out of it, but then I knocked her La Croix over, and well, I think I’m on my own now.

I met Ted a few weeks ago at a writing workshop when he approached me afterwards to compliment a poem I’d shared. I recognized him instantly.

“Ted Güiser. You wrote To Dream of Hiroshima,” I’d said, a little starstruck.

He smiled proudly. “Yes. Though most people these days know me as Editor-in-Chief of The Pacific Review.”

Embarrassed that I didn’t know the journal, or that he was the editor of it, I said, “I read your collection in school. It was one of my favorites.”

Ted told me he was new in town and was looking for some respectable writing friends. I felt flattered to be a prospect, despite his vanity, which came in the form of incessant name-dropping: Why yes, I do know Dorianne Laux. Her friend, Kim, is a great friend of mine. And Maggie Smith, she helped edit my first book. Let me connect you. Even then, I could tell he was laying it on thick. But I’d convinced myself otherwise. I thought maybe this guy has some useful connections. Maybe he could mentor me, edit my stuff, get me free workshops, write some recommendation letters.

In hindsight, I realize I’d been a little naïve in my assumptions that senior citizens were nonthreatening creatures, or at least far from sexually assertive deviants. I usually save those paranoias for the deli guy at Whole Foods who looks like he wants to put his hair in my sandwich, or wear mine. So, when Ted first brought the BDSM stuff into conversation, so brazenly as if it were the most casual topic in the world, I was still too dazzled by his fame to think anything of it. It happened after our second library workshop together; he’d walked me out to my car, grabbing my elbow and pulling me close. His lips were wet, spitting as he spoke; it’d reminded me of my grandmother, how her bright red, lip-sticked lips would slowly inch closer just before she planted one of her awful, sloppy kisses one me. I couldn’t help from staring at his teeth, his teeny tiny incisors clacking on and on about how lucky he was to never get a single STD. Not one, he’d said. And I went with some crazy girls.

He must have noticed my shock, because he switched the subject in a single breath, immediately going off about writing programs I should apply to. You’re good. You’d get into all of them. I’ll help.

I really wanted the help, and after my recent rejection from Warren Wilson, I was desperate for it. Apparently, a little flattery does it for me, because I could have turned around when Mindy cancelled tonight. I could have gone home and finished a whole bottle of wine and actually applied to another program. Instead, I go to the reading, let him sexualize an ekphrastic poem I wrote (though, even I got a little hot and bothered by Lautrec’s redhead painting), and when he asks to meet me for drinks next week to discuss my working manuscript, I give him my number.

***

On my drive home, I call Mindy to guilt her for putting me in this situation.

“Do you want to be his dominatrix?” Mindy asks. She thinks this is all very amusing.

“I’d rather try my luck with a brown banana.”

“Maybe Ted would be into it.”

“Not funny. This is your fault, you know. You abandoned me.”

“You’re a big girl, Camry. Two kids is my limit.” In the background, I hear her unwrap a snack and divvy it up to high-pitched, pestering voices, whispering something about sharing. “Did you give him a fake number?”

“Fuck, that’s a good idea. See! I need you,” I pout.

“Look, just go to dinner. Let him buy you a fancy tiki drink. Keep the conversation on your writing. Or, talk about that Poodle-Pomeranian mix of his he’s always going on about. If he lays a finger on you, then lay down the law. Tell him you’re not interested.”

“It’ll probably arouse him,” I say.

“Probably. But who knows? It might arouse you.”

“You really can’t go?”

“Can’t. Won’t. But I expect to hear all the juicy details.”

***

I choose a Hawaiian place on the pier, because if I’m going to be sexualized by a freaky grandfather, I’m going to need a lot of rum. But when I get to the wharf, cops are all over it. The parking attendant lets me pass, telling me I’m lucky because the pier just reopened. Though, luck isn’t the word I’d use.

Someone drove their car off the pier, according to the Aloha Grill’s bartender, who’s really just some college kid with a bad nose ring wearing a beanie. He’s wiping a water glass dry, explaining why the place is empty on a Friday night. It’s just him and I, alone at the tiki bar that exists on a slow-spinning platform in the back of the restaurant where the lighting’s dim, a feature of this place that usually attracts a crowd of both tourists and locals. Either the first sips of rum or the moving floor makes the skeletons on his collar shirt look like they’re riding pineapples like a mechanical bull.

“Did anyone die?” I ask.

“Last I heard, they got him out. The dog, too,” he says.

“Shit,” I say, choking on the rum topper in my Mai Tai.

“Yeah,” he chuckles. “They’re still working on the car, though.” He nods behind me towards the west window where the neck of a flatbed crane looms over the wharf’s rail.

“Is it even safe to be out here?” I ask.

“Probably not,” he shrugs. “Just keep drinking, and you’ll forget we’re gambling with our lives every time we step onto this rickety old pier.” He winks, and it’s not nearly as creepy as anything Ted’s done or said to me.

I sip more coconut rum through a straw and keep sipping, as if I can make a wish by taking in half the drink at once. I wish that Ted’s tardiness means he won’t show up after all.

Avoidant. I couldn’t be a domme even if I wanted to. Maybe I should lead with that when he gets here.

My stomach churns, and it’s more than just the rum settling. My leg taps the chair’s footrest. I chew on my thumbnail. If I reject Ted, what does that mean for my future? Part of me knows I haven’t said no yet. For a reason. The other part is ready to surrender to a life working at a bookshop for minimum wage. The thought of either option repulses me.

He has connections. He could change everything for me.

I pull out my phone and Google search “dominatrix.” I scroll through an assortment of leather bodysuits, chain-link bras, strap-ons, and feather whips, occasionally checking behind me for Ted. I wouldn’t want him to witness me considering any of this. I stop on a reddit post, an ex-domme answering questions about inflicting humiliation on a “slave.” The word makes me shiver, but I can’t help but glance at the bartender, curious about how he might look in a collar.

Bartender-kid mistakes the glance for something else. Leaning against the counter across from me, he says, “Waiting for someone?”

I slide the tiki drink away and offer him my best anxious smile. “Unfortunately.”

The kid inhales sharply, hissing through his teeth. “That bad, huh?” Like he knows anything about real problems. He probably thinks Ted didn’t text me back for a day.

I’m about to make something up when I hear heels clicking on the faux bamboo floors behind me, heading my direction.

“Nothing she can’t handle.” Mindy slides an arm around my shoulders.

I spring into her arms like the wharf is collapsing and she’s my life vest. “Aw, you actually do care if Benjamin Button gropes me!”

Mindy pats my head. “I’m here because I heard someone died on the wharf tonight and I had to make sure it wasn’t you,” she says. She gestures for Bartender-kid to make her one of what I’m having, and he does.

“Wait, the guy died?” he asks, slipping a hibiscus flower on the edge of Mindy’s glass.

“That’s what they’re saying. Heart attack, and then swoosh,” she makes a flying-then-sinking motion with her hand. “Pronounced dead at the hospital.” To me, she says, “I literally wouldn’t put it past you if you drove off into the ocean to avoid meeting with Ted.”

I can’t argue. It’s been a year since I’ve ordered sandwiches from the Whole Foods deli guy. And they have the best figgy mustard.

“At least the dog survived.” Bartender-kid, researches the incident on his phone, then turns his screen towards us, revealing a news clip with photos of the damaged section of the wharf and a small wet dog wrapped in a towel. “A little pomapoo.”

Mindy turns to me. I turn to her.

“Poodle,” she says.

“Pomeranian,” I finish.

“Oh, my God. Camry! You killed Ted!” Mindy erupts into laughter.

“Oh, fuck.”

Poor Bartender-kid looks at us like he’s just discovered a secret league of lady killers, and he thinks he might be the next target. So, Mindy tells him to make us all another round, and we tell him the saga of Grandpa Ted.

“Oh, shit, alright. Old man trying to get it in,” says Bartender-kid, because what 20-something year old doesn’t think being the Rubber Man from American Horror Story when he’s old is some sexual aspiration.

“No, no, we’re not rooting for this guy,” I say, my words starting to slur.

“Camry, here, is a little too vanilla for all that bondage stuff,” Mindy says.

I slap her playfully. “Hey, I did the handcuffs thing once.”

“And the choking thing,” Mindy adds.

This makes Bartender-kid blush, but he blames it on the one drink he had. Then tells us he has to start closing the bar up, a white lie we let him get away with since Mindy’s got to get back to the kids anyway.

Out on the pier, Mindy and I lean over the rail, watching the crane lift Ted’s car out of the dark water, perfectly illuminated by buzzing lampposts and flashing cop lights. His white Toyota RAV4 lifts slowly, hovering just outside the railing, water streaming out from the seams.

“Poor bastard,” Mindy says. “But I’m glad it wasn’t you.”

“Yeah,” I say. “He was probably harmless, though.”

“At least he got what he wanted,” Mindy says. I give her a look. “You know, being strapped down and all.” She crosses her hand over her chest like a seatbelt, and we laugh all the way to our cars.

As I follow Mindy down the long stretch of boardwalk, I feel her words sinking into me the way Ted’s dominatrix had latched onto me ever since the poetry reading.

You killed Ted.

I like the thought of it. The possibility. Or maybe the power.

When I get home, I start applying to all those programs he told me to consider. I write a letter of recommendation featuring yesterday’s date. Then, I sign Ted’s name and send it off.

I go to text Mindy to let her know I’ve finally sent out applications, but when I open my phone, the BDSM search from earlier fills the screen. I scroll for a few minutes before landing on a cute, heart-shaped riding crop. My thumb hovers over the purchase button.

Maybe I could have done it, I think.

I add the item to my cart.

Maybe I could have done both.