Carrie's Story Read online

  “Hear me out,” he said. He seemed so unflustered that I found myself stopping and turning to him again. “Look,” he said again, patiently, “we were watching an outrageously tacky and stupid porn film in there and you could have mopped the floor with those jeans.” His matter-of-fact gaze rested on my hips a heartbeat longer than it needed to, I thought.

  “So,” he continued, “I don’t think you’re nearly as shocked and scandalized as you’d like to think you are. After all, it’s not as though you haven’t thought about these things before. And at some length, I bet. In fact, my guess is that you’ve been jerking off to S/M porn since you found a copy of Story of O when you were a twelve-year-old baby-sitter. But I don’t think you’ve ever done more than read and jerk off. Which is a shame. Because I think you’d be good at the real thing. I’m good at the real thing.”

  Thirteen and a half. Almost fourteen. I mean that’s how old I actually had been when I found that copy of Story of O. Of course, that’s typical of Jonathan’s almost pathological politeness—one of the little things I learned from him is that it never hurts to give the other guy credit for a little more charm or precocity than he or she actually possesses. So probably he knew he was flattering me a little, in a perverse way, but he obviously also knew that, in all the ways that counted, he was dead-on right. S/M porn was one of my secrets. I didn’t understand why I liked it, but I knew it was important to me. It seemed to occupy a space in my head next door to the more typical romantic passions—little-girl crushes on actors and rock stars and even some English teachers, the silly sweeping pleasure I always get reading Jane Eyre. And—Jonathan had made it so embarrassing—the romantic feelings I’d been having talking to him before the conversation had taken this disquieting turn. I felt very frightened and exposed.

  But I had to say something. Enough about me, let’s talk about you. “You got good at it hanging with Sir Jack and Mistress Anastasia?”

  “I hang with a much better class of pervert. Well, they’re richer, anyway, and they’re a lot prettier. But you’re right, in a way. I do respect those silly-looking guys from the movie. It takes passion to act out your fantasy when you’re going to look so graceless. I’m good at spotting passion—sincerity, maybe. I spotted you.”

  He reached into his pocket, found a piece of scrap paper, and scribbled his name and address on it—in predictably tiny, superlegible writing. “For a good time,” he said, “come by, tomorrow at three.” And then he wandered back into the party.

  A star is born, I thought insanely, noticing that my jeans would mop up the whole terrace, at this point maybe the whole mansion.

  And the next day at 3:00, reader, I went to his house. I didn’t tell anybody about it and I’d even shaved my legs and underarms. His house was a little unusual for San Francisco—brown shingle and set back from the street among evergreens. I rang the doorbell, and he came to the door in jeans and a sweater. He was as friendly and charming as he’d been the night before, and he looked even better. He hadn’t shaved, I realized. I guessed that this made us even, in some odd way, and I liked the way the stubble brought out lines and shadows around his mouth. Behind his pampered thirty-something look, there was just a touch of wildness. Yves Montand, I thought, in The Wages of Fear. The look contrasted with his calm, polite good humor. “I’m glad you’re here. Come in.”

  He led me down the hall to a very beautiful book-lined study. There was a low fire burning in the fireplace, and he stood me in front of it. And very efficiently, neither of us saying a word, he took off my shirt and bra, helped me out of my jeans and underpants, took off my shoes and socks. He handed me a pair of very high-heeled shoes and told me to put them on and walk around until I got the feel of them. They fit pretty well, though I’d never worn anything nearly that high. Then he put a leather collar around my neck, buckling it in the back. He guided me by the shoulders, stood me near the fireplace again, and picked up the remote from a little table. He pressed a button on the remote, and a chain descended from the ceiling over my head. He put leather cuffs on my wrists and hooked them to the chain. Then he fiddled with the buttons on the remote again until the chain retracted back enough to be taut, and I was almost standing on my toes, hardly using the spike heels at all. Hardly breathing, either.

  Jonathan sat down in a nearby armchair, leaned back, and surveyed me placidly. “I was right,” he said. “You like this. Now answer my questions, and always address me as Jonathan when you do. And keep looking at me—no turning inward toward your own fantasy version of what’s happening. No talking out of turn, either. You’re here to tell me what I want to know. You can ask me questions later.”

  His questions were cold and clinical, though of course enunciated with the most careful civility. Age, height, weight. My family. Schedule and time obligations. Diseases, allergies. Sexual experience, in minute detail. He even scribbled down a few notes. It was hard to take a breath and find my voice, to keep looking at him, to remember to use his name. The fire was warm at my back, but I had to fight to keep off the shakes.

  “Turn around,” he said, finally. “I want to see your ass.”

  This was tough, given the shoes and the tautness of the chain. But—“Yes, Jonathan”—I did it. He leaned over and grabbed me—thumb up my ass, middle finger up my cunt, and held me as though I were some yard goods he was considering buying. He used the other hand to trace the shape of my buttocks. I could feel their roundness below and the two dimples above, as though he had drawn a picture for me. I thought of buying grapefruit at a supermarket. All the images that flashed through my mind, in fact, were of buying things.

  Keeping hold of me, he used the hand that had been fondling me to slap me, hard. I gasped. What had I done to make him do that? I opened my eyes and looked around to see what he was doing. But he didn’t respond, except to hold me a little tighter with those fingers that were up me. Mostly he was just looking at the spot he’d hit, at the bright pink color, I guessed. It seemed to me he liked the way it looked, and I realized that this had very little to do with me, or who I usually thought of as “me.” This had to do with the texture of my skin, the shape and heft of my flesh. I had been right when I’d flashed on supermarkets and such. He was shopping. And god help me, I wanted him to want to buy.

  Well, I thought, he had, after all, used the word “slave” out there on the balcony. But, you know, I’d thought of it differently then, more as in “slave of love” or something equally silly. I hadn’t thought of him seriously inspecting, evaluating the merchandise. My face, and most of the rest of me I guess, flushed deeply, and I started to weep with humiliation. I was horribly embarrassed to be exposed as silly, shallow—missing meanings that should have been clear as day. Mostly, though, there was the obvious humiliation of being chained, helpless, open, obvious. Not only was I doing this, I was mortified to realize, but I was unmistakably turned on by doing this, soaking wet inside, in fact, and of course he could feel it. And I didn’t even know if he cared one way or another.

  Finally he let go of my ass and turned me back around. Then just leaned back and watched me cry, as though that were interesting, too.

  When I’d calmed down a bit, he asked quietly, “Do you like to be looked at?”

  “Yes, Jonathan, I do,” I sniffled, but I was surprised by the certainty that underlay my weepy voice.

  “Good,” he said, and pressed the button to loosen the chain.

  “On your knees,” he continued, “but keep your back straight up and down and your chin up. That’s a position I like.” He pinched my nipples, hard, and he slapped my breasts.

  “Have you ever been whipped or beaten?” he asked.

  “No, Jonathan,” I said.

  “You will be,” he said. “Enough to leave marks but not enough to scar or break the skin or injure you in any other way.”

  He pulled off his belt, doubled it, and stroked my breasts with it. He traced the outline of my mouth with it, and the smell of the soft leather was overwhelming. I dr
ifted off into the sensations I was feeling, my eyes closing, and began to moan.

  “Quiet,” he said sternly, and then, “Get back here and pay attention.” I opened my eyes wide, startled by the new tone in his voice. He looked at me for an instant and then continued in his polite, somewhat pedantic mode, “That’s the sort of thing you’ll learn not to do. I’ll teach you. I have canes and whips. You can trust me to give you just a little more pain than you think you can stand. I’ll beat you if you break the rules or for any lapses in form or sensibility, and sometimes I’ll just do it for fun.”

  “Now,” he continued, freeing my hands, “crawl over to the other side of the room and make sure you keep your ass high in the air. Pick up that rattan cane from the chair over there in your mouth and crawl back over here to give it to me. And don’t slobber over it.”

  “Yes, Jonathan,” I said, and did it. The cane was about thirty inches long, just a flexible reed that was a little thicker on the end he reached for when I came back. He told me to kneel up again and to put my hand out.

  “This is the most painful thing I’ll use,” he said, “and only to punish you. So I want you to know what it feels like. It’s what they used in all those famous brutal faggy English boys’ schools.”

  It really did whistle through the air and it really did hurt like hell, raising an angry livid welt immediately. I gasped again, but this time I held back the tears. I can’t keep from crying if he hits me again, I thought. But I didn’t think he would. After all, the point of this blow was to communicate, not to punish. It was to introduce me to the currency we’d be dealing in. At least that’s what he’d said, and I realized that I believed him. I guessed that was a good sign. Still, I realized that, while precise, his message was also intentionally and profoundly ambiguous, because I knew that he wouldn’t tell me how many of such blows I’d be receiving.

  “Get dressed,” he told me now, “and sit down over there. Do you want some coffee?”

  I nodded.

  He spoke into an intercom. “Mrs. Branden, could we have a pot of coffee, please? Thanks.”

  Mrs. Branden? I hurried to get dressed and sat down in a straight chair nearby. He picked up the remote and retracted the chain back into the ceiling. Thank God. I hadn’t thought I could concentrate on talking to him with it swinging ever so slightly, a few feet from where I was sitting.

  “Okay.” He smiled. “Now, let’s make a deal. But first, ask me anything, everything. Address me any way you want. If you sign on, you won’t get this chance very often.”

  A pleasant-looking woman in her late forties came into the room. She wore a tweedy sweater and skirt and some artsy jewelry, and she carried coffee and cookies on a tray. She looked like a hip legal secretary, I thought. “Hi, Carrie.” She smiled.

  “Hi,” I managed, and she smiled again and left.

  Jonathan poured coffee. “Mrs. Branden’s my housekeeper. And yes, she knows exactly what’s going on. It’s okay, though.”

  I turned to him in fury. “What do you mean it’s okay? I thought we were alone,” I sputtered.

  He offered me a cup of black coffee. I nodded and took it. And he laughed a little. “That, you’ve got to get used to. You will, though. This is pornotopia—it’s a place, Carrie, a place where people live like this all the time. This afternoon and all the times we’ll spend together in the future are normal here. Normal depends on strict and absolute rules that everybody agrees on ahead of time, and it also means that it’s not a big hush-hush thing. There are witnesses. That’s part of the point and the pleasure. Total environment, or at least a convincing facsimile. Virtual reality.”

  I tried to think fast, but my mind felt dull and sluggish. So I swallowed some coffee and took a deep breath.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Let me get this straight. Mrs. Branden works for you. She knows what you do in here. She thinks it’s okay.”

  “Do you think it’s okay?” he asked.

  I had to consider that one. “I don’t know,” I stammered. “I do know that it scares me a whole lot. I mean, well, I mean… I mean, I don’t really know whether something that can make me feel so…so…make me feel like I feel right now… could really be okay. The only thing I know for sure is that I want it. Maybe I’ll just have to wait to find out whether I think it’s okay.” I was astonished to hear myself say that I wanted it, but I knew it was true.

  He nodded. “That’s fair,” he said, “and brave. And smart, too. But then, that’s partly why I want you, because you’re smart.”

  He seemed to specialize in this sort of friendly, matter-of-fact remark, lobbing them into the conversation like grenades aimed at demolishing every bit of cool I had left. I didn’t know what to say next. What were we talking about, anyway. Oh, yeah…

  “So, Mrs. Branden,” I said. “Is she into it? Does she like it?”

  “How would I know?” he said, laughing. He had a surprisingly pleasant, ordinary laugh. “I’ve never asked her. I haven’t got the slightest idea. I pay her a lot and we’re very nice and friendly with each other. It would be a whole lot harder for me to keep all the rules I like to keep without her. Listen, Carrie, I can see that Mrs. Branden was a shock to you, but don’t you want to know anything else?”

  “Okay,” I said, “tell me some of these rules you keep around here.”

  “You are always here when you say you’ll be here. With school, what would you say that means? Two weekday evenings, late Saturday afternoon through midday Sunday? I won’t take more time than a boyfriend. Less, probably. You come to the side door. Mrs. Branden lets you into the kitchen. You undress, and she puts on your leash and collar and whatever else I want you to wear. She leads you in here. You’re tethered and waiting at attention for me when I come in. And then you do absolutely everything I say. That’s the easy part.”

  “That’s disingenuous,” I said, trying to hide my discomfort and, yes, my excitement. Tethered and waiting…

  “You’re right,” he said. “It’s not easy at all. But I think it’ll be worth it for you. I’m a very responsible, methodical person. Stuffy, when you get right down to it, but the good side of that is that I’m consistent, detail-oriented, and very dependable. It’s a good deal, really—you do everything I say, and you get a lot, quite a lot, of what you want.”

  “How do you know what I want?” I asked.

  “Well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist,” he said. “I mean, you’re here, aren’t you?”

  I nodded grimly.

  “Sorry,” he smiled, “that was a cheap shot.”

  “But I do know what you want,” he continued, “in essence if not yet in all its particulars. I can recognize it in your eyes and in your open mouth. You do like to be looked at: admired or belittled, adored or punished. You want to be done to, by a desire that’s more selfish and specific than your own. You want that blank, floating moment of release, of submission, of knowing that it’s useless to resist. Free fall, happening faster than even a motormouth like you can describe it.

  “And you’ll put up with the trite details, the silly redundancy of what we’ll do, because I’ll be showing you ways to capture that moment, again and again and again. I’ll give it narrative shape, I’ll keep it going, I’ll figure out the particulars as we go along. And I’ll stay ahead of you. You won’t have to worry about that.”

  The fire hissed just then, and one of the logs fell over, punctuating what he’d said with a little flourish and fanfare of sparks. I sat stock-still, trying my damnedest to believe that this was really happening. I rubbed the painful welt on my hand, glad to be reminded of corporeal reality. I looked at him hard and he looked back serenely. He knew he had me.

  I shuddered, but realized that I was also nodding my assent. Still, I wasn’t ready to stop questioning him. “And suppose I call it all off,” I said.

  “Hey,” he shrugged, “you know my address. I’ll give you my phone number. I don’t have yours and that’s fine. I don’t need it. So you can end this th
ing whenever—and however—you want. Write me a letter. Or you can call me up anytime and tell me you’re not coming anymore. You can leave a message on my machine. Fax me, e-mail me, whatever. Or you can simply never show up again. But when you do come,” he continued, “you’d better be prompt.”

  He pulled a card out of his pocket, very businesslike now, and rummaged around the table until he found an envelope. “Here’s my doctor’s card. Make an appointment for an HIV test. Get a complete checkup, too. I’ll pay. And here’s a copy of my latest HIV test. You can verify it with him. You can see one from me every month.”

  “So you get tested every month,” I said. “Suppose I start fucking somebody else?”

  “You won’t,” he said.

  I was amazed. “That’s an outrageous thing to say. Why not? I mean, you know how attractive you are, but that doesn’t mean I won’t fuck somebody else.”

  “That’s not the point,” he said. “I’m very glad you think I’m attractive, but that’s not what I’m talking about. You won’t fuck anybody else—at least, not on your own time—because you’ll be too aching, exhausted, and fucked out to want to try. Trust me.” I did, too, though I wasn’t crazy about this obnoxious quien es más macho little speech. Still, his delivery was impressive, casual and understated, as though he were ordering a burrito. “Just a little more pain than you think you can stand, please. With onions and hot sauce.”

  He pulled out some more cards from his pocket. “And get a haircut. Like mine, really short, maybe even shorter. Very butch, only it won’t look butch. It’ll look…well, you’ll see. Anyway, they’ll know what I want. Oh, and a leg waxing, too.”