Wonderland

Senior Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of the School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University

Undergraduate Program in Creative Writing Stephen McCauley, Advisor

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts

by Arianna Arguetty

May 2021

Copyright by Arianna Arguetty 1

I was lounging on the sofa in the laundry room, wearing a two thousand dollar cocktail

dress and watching YouTube. My last days at university had come and gone. Exams were over,

and I’d secured a job as an entry-level marketing assistant at a nearby firm. Once I earned a couple of paychecks, I’d be all set to get a place of my own. I’d even found that once a month in

Fort Lauderdale--which wasn’t exactly close to my mother’s house but not terribly far either--a

certain club met. In two weeks, I would go and take the chance to explore a nagging interest of

mine.

For now, all I had to do was walk across a stage, shake a few hands, and secure my

degree. It should have been exciting, but I was preoccupied with my insecurity.

I’d graduated from high school in a pair of bedazzled bootcut jeans I’d gotten myself at

Target and a boxy t-shirt two sizes too big that my high school had given out after some trip. The

shirt had covered the fake gemstones entirely which may have been a mistake because my old

English teacher couldn’t have complained about my “horseback riding outfit” if she’d seen them.

I would’ve replicated the outfit for this ceremony, but I wanted to prove I’d changed, gotten

stronger. Surely, I’d matured enough in the last four years to be able to stomach a dress in public.

I’d put it on about two hours before, but since I’d unfortunately glimpsed myself in the reflection

of my brother’s 86” TV, I’d retreated to my actual room--the laundry room--where there were no

mirrors, TVs, or windows.

A blurry, distant image of my bulging waistline protruding from the sides of my polka

dot dress was haunting me. I’d averted my gaze before I could see more. Still, even brushing by

that image in my brain made it clearer. The grotesque curve of my stomach hanging out in front

of me, casting a shadow just underneath it. The redness of a would-be pimple shining brightly on

1 my forehead and in a trio on the left side of my mouth. The patch of flaking skin around my

nose.

I was pretty sure I’d heard a degree could be mailed home. Something like that. It was

too late now to request that, I suspected, but maybe the ceremony would suddenly be

mysteriously cancelled? I skipped the ad on the YouTube video.

“You have one loop at the end of your starting chain. For that last one, use a half-double crochet,” the woman on the video said, and I watched carefully as she weaved what appeared to be a mess of knots. I was good at tangling things up. I’d never done it on purpose, but crocheting was something I wanted to eventually try. I watched instructional videos for fun.

“Alexandra,” my mother said from down the hall, and I frowned, paused the video, and turned.

Pressed against one wall of the laundry room, there was a sofa and a dresser just barely squeezed in so that the drawers faced the rest of the room. On the opposite wall, there were three small closets for the laundry machines, storage, and a toilet. The third wall was bare. And the fourth wall did not exist. In its place, there was a tall bookshelf, a white grid-like thing filled with beige fabric bins and the occasional decorative book or bauble. It left only a small section, slightly bigger than a standard doorway, for people to pass into and out of the room. An original

Britto vase--a mix of brightly colored lines and bulbous protrusions--sat in one of the largely empty cubbies, and when my mother passed behind it, it made the already impressive muscles on her bicep bulge like they belonged to a steroid user.

In my mind, the blurry memory of myself in this damned dress tried to creep into sight.

“Let me see you,” she said, her looks so at odds with my own. Her wavy, blonde hair just brushed her bronzed shoulders, while my stick-straight black hair fell limply down by pale back.

2 My gaze flickered from the paused video to her and back. The image of rolls of fat in a polka dot dress sharpened, brightened, tried to draw me in, but I stood for her.

She smoothed down the skirt of my crinkled dress while I stood stiff, the backs of my knees pressing against the bare sofa. I’d been staying in my brother’s room lately, so the sheet that usually held together the two seat cushions was absent. Behind her head, the laundry machine was thumping and buzzing, thumping and buzzing, like it might just buzz right out of its spot. The housekeeper had started it up an hour ago, forcing me to switch to earbuds.

"You look beautiful," my mom said.

She had said such things before. It rarely took her a full day to tell me the exact opposite.

In much more elaborate and creative words.

I didn’t smile. “Thanks.” I sat back down.

“I got you a present for graduation.”

I looked at her again. In elementary school, when birthday parties were nothing more than a field trip for the class, I’d received many presents.

“Thank you,” I said as I took it. It was a jewelry box--jewelry was yet another facet of dressing up that failed to appeal to me--but I tried to hold on to positivity. Inside was a pair of earrings. Diamond studs with gold backings.

I reached up to touch my empty ears. I realized I had taken my only other pair off two weeks ago and forgotten to put them back on. These were pretty. It was a nice gesture. “They are beautiful.”

“Do you want to wear them today?”

“Sure,” I said and reluctantly stood again so she could put them in my ears.

3 “They look so good. I’m so proud of you, my beautiful girl.” I started to sit, and she

continued, “Aren’t you going to look at them in the mirror?”

I tried my best to smile as I reluctantly opened the door to the small bathroom to see my

face in the small mirror. “So pretty,” I said and continued to stare at them, trying to block out the rest of my reflection. My gaze kept slipping, though, cataloguing all the flaws of my face. I turned my back to the mirror before my gaze could slip below the neck, and I kept up a steady flow of “okays” and nods as she explained our plans to get to the ceremony. We would be taking her car. Because of the timing of things, I needed to make sure everything was ready by 3:35, at which time she would call the valet to bring out the car, and we had to call the elevator at 3:41 at

the latest. The ceremony started at 4:40, and we lived a whopping ten minutes away. Maybe

twenty in heavy traffic.

During this conversation, I stared at the custom-made jewelry resting delicately on her

exposed collarbone. It was a thin gold necklace with the diamond-studded word “trust” hanging

vertically, dipping tastefully into her generous cleavage.

After she left to touch up her gold eyeshadow, I made sure that the mirror was trapped

behind a shut door and walked back to the sofa. My cat appeared soon after, having been too

busy inhaling her food to join me until then. I hit play on the YouTube video as she settled up

against me, the comforting weight of her butt partially resting on my shin as she began her

grooming routine.

It was a shame, if not a surprise, that looking at myself continued to elicit disgust and

nausea. Sometime just before my high school graduation, a teacher had asked the class to write

down our greatest wishes and our greatest fears.

4 I couldn’t remember my greatest wish, but my greatest fear had always been strong enough for me to name, despite the careful way I tried to bury it. Would I ever find anything about myself to love?

***

The ceremony was long and boring. The valedictorian--a guy I’d never seen around campus--gave a fifteen-minute-long speech, which included extensive and painfully-detailed tangents about his love of golf. At some point, the host of the event tried to cut him off, but he was too polite about it. The student nodded like he got the hint and flipped through a couple of pages before he continued for another five minutes. I couldn’t bear to consider how long the speech had originally been. To top it off, with a name like Alexandra Baker and a relatively tiny graduating class, I was stuck in the front row, where using my phone was not an option, not even to read the texts I’d received from my friend Ellie. I hadn’t actually checked what caused my phone to buzz so many times in quick succession, but I was sure she wanted to talk about the incident she’d seen in the parking lot. From the corner of my eye, I glanced at my mother sitting in a different section, her piercing blue eyes fixated on the phone in her lap.

One of the professors had pulled into a parking spot that she’d sighted, and she’d parked right there in the middle of the lane, stormed out, slammed her car door, and reamed the poor woman out for apparently daring to think her time was more precious than ours. It was a teacher

I’d had before, too. A petite Asian woman who used silly hand gestures to help us remember formulas, often bounced on the balls of her feet, and laughed easily. I’d climbed out of the car to get my mother, even before I’d noticed the way the small woman cowered.

I sighed. At least my current seat was well ventilated. I always froze my toes off in my family’s private box at the Adrianne Arsht Center, but down on the main floor of the enormous

5 theater space, the high ceilings simultaneously allowed for the elaborate 3D-art piece that I spent much of the ceremony analyzing and kept the air conditioning well away from the needy. With the black hoodie I wore being my single lifeline, the airflow of the front row was a blessing.

When my name was called, a bead of sweat dripped down my spine. As I stood, I stuck my hands in my pockets, looking out at the audience, daring them to object. My mother’s expression did, and then she turned back to her phone. In this dress, to stand on a stage...I wouldn’t remove the hoodie. Already my blotchy face was visible, my thin hair, my chicken legs. The man I’d lost my virginity to caught my eye, and some measure of composure returned.

Our brief interlude had ended almost as soon as it had begun the previous semester, but I still avoided his eyes, his questions, and his calls. He’d done nothing wrong, and while I suspected that I was supposed to feel bad for ghosting him, I didn’t. I’d told him the deal when

I’d approached him, and he was an attractive man with enough wit and tact to get many lovers.

He was someone who’d thrown me appreciative looks here and there during shared projects in business classes, and I’d figured he was a safe bet to ensure I didn’t die a virgin. I’d told him I only wanted to lose my virginity, maybe do it again once or twice, and then we’d be done. He’d agreed.

His continued attempts to contact me confounded me. And frankly, I didn’t want to deal with it. Nor did I want to deal with him.

The fact that I’d gone back to him beyond the first time, beyond the second, beyond even the third said nothing about him. It had been a pathetic attempt to give sex a chance. The first time had hurt, I’d told myself--though it hadn’t altogether very much--so how could that have been a true representation? Once I’d finished punishing myself with him, I’d avoided him like the plague. Yet, seeing him now, reminded me of my strength. Yes, this man had taken my

6 virginity. Yes, I’d even gotten naked on the last night with him. But I could cut him out of my life and forget him. It was a point of pride. Proof of my strength, my independence.

Finally, I caught sight of Ellie’s mischievous grin and double thumbs up, and I smiled back and greeted the professors and dean with genuine pleasure, confident that I could dismiss the judgement of my peers. Confident that the event I planned to attend would allow me to explore something that intrigued me but would never, ever disturb my emotional protection.

7 2

For two weeks after that day, every time I closed my eyes, I saw a countdown imprinted

on the back of my eyelids. It was neon red and jagged, and it lingered even after I opened my

eyes. As the days ticked by--fourteen, thirteen, twelve---my fear grew, and some of that

confidence faded.

Now, staring at the door before me, the timer was at zero, and I had to make a choice.

The ball of nerves in my stomach was so tightly wound it was painful, and I couldn’t

differentiate between excitement and dread. A single light bulb flickered across the street,

providing me just enough light to make out the number on the door in front of me. Truck storage

unit thirty three.

I’d never been intrigued at the prospect of sex. This was the interest that had occupied that slot, the thing that my teenage, hormone-addled brain had latched onto and obsessed over.

My job started Monday, but my dual anticipation and fear of this day had bumped it out of mind.

A car honked, and somewhere on the street above me, a man yelled something about come mierdarias.

I huffed a laugh. This place was by far the sketchiest I’d ever been, but though the possibility of my gruesome murder had crossed my mind, I couldn’t summon up any real fear for my life. It seemed unlikely such a thing could happen to me. No, I was afraid the people I found behind this door wouldn’t live up to my expectations.

I was an adult now--a full adult. I couldn’t keep expecting to spot a dominant man out in the wild. Google had ruined that plan for me by pointing out, without the slightest remorse or hesitation, that “dominates” out in the wild were often just self-important misogynists. Maybe I

8 would never find another soul that matched mine, maybe that didn’t exist, but I had to try. I had to know.

I knocked.

I waited, thought about leaving, and instead knocked again and rang the doorbell for good measure. Finally, the door opened, and I jumped back to avoid being hit.

“Hi!” the woman said, her hair the same shade of crimson as the paint-chipped door. “I’m

Rosa,” she said. “You’re Lexi?”

“Yeah. You’re the one who vetted me?” Her hair matched her profile picture. Next to her, I was an apple with legs. She was a hispanic Marilyn Monroe, though twice as big.

“Yep. Come on in. It’s a $10 fee. You remembered to bring cash, right?”

“Yeah.” I popped my phone out of its case and grabbed the money. She took it and danced around the desk--the only furniture in the room. The room was five-by-five with two lamps on the desk for lighting and a whiteboard on the far wall. The whiteboard said:

Needles w/ Lady A. May 11th

Whips w/ Woodland May 12th

Party Time! May 18th

Littles’ Tea Time May 19th

“Could I take a picture of this?” I asked.

“Yep. You read the rules, right? As long as no one else is in the picture, you’re fine. One of the walls inside has stone wallpaper for people who like to pose.”

“Nice,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t like to pose. I snapped a picture.

9 Rosa wore a flowery dress with a modest neck and cute heels. Her skirt flirted with her

knees as she danced to the door. “I’m glad you made it. We’re all very nice, but we can be a bit

much. I hope we don’t scare you away. Ready?”

I nodded, and then I stepped into a BDSM dungeon for the first time.

It was just big enough to store two eight-wheelers side by side. Electronic torches lined the walls. Carpets covered the floor, overlapping one another until there was no tile left to be seen. I wouldn’t notice the chains hanging from the ceiling, the St. Andrew’s crosses tucked in the corners, or the slim cages until my next visit, and it would be a long time until I tried them myself. It was the submissive roundtable tonight. No dominants were allowed. No toys were out.

Today, my attention was on the group of people in a little section off to the side where

couches and cushioned chairs were arranged in a circle. A short woman, no more than four feet

tall, was the first of the group to see me. She directed the two people on the bigger couch to

move over. The two looked at me as they moved, smiled, and exclaimed, “hello!” and then the

whole room was in motion. People on every couch and even on the chairs got up so I’d have my

pick of the seats. Someone offered me pizza, another chips.

I sat on the floor where I stood.

“I’m goo--” the saliva caught in my throat. “I’m good here,” I managed.

Behind me, Rosa said, “All right, everyone. Let’s try not to scare her off. Is everyone

here, Chiquita?” She settled down right beside me on a giant teal pillow, while a sixty-year-old

man with a pot belly leaned down to me.

“Are you sure you’re all right down there? I, well, I wouldn’t mind giving up my seat

here. And it’s not, well, it’s not good for you to sit there if you aren’t comfortable,” he whispered

to me, and I smiled a little and shook my head.

10 “I’m good,” I whispered back.

Chiquita, the small woman, was seated directly behind Rosa and immediately started playing with her friend’s perfect curls. “Lorraine is the only one left.”

Rosa nodded. “Then let’s get started. Introductions, first. John, how about you?”

The old man beside me sat up straighter and fluttered his hands around until he finally set his paper plate down on the coffee table in front of us. “Well, I’m John. I’m a submissive, uh, well, let’s see. I’m unowned and uncollared. I’ve been coming out for about fifteen years now, and, um, I’ve been having a darn good time.”

He was in a button-up shirt and khaki shorts, his hair was thinning at the top, and apparently, he always brought the pizza.

The woman beside him was middle-age, plump in a healthy way, and dressed in jeans and a cream-colored blouse. She interrupted her own self-introduction to tell me that if I needed anything, I should feel free to ask her.

One of the women was wearing pink tie-up boots and lace kitten ears and looked to be in her early 20s like me. A pink pet collar with a heart-shaped tag was wrapped around her neck, and she wore pig-tails, a crop top, and a skirt. She was the only one in the place dressed in anything of note, and her skirt was not even short enough to see her underwear. It was a tremendous relief, knowing I wouldn’t have to spend the next two hours studiously avoiding eye- contact with various genitalia.

“Today’s topic is consent. Let’s start with an overview. SSC, as we all know, is the most common, meaning Safe, Sane, and Consensual. RACK is another popular one, meaning Risk

Aware Consensual Kink.”

“PRICK is Rosa’s favorite,” Chiquita added with a wink. People laughed.

11 “What’s PRICK?” the old man, John, asked.

With a pat to his hand, the middle-aged woman said, “Personal Responsibility, Informed,

Consensual Kink. It’s not too different from RACK.”

“I hate SSC, personally,” the kitten girl jumped in.

A slim but muscular, tanned woman with short hair--and a physique very similar to my mother’s--nodded and pointed at the kitten girl. “For sure. RACK and PRICK at least acknowledge that both sides need to be aware of the dangers involved in hitting someone with a bat.” The horrific sense of similarity to my mother disappeared immediately. She would never point at someone, not in agreement.

“Bats are really fun, just saying,” someone said.

“Foam or wood?”

“Metal.”

My eyes must have widened because Rosa interrupted. “Back on track, guys.”

“Oh! Don’t worry. No bats if you don’t like them, of course. That’s the whole point. Do you know what you like?” the middle-aged woman said.

My face felt like it was on fire, and I knew that I was as red as a tomato. “Um...not really,” I said. “I’ve never even been spanked.”

“Wow, really?” someone said, and my face flamed all the brighter.

“That will make negotiation hard. So what brought you out?”

“Do you know what negotiation is?” John asked.

“Uh...uh.” I swallowed hard. There were a lot of eyes facing my direction. “Negotiation

is the stuff that happens before the scene, where the people talk about what they want and don’t

12 want. Establish safewords, hard limits, soft limits--” I shut my mouth abruptly, barely finishing

the last word to swallow a large amount of saliva that was trying to choke me.

“Exactly, negotiation is a big part of consent,” Rosa said, sending a reassuring look my

way. “Play can mess with the brain. Pain equals endorphins equals high. ‘Consenting’ while

inebriated isn’t fully-informed consent. During play, or even during sex, you might as well be

under the influence. I always tell new people to try to go to every event they can, whether they

think they know what they want or not. We have no problem with voyeurs here. And Newbie

Night, specifically, sometimes has sensation stations where experts will give you the chance to

try things in a completely nonsexual, just-a-test kind of way.”

“When is that?” I whispered, fairly certain I could melt an ice cube with the heat of my cheeks.

“I think we have one coming up in a couple weeks actually. I’ll message you.”

“Please do.”

“If you ever feel uncomfortable, no matter what, you can always come to any of us. We got your back,” a man added, sprawled in the armchair across from me with a four-limbed heart- shaped pillow propped between his spread legs.

“So how did you know you liked this?” a grandma asked. She may not have been a grandmother, but her glasses hung off her nose with a green, beaded chain around her head. The veins in her hand stuck out so much, I might’ve mistaken them for snakes, and her dress--a floral, oversized shift--draped her from collar to her ankles. “It took me forever. I was married to a man for five years. He never once even pulled my hair.”

There was a collective groan, the sound of shared frustration so palpable it vibrated in my chest the way a loud speaker does.

13 I shrugged a shoulder, a small smile at my lips. Funny how that collective groan had shot

a sense of belonging through me. I’d been stabbed with it, and I’d liked it. “I’ve just always

known.”

I couldn’t have articulated beyond that even if I’d wanted to. I didn’t look twice at hot

men. Hot women either. Some of my family’s friends used to comment on it, asking well into my

high school years if I liked any boys, as though wondering why my hormones didn’t seem to

have worked well enough to begin the sex craze. The questions were always tinged with concern

and severely uncomfortable. The answer? I didn’t know. I just didn’t notice them, didn’t care.

Stories about sex and all its bodily fluids, from friends or from TV or from porn, ran the gamut

from anthropoligically interesting to vaguely revolting.

It was only thoughts of BDSM that made me stop and consider. Not because of a physical

reaction, but because of a mental one. Emotional? I wasn’t sure. Anyway, I left my explanation

vague with this group of people, and they let me.

“Oh, yeah. Tied up on the railroad tracks, anyone?”

And off they went, talking about superhero kidnappings, bossy bosses, an accidental spank in the bedroom. The woman who’d been missing when we began, Lorraine, came into the room at this point, rambling on about various hold ups, and everyone laughed and waved her excuses away, prompting a bout of jokes, in which she also participated, about the crazy things people would do for her the day she showed up on time.

Someone shared a vanilla horror story--being so pressured into sex, it was more properly named rape--and tempers rose. Vows were made.

“If he ever bothers you again…”

“If you ever need us…”

14 “Damn vanillas. It’s unbelievable that sex-ed doesn’t teach you about consent, if they even teach sex-ed at all.”

“As if women are doormats to be used…”

“And we are not doormats, women or submissives,” kitten ears declared. “It’s power exchange. Pooweerrr exchangeeeeee. To exchange power, you need power to begin with!”

Lorraine hooted. “Absolutely. And both sides better know it!”

Attention soon turned back to me as all sorts of advice was tossed my way. The questions to ask a ‘dom’ to check if he even knows what that word means. The tips and tricks to meeting someone online. The secret code word I could tell Rosa or one of the other community leaders to say that I needed help getting someone off my back. Then, we moved on to the glory that was subspace, and somehow I mentioned that I most wanted to try electro play, which could include anything from the tens units that vanilla people used for muscle therapy to zappy wands that glowed purple to shock collars.

“You even know the proper terminology,” the grandma goaned. “I wish I’d started so early.”

“How’s Dave, Gertrude?” the kitten girl asked, bumping her with a shoulder.

The grandma blushed and dropped her gaze to her beige sandals. “We tried needles for the first time last Saturday.”

Chaotic enthusiasm erupted again. Rosa--a submissive and a sadist--had apparently stuck needles in more than one of the people in the room. And a phantom “Miss Cleveland” was apparently the goddess domme that had taught them all.

The event ended at nine thirty on the dot, by which I mean, a little past ten pm. Miami ran on the Cuban concept of time. My armpits were itchy with sweat from the sporadic air

15 conditioning and the near-constant heat generated by my flushing face. My heart was still beating fast, but in a good way, now. It wanted to leap out of my chest in glee. These people felt right.

I drove home belting out the lyrics to the Nightcore version of “Wonderland” by Natalia

Kills, and by the time I got home, my energy wasn’t even close to depleted. I sprinted to my little brother’s room, thankful for the privacy afforded by his recent move.

He was seventeen. At some point maybe a month ago, my mother had tripped over my aluminium water bottle, which I’d placed on the floor in the laundry room in want of a bedside table. She caught herself before she fell, but she was furious, looking around my room at the cluster of chargers by my feet and the melting grapefruit-pink ice in the cup on the antique dresser with gold trim. She’d yelled at me. Told me I was too disgusting to live with her, too irresponsible, too much of a pig. She told me to get out, that she’d pay for an Airbnb if only it would get me out from under her roof. My little brother had overheard this, and he’d jumped on the chance. “I could move out. She could take my room.”

“Ugh. You can live together, you disgusting asshole.” That was directed at my brother.

She only ever called my cat and my brother an asshole. She had different names for me.

Anyway, my brother hadn’t allowed the opportunity to slip away, convincing my father to follow through on the threat. That was how I ended up in my brother's room at midnight, popping on some fuzzy socks, sticking my taped-up Beats on my head, and dancing until the sun was edging into the sky. I hadn't closed the shades since I'd moved into his room. At night, the lights of the city in the distance glittered and danced around the moon’s reflection in the ocean, while the stars in the sky shone beside the true moon.

16 3

Sometime after noon the following day the sound of my mother’s yelling slipped through the barrier of my dreams. My cat shifted on my stomach. I blinked my eyes open, covered my head in my blanket--taking my cat with me into the darkness--and tried to dream on.

Unfortunately, that was not to be. The door to my borrowed room banged open. “Alexis!” my sister screamed at me. “Mami is such a bitch.”

I sighed and pulled the blanket away from my face. Squinting at her in an attempt to get used to the light, I muttered, “Wha…” I licked my chapped lips and tried again, clumsily sitting up. “What did she do now?” My little sister started pacing in front of me, her reflection in the massive TV behind her following suit.

“She won’t let me take violin lessons!” She threw her hands down, like she’d wanted to stomp her foot and her hands had made up for her restraint.

“Why?” I asked, distracted by a warm feeling that seemed to be wrapped around my heart. It was light and pleasant and comforting, and it took me a moment to trace it back to the meeting I’d had yesterday. My eyes crinkled with happiness before I focused on the moment.

“She says it’s too expensive.”

“Well, how much is it?”

“Eighty dollars a week! Every other week!” Her high ponytail swung back and forth as she moved, the scattered streaks of platinum and gold in her dark blonde curls catching the light of the sun. The ponytail was thicker than her slim neck.

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“I know. But she thinks we’re poor.”

17 I rolled my eyes and looked out my window at the ocean sparkling in the sunlight. We lived on the fiftieth floor, and the little houses on the other side of the water all blended together into one long strip of browns and oranges. The people I’d met lived somewhere out there with their beat-up cars and unbranded jeans. They probably kept their kitty ears and their paddles hidden away in a bin or maybe stored in a room all to themselves. The way they’d toyed with each other’s hair and ragged on each other, the way they’d hugged so freely and talked about the sexual exploits they had shared together--I was sure they slept beside their partners and cradled each other through the miseries of life.

“Alexis!”

I startled and looked back at her. “Sorry. She’s an idiot. Didn’t she buy a second pair of

Airpods like yesterday?”

“Two days ago, but yes! Alexis, I hate her.” Her hands were settled on her hips now, and she was leaning towards me a little bit in irritation, leaving her two feet away from the foot of my brother’s bed. It didn’t occur to me to invite her to sit down nor did it occur to her to want to sit, I was sure. There was a couch that could seat three people to the left of the bed--there were, oddly enough, multiple framed pictures of this same couch decorating the walls--but it sat empty.

My brother’s only stuffed animal--an enormous lion--used to stay there years ago, but he’d

hidden it in his closet when I was thirteen and my mom had thrown all my stuffed animals out

while I was at school. I’d cried for days but only in my bathroom behind closed doors, biting my

lip to keep silent.

I thought back to the kitty ears on the woman and the man with the heart-shaped pillow and the sign on the whiteboard that had mentioned a party for littles. I didn’t think I was a little, though I didn’t really know. Littles were all about childlike things. Their scenes often involved

18 them mentally regressing. I didn’t know much about it, but I was pretty confident none of those people would have judged thirteen-year-old me for my stuffed animals. Still, thinking about it made me feel weak. Ashamed.

The couch didn’t sit empty in memory of my lost childhood toys or my brother’s still- hidden lion, of course. It sat empty because it was damn uncomfortable. Its purple velvet material was covered in glittery gold signatures stitched into the fabric that made sitting on the couch an unbearably itchy affair. My cat bumped my palm. My hand had stopped its movement across her fur.

“I know,” I said slowly, my hand resuming its motion, “but let’s try to cut her some slack. She’s worried about what she will do once daddy dies.”

“She wouldn’t need to worry if she’d worked a day in her life!” She stormed out. Two minutes later, my mother walked into my room where I still sat in bed, hardly awake and stroking my cat. My cat, Tessa, tensed, but I cooed at her and kept petting until she calmed down. My cat didn’t appreciate being kicked, however rarely, and this was how she let my mom know.

“Ohh,” my mother breathed. “So you’ve finally decided to wake up. Let me know if you ever decide to get your fat ass out of bed, okay? I won’t hold my breath. Your face looks like shit, by the way. Don’t you ever wash it?”

She was wearing my sister’s mesh coverup again, and I was certain that hadn’t helped ease my sister’s frustration. She hated when our mother stole her clothes, and I think we both found it somewhat disturbing when she went out in just a bikini and a transparent, cover-up robe.

Unless my sister installed a lock on her closet door, my mother would continue to steal her

19 clothes. They were both size fours with legs that went on for days. I was a size eight with normal-length legs, so my clothes were safe.

“Okay.”

She was barely in the room when her gaze caught on the half-empty bottle of San.

Pelligrino on the bedside table, and with one step forward, she swept it up. “For fuck’s sake,

Alexandra! I don’t want rats in the house, so do me a favor and try to be a little less revolting, okay? I know you enjoy living in a pigsty, but this is my house.”

“Okay.” My monotonous parade of okays never bothered her. They were the only thing that didn’t. If I questioned her plans or asked for further details, she’d go on the defensive. If I defended myself, she’d keep insulting me long after I started crying. Either way, the conversation went on longer than I wanted it to.

Once, when I was eleven, my father had walked in on her throwing insults while I cried and had decided to leave her and take me with him. In the end, of course, he only actually left her three years after that, and he’d left me as well. His parting advice had been to install

“shutters” over my emotions, and I’d listened, locking away my emotions from the real world.

They didn’t only dull the pain, pleasure filtering in as though second hand, but it was worth the trade off.

“Ugh.” Her lips curled in disgust, she said, “Look, I’ll be on Irena’s boat today. You need to pick up your sister after school,” and then she left, her heels clicking against the tile floor, her legs on full display. Her tan was only edging into brown, which was pale for her. I assumed she would be lying naked on Irena’s boat, suntanning the whole day away. A thirty-by-forty black and white picture was always in her bathroom if I ever forgot the sight of her naked body. A smaller, colored photo of her naked torso waited in the middle of the hallway to make sure I

20 never forgot. She’d hired some unbelievably expensive photographer to take the big one, but the

smaller one had been taken by an appreciative man in a helicopter that had passed my mother

suntanning on our boat. That’s what she’d told us, and our boat was tall, the angle of the photo

even taller, confirming it as an aerial shot. I’d never thought to question how the photo had

ended up in her possession.

I called to mind the pictures that had decorated the walls of the dungeon. They were

candid shots, filled with people beaming through dripping mascara and bruised bottoms covered

in cellulite. Those people were like me.

My mother shut the door behind her, and I glanced at the empty space my drink had left

behind and then at my watch. Eight.

I closed my eyes. Today was...I wasn’t sure. I heard my mother tell my sister she would

miss her and to make sure I didn’t invite roaches into the house. Anyway, I was tired. I went

back to sleep.

Thirty minutes and four alarms later, Tessa head-butted me and hissed.

“Tes, love, why do I have to get up? I don’t want to.” My phone was having a seizure, and I glanced at it. A scrolling list of texts assaulted me:

my car is in shop

got practice at ten.

can you take me

Elias won’t

Alexis

answer the fucking phone

21 I sighed and rolled out of bed, landing on my back with a dull thud. My cat hopped onto my stomach, rubbed her cheek to mine, and continued to the bathroom. I called my brother.

“Why is your car in the shop?”

“Got into an accident yesterday. Don’t tell mom.”

I barely faltered in brushing my teeth. He acted casual, so I did, too.“How bad?”

“Couple thousand in damages. No one hurt. Elias is pissed, so he won’t take me. It wasn’t my fault, though. The guy didn’t turn his blinker on.” Elias was our father.

“You could’ve hit the brakes when he did.”

“Too fast, too close.”

I put my phone on speaker and threw it on the bed, stripping. “Sounds like your fault.”

“It wasn’t. He was an idiot, and he should’ve used his blinker.”

“Yeah, whatever. I’ll take you.”

“Okay. Leave now. It’s already gonna be close.”

“‘Kay.”

His soccer practice was over an hour from now, but it was down in Aventura, at least thirty minutes from my mother’s house. Plus picking him up. Plus traffic. We were late, though I drove like a maniac. Since it was only a couple of hours long, rather than drive home and back, I reclined in my chair and got to work daydreaming. I was tired from staying up the previous night dancing.

Lying in my car with the air conditioning running, I was feeling bitter. It was the middle of June, and the sun was beating down on me. The black leather of my car seats soaked up heat like a sponge. I couldn’t count how many times I’d returned to it only to burn my butt on the chair, my fingers on the wheel. Today, I baked with it, while my brother ran back and forth

22 across the field of carefully cropped grass that extended at least a mile in front of me. A handful

of tall palm trees waited in the distance, fortifying the thin wire fence that kept the children from

the bustling road. The revving of an engine reached me, and I sighed at the thought of yet

another man in one of the bright green Maseratis that seemed to be all the rage.

I started to think about the new event I’d already signed up for. It was a month away. We would meet at an iHop and have a group discussion about edge play, which referred to things that were generally considered edgy like blood. The Miss Cleveland I’d already heard so much about was apparently on the panel--and yes, there was a panel. It seemed like it was going to be an organized and official affair. Thank goodness for that.

Traditional munches, which were the type of meetings wherein kinky people met up at normal places, had way too many opportunities for idle chatter. Not that I’d ever been, but small talk was just the worst. Following the early dinner at iHop, the lot of us would head over to the dungeon to watch a demo. Fire play was the featured act, though the description of the event also said that they’d have “sensation stations” set up. I’d signed up for it the minute I’d gotten home the night before, pulling up the page on my phone before I’d even entered the elevator to get to the apartment.

I wondered if I should make a point of not staying up too late. With my brother’s car in the shop, he wouldn’t be able to drive my sister or himself to school, and everyone knew my mother wasn’t going to do it. I wondered if I could convince my father to do it. Maybe. He’d always been the chauffeur of the family. Back before I’d gotten a car, the days he drove me to a friend’s house were the only times I saw him, though he lived only fifteen minutes away. Now, I just didn’t see him.

23 I would make a point of being willing to drive them, I decided, as I drifted off, though I would still try to talk my dad into doing it. I could give up some free time--or more likely some sleep--to ensure my sister wasn’t stranded at school or at home. And, honestly, some part of me craved my parents’ failures for the perverse pleasure I took in being a better caretaker than either of them.

Meanwhile, my job started tomorrow. I wasn’t going to think about that.

A sharp knock had me jerking awake, and I found my mother glaring at me through the driver’s side window, her skin not yet darker than it had been, but already glistening from a thick layer of tanning oil that had her transparent robe clinging to her breasts.

I turned on the car just to roll down the window, heart hammering. She seemed to be vibrating with rage. What the heck did she want? How did she even know where I was?

“Earrings,” she demanded, palm out.

“My earrings?” I parroted.

She huffed in disgust, reached her other hand through the window, and started unscrewing the backing from one of the earrings she had gifted me. I didn’t pull away, not wanting my ear ripped off. Instead, I started undoing the other one. The area behind my hair was slick with sweat from the heat, explaining the even more pronounced revulsion on my mother’s face.

“Why?”

“You are too fucking irresponsible. These are expensive earrings, and I will not let you lose them. You are sweating like a pig. Ugh.” She flicked her fingers like she expected a stream of sweat to fly off her hand.

“Ah.”

24 She shoved my hands away from my other ear and finished unscrewing it for me, hurting

me a little when she tried to pull it out before the screw was fully removed.

“What are you going to do with them?” I said, not bothering to say ow.

“Put them somewhere safe from you, not that it’s your business.”

She crossed three empty parking spaces to get to her car, which is when I noticed my cat

staring at me from her car window. She pulled out of the space with tires screeching, and then she was gone.

A grooming appointment.

I readjusted my chair so it sat up again, but I was tense enough that my back didn’t even touch it. I checked my alarms. Four now deactivated ones, saying “cat” were listed around the same time my brother had called.

I’d forgotten I was supposed to take the cat to a grooming appointment today.

25 4

The next day my palms were damp and shaking just a little. I’d slept only three hours. I knew full well that nothing I’d learned in school had actually prepared me for my first day at work, and I was concerned that the boss would expect me to know what I was doing. My friends had told me that wasn’t how it worked. They said that jobs had training periods, and someone would help me figure out what to do.

I’d gotten an office job, a simple thing that would largely consist of researching the market for whatever product the company was paid to advertise, although there was apparently an opportunity to grow into a more interesting position.

“Oh. Wait!” I called as the woman who’d helped me tried to walk away from my cubicle.

She stopped and turned to face me.

“Double-spaced or single-spaced?”

“Either one,” she said and started to turn back around.

“Times New Roman?” I called again. “And do you want MLA citations or Chicago?”

“Uh, you can pick whatever font you want. Except for Comic Sans. That font is atrocious. And don’t use either of those citation methods. Waste of time. Just keep track of stuff on your own in case we need to verify something.”

“Okay, thank you.”

She walked off, and I turned to face the desktop they’d provided me with. First thing to do was figure out how to scroll down on the computer. It wasn’t a Macbook, and the two-finger slide wasn’t working. I needed to figure out how to scroll.

Then, I’d try to not be useless.

26 Then, I’d think about sprucing up my space. I’d asked, and she said I could decorate. I

was thinking of maybe a plant. I’d never had one of those before, fake or otherwise. Perhaps

some colorful sticky notes. Maybe even both. The grey fabric wall was not a bad jumping off

point.

In the end, day one turned out fine. I’d always been good at research, and that woman had

spent hours walking me through the kind of information I would need to provide and how it

would need to be presented. Still, I waited the whole day for the other shoe to drop, even while I

shoved my anxiety into that dusty corner of my mind where feelings went to fade and rot.

I spent that night wondering if I was going to be fired because I’d sent my first

spreadsheet with only a “--Alexis” instead of a “Best, Alexandra.” It was rude and

unprofessional, and I was sure they’d notice. I didn’t stop waiting for a comment about it until

the morning after next, when I simply forgot.

Days passed, and though my anxiety over small things didn’t disappear, I settled into the

routine of work, growing accustomed to the nagging stress. My mother had stuck me in ballet

classes when I was around five. Painting and tap dancing and singing, too. But I’d failed to

become a prodigy on the first day, so I’d quit all of those activities within the same week I

began. School was the one thing I had not been able to escape, and I had risen to the challenge,

maintaining straight A’s throughout high school and through nearly all of college as well. It kept

me up all night, sure. It left me with little free time, yeah.

But the first time I’d received a B in college had also been the last time. After crying myself to sleep at six in the afternoon, it was like my whole self had retreated behind the shutters. During that week, a flower had bloomed outside my dorm window, a bird had chirped, and I’d felt nothing. A rainstorm had flooded the sidewalks, leaving me in soggy socks, and I’d

27 felt nothing. A mother and a little girl had driven a cart around the deli section of the supermarket, the two laughing as they pretended to be on patrol, and when they’d stopped me for my “license and registration,” I’d felt nothing. I didn’t even smile back. It was like I’d been dead inside. My connection to my feelings had grown so cold it had caught frostbite, withered, and died.

My successes in school staved off some of that deadness, which I always claimed to enjoy, but which I feared somewhat. My grades had always been the one part of myself I did not hate. I didn’t like it exactly, but it wasn’t repulsive, giving me a bit of relief from my emotional standard. Work, however, left that unfulfilled, keeping me on edge. It was a grade never returned, refusing to give me that clear reaffirmation that I was worth something.

Meanwhile, I kept going to events. There were at least three every week, and I followed

Rosa’s advice and attended all of them, even a class in which I learned how to crack a whip. It was loud, and each time I threw my arm back, some part of me hoped it would fail, just to spare my ears the sound. Yet every time I failed, I tried again.

A month passed, and I attended the Newbie Night at iHop I’d been promised. It was a restaurant with an all-day breakfast. If I’d known such a thing was possible, I would never have bothered learning how to make eggs.

I was salivating over the many different pictures of omelettes on the menu when John found his way into the room. This iHop had a private area, completely separate from the main part of the restaurant. It wasn’t beautiful, but it was certainly convenient for us. We were only a couple of blocks away from the dungeon, and the room was just big enough to handle our crowd.

And we were certainly a crowd. Long tables were set up in the shape of a “U,” and the seats were filled on both the inside and outside of the letter. Along the wall, a couple of spare

28 chairs sat waiting in case of overflow. At the center of the U, the famed Miss Cleveland and her panel of experts waited. Rosa, the woman who had opened the door to this life for me, sat at her right. On Miss Cleveland’s left, there was a tall man, at least a head taller than both Rosa and

Miss Cleveland, with a pot belly that stood out prominently from the tight leather vest he wore.

His legs were spread wide--possibly the most extreme example of manspreading I’d yet seen. To the left of him sat another man, this one older. While the guy with the potbelly still had a streak or two of black in his greying hair, this man’s hair had long since gone white. The skin on his face sagged a little, betraying his age, and I found myself thoroughly impressed with his biceps, which were on full display when he reached for his water. He was wearing a muscle tee under his own leather vest. Miss Cleveland also had a vest, and like the others’, hers was decorated with colorful pins. I didn’t know what any of the pins or vests meant. Not yet, anyway.

Miss Cleveland...Well, she was a character. Her hair--also long since turned white--hung down to her waist, and her nails seemed to be a full inch long, clicking and clacking on her utensils and her glass and her plate. I was sitting inside of the U, relatively close to her and the rest of the panel. She was a sadist, clearly--the glint in her eye when anyone mentioned blood was unmistakable--but I was not afraid of her. No one was. Somehow, her delight in consensual bloody torture made her into a likeable character. The enthusiasm was infectious, and I think it helped that so many in the group clearly adored her and joined in her enthusiasm.

“Lexi!” John exclaimed when he saw me. “It’s so good to see you.”

“You, too,” I said with a genuine smile. He was an adorable man, though our age difference was far too extreme for us to be conventional friends. Of the thirty plus people in the room, I was one of maybe three who looked to be under thirty. Somewhere in the back of my mind, this information worried me. I knew I didn’t want to start something with anyone more

29 than a decade older than me. My parents were thirty years apart, and I’d only been twelve the first time my father had warned me of his impending death. He used to take me on late-night walks along the marina where our boat was kept and, interspersed with his rantings about my mother, tell me about how he would die before my high school graduation. My mom didn’t go on walks with me. She simply walked into my room and began, not even bothering to make sure the door was shut before she launched into a tirade about nursing him and his old, withered ass.

That always struck me as particularly odd, seeing as how he was still perfectly capable of caring for his own ass, and we had nannies and housekeepers even then.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Good, good. Well, I am a little impatient for a man to come along and sweep me off my feet. How are you?”

“Good. And I’ll be rooting for you. Do you know what you are going to have?”

“Oh, I’m probably not going to eat. I had something earlier.”

I nodded and went back to contemplating the menu, already knowing what I wanted and using it as a shield against further social interaction. I liked him, but already, I was freaking out internally. I couldn’t believe I’d ended the conversation that way. I hadn’t responded. That was terrible. But what could I have said? I could only hope that once the structured part began I would have no further opportunities to screw up.

John got into a conversation with our neighbors about their interests, and one of them turned to me in a way that screamed of friendly inclusion. “What do you like, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t tried much of anything. I just know I want to explore,” I said, feeling dumb, until a different person nearby caught my eye and nodded.

30 “I was in the same boat,” that person said, and I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a good

reminder that I wasn’t so terribly alone here.

“Sub or dom, you think?” someone asked, and we had a brief conversation about our

absolute inability to even contemplate being the dom--who in their right mind would voluntarily

accept more responsibility?--before Miss Cleveland finally got the discussion going.

“Let’s begin with the definition of edge play. People usually think of it as something

more taboo, more dangerous, more traditionally ‘edgy,’ but something doesn’t have to be

conventionally dangerous to count as edge play,” the old buff man said, and already, this was

news to me. With all the research I’d done into this lifestyle, I didn’t expect much to be new,

although admittedly edge play was not something I thought much about. “If it pushes the limits

of what someone is comfortable with, it counts. Often, edge play toys with soft limits. If I were

afraid of the dark, then a blindfold might count as edge play for me. What kinds of edge play do

people here like? My favorite is fire play. I’ve been doing it for fifty years, and if you are

stopping by the dungeon afterwards, you’ll get to see it for yourselves, too. We’ll talk more

about it here, too.”

The panel called on people to tell stories about crazy things I’d never thought to fantasize about, like bull whips and fire, bloodletting and tasers. Even fear itself. I had not realized there was a world in which people fantasized about being afraid.

The discussion soon moved on to why they liked it so much. For some, pushing the

limits--in an arena that was as safe and controlled as they could possibly make it--was thrilling

for them, giving them either a sense of being alive that they craved or simply making sex all the

more exciting. For others, it was yet another exercise in trust, and the thrill came from trusting

and knowing they were trusted to perform such crazy stunts. The whole thing was not for me.

31 Even mild choking--which many vanilla people did despite the many risks--seemed too scary.

But despite how completely and utterly insane a lot of it sounded, I still felt like a part of the group. I didn’t feel as at home as I’d felt when it had only been submissives talking about being submissive, but the lack of judgement from everyone was comforting. The sense of community permeated even here, with the panel encouraging people to explore their boundaries in a safe way, offering resources in any way they could. After the requisite safety lecture had ended, the panel addressed a new topic: what to do if things go wrong.

Edge play was the key reason that the people at the roundtable had been so opposed to

“Safe, Sane, and Consensual.” They recognized that what they craved wasn’t entirely sane, and much of it was impossible to make completely safe. So they not only put every effort into being as safe as possible, they also planned for mistakes. Being tied up with rope can, if done incorrectly, cause permanent nerve damage, so the dungeon offered classes on tying right, showed both tops and bottoms how to watch out for warning signs during a scene, and made sure everyone knew what to do the millisecond a bottom thought they were going numb.

It was rather scary to think about, but knowing they were being so careful helped ease some of my worry for these people. Still, I didn’t think I would experiment much with edge play.

I overthought things way too much for that.

Rosa and I had parked near each other, and I’d been slow to get out of the building.

Everyone else had knowingly rushed to pay their bills, while I’d hung back, unsure of what I was doing. In between chatting with new people who had come in the hopes of being vetted, Rosa saw me and pointed me to the register. By the time I was done, we walked side by side to our cars.

“What did you think?” she asked.

32 “That stuff is too stressful for me, I think. But I’m happy to learn about it.”

“Fair. I thought blood was terrifying when I first started. Now it’s blood or nothing. Are you going to the dungeon?”

“Yeah, absolutely. I don’t need to be lit on fire, but how can I possibly pass up getting to see it?”

She chuckled. “I admire your willingness to even watch. There are other sensation stations happening tonight, so you’ll get the chance to try some stuff out.”

“Yeah, I remembered you mentioning them at the roundtable. I’m counting on them. It’s not the same as a proper scene, though, is it? Isn’t part of the fun the build up to the sensation and stuff?”

“Yeah. The chemicals in your body won’t be running wild like they can in a scene, but it’s a good starting point.” She unlocked her car--a small red thing--and started to climb in. Her body already half in the car, she said, “You know, someone else I vetted into the scene ages ago is pretty good at all sorts of stuff now, and he’s closer to your age than a lot of the people around here. Find me in the dungeon later, if you want, and I can see about reaching out to him for you.”

I stared at her over the hood of my car, the parking lot around us full of cars but empty of people, the register in iHop still terribly clogged. “I wouldn’t want to do anything sexual, though,” I said.

“Oh, of course, yeah. He’s asexual, anyway.” She glanced around, at the slow trickle of people starting to flow from the iHop. “I’ll see you there.”

Asexual, huh? The casual way she’d said it confirmed what the internet had claimed-- asexuals were as embraced as everything else here. “See ya!” I waved and then hopped in the car

33 myself. It was perfect. First, I’d see some fireworks at the dungeon, then I’d experience some new things, and then I’d reach out to a guy who might very well be perfect for me.

34 5

The dungeon looked very different that night. What had been a well-lit, cozy space with treats and sofas had turned into something more fitting for its name. The lighting was dim. Strips of black lights criss-crossed the ceiling. The props on the wall--daggers and chains and swords-- were shrouded by a red backlight, suddenly more sinister than nerdy. A hard rock song with a pounding bass crowded out people’s voices. In the darkness, the overlapping carpets seemed to have merged, and the once empty space was filled to the brim with equipment. A St. Andrew’s cross, shiny red, sat in the back left corner, metal rings protruding from each end. Along the walls, spanking benches had been pulled up, each also equipped with rings for bondage. Open duffel bags, overflowing with whips and paddles, already sat by a few of the places.

In the center, two rows of ten metal chairs had been set up in a half circle around a long table similar to those used for massages. I took a step towards them, aiming for the back row even though no one else was yet seated, when I was enveloped in a hug. “I’m so glad we didn’t scare you off!” My arms stayed limp at my sides, and I blinked.

The person popped off. It was one of the people from the roundtable, the one with the kitty ears, and her expression was one of extreme remorse. “I am so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t ask if it would be all right to give you a hug. I am so so sorry. Are you okay?”

I blinked twice more before I got around to smiling my reassurance. “Sure,” I said.

“Yeah, I’m okay. I don’t hug often, but I’m okay with it.”

So she hugged me again, more hesitantly this time. I patted her back once, and then the hug was over once again. By then, a line had formed. A variety of other people I’d met the other night were standing around, bright smiles on their faces at the sight of me. They all asked before

35 giving me a hug, most of them by opening their arms to me. My answer was always to return the offered hug.

I truly didn’t hug people often. Perhaps when I was younger I’d been hugged more and forgotten, but on what occasions did people hug? My friends and I certainly did not hug upon meeting. Birthdays? My family didn’t celebrate those. Holidays? We didn’t celebrate those either. When I was young, sometimes I tripped and scraped my knee, but then I was jerked up from the ground and insulted for my clumsiness, not hugged.

Regardless, the whole lot of them were experts at it, and I was anything but. I awkwardly patted, bringing my arms halfway up and keeping my elbows out as though only my hands were safe. They embraced, wrapping me up tight in strong arms without hesitation (once they’d received the okay), never lingering nor rushing. I was struck dumb by the whole affair. The people had asked me how my day had been, if I had any questions I’d thought of later. Was fire play an interest of mine? I couldn’t answer a single question while a hug was going on, my brain stopping and starting with each greeting.

Not all of them stayed. Many of them hugged and moved on, going off to greet their other friends with more hugs all around. Rosa and John had already given me brief hugs at the diner, but Rosa gave me another half-hug and then disappeared. John stood next to me, arms folded in front of him, and we walked together to find chairs, while he told me about how excited he was for the sensation stations. “I thought I would hate canes,” he said. “They are stingy things, nasty things really. I thought I would hate them really, but well, Lady A is really very good. Last time, there was a sensation station, she used them on me, and now I love them.” He did a little jiggle and hummed, “Mmm.”

36 Rosa popped up again soon after with Miss Cleveland in tow, and I stood to be introduced. Then the games began.

Rosa and Miss Cleveland stood in front of the table to explain the rules of the space. No sex. No pictures unless the photo was to a wall. No “non-human animals.” No blood or wax without permission. When she said “no glitter,” sporadic groans of relief peppered the crowd, and a mischievous “but daddy...” or two echoed in the background.

The two women found their seats, Rosa’s that same teal pillow set at Miss Cleveland’s feet, and the buff old man began his speech. He lectured on safety, pointed out his lovely assistants--his wife and his girlfriend--and asked if anyone wanted to volunteer to participate in the demo. At least seven hands shot up, and John leaned into me, whispering, “Much braver than me.”

Eyes wide, I nodded in agreement. A person was chosen--a girl around my age who was thin and blonde and pretty--and she shucked off her clothes right where she stood and strutted to the front. It was the first of many naked bodies I would see in the dungeon, and like all the times to follow, no one ogled her. It was a group filled with highly sexual beings--not all, of course, but many--yet nothing in their gaze was sexualizing as they looked upon this woman. Their gazes only said they were excited to learn about this new thing, excited to live vicariously through her. The people I’d been passing on the streets and sitting next to in classes all my life were a different breed. Whether they catcalled or not, they looked at a woman’s short-shorts or at a man’s biceps and a look came into their eyes. An assessment. A judgement that led to interest or dismissal. An imposition.

I didn’t see any of that as the woman strutted naked through her fully-clothed audience.

They were capable of that same look. I saw it when established partners looked at each other, but

37 in the same way that a hug required permission, that sexually objectifying look also required permission. Appreciation, however, was fair game. There was probably an exception that I failed to spot somewhere in the crowd. There always was, after all. But that was the thing, wasn’t it?

Here, at the very least in this particular pocket of BDSM I had found, those who only accepted enthusiastic, informed consent were in the majority. I had never in my life felt so comfortable in the company of a group of people.

The fire man showed off his torch. (That sounds like it should be a euphemism, but it was not.) It was a wooden stick with a thick wad of paper towel wrapped around one end. If the girl had acted afraid, I would have been terrified, but no one seemed concerned. As the girl pulled her hair into a high bun and climbed onto the table, people leaned forward in their chairs, knowing, because we’d already been told, that our chairs were far enough away to ensure our safety. The wrapped end of the torch was dipped in a bowl of rubbing alcohol and stirred around until it was thoroughly soaked.

He’d already checked with her to ask about health conditions and potential triggers, but he checked again, the torch dripping unlit liquid onto her stomach--the part of her body they had agreed he could light. His hand rested on her shoulder, a light, comforting touch. (When asked, the next volunteer opted out of that same comfort, and the fire guy complied, his touches purely professional). The torch was lit.

I watched, my gaze glued to the flame, tracking every flicker of it as he slowly lowered it to her skin. With a swipe, a line of fire was blazing along her stomach, and with a swipe of his gloved hand, the fire was gone. Three times, the fire was lit and put out, and then it was over.

One assistant took the equipment and dunked it in a bucket for later sanitization, while the other set to work preparing a thin riding crop.

38 The fire man helped the volunteer up, checked in with her again, and she tottered off to her seat. She opted to remain naked, and somewhere to the left, I heard her whisper to her companion that it had not felt like burning but like warmth that grew to near blistering with each swipe.

The next volunteer was slapped right on his bare nipple with the fiery riding crop. The fire man checked in, and when he received good reviews, he asked if he would like a couple in quick succession. And so I watched a thirty-year-old naked man with ripped abs and golden brown skin, wearing a bronze cage on his genitals and getting hit with a fiery riding crop. My life had never been stranger, and I had to admit, I delighted in it.

It was the last volunteer who received the most awe-inspiring feat of fiery insanity. The fire man took out a plastic bag filled with what looked like puffs of cotton, the same exact type of thing that magicians used in some of their tricks. Flash cotton, he called it, but it was treated until bone dry. The fire would be quick and intense and would not have any opportunity to cling to the volunteer’s skin.

The man and his two assistants set out to cover the entirety of the man’s torso in the little cotton balls, stretching them out so they lay flat. The singer of an old classical rock song crooned in the background. At least two layers of the cotton covered the man from crotch to collarbone by the time they were done, and then, with a flick of an electric lighter’s switch, the whole thing went up in a puff of flames, bright enough both John and I were forced to look away, shielding our eyes as we grinned to each other, the image of a torso-sized mushroom cloud burned in our brains.

Once the demonstration was over, we all helped move the chairs behind a curtain in the back, and the experts took their places. The fire guy maintained his post at the massage table,

39 though it was pushed back a little to make more room; a woman I’d met at the submissive

discussion was manning the cross; and the owner of the dungeon was set up next to a spanking

bench. The owner was holding a particularly wicked-looking knife.

I started with the submissive woman because she was submissive and female, and I, therefore, felt more at ease, despite the fact that she was wielding a bullwhip.

I opted to keep my pants on, but I’d worn leggings specifically because I’d known I would be experiencing things this evening.

“My master taught me,” she explained. “He loves it, so I wanted to learn about it. I only service top.”

So she wouldn’t take much pleasure from this, beyond being happy to help me figure out if I liked it. I didn’t love that. For sure, any real scene I did would need to have someone who would enjoy the experience for themselves. Jose, the guy Rosa had told me about while the stations were being set up, seemed to be the sort. Although I wouldn’t let him whip me, whether that was in his wheelhouse or not.

She explained that I had to stand with my hands fisted on the cross. If I lifted a finger, it meant I wanted to try harder. An open palm meant I wanted to stop.

I stepped up to the cross, facing away from her and the rest of the room, and kept my hand fisted. The corner I was staring into was where the shiny stone-print wallpaper met the dull ruddy brown of the drywall.

At first, I didn’t even notice she’d begun. I noticed only when it occurred to me that the fleeting tickling feeling was the very tip of the whip--the name of which I’d learned in whipping class and promptly forgotten--brushing against my skin and retreating. It was like a feather. I

40 stuck a finger up. Suddenly, the whip cracked, and I jerked in surprise, though I remembered to re-fist my hand.

When the whip made contact with my skin this time, it stung, but not terribly--a sharp pain followed by a burst of fiery warmth that spread out and faded. Then she hit again. My leggings were making it feel even sharper. I took around five, told her to raise it again, curious to know. It was a sharper pain, a fiercer blaze, a slower fade. I couldn’t tell if I liked it. Taking it made me feel alive, made me feel like I was as strong and impervious as I wished to be. But it also hurt. Five more, and I gave her an open palm.

My next stop was the owner and his giant knife. He was also the whip-wielding woman’s master. It didn’t occur to me at the time that these experiences were edge play by most definitions, mine included because I wasn’t nervous engaging with these experts. I mean, the submissive woman was well known for her whipping prowess, her husband famous for his ability with the knife.

“For safety’s sake, I’m not drawing any blood with this knife, never have.”

I shook my head, eyes wide. “Right. That’s good. I wasn’t hoping for blood.”

“Alrighty then,” he said, and after a pause during which I just sort of stared at his expectant expression, he added, “ya knees go there, torso there, hands there.”

“Gotcha,” I said and climbed onto the oddly-shaped bench. There were three bars, first a lower one, then a higher, then another the same low height as the first. I followed the owner’s directions and stuck my hands and knees on the lower bars, allowing my torso to rest on the bar in the middle.

“Red means stop, remember.”

41 “Right,” I said. My already pale fingers seemed to be turning completely bloodless with nerves.

He ran the tip of the knife gently from my nape to the small of my back, and the feel of the cool metal caused an involuntary shiver to run through me. When he passed my mid-back, I shivered again. It was a pleasant sensation, and I loved that it made me react in a way that was beyond my control. I was shocked. He did it one more time down my spine, and again, I shivered, goosebumps rising all along my skin. He ran it on my bare arms then, on the back of legging-clad thighs. That was still nice, though not as nice. I was still surprised by how much I’d enjoyed the feeling of it passing the back of my neck.

“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

He stopped. “All done?”

“Yes.” I sat up, eyes bright. I thought red sounded like something was wrong, so I hadn’t said it. “That was incredible! Thank you so much. I did not expect to like it so much.”

“Did ya? I thought ya didn’t. You were as rigid as a metal rod.”

“Ah.” I laughed awkwardly. “I’m just kind of tense. I’ve had a massage therapist tell me multiple times mid-massage to just relax. But that was awesome, seriously. Very cool. Thanks so much.”

“My pleasure.”

I wasn’t going to explore the fire, so I glanced around the room, thinking I was done.

That’s when I noticed the last station. A tickling station. I didn’t enjoy tickling at all, but she seemed to have other tools on hand, like that multi-pronged thing people use to massage their head. One of my coworkers had one in their cubicle with a turquoise and marble handle, and I’d asked about it, thinking it was beautiful. Then the boss had passed by, and we’d both spun back

42 to our computers like mischievous grade schoolers. That experience had stressed me out enough

that I hadn’t dared to start up any conversations since. The boss never brought it up, though I was

sure he had heard us chatting before we’d seen him, and I had no way of knowing how far I’d

fallen in his eyes for it. I was as much a loner at the office as I’d always been in school.

Chickening out on tickling of all things would be ridiculous, I decided, so I waited for my

turn. When I got to go, I said, “I don’t actually like tickling, so I’m not sure….”

“Don’t worry! Really, it’s just about sensations, just like the rest of these things. Some

sensations can be particularly fun, add pizazz or relaxation or what have you. Feathers are off the

table then. Anything else here that you don’t want to try?”

Her little table included the head massager and a series of metallic chains. “What do you do with those?”

“I get them cold, and then it feels like I’m pouring water on you.”

I blinked. That seemed unlikely. “Okay. I’ll try it.” I settled down into the position I’d learned at the knife station.

“I’m going to move your hair aside,” she said.

“Okay.”

The head thing was heavenly, as expected. I needed to get one of those for myself. And the cold chains genuinely did feel like water. She laid them on the back of my neck, letting them slowly overflow and drip down past my ears, and I reached up, cupping my hand, to try to stop the flow of water. She put them on my head, slithered them up and down my arms. It was interesting. Relaxing. I liked the sharpness of the knife best. It was both relaxing and invigorating somehow.

43 6

When my dad called me later that week, I was watching a YouTube video titled

“Mistakes Everyone Makes At Their First Job,” and I wasn’t in the best of moods because most

of the video’s mistakes applied to me. I had acted as though I knew something I didn’t because

I’d been afraid of asking too many questions. I had responded to more than one email with only

a thanks, and I had called my boss by the wrong name the other day. According to the internet, I

wasn’t alone in my screw-ups, but that didn’t make me feel better. And I was pretty sure that my clothing choices weren’t professional enough, either. I glanced down at the white blouse I was wearing, the two buttons directly over my chest gaping open. My beige slacks left faint red lines around my waist and resisted every bend of my knee and had been discarded on the floor as soon as I’d gotten home.

Upon seeing the word “Elias” light up on my screen, I felt worse than before. I’d forgotten about the only time in four months that I had planned to see my father. I’d been the one that had proposed the lunch date, too, knowing I’d never see him otherwise.

“Hey, Papi,” I said, remorse weighing down my words. Perhaps we could get dinner instead of lunch, though it was already nine. The lights of the city outside were as bright as always. There were places open.

“Where is your brother?”

I blinked. “Uh, I don’t know.”

“Find him! I called him three times already, and he doesn’t answer.”

“Uh, I don’t know how you expect me to find him,” I said, looking around the room in which I sat. Did my father expect him to be hiding behind the massive signed Dwayne Wade jersey that was framed on the wall? My brother’s room had an attached bathroom--the door to

44 which was open--and I could confirm with a glance that he wasn’t hiding behind the transparent

glass walls of his shower. The big, queen-size bed rested nearly on the floor, so he couldn’t be under there. The sofa sat empty as always, and while the TV was large, it was also mounted. “He doesn’t live here, remember?”

“I’m going to check my place now. What a fucking, irresponsible idiot. He has soccer practice in thirty minutes. He needs to be on his fucking way already. He will never make it anywhere in life,” my father said, launching into a rant.

He and my mother both enjoyed shit-talking people, their own children and their so- called friends, to our faces and to our backs. They trashed each other as well. What did it mean when anyone said anything nice? It meant nothing. I glanced at my paused YouTube video. My co-workers had complimented some of what I’d done. My boss, too, had given me encouragement on occasion, but it meant nothing. Words were fickle--puffs of air that faded even as they were brought to life.

I opened a mobile game on my phone and let him have his tirade, which he began with my brother but which soon moved to my mother for no other reason than that he had the opportunity. I checked my watch and cut him off at eleven minutes into it. “Elias,” I said. “We were supposed to get lunch today, weren’t we?”

He paused. Then he laughed. “Yeah, yeah. You’re right. How about next Saturday?” He always laughed. Unless I cried. Then he yelled.

“I have plans next Saturday.” I was going to meet that Jose guy that Rosa had connected me with the previous weekend.

“Ah, well. We’ll figure it out. I’m at my place, and I see your brother. I’ll call you later.

Bye,” he said. “Bye, bye, bye,” he continued, the flow of goodbyes falling quieter as he repeated

45 them, until he stopped, and it was clear he’d forgotten to hang up the phone. This was how he

always signed off, as if his attention was slowly being pulled to something else. I usually hung

up by the second repetition. This time, he was on speaker because I was in the middle of a battle

on my game, so I left it on long enough to hear my father roll down the window and yell, “You

gotta answer the phone!”.

I heard a whoosh of air as a car door opened, a slight whirring as a window closed, and

then my brother’s voice, “Yeah, yeah. I’m here, aren’t I? My phone’s dead.”

“I was just on the phone with your sister trying to get a hold of you. Your mother tells me

she is basically obese now, and she won’t go to the doctor for her yearly check-up because she

doesn’t want to confront it. Have you seen her lately?”

I hung up. I wouldn’t go to the doctor because he was an asshole who liked to show

pictures of his marathon-running, darling daughters and then ask me pointed questions about my

eating habits whenever my mother made declarations about my obesity, my diabetes, or my

imminent heart attack. I’d never been diagnosed with any of those things and showed no

symptoms, but the last time we’d left the doctor and my mother had told me to buy myself a

portable blood sugar test, I’d seriously considered it.

I wasn’t going back to that doctor, and I wasn’t living in my mother’s house any longer

than necessary. I went back to my YouTube video. My co-workers had reminded me the other

day that there was a bonus on the table at the six-month mark if the boss was sufficiently impressed with my performance. It would be enough to get me my own place a month early. I had to do better.

46 7

I was considering Taco Bell’s various sauces when Rosa entered the building. There were

no bells attached to the door, nobody announcing her entrance, yet I turned to face her as soon as

she entered. Maybe it was such a huge moment of fate that I simply sensed--in an otherworldly

way--that I was about to meet someone important, but realistically, it was probably a

combination of the breeze and the sudden roar of traffic-induced cursing that made me turn my

head.

The man I was there to meet walked in behind her, his shoulder-length hair fluttering in

the breeze. The smell of gasoline and dirt wafted in, disturbing the smells of beans and cheese.

He looked to be my height, maybe shorter, and he walked with a sort of put-on confidence, a swagger that seemed manufactured. But the ever-observant Lexi that I was focused on two key things: he appeared to be my age, and he wasn’t morbidly obese.

I was drowning in nerves, and while he went to order, Rosa came over to meet me.

“Hey, Lexi, how’ve you been?”

“Good,” I said. My voice was breathy and light as if I could only spare so much oxygen to speak. I’d worn my favorite sweatshirt, black and baggy enough to retreat my entire upper body into. My hands were inside my sleeves now--the only reason she couldn’t see their mild tremor.

“Are you ready to meet him? He’s a good guy. I’ve known him since he entered the scene. You know, he entered as a submissive, so he’s experienced all this for himself. He’s a switch now, but he mostly tops. I could just introduce you and go, but I was thinking I could also stick around for the negotiation, if you’d like me to.”

I nodded. “That sounds great. You staying, I mean.”

47 She looked pointedly at the sauces I’d scattered on the little condiments table. One of

each sauce variety stared at me. “Did you get anything? Where are you sitting?”

“Oh, I ate earlier. I’ve never been to Taco Bell. Didn’t expect them to have so many

sauces. Are you going to get anything?”

“No,” she said and started walking, in her dance-like way, towards a table. I put the sauces back and followed as she continued, “I ate earlier, too. I think you also mentioned that you had never gone to iHop either? Do you live under a rock?”

“No.” I laughed as I took the seat across from her. “Actually, maybe a little. My mother’s a health freak, so she never took us to any fast food places or chains or anything. I made a list in college of different food places I had to try, and I got through most of them. Taco Bell and iHop were just nowhere near where I went to school.”

Rosa stood, and following her lead, I stood as well. The man who I was here to meet had arrived. “Lexi, this is Jose. Jose, this is Lexi.” She waved her hand at the table and took her seat again. I sat too.

“Nice to meet you, Lexi,” he said, settling in. With his plate between us, the scent of nacho cheese hit me hard. Suddenly, I regretted not getting anything. It smelled delicious.

Worlds better than the whole wheat toast I’d had earlier.

“Nice to meet you, too,” I replied. He doused one end of his taco in the black packet’s sauce and took a bite.

“So, as I explained, Lexi is new and hasn’t experienced much of anything yet, and you are particularly good at a wide variety of things,” Rosa said.

“Yeah,” he said, pouring more sauce and taking another bite. “I haven’t eaten yet today, sorry.”

48 I frowned. It was five in the afternoon.

“So I’d be happy to do a scene with you. It could be something like a demo, only longer

to give you a proper feel for it. We could try out any tools you are interested in, adjust the

intensity as you want it, and go from there.”

I was almost dizzy from my own nodding by the time he’d finished. “That sounds

perfect. Nothing sexual or anything like that, right?”

“Sounds good. I’m asexual. I can be sexual if my partner wants, but I don’t ever crave it myself, so it makes no difference to me. I have…” He licked some sauce off his mustache and then grabbed some paper napkins for his fingers before grabbing his phone. Seconds later, he had a picture pulled up for me. “I have these pictures of my toys,” he said. “We’ll have to negotiate in a lot more detail before we actually do anything, but just right off the bat, which of these things do you wanna try out?”

He flipped through three photos, each of a bed covered in toys, and zoomed in on a random item to show me I could. I recognized many of them but had never seen any in person.

Before I could focus, though, there was something that had to be said. I zoomed in on a bright yellow rubber chicken with a long neck, little legs, and a big, round belly. “Is this a chicken?”

He grinned, and Rosa laughed. “Ah, the rubber chicken,” Rosa said. “Don’t underestimate it. That beak and those little claws can really sting.”

“Do you wanna try that?” he asked.

“No, no,” I said, the tickle of a laugh unvoiced in my throat. “Maybe not for my first time.” I refocused. The handcuffs intrigued me, naturally. Especially the thick leather cuffs adorned with metal rings. The Wartenberg wheel caught my attention as well, especially after experiencing that bit of knife play the previous weekend. Of course, I wanted to try electro play,

49 as well. Jose was apparently one of the resident experts in that particular field. Flogging, too, but

he had so many floggers that I knew I had to specifically pick a couple of them. I didn’t want the

one made of fluffy cheetah print, but that still left quite an assortment.

“Do you know if you prefer thuddy or stingy?” Jose asked.

“What’s that, exactly?” I asked, feeling a little ridiculous. I’d spent so many nights

Googling this lifestyle, read so many books about it, but there was still so much I didn’t know.

“It’s the sensation. Thuddy is more like a punch. It’s deeper, more aimed at the muscle.

Like a massage. Stingy is more of a surface pain. Like a slap.”

I nodded. “I’m not sure. Never tried either.” Though I knew that, in an everyday context,

I enjoyed neither. When my siblings and I were kids, they’d lashed out when they were angry.

My strategy had always been to scratch back, but unfortunately, scratches left a mark that their

fists never had. My mother yelling at me, “Stay away from my children!” still rang in my ears

sometimes. She never listened when I told her the blob-like hand-sized red marks on my body

were from them hitting me first. I hadn’t bothered to remind her that I was also her child.

“I don’t particularly like floggers, unless people go hard,” Rosa said. “Otherwise it’s like

a feather duster. Or a carwash.”

“Hmm.” I opted to go with one stingy and one thuddy. I added in a paddle as well and

mentioned that blindfolds sounded intriguing but were better left out of my first time. Blood was

out, both a result of the dungeon rules and my own personal aversion to it.

Jose finished his taco and burped, and both Rosa and Jose pretended it hadn’t happened.

After a moment, I decided to do the same, looking back down at the phone to the tune of some

extremely loud crunching. Whatever fried, sugary thing he was eating now, he’d ordered two

50 bags of it, and he was crunching away. I wanted to try it. Next time I was at Taco Bell, I would order food. He was even drinking a slushie. It looked freaking fantastic.

I pointed at a small stick on the screen. It was like a particularly long lollipop, but instead of candy at the end, there was a thick rubber batman logo. “What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s an evil stick,” Jose said. “You pull back the logo part, and the whole stick bends.

When you release it, it’s like snapping a rubber band against someone’s skin, only much worse.

If done right, it leaves imprints of the image on the skin.”

Sounded too painful for me. “Got it. Not for me, I think. I think that’s all for now.”

“Okay, great. Is there any particular day that works for you that you’d like to plan to meet at the dungeon? I’m usually working on Saturday nights or early Monday mornings, so that ruins

Saturdays and Sundays. Can you do Fridays?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Okay. Let’s figure out when the next Friday party is, and we can meet there. We’ll also do a longer, more in-depth negotiation, too.”

“Okay.”

We all stood and headed for the door, Jose dumping his trash in a bin as we went.

“Thanks for meeting me,” I said. “This is exactly what I need.”

“You’re welcome. I’m going to have fun as well.”

After Jose and Rosa hugged, and then Rosa hugged me, we all went our separate ways, finding our own cars in the small parking lot.

51 8

For July 4th, like for every holiday, my family had two options. We could either celebrate it very publicly in a house built for showmanship in outfits meant to dazzle. Or we could do nothing at all. This particular Independence Day my mother received an invite from her beloved

Bella Slvaski who had consistently popped out a child one year after each of my mother’s, leaving us with age-appropriate counterparts with whom we could schmooze. That none of us liked Bella’s children meant nothing, of course. Our resistance was ignored; our cell phones were threatened; and we were off to the celebration.

The Slvaskis had attempted to have another child only two or three years ago, but the woman had miscarried late enough into the pregnancy to spot a small, alien-like shape in the toilet amidst the blood. Bella had flushed that toilet and told her friends of the story without a tear in her eye. Still, my mother had taken to reminding us of the “Poor Slvaskis” whenever we complained of a loss. A lost wallet? A lost childhood memento? Think of the poor Slvaskis.

To their house that evening, I wore a blue dress, A-line as all my dresses were. A silken white sash was tied in a bow around my waist, and the black stockings my mother had thrust upon me were bursting with lace detailing reminiscint of fireworks. I’d argued my way into a sweatshirt, and as we rang the doorbell to the enormous house, I fiddled with the hood’s drawstrings. My brother slouched with his hands in his pockets and his Beats around his neck, his white shirt defiantly untucked on one side. My sister was frowning at the door, arms crossed over the red bodycon my mother had shoved her into. She looked stunning, outshining even my mother who’d gone for a color combination of red and white and gold.

At least I’d walked into my sister’s room before she had caved to the stockings. I would never forget the short-shorts and fishnet stockings my mother’d had me wear to a boy’s birthday

52 party in the sixth grade. They had been itchy and annoying and far too attention grabbing, and my friends and I had ripped them right off my legs in the car on the way home. That part was fun, at least. Ripping clothes off would be fun to try in the dungeon. But no, then I’d end up naked, wouldn’t I? The thought of my naked body killed that fantasy quick.

The grand white door opened, and a Hispanic housemaid waved us in, a plate of hors d’euovers in her hand. We stepped into the large foyer which was decorated with an extravagant chandelier and framed by two staircases. Wandering into the living room, I wondered why we couldn’t visit this family more often. They had an amazing pool. It was set up like a waterfall, multiple tiers pouring down into each other, no real lip between them, and the far wall was glass, allowing the ocean to look like another extension.

We were directed to the formal dining room, which was close to what was called the Blue

Room. The Blue Room and the Green Room were not rooms but spiraling towers on either side of the house, each decorated in their respective colors. We hardly ever went in the towers when we visited, more often hanging out in their theater room or their playroom. Sometimes, I stood in the living room, stepping back and forth and side to side, jumping and squinting, gaze always fixed on the painting of London’s skyline. It popped like a 3D hologram and followed my every move.

The dinner was terrible.

Well, actually, it was wonderful. It was delicious. The meats were tender and juicy, the sauces multi-note masterpieces, the sides an appealing blend of textures that complimented the entree. But I was so hot underneath my sweatshirt that I took it off and spent the majority of the evening with my shoulders tucked up beside my ears. My toes hurt inside my nice shoes, and the

53 more I struggled to resist fidgeting, the more I fidgeted, the urge to plant my foot on my own seat

and hug my knee unreasonably compelling.

The conversation was dull. The Slvaski kids were full of themselves in a way that even my brother could not achieve--a prim and proper, devilish sort. Like that one character with the blueberry from Willy Wonka but subtler. My siblings and I stuck together and mostly chatted about our food, the desserts we’d spotted, and how long after dessert we would be allowed to leave. My brother and I were seriously regretting allowing our mother to drive us all.

When someone engaged us, we responded, but that was rare and always painful. They asked us about school, and it was known somehow that the only appropriate response was to list our awards. And so we did. But we did it grudgingly, feeling rude for listing off our medals and trophys and for playing them off as though they came to us without difficulty.

“And you, Sylvia? Where do you hope to go to school?” someone, another executive of another company with a painted-on face and a Rolex watch, asked my sister.

“I’ve been looking at USC and UCLA. I’d like to live in that area, I think.”

“Oh! You aren’t going to an Ivy League? My daughter got into Yale on a full scholarship.” Obviously, my sister must believe she couldn’t do the same.

“No. I don’t want to live on this coast. I’m hoping to explore,” she said, as if we didn’t visit California all the time. We all knew she was hoping to flee our mother, same as I had when

I’d elected to attend college in Seattle, same as my brother planned by joining a soccer team in

Barcelona.

“Get away from the family, she means,” my brother said around a mouthful of steak. A couple seats down, my mother stiffened and glanced our way, her posture ringing not with anger,

54 for once, but with hurt. And then the flicker of pain was gone. Her face turned away with a flick of her hair, and I forgot the slight pang of guilt that had answered her.

I sipped champagne--actual champagne from the wine region in France--and resisted the urge to cringe. Alcohol was so unappealing. Katina, my age-equivalent Slvaski counterpart, had told me once that if you could taste it, you weren’t drinking it right. My confusion had prompted her little sister to explain that I had to get drunk to appreciate the flavor. That may have been true. Their aunt was, as usual, roaring drunk on the other end of the table, hiding behind her ruffled shawl, and simpering at the married man to her right.

“Explore? Why, you could always stay a week in our villa! It’s in Malibu on the water.

Absolutely stunning.”

I took another sip of champagne to stall. This was the point where we were supposed to brag about our own villa, except we only had the one residence. My father was actively paying for three residences in actuality--his own, my mother’s, and my brother’s Airbnb. Still, that was not the way to brag. I couldn’t think of anything to counter with, so I said, “Thank you. That’s very nice. I’ve never been to Malibu, although we go to visit friends in Beverly Hills almost every summer. They are like family.”

“Oh, yeah!” my brother said, gulping down some red wine to chase his last bite. Drinking alcohol was fashionable, so it was not age-restricted at these events. Or any events. My brother told me he regularly went home and nursed a glass of whiskey. “How is Jeff, anyway? I haven’t heard from them lately.”

“Mami said they just got another jet ski,” my little sister replied.

“Sweet! I call that one.” He took another bite of steak.

55 I told the woman a story about the time that family had taken us out on their motorboat--a small thing, low to the water, with sides like a life preserver--and we’d bumped alongside a herd of dolphins. We’d watched them leap and splash right beside us, letting our hands drift out and skim their backs. The setting sun was a detail I made up, but I’d retold the story with that detail often enough that it felt real.

We inhaled the tiramisu, myself included, even though I was paranoid people were watching and whispering among themselves about how Lexi the pig stuffs her filthy face. My mom had already come over to sneer at my plate when she’d seen the size of the piece I’d grabbed. But it was my favorite dessert, and I only got to eat it at social events. My brother had taken double my portion, but she never bothered with him. He was my father’s child, and my father wasn’t here. Usually, he did come, and they acted the part of cordial parenting partners, even if they were no longer lovers.

Soon after, the housekeeper informed us that our mother was ready to leave, and my brother disappeared into the kitchen to give his compliments to the chef with whom he often discussed sports. My sister and I found our mother already in the driver’s seat, and when I asked if she was all right, curious about the gift of a rapid departure, she said nothing.

“Hello?” I said. Nothing. “Hellooooo?” I turned to my sister.

“Mami? Are you okay?” she said. Our mother turned on some music.

My sister and I exchanged a look. My brother slipped into the front seat, and we set off.

“Hey, bro. Could you ask Mami a question?”

He peered at me from over the seat’s shoulder, giving me a look that clearly questioned my intelligence, but he said, “What question?”

“Anything. She seems to be ignoring me and Sylvia.”

56 He combed his fingers through his hair and faced my mother. “Did you see how much people loved your tiramisu? It was the first thing to go, as usual.”

She said nothing.

Three days later, the silence reigned on. My sister had gone to her groveling on day two, and my mother had forgiven her. When I’d asked her what she’d even said, she’d replied, “I apologized for not wearing a napkin at the dinner table, for not wearing the stockings she’d asked me to wear and then being cold, and anything else like that I could think of. Also, a whole lot for not being grateful enough for her. And then I cried while saying I love her over and over.”

The silence resolved itself a couple days after that when our father called us to laugh and tell us what we’d supposedly done wrong. She’d heard my brother’s comment about my sister trying to escape the family, and she’d been hurt. According to her, she did so much for us, gave us everything, and still, we hated her. Why did we hate her? She just couldn’t understand it. And, my dad had added, my sister was the last of us to leave home. It was a cruel way to remember that she would soon be alone in that three thousand squarefoot apartment.

My brother and I went and apologized, explaining how grateful we were, how sorry we were, and denying the idea that we all sought escape. Largely lies, of course.

I did feel bad for her, imagining her alone on her massive bed, night after night, while we hid our tears and our pain and our laughter, unwilling to reach for her. I pitied her. But I also feared the power she had over me. The shutters I had worked so hard to build--I’d built them to survive her. And no one--not my dad, my friends, or my enemies--seemed to have the same ability to tear them apart.

57 9

I was sitting on one of the couches in the dungeon the following Friday in the same area where I’d spent that first submissive roundtable. Jose and I were leaning into each other, trying to hear each other, trying to focus. He was sitting directly in front of me on a small stool that was short enough he had to tilt his face up, just a bit, to look me in the eyes.

Our discussion was more in depth this time around, and my anxiety faded almost as soon as we got to talking. Safewords came first. Rosa came over to say hello. Then, Jose and I discussed any medical conditions or medications we might be on--an important topic. Aspirin, for example, can make a simple bruise a lot more dangerous. I was healthy. He had diabetes, and

I was stunned. He was a skinny man, with the face of a young boy and the goatee of a teenager who didn’t know how to shave. Patches of long hair spotted his cheeks. He definitely did not look like what I associated with diabetes. But he said it wouldn’t interfere with the scene, and I believed it. He also said he had scoliosis, which I had thought was extinct in modern society despite my childhood doctor constantly checking my spine.

Rosa came over to offer us water. He accepted and drained it in one shot. I refused.

We talked about hard and soft limits. For example, I would NOT remove my clothes. Not even my jean shorts, which were hardly longer than underwear. Marks were okay, but they had to be within the boundaries of the clothing that I would NOT be removing. Permanent marks were a no. Blood was a no. Knives were a no, but less dangerous imitation objects could be used like a clam shucker. Touching was only allowed in a soothing sort of sense, and even that, I told him to limit. Nothing sexual, which pleased both of us just fine.

Rosa was hovering over the box of cookies on the coffee table behind Jose and had been there for the better part of ten minutes. It was odd. The rope class taking place in the main part of

58 the room was finishing up, and I was pretty sure she usually helped people move things around

to prepare for play time.

Back to the conversation: What was I looking for? An experience. Low to medium intensity. I didn’t need to enter subspace. I didn’t know if I could enter it. Becoming high off my own body’s chemicals seemed like a stretch. We talked about triggers. I told him I had none, and

he told me not to call him daddy. With all that agreed, he went out to get his toy bag, which I

then watched him drag into the room and over to us. The duffle bag was longer than he was tall

and so full of things it bulged, its belly sagging down, trying to brush the ground as he

awkwardly rolled it behind him. Each step, it bumped the back of his legs and his hair shook

with the rest of his body. I went to help.

Once we were settled back in the conversation area, he started taking toys out, and we

went over the things I wanted to try. One by one, we pulled things out. I caressed the leather or

felt the faux fur tickle my skin. I tapped a paddle or two on my hand, trying to seem like I knew

what I was doing, and he smiled and told me, “You’re supposed to test it on the forearm.”

The main lights were off now, the black lights in the room making my light blue shirt

glow like a beacon. The excitement that had been bubbling up this entire time was far beyond my

control, almost painful now. I was paranoid I had to pee but couldn’t tell.

Finally, we knew what the plan was. One or two people in the dungeon had already

begun to play. Most were still picking pieces of equipment and setting up. I helped Jose move

the toys we’d picked to a spanking bench. It was effectively two cushions, stacked like stairs but

separated by enough empty space for someone to put their knees on the bottom cushion and lie

their torso and head across the top. I ran off to pee, barely peed at all, and turned on the faucet.

59 “We Will Rock You” came on--I could just hear it through the door--as I finished washing my hands.

I opened the door, and my heart seemed to beat in time to the music. The ornaments on the walls were backlit in their signature dark red. People lay on benches, some nude but for cuffs, others in various states of undress. A man hung from a wooden St. Andrew’s cross off to the left.

Tops circled their prey, caressed bruised skin. Bottoms held their breaths, shook their booties.

Then, the whips sailed. Paddles and floggers, too. All flew through the air and hit their willing victims. All in sync with the beat of the music.

I scurried over to Jose, and he helped me figure out how to climb onto the spanking bench we had chosen, while “We Will Rock You” played out on the backs and butts of everyone in the room.

I settled down. The floggers came first, and Jose started gentle. Too gentle. I could hardly feel anything through my clothes. He leaned towards me to ask if I was okay, and I whispered to him, “Harder.”

He smiled and nodded. “Give me a thumbs up when it’s a good intensity,” he said.

So he increased his intensity, hit by hit, until I lifted my head up from the bench and gave him a thumbs up. It wasn’t painful in the slightest, just a simple thud, thud, thud that soon joined the rhythm of the room.

It was all of us, together. The walls throbbed with the music. It was in my ears. In my heart. Being beaten onto my back. It was infectious and hypnotizing and relaxing. When the song changed, some of that harmony was lost, but the sense of community persisted. And some part of me was too far gone to care about the music anymore.

60 Jose had moved on to paddles at some point, and the slightly tender, slightly sensitive feeling became more intense, closer to painful, but it was such a gradual change that I’d been lulled into so thoroughly, it only served to pull me deeper. I’d always hated massages. They hurt, a series of unpleasant sharp twinges, but I imagined that this feeling may be what massage- loyalists felt. I was floating and deeply relaxed. Far beyond the ability to care or notice when other people stopped or started or yelped around me. I barely noticed when he switched from item to item, and only barely managed to pull myself back to reality enough to respond when he asked me if I was okay with various changes. That was annoying. I wished he’d stop asking.

It was the introduction of electricity that brought my awareness back to my body. It tingled down my arm in the form of an electrified Wartenberg wheel. With the electricity making the edges seem sharper, it was enough to make me shiver like I had with the knife at the sensation station, and I blearily looked over at Jose. “My neck,” I slurred, flipped my hair over, and settled back down.

He rolled it down my neck, and I shuddered in utter delight before it rolled onto my shirt.

That alone was enough to convince me that everyone else in the dungeon had it right: shirts had no place on the playing field. Now successfully aware of my body again, I did my best to carefully analyze my reaction to the few things remaining. Canes were stingy, and I didn’t like them. The fluffy floggers were useless. Rosa had said some floggers might as well be feather dusters. Well, that point was made. Two songs later, Jose helped me up as if I was drunk off my ass. I was not! So I told him I could stand alone, took one step forward, and promptly swayed into the bench I’d just been sitting on.

“Can I help you now?” he said, and I frowned.

“Yeah,” I mumbled, feeling foolish.

61 He wrapped my arm around his shoulders, and we wandered over to the couch, where he sat me down and stayed with me. He wasn’t touching me because I’d said I didn’t want touching, not even for aftercare, but he was close enough it was clear he wanted to. And I found myself wanting to please him. During negotiation, he’d said he liked the reassurance, that it helped remind him that I’d asked to be beaten, that I didn’t blame him for enjoying my vulnerability or my pain.

I moved one of my hands from where they both sat clutching my phone and crossed the distance. I hovered my hand over his and met his eye, looking for permission. He didn’t react one way or another, leaving it up to me entirely, but it was clear he would welcome it. I gave him a small smile and rested my hand on his. He visibly relaxed. The small smile he gave me in return was filled with relief and gratitude.

After I’d had a moment, he wanted to get me water. I didn’t want any, but he insisted as he hadn’t seen me take a sip of anything since the event had started hours ago. I shrugged, and so he went.

Now that the aftercare was done, the couples that had been cuddling on the sofas around me--which included John with a man I didn’t know as well as the kitten girl with a hunk of a man in his late forties--brought me into the fold of the conversation that had been taking place. It was a debate about whether or not vegan eggs could stand a chance against regular eggs. The answer, by the way, was largely a resounding no, but for one poor hopeful.

Rosa came over and sat beside me on the couch.

“You sure seem relaxed.”

“I am,” I said with a grin. “That was fun.”

“Still not scared away?”

62 “Definitely not.”

63 10

I saw Jose again only a couple of days later. In my excitement, I wanted to do it again.

Immediately. Luckily, he was willing, so later on that same weekend, we met at the dungeon

again.

We went harder this time and tried out restraints, too. While our heads were ducked

together, music and madness around us and my cheek pressed against the cool metal of the cross,

he was almost handsome. The stubble on his jawline hardened his baby face into that of a man,

and the overgrown patches of hair he’d missed were stolen by the shadows.

Once the scene ended, I stopped him from taking the cuffs off. I wanted to wear them

longer. They were comforting. Comfortable and reassuring in their weight. And when I sat, the

dangling carabiners clinking against each other, he sat beside me. My butt was sore, making me

groan upon contact with the seat, and I loved it. It was a comfortable level of pain, unlike what

I’d taken to earn them, and it was a reminder of my triumph and my ability to place myself willingly into this man’s hands.

“Would you like to lie on my lap?” he asked. I’d crunched myself up in an effort to lay my head on the armrest alongside my elbow, and because it was uncomfortable, I agreed. I was

too tired to worry about it. The lap would save me from developing a crick in my neck, and

perhaps, just maybe, I also wanted the reassurance of his touch.

***

We played again the weekend after that and again the weekend after that. We didn’t go as

hard as we had the second time again, settling in much closer to the level of pain I felt reflected a

massage. The bruises took a while to heal. We began to talk regularly. Apparently, play could

64 give way to a serious drop even whole days after, and he’d check up on me often. I’d respond to

his check-ins with things like, “I’m good, thank you. How are you?”

So he’d tell me about his day, and then ask me about my own. Soon, anything new or

intriguing or funny I encountered was written up and sent to him.

Today, I spotted the girl next to me look around all sneaky-like and then open up this little cactus figure on her desk. She, like, popped off the fake mini cactus from the fake mini pot, and then she shook the two pieces over her food. It was salt! And pepper! She hid them! Lololol.

He didn’t always respond immediately. He often didn't, which he said was because of work. It worried me a little, but at night, I’d always find his belated responses to the many things

I’d sent throughout the day. Didn’t you say someone stole your salt and pepper last week? You should steal hers. That appeased me, even though I was also at work and still found time to text him. Our jobs were different, anyway. His was customer service. Mine was an office job to which I soon brought a fresh set of Amazon’s disguised salt and pepper.

About a month after playing together for the first time, we went to a diner after the dungeon. It was one in the morning, and we were sitting across from each other in a very bright, artificially-lit booth. The booths were plastic and a sparkly ruby red. The table was a blueish grey. He had four plates piled in front of him, two of which were already empty. He ate a lot, I’d discovered. Like, enough for four men. He’d asked me to help inject him before a meal only the week before. Apparently, diabetes meant he could eat loads of food in one sitting before he felt full, and he didn’t get fat like a normal person would. Still, I didn’t envy him, and actually, the diabetes was a little off-putting. I cared for him a little already. Attaching myself to someone with a chronic health condition was not appealing. I didn’t want to become a maid to him or to anyone.

65 I had just finished devouring my late night omelette when he said, “Would you like to date?”

“To date? Like to be boyfriend and girlfriend?” I felt more shock than anything, though it was dim. Obligatory. My subconscious had put the signs together and wasn’t surprised. The conscious person, however, was unprepared, having dismissed the signs altogether.

“Yes.”

Excitement unfurled. This was my chance. “And dom and sub?” I said, breathless.

“Of course.” He grinned.

I grinned back, took a tiny sip of my water, and said, “But you want an open relationship, right? You still want to play with other people?”

His grin flickered. “Yes, I do.” He was a sadist, and he liked inflicting diverse kinds of pain on diverse kinds of people.

“So, then, I think this would be like a practice. Or a temporary relationship. Yes, a temporary relationship. Because I am pretty sure I don’t want an open relationship longterm.”

Plus, I was very much aware of his health defects, which would be fine in a friend, but far too much in a serious relationship. Plus, I’d never had a relationship before at all, and he wasn’t particularly attractive. I wanted an escape hatch.

“Do you think you’re going to get jealous?”

“I don’t know. Probably not? Then again, I don’t like to share anything I consider mine. I suppose it depends on if I think of you as mine.”

“I will be yours. And you will be mine. That’s the idea.” Being his sounded wonderful.

Being anyone’s sounded wonderful. It was belonging. It was being desired. Being cared for. The

66 other way around wasn’t as appealing. I didn’t quite want it, and I didn’t really feel like I had the right to it.

I shrugged. “Maybe the moment I start to think of you as mine will be the moment we know it’s gotta end.”

“All right,” he said, looking troubled. “We’ll see.”

“So are we dating now?”

“Yes.”

I grinned again. “Cool. So what do I call you?”

“Sir.”

“Yes, Sir,” I replied with a shy smile, and then we began to go over some of the rules we wanted for each other. We’d say good morning and good night every morning and every night. If we missed a day, we’d have to explain ourselves as soon as possible, and we better have a good reason.

He told me that I needed to drink more water, something that he’d apparently been eager to implement since the night about a week before when I’d messaged him from my brother’s shower floor.

“I’m dying,” I’d said. “My head hurts. I think it’s splitting in half, no joke.”

He’d called me then, which had shocked me. He never called me, and I never ever called him. It was an intrusion into his time unlike texts, which could be ignored or read freely.

“Are you all right?” he’d demanded, and I’d broken into tears. The splitting pain in my head had already brought me to the edge. I’d left a fancy dinner party to go home because of the pain, which blazed and blazed like fire, like it was ripping, tearing my skull to shreds. It had made me throw up in the bathroom of that party, which I’d told my mother, but she had only

67 watched me in silent fury for daring to leave her dinner party. Once home, I’d shut all the lights and climbed into the shower to lie on the cool tile. Shut my eyes to dim the pain.

He’d demanded I check my temperature and take some painkillers. He’d wanted me to go to the doctor in the morning. It took a lot of prodding before I agreed to the painkillers, but I refused the thermometer, informing him that I’d only had about one glass of water for the past three days. That was what my headache was. Dehydration. The feeling of it was distinct. I knew it well.

My mother didn’t bother to check on me that night. My sister tried to storm inside to complain about her when they got home, but I kicked her out, yelling. That I could’ve called my father, that he might’ve come or comforted me or cared, didn’t even cross my mind. I forgot him.

As he often did me.

Now, sitting in the sparkly red booth of a diner, I realized Jose had cared enough to remember. Enough to make drinking water one of my very first rules. Accountable to him now, I could not fail, lest I undermine or disrespect the power I’d agreed he would have over me. I couldn’t believe that he’d remembered.

68 11

It was about a week after we started dating that I made the mistake of telling my mother about my dude. (I’d taken to calling him that because calling him boyfriend was too much of a claim, and dom was both that and troublesome to explain to most of my vanilla friends.) It was dumb to tell her, but I’d managed to convince myself, for just a moment, that she would be as excited to talk about my love life as she was to talk about her own. The coming Saturday was our first true date. I’d been blinded by my excitement and my anxiety, and I’d wanted to share. Upon learning that I was in a relationship, her first question was, “Does he have money?”

I was a notoriously bad liar, so I didn’t lie. I simply said no. She didn’t question me further, and I thanked my lucky stars she hadn’t asked for any actual details. I hadn’t thought it through. Any lies to cover up where we’d met would have been entirely transparent, and if she found out that the two of us frequented a local dungeon, or that the professor I’d told her I knew from the University of Miami was one its patrons, I was sure that arrests would have been made.

Instead of being thrown in prison, or watching Jose get thrown in prison, I spent the following week suffering dirty looks whenever I left the house. I got whispered insults about my stupidity for falling for his trickery and about him for his lechery--based solely on his income status. And, of course, in the most concerned, delicate voice my mother could muster, I was told that he was only with me for my money.

An impossibility. He was a Cuban-American man, and though he was perfectly willing to wear a dress for Halloween, he was adamant that he pay for our outings. It was a pride thing. A manly macho thing. And I liked it, though I offered to pay.

69 The day of our date arrived. I didn’t know where we were going, but I wore a dress in an effort to look somewhat decent. He told me I looked beautiful, and I smiled tightly at the lie and let it go.

The place was called Under The Sun, and it was a store full of nicknacks. It was organized but stuffed to bursting. Shelves from floor to ceiling wound throughout the store, turning it into a maze. There were as many items in there as leaves in a maze of bushes.

It wasn’t what I expected for my first date, but it was wonderful. There was little pressure to be magnificent in the dingy, crowded store. It was private, the tall shelves hiding us from any others, without the pressure of true privacy.

He pulled out a postcard. The front was divided into four sections, depicting a man preparing to play a new game, his wife waiting, then losing patience, only to find him researching character builds. I laughed. I also researched character builds before starting a new game.

He picked up another thing. An image of the bird character in Sesame Street. One of the other characters was pulling anal beads out of him, surprised at how many eggs the bird could lay. I cringed. “Yuck,” I said. “Don’t corrupt children’s shows.”

With a dirty grin, he put it away, picked up another short comic. It was a little kid asking for a “girl game” at GameStop. The worker declared that all games are “girl games,” the words in a rainbow font above her head, her eyes sparkling. The little girl stared, and then the worker caved and gave the kid a Barbie game.

“Nuh-uh!” I said. “Girl anything means nothing. There are racing-unicorn games, dress- up games, shoot-people-with-sparkly-magic games. Those are all traditionally ‘girly’ but different things altogether. Even within Barbie, there’s horse-riding Barbie and all sorts of stuff.

70 It’s a bad description. And it propagates sexism! What if a boy wants a unicorn game? What if a girl wants to race cars?”

“Girl jeans.”

“What?”

“Girl jeans. They are usually skinny, don’t have pockets.”

“Nuh-uh!” I said again and then proceeded to list the many different types of jean cuts that existed for women. Bootcut, skinny, boyfriend, etc. “There’s an entire wall of them at

Ambercrombie. It’s too much for me. That’s one of the reasons I don’t shop!” A very minor reason.

He shrugged and picked up a birthday card.

His sense of humor and mine were very different, and that became clear quickly. But it was a fun date. When he got a feel for what I liked, he picked up more of those to share with me, and once I understood his kind of gross, kind of taboo sense of humor, I looked for things to share with him. Afterwards, we went next door to eat grilled cheese at a place that was set up to look like a street-side hole in the wall in New York City. Vaguely intelligent and vaguely funny quotes were scattered along the wall. It was the best grilled cheese I’d ever had, and they paired it with a mushroom bisque that was amazing. They had candied maple bacon and french fry poutine, too.

All in all, it was cheap and grungy and kinda weird. Perfect.

71 12

Friday night was New Year’s Eve. As on every other New Year’s Eve, I saw my mother

only once--as she walked out the front door. She was wearing a black bodysuit, thigh high boots,

gold dangling chains, and nothing else as she tossed her classic “See you next year!” over her

shoulder. It reminded me of the pictures I’d seen of her from last Halloween in which she had

dressed up as a Victoria Secret Angel. My cat perked up at the sound of the door opening and

then settled back down when nothing of interest turned up. My sister walked into my borrowed

room--my brother was still living elsewhere and hadn’t bothered to show his face for the holiday--almost as soon as she was gone.

“I totally bet you don’t remember this or aren’t in the mood or whatever, but you said we could make macarons together for New Years. I told my friend that you wouldn’t remember,” she said. Both her hands held her phone in front of her chest, her expression one of annoyed anger and certainty, her thumbs poised to tell her friend she was right. Her shoulders were

hunched, her already small, slightly underweight frame curling into itself.

“Oh,” I glanced from her to my computer. I was in the middle of a random “Are you

nice?” test I’d found on the internet, trying to cure the weight of hopelessness sitting in my gut.

“I hate to confirm this...stereotype or whatever. But I did forget. And I am also not in the mood.”

“Figures,” she said and hit the button on her phone to record a voice message. As she

walked away, she said, “Yep, told you. She forgot.”

I went back to my quiz and only an hour later managed to pull myself away from the

computer and my nagging self-hatred. It had appeared seemingly at random and had only been

temporarily appeased by my dude’s Happy New Year’s text before coming back with a

vengeance. I entered my sister’s room.

72 My sister was the favorite. Her room was one of three bedrooms in the apartments, though the bathroom in the master bedroom was large enough to be a fourth bedroom. The office was also big enough to be a bedroom, and no one ever used it. The doors were glass, however, and it didn’t have its own toilet like the laundry room. That was why, when I wasn’t being granted special permission to stay in my brother’s room, I lived in the laundry room. My sister’s room had a private balcony, though her piano partially obstructed the entrance to it. She was lying on her bed the wrong way, her feet hanging off the side, her phone held high above her head.

“Hey, Coco. I’m in a better mood now. Do you still wanna make macarons?” I said, half- hoping she would say no and half-certain if she said no I’d be upset.

She sat up so fast I nearly jerked back a step in response. The excitement in her eyes was unexpected. I’d been certain she would refuse on principle, and I’d have to beg.

“Really, Coco? You don’t have to say yes only for me,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m serious.”

Her mood seemed to deflate before my eyes. “Are you sure, though? I don’t want to be...I don’t know. Like a burden.”

I felt a pang in my chest. It was a familiar thought.

“You’re not. Go get the book,” I said and headed to the kitchen.

“Okay!” She bounded out of bed.

The ensuing baking experience was questionable to say the least. We found out that the recipe for the frosting called for powdered sugar rather than granulated sugar, and we only had enough powdered sugar for the cookie part. It was leftover from our previous baking attempt.

We also didn’t have granulated sugar, and we hoped that date sugar would do. Our flour was

73 some sort of gluten-free paleo concoction rather than the almond flour the recipe requested, and

the only vanilla we could find was literal vanilla beans. We trucked on.

We read that granulated sugar could be turned into powdered sugar by running it through

a food processor and adding something like cornstarch. We decided to skip the step of cornstarch

and jumped straight to the food processor. But the food processor was a miniature model and

could only handle a quarter of a cup at once. We needed two cups.

So we scooped and blended and scooped and blended and spilled fake powdered sugar all

over the place. Each time we opened the processor, clouds of date sugar would puff into the air.

“Mami is gonna kill us,” she said. “We’ll have to clean very well.”

I nodded. “Too late to quit now. Hey! Coco!” I yelled at the cat. “Don’t pull that!”

Coco was my nickname, my sister’s nickname, and the cat’s nickname. Other people got confused. Luckily, they weren’t allowed to use it.

In the end, the cookies were perfect. They’d risen. They were uniform in color. They had the expected slight sheen. We didn’t even burn anything this time, not the trays my mom kept in the oven nor the food itself. They were irregular in shape but overall, it was a win. The frosting, on the other hand, was grainy. We decided it would have to do and sandwiched our cookies, and the mouthfeel of the finished product was that of sand. We did our best to focus on the positive.

My sister wandered off, and I watched her go, annoyed she was leaving me to clean

alone. I didn’t say anything, instead beginning the laborious task of sweeping and vacuuming the

floor, spraying and wiping down the counters, cleaning the dishes, and even surveying the inside

of the oven in case the batter had spilled. I walked around the other side of the counter, which

we’d been nowhere near, as well as under the seats that were positioned there. After nearly two

hours of cleaning, my back hurt, but the place was spotless. I’d left only a few dishes in the sink

74 that I wasn’t sure could be stuck in the dishwasher. Our somewhat questionable macarons were zipped up in a baggie and moved to the fridge. I headed to my room just before midnight. Soon after, I texted my brother.

Happy New Year, I said.

You, too.

Please drive safe. And drink responsibly. Tonight is supposed to be one of the worst on the roads.

He didn’t respond, and I unpaused the game I’d been playing when I’d thought of him. A loud explosion suddenly sent my character flying back several paces. She was on fire, so I walked her through an ankle-deep puddle to put out the flames in her hair. Fire extinguished, I continued beating up enemies, creating tornados, and causing fiery meteors to fall from the sky.

Explosions sounded left and right, a violin and flute playing a fast melody that urged my character to run.

“Coco!”

I jumped at my sister’s sudden appearance in the corner of my eye, and my character fell off the side of a cliff. “Crap,” I muttered as its dead body faded into the ether.

“The fireworks started.”

I climbed out of bed. “Oh, nice. Which balcony?”

“There aren’t very many,” she said, as she walked towards her room.

She was right. The view from her balcony was filled with high-rise buildings and only far in the distance were there small little houses shooting fireworks. People in one apartment on the tenth or eleventh floor of the building directly in front of us were dangling sparklers over the

75 edge of their balcony, just two little lights, far enough below us that even those were unimpressively small.

We didn’t bother to check the other balcony. The bay separated us from anything that could launch a firework. Sometimes boats passed through and lit up the sky, but we would’ve heard it. My sister went to sleep. I went back to my game.

Midnight came and went. I went to sleep around five.

“Alexis!” I heard, and something landed on me. Suddenly, my eyes were open and I was sitting up in bed, a once-white dish towel in my lap. As I stared at the dirty dish towel I’d used earlier, my eyes narrowed, and I turned to face my mother. She was right next to my bed.

“Yes?” I said. I was not in the mood for this.

“What the fuck is wrong with you? You know, I walked in this morning to see your sister cleaning up your mess? She clearly takes after me, but you. You are just like my sister. What a pig. How many times do I need to tell you to just live with her. I’m sure she can make room for you in that shithole house of hers.”

I said nothing because my usual okay might’ve mistakenly been taken as an actual assent, so I simply stared at her blankly with the deadest look in my eyes that I could manage.

“Ugh. Fucking disgusting,” she said and stormed back out.

I checked the time. 8AM. I went back to sleep and didn't wake up until four in the afternoon.

***

When I woke up, there was still a residual blackness in my soul. I felt vaguely disgusted with myself and angry and a little like I wanted to cry. I’d learned my lesson about tears well, though, and usually only allowed myself to do so a couple times a year when I could ensure my

76 absolute privacy, though my dude was slowly ruining that. If I was caught crying, I’d be treated to my father rolling his eyes and waving me out of the room or yelling for the nanny to remove me for him. My mother usually reacted with another bout of comments about my general uselessness and weakness and worthlessness.

I shoved the thoughts out of my head, opened my laptop, and started a search for a new fantasy novel. A story about a girl who rode dragons and saved the world from an imperialist empire soon sucked me in, and I lost myself in a world of dragons.

My sister walked in at some point, and I ignored her entirely, pissed that she’d claimed all my hard work.

“What a bitch,” she said as she, too, abandoned me.

That’s when my dude texted me again.

How is your holiday going?

Not great, I replied. I’m not sure what possessed me to say it. It was a fact of life that no one who asked how you were or how you felt actually wanted to know.

How come?

Eh, just a bad day. I can’t wait until I move.

How many paychecks do you want to get before you find a place?

Enough to cover the deposits and like four months of rent in savings.

So you’ve got a few months yet.

Yeah. I sighed.

Have you heard of Beyond Leather?

The convention this weekend everyone’s been talking about?

Yeah. If you’d like to get away, you could join us.

77 I don’t have tickets.

You don’t need tickets to be in the hotel, and you can get a day pass to go to Saturday’s

classes and the dungeon at night. We could play in the room other days, get dinner.

I don’t have a hotel room, though.

Why would you need one? You would stay with me. Josh and Elisabeth and a couple of other people are also staying with me, so it won’t be just us, unfortunately.

How big is the room?

It’s got one bed and a sleeper sofa, and I think someone is bringing an air mattress.

Okay, then! That sounds awesome. I had a sleeping bag I could bring.

78 13

I experienced the longest car ride of my life that weekend, and I drove it all myself. It was brutal. On previous trips, my father had driven, and my mother had packed sandwiches, snacks, games, and all sorts of things to keep my siblings and me entertained. Whether she threw those things at our faces from the front seat or not, they were wonderful, and it was a loss that she didn’t help me prepare for this one.

It took three hours to get from Miami to Orlando, and the first hour was full of excitement. As I moved from tall buildings to squat, broken-down houses, I lost some of my enthusiasm. My singing voice was already worn out, so in fear of losing my speaking voice, I turned off the music. Instead, I stuck my phone directly behind my wheel and put on a playlist of

YouTube videos.

By hour two, I’d run out of videos to watch, and my throat still hurt from my excessive singing. The roads had cleared up, and the highway was surrounded by only large swaths of swampland and grass fields. I enjoyed the view, but the peace of it did not help my mounting exhaustion and frustration. Every time I tried to look at it, I swerved just a little, overcorrected, and then swerved around like a maniac. The bouts of panic did a lot to wake me up when I was nodding off from pure boredom.

I went back and forth between thinking I definitely should’ve agreed to drive with my dude and congratulating myself for not being subjected to another person’s presence for such a long period of time.

By the last half hour, I broke into a song about how I couldn’t believe I wasn’t there yet.

It went something like this: “I can’t believe I’m still driving. People who like road trips are

79 clearly insane. I just wanna stop. How much time do I have left? 29 minutes. How has only a

minute passed? I can’t believe I am still driving.”

Finally, I reached the hotel that had been converted for the purposes of this convention.

I’d passed it three times and had to make multiple U-turns, but seeing the destination still

managed to revive my excitement.

I parked my car and texted my dude, and he let me in through the side entrance. There

were well-managed bushes blocking the entrance from the parking lot. It was sneaky. My

girlhood obsession with being a secret agent-ninja hybrid felt like they were being realized.

The inside of the building surprised me. The carpet flooring was vibrant, plush, and pristine. The pattern was modern and minimalistic. Nearby a small ornate wall light floated above a marble counter with gold accents and a vase.

“How was the drive?” he said as he led me towards his room. My carry-on bag rolled along behind me.

“Okay. It was super long, but I spent most of it singing as loud as possible. My throat’s even a little sore.”

He grinned like I’d said something dirty. “You like to sing?”

“Yeah, but not in front of people.”

He nodded. “Gotcha.” The electronic lock to his door clicked open just as a man in a full- on latex suit passed behind us. My dude said nothing as we walked in, and I was immediately greeted with a round of “Hello, Lexi!”s from the people in the room. We entered into a kitchen area equipped with little more than a microwave. Beyond that stretched a living room with a long sectional sofa, a blown-up air mattress, and humans everywhere. There were six or seven people

80 in the room, sprawled on the couch or sitting in someone’s lap. A reclining armchair cradled a

napper. I saw no actual bed.

“Hi,” I said back, though most of them had already gone back to what they’d been doing.

I knew all of them in theory, having met them at the dungeon and through a house party or two.

My dude went out that night to play with someone else, and I didn’t mind. I didn’t know

anything about the other person, so there was nothing to worry me. If I’d met her and found her

to be superior in any way at all, which was basically a foregone conclusion, then perhaps it might

have been an issue. As it was, I gave it little thought. I did, however, give a lot of thought to

falling asleep in the bed without him.

He’d told me that we’d be sharing a bed, and theoretically, the idea was that I obey him.

But he’d probably only said so because it was the nice thing to do. I mean, who lets his

“girlfriend” sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor when there is a mattress to be shared? We’d

never slept in bed together, and I didn’t know what I would do. What if I farted in my sleep?

Sometimes I conducted orchestras in my sleep. Sometimes I woke up crying. I definitely did not

want him to see me cry. So far, he’d only heard me crying over the phone.

So I set up my sleeping bag, sandwiched between the reclining armchair and the sofa bed.

The others were watching a movie, and they’d invited me. Hopefully, the sleeping bag came off

as simply a move towards comfort.

I fell asleep before the movie was halfway done--something I didn’t usually do. Between the drive and the constant social interaction, it was out of my control.

A gentle wiggle pulled me from my sleep, and my eyes fluttered open, my brain processing little. The guy on the reclining chair was snoring, and the lights in the place had all

81 been shut off. I could barely make out the long strands of hair that tickled my face, everything dark and hazy as it was.

“Come on,” my dude said and offered me his arm. I refused it because such a hand had never actually helped me, but I stood, fisting the blanket I’d had over me and bringing it with me.

He caught me as I stumbled and led me towards the bed, which was behind a door that I hadn’t noticed when I’d first walked in. I plodded along like a small child dragging their beloved teddy bear. Some vague emotional warmth touched me, but I was in bed and asleep again before

I could acknowledge it.

I woke up with my head resting on one of his arms while his other draped over my waist.

My heart was instantly in my throat. I tried to carefully remove his arm, prepared to sneak away like I saw in movies, but it was surprisingly heavy. I couldn’t budge it without seriously picking it up which would almost certainly disturb him. I didn’t dare, instead choosing to lie there as stiff as a board while I stared at the lamp on the bedside table. I pondered the button on the base of the lamp, which flipped between a circle, a line, and two lines. I knew what each sign did, but I wondered why. Wouldn’t an open letter like an “o” be like an on, an opening of the gates of electricity? Shouldn’t the line signal the closed door? What could the “o” possibly mean that would translate in it turning off the light? I thought about it for at least a minute before it occurred to me that it might just be a zero and roman numerals.

That line of thinking having concluded in a way that left me feeling dumber than ever, I tried again to grab his arm.

“I’m awake,” he said.

I froze, my fingers still resting lightly on his forearm. “Good morning, Sir,” I replied.

82 “Good morning, Princess. What were you doing?”

“Trying to get up to pee.”

He moved his arm, so I could get up. “We need to talk when you get back,” he said, and

my heart sank. Basically all forms of entertainment had already ingrained in me the horror that

those words foretold.

“We can talk now. I don’t have to go that badly.”

“No. Go to the bathroom first.”

I opened my mouth to argue and realized it would probably just be faster for me to go.

Less than five minutes later, I was sitting on my side of the bed, my undried hands dampening

the fabric that I clung to. “So what did you want to talk about? Are you breaking up with me?”

Wariness chased frustration across his face. “No. Why do you always think that?”

“You said we needed to talk.”

“And?”

“So you aren’t breaking up with me?”

“No. Do you want me to?”

“No.”

“Okay…” The disapproval on his face was hard to bear. I’d already tried to break up with him once or twice, telling him it was for his own good as I cried and cried. I was a disaster.

“Sorry, what were you going to say?” I whispered, watching my nails pull at the skin

around my thumb.

“Why did you fall asleep on the floor last night when I told you to sleep in bed with me?”

“I was watching something with everybody.”

“Is that the only reason?”

83 He was staring right at me, and he was expecting honesty. I tried to think of an excuse.

Tried to convince my tongue to complete the lie. But guilt was an overwhelming force I could not overcome. “No. I just wasn’t really comfortable with climbing into your bed.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. What if you changed your mind?”

“Changed my mind? Even if we weren’t dating, it’s a big bed, and it’s the only place left to sleep. Do you think I would make you sleep on the floor?”

“No…”

“Okay, then. Are you all right with sleeping in bed with me tonight as well?”

I nodded, but I was a mess of nerves inside and couldn’t meet his eye. What if he changed his mind? What if he wasn’t being serious?

“Okay,” he said and started to get up.

I grabbed onto his shirt, a black T-shirt. His pajama pants were covered in little dinosaurs. “Actually,” I whispered, tried to meet his eyes, and looked again at the floor. “Do you think you could make it an order?”

“What?”

“Sleeping in bed with you tonight.”

“Would that make you feel more comfortable?”

I nodded, tried to meet his eyes. Failed.

“Okay. Tonight you are to sleep in bed beside me, is that understood?”

My heart lightened, swelled. For a moment, it was like I actually believed him. Then it occurred to me that I’d just told him to do that. He couldn’t be serious. I didn’t believe him.

Didn’t believe he wanted me.

84 “Okay,” I said anyway, releasing his shirt.

He went off to find breakfast while I did my best to ignore my doubts.

He was lying. The thought rattled around in my brain throughout the day. I tried to force it back. Where were my shutters? Ignoring emotions hadn’t been this much work before him, had it? He hadn’t lied or been remotely dishonest about anything, I tried to tell myself. Why would he lie about this?

It was Saturday that day, anyway, meaning I would get to go to some classes. The first one I went to was called Kidnapping 101. The red and gold carpet that covered the floor of the conference room was just the right balance of soft and firm, the colors pairing well with the golden chandelier hanging above my head. The chairs, arranged in neat rows all facing the teacher, were well-cushioned and adorned with flourishes reminiscent of the antiques my parents favored. It was good the seats were so comfortable. By the time we got to the middle of the class,

I’d forgotten my woes and was bouncing up and down in my chair as the teacher, Big Red, showed off the contents of her nefarious kit.

My dude was in a different class. Bloodletting, I was pretty sure, and it was a relief to have lost the reminder of my dilemma.

“Okay, everybody. We’re at time. If you have any questions, or want to try out some of my equipment, feel free to come on up. Otherwise, here is some Big Red gum, so you can all just bite me.” She grinned.

Cinnamon gum was my favorite. I liked it for the same reason that I liked spicy food. I liked the burn.

Big Red walked down the center aisle and passed out gum as people started talking about what they had learned, their chairs banging together in the commotion.

85 I picked up my bag and made my way to the front of the classroom. I wanted to ask about

her masks. She had two. One was a plain black ski mask, but it was the other that had caught my

eye. It was white and plastic with facial features that lacked any real detail. It was the epitome of

creep-ville, and I was here for it.

There were too many people lined up to chat, though. They asked about the zip ties and

the how-tos of being pulled over by a cop when there’s a person in the trunk. I had to go long

before it was my turn to talk. I wanted a good seat in my next class.

Down the hall, in another luxurious Hilton hotel conference room, I found an aisle seat in

the second row of the Dollification class. I knew the basics: turn a human into a doll. I didn’t

know much else, but what was I here for, if not to learn?

In the front of the classroom was a wooden structure like a life-sized picture frame. Four wooden columns held up a top bar, attached to which a wooden and horizontal X swayed in the air conditioning. A girl in a puffy violet dress was at the front of the room chatting with a woman in a black and violet tux. I said “girl,” but she was likely in her fifties. The perfect circles of blush on the apples of her cheeks did not hide the wrinkles, and the violet bow in her hair didn’t hide the grey. It all matched well with her purple nails, though, and besides, in my world, once you were old enough to give consent, few cared how old you were.

My dude rushed in just as the class was starting. All the seats were already full, but I saw him towards the back and waved him over. He shuffled over with his legs bent at the knees, trying not to block the speakers as they began.

“Hey, Princess,” he whispered. He slid into my chair as I slid onto the floor and settled at his feet. I rested my head on his knee and listened. I could see the purple loafers and frilly knee socks of the doll-to-be between the legs of the seats in front of me.

86 Lucy, the doll-to-be, said, “Dollification, like everything else we do here, takes a lot of

trust. It also takes a lot of time to be able to shut down the way I do. Luckily, I found Mistress

Abby early, and she is a wonderful trainer and owner.”

“Lucy is about to put herself in a very vulnerable place for you to see,” Mistress Abby

said, taking over, “and then she is going to pull herself out of it and repeat so that you can see

more than one type of doll. You can ask her questions between transitions, but she’s going to be

out of it. Please be respectful. That sort of transition is very hard for her.”

“Before we start,” Lucy said, “I want to point out that I hate purple. It is my absolute most detested color. I don’t know if you can tell, but she made me wear purple contacts, and everything I see right now is just slightly purple.” She gave her owner an exasperated look and

then stepped closer to us, opening her eyes wide and pointing at them for us to see.

I giggled as I leaned farther out into the aisle so I could get a better look at her face.

“This whole outfit is one of the methods we use to get me into the right mind frame to do this. It sets up the mood and builds the anticipation days in advance. When I’m sitting in the nail salon getting my nails done the perfect shade of purple...it’s like the scene started days ago. But she only picks purple because she’s a sadist. Tops in the room, you don’t have to be so sadistic.”

“That’s so evil,” I whispered with a smile as someone nearby said something about the joys of sadism.

My dude grabbed a handful of my hair and tilted my head back so I would look at him. I didn’t resist, so it didn’t hurt. I liked when he touched me like that, like he owned me. It made me feel cared for. Perhaps that’s strange in the vanilla world. “Can you see down there? Would you rather sit on my lap?”

I frowned and tried to turn my head away. “I can see fine,” I said.

87 “You are not too heavy,” he said.

That stabbed my heart. I didn’t like that he’d guessed that. I tried again to turn my face away from him, and he let me this time, his hands leaving my hair. I was medically overweight, as I told him often. I was exactly one pound too heavy for him to say that I wasn’t heavy. Why did he have to lie about those things? Why did he always have to lie?

I pulled at my T-shirt. It was one of my “nicer” ones, meaning it was one size too big rather than four sizes. Its tent-likeness rating was low, and I disapproved of the way it clung to my belly. I’d worn it to please him. I was trying to believe him when he said nice things, but I knew I couldn’t actually be beautiful or loved. I would have trusted him to wear that white mask and throw me in the trunk of a car. Why couldn’t that trust just be enough for him? Why did I have to trust him when the masks weren’t in play? His hand moved back to my head, playing with the soft strands, and I slowly relaxed into him.

At the front of the classroom, Mistress Abby had started tying Lucy onto the frame. A separate chain connected each limb to the four ends of the X. I kept leaning into the aisle, trying to see. Lucy was explaining that one of her knees was bad, so for the sake of caution, they included a ton of extra chains around her waist to act as a support in case her leg gave out.

“You don’t want to break your toys, you know,” Mistress Abby declared. The class hooted in agreement.

I heard a quiet gasp and looked at the man in the chair next to mine. He wore stilettos and a sequined dress, and his hairless upper thigh was red from where his Master had just pinched him. We exchanged a grin, and I leaned back over to try to see Lucy.

Suddenly, the hand in my hair tightened again, and I was pulled--painfully this time--up to my feet. “Sit,” my dude said quietly but the command in his voice was unmistakable. He

88 pointed at his lap. With another deep frown, I silently cursed the thrill that had run through me

and sat gingerly. A minute later my legs were shaking from the effort of holding most of my

weight in such an awkward position.

He sighed and spread his legs wide to give me space on the cushion between them. I

settled just in time to watch the scene begin. Mistress Abby snapped her fingers, and Lucy’s eyes

went dead. The light just snapped right out. Her body went limp, and the chains became taut as

her body drooped forward and hung there, swaying a little as the X got used to carrying her.

The Doll Maker circled her, running a finger over the purple frills and the purple lace, tugging on her hair. The doll didn’t even blink. She was a marionette, not a person. The Doll

Maker pushed on the marionette’s chest, until she stood upright, her head and arms hanging low.

Then the Maker grabbed her doll’s arms and wrapped them around her body. The puppet’s fingers and hands dangled as the Doll Maker danced with her doll.

Soon, the Doll Maker moved away to grab a whip out of her bag. It was a bullwhip, and she cracked it without fail over her doll’s body. I’d felt the sting of a whip before. It was one of the first things I’d felt when I’d started exploring this wicked underworld of America. Whips stung like a bitch and boomed like thunder. But the doll didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t flinch.

Instead, I did. I flinched at each crack, my eyes blinking harshly, reflexively, at the sound. Each lash of the whip brought with it a flash of a memory. Of my dude coming through on a promise. Of his patience with me everytime I called him a liar--an insult greater to him than any other. I remembered the pain in his eyes when he’d said, “You think the meaner and harsher people are, the more truthful they are. That’s not always how it works.”

I squeezed the hands around my waist tighter and my dude pulled me closer, resting his head on my shoulder, his goatee scratching against my cheek. “Sir,” I whispered. He looked at

89 me, waiting. “Do you promise you love me?” My voice was small. It belonged to a timid child, not to me. My eyes watered.

He shifted in his seat, holding my face steady in his hands, and looked me in the eyes. “I promise. I love you.”

He wiped the silent tears from my eyes, clearing my vision just enough to see Lucy pop back into being with a snap of her owner’s fingers. Her whole body jerked, her reaction delayed by minutes but genuine, and she screeched, “God damn it, what did you hit me with?” as she brought her hands to her reddened skin and looked around wildly.

We all laughed, knowing she’d enjoyed the pain.

90 14

That night, I tried. We shut the door to the bedroom, even though no one was in the living

room. He’d decided he didn’t want to play in the dungeon. He wanted to play in the bed. He

wanted my nudity.

It was a fair request. Most of the activities involved in BDSM play felt better on bare skin, fabric only dumbing down the sensations. I’d been with him for a couple months already,

and we’d visited the dungeon together nearly every weekend, playing often and cuddling--

lightly--always. We’d gone on many dates, too, although we had yet to see each other’s houses.

I’d taken off my shirt once or twice during play, but I’d always done that after the lights were off

and my upper body was pressed against the bench, hidden from view as I awkwardly shuffled

my shirt off in the dark. I’d taken my shorts off even before that. They barely covered anything,

anyway.

No, the problem was my stomach, but I trusted him. Or I wanted to, anyway, and this step

made sense. He’d promised he loved me. He’d never lied. He was a good man. He wouldn’t lie.

He allowed me to turn off the overhead lights first, leaving only one of the bedside lamps

to light the room. If he’d refused me, I might’ve had to call a safeword on that alone, and even

so, I was grumpy I couldn’t turn all the lights off. He’d promised knife play, though, and while I

wanted to urge him to do it in the dark, I knew he’d punish me at even the suggestion.

Punishments between us included upping my water intake. What a nightmare. As it was, I ended

up having to chug two whole bottles of water--my entire daily requirement--just before bed.

Then, I’d have to pee multiple times before I could sleep.

91 Once the lights were off, I got on my knees on the bed, removed my shirt, and flung

myself down, belly first. He put on some music, some kind of classical rock song that was all

croons rather than the yells I usually preferred.

He blindfolded me first. A little pinprick of light came through next to my nose, so I shut

my eyes. He teased me with the tip of the knife, drawing a line of cold along my limbs, starting

at my feet and slowly working his way up towards my neck, where I truly craved it. Up one leg.

Up the other. He drew it lightly--it wasn’t painful, wasn’t cutting--up my back a little to the right

of my spine, and I tried not to think about the fat that bulged out at my hips. He traced my

shoulder blades. I shivered in anticipation. He stopped.

“Present your hands,” he said, climbing off my back and removing the slight weight of his body. The bed dipped to the right.

"You want me to sit up?" I murmured into the pillow.

"Yes, Princess. Do it now."

It never felt insulting when he called me that. His tone always caressed the name. It was

an endearment even now, when his tone also conveyed ironclad will.

“But then you'll see me.”

“It's dark, and you should trust me, anyway.”

“I do.”

“Then why can’t I see your body?”

“I--” I paused, hesitating, hoping that by not admitting it, maybe he wouldn’t see it. But I

couldn’t think of anything else to say. “It’s ugly.”

“No, your body is not ugly.”

“You haven't seen me yet.”

92 “How do you think I aim in the dungeon?”

I squeezed my eyes as if I could shut out that thought. I’d never considered it.

“Present, Princess.” His voice brooked no argument. I could safeword, or I could do it.

Those were my only choices. I refused to safeword.

Slowly, I crawled to my knees and shuffled around. He grabbed my shoulders, so I could orient to face him.

“Hands,” he said, gently tugging my hands forward. I rested my butt on my heels and set my hands, palm up, on my knees. “Good girl.”

The pleasure I got from his praise was quickly swept under the mounting despair.

He said nothing now, and I knew he was taking in the sight of the body. The one lamp was enough to highlight the bulge of my belly, the slack flesh hanging from my sides. It was enough to see the droop of my breasts and the small blackheads on my chest. I felt like trash.

“You’re beautiful,” he breathed, and I felt worse than trash. Disgusting. Wretched.

Betrayed. I wanted to be sick. He was lying, I knew. Lying. Right to my face, he was lying. I said nothing, holding my breath as he ran the knife up my left arm.

I felt wretched.

He followed with my right arm, then between my breasts. I focused on the sensation, desperate to lose my mind to it and forget his blatant lie.

I succeeded, and I failed. I avoided the words for the duration of the scene, but there was a pressing tension in my mind, hovering as though in my peripheral vision. Hounding me. It was trying to reach me, and every muscle was tense from the effort of keeping it at bay.

93 The scene lasted for barely ten more minutes, though it felt like an eternity. I should’ve

used the safeword, but I didn’t want to alert him to my weakness. And he’d already lied. I didn’t

need to hear him defend it.

I suspected he recognized the tightness in my limbs because he’d pulled out more toys

than he used in the end. Even still, he continued on long enough to fire up the violet wand,

running the electrified knife down my spine. I shivered, couldn’t help it, but my determination to

ignore my pain also held back pleasure.

“Do you need aftercare?” he asked.

“No,” I replied, so he went to take a shower. His house, he’d mentioned in passing at

some point, didn’t have hot water. He took his time, and I could only pray he took long enough

for me to fall asleep because the second he left I burst into tears.

Silent tears, of course. I knew how to hide.

He’d lied. He’d called me beautiful, as if I could be such a thing. I was gross and one look made it clear. Gross and disgusting. Hideous. Fat. Breasts too saggy, stomach far too big, butt too small. My face was too round, my hair too thin.

The voice in my head was my own, but the words overlapped with images of my mother's face. My mother’s mouth moving, her anger.

I left clothes on the floor, forgot to take my cat to the groom. I was irresponsible. I was

lazy, slept in too late. I was a pig living in a pigsty. Go live with your aunt. Get the hell out of

my house. I never want to see you.

I was wretched. Wretched enough to be looked through like a ghost, not a word from her

for months, no support from my siblings, no comfort from my father. All I did was take, anyway.

What use was I? I was worthless.

94 No one loved me. No one cared. Of course, he was lying. Of course. Of course, no one

loved me. I was unlovable. How could I be beautiful? I wasn’t, and I wasn’t stupid enough to

believe it. How dare he lie. How dare he? How dare he!

By the time he’d exited the shower I had a raging headache, and I was exhausted. The

tension in my body remained.

As he settled in to bed, he tried to put his arm over me, and I held stock still for a full

minute without a breath before I scooted an inch away. He did it again, and I held still for a

minute and a half and scooted away again, until I was dangling on the edge of the bed and

occupying as little space as possible.

He tried again, and I jerked. The tears were falling.

“Princess? Did I hurt you?” he said, his tone rapidly falling to terror. “Did I hurt you?”

“N-no, Sir. No. I-I just. You don’t want me.” My tears were dreadfully audible.

“What?”

He grabbed my shoulder and tried to pull me so I’d turn over and face him, but I pulled out of his grip. He did it again, this time using both hands, and I fought.

“Let me go!” I said. “You don’t want me in your bed. You don’t want me at all.”

“If you want me to stop,” he said, continuing to wrestle with me for control of my gaze,

“you have a safeword. Do you remember it?”

“Yes,” I said and I continued to fight, jerking blindly to escape him. I said nothing else.

The moment I’d wiggled too far from the edge, he was on top of me. I was pinned.

He grabbed my chin and looked me in the eyes. “What’s going on? Why would you think

I don’t want you? I thought we made progress today.”

“Because I’m not an idiot? How could you want me? How could anyone want me?”

95 He looked bewildered. “Why wouldn’t anyone want you?”

“Because I’m horrible. Disgusting. Ugly. I’m fat like a pig and lazy. I’m terrible.”

Each declaration loosened his grip on my shoulders, and while confusion and sadness mounted in his eyes, tears flowed freely now from mine, wetting the mattress beneath my ears.

At the word terrible, I turned onto my side again, curling into a ball and barely teetering on the edge of the bed. My sobs were slowing now. The familiar numbness of my emotional barriers seemed to be creeping in, and I welcomed it. “You lied to me,” I said, rocking myself. I felt crazy, insane. No sane person rocked like this. It was his fault I felt this way. His fault. I shouldn’t have agreed to this. I was a fool. How could I have let him in? He was supposed to be the safe bet. Not handsome enough, not successful enough, not charming enough to get through my defenses. I was a fool. “You told me I’m beautiful,” I said, my voice broke, and tears once again soaked the spot under my ear. My shutters trembled. “You lied. You’re supposed to be honest with me.”

“I didn’t lie. You are beautiful.”

“I’m not!” I pulled away even farther, though he’d made no move to touch me. I was really close to falling off the bed now. “Stop lying!”

“Princess…”

“No! Red! Red, Sir, Red! I can’t.”

“Okay.” I felt him shift. “What do you want me to do?”

“You can’t compliment me,” I declared. “Okay? It’s a hard limit, I’ve decided. I can’t handle it. I can’t.”

“Okay,” he said, “okay.”

96 He reached for me then, and I allowed him to move me closer, allowed him to pull me

into his arms. The fight had left me, and I could only continue to cry as he held me, my back to

his front, my arms curled tightly into my own chest. I was still naked. I was too tired and too

covered in blankets to deal with it.

“Will you tell me why?” he said, after the sobs that had shaken my whole body had abated and only hiccuping gasps remained.

“I don’t want to,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “I won’t push. Not today.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

I fell into a dreamless sleep soon after, thinking that maybe if he didn’t say anything nice to me, I could reclaim what I’d felt in that Dollification class. That he could love me somehow.

Like I could believe that somehow.

On later nights, sleeping in his arms would not even find me that peace. The voices would come and haunt me, shaming me for taking up space, for being a burden. And once or twice, he turned away from me.

While it was easier without his arms around me, it was also harder. The thoughts didn’t hit as hard nor did they come as fast. Because I was right. The source of my distress--the conflict between what I knew to be true and what he fought so hard to convince me was true--had fled. I didn’t need to hear it as much or as loudly because I’d been proven correct. I was a burden.

That’s why he turned away those nights.

Yet the voices being quieter was at once a great relief and a nightmare. A miniscule part of me had written on an assignment, “My greatest fear is that I will never love myself,” and that part of me still yearned for someone else to do it for me.

97 15

I drove to his house for the first time. He was waiting for me on the sidewalk. We hugged each other tightly in greeting, and he led me inside. Each step we took, my stress level rose. The outside of the house wasn’t inspiring much confidence with its boarded windows and its chipping paint. A heap of old cardboard sat in the outdoor garage.

I’d never met his family before, but I didn’t think about it particularly much. I didn’t expect to ever get my parents’ approval on a partner, so I forgot to some it was important. I’d been excited and nervous to see his space. Excited to see where and how he lived, to spend time with him in a properly private location. Nervous to intrude into his space. I’d have preferred hosting, but my chance to own my own place was still two months away, one if the job review that was coming up went well.

Now, though, seeing the place, I wondered how much I really knew about his financial situation. Towards the beginning of our relationship, he’d asked me, hesitantly and without meeting my eye, if I could split the bill on one of our dates, and I’d gotten the sense he was ashamed of asking. I’d therefore assumed it was out of necessity that he did, so I’d started regularly sharing the bill for meals and such. When he had a late shift, and I drove over to eat with him during his break, I paid entirely for the food that I brought for the both of us. Still, the first week of each month, he would insist on paying alone.

When the door to his house opened, there was a moment in which my heart stopped. A split second. A beat that missed its cue. And for a while, I had control over my feelings the way I used to. As if I’d shoved them in a room and locked the door. Overwhelmed, I began observing without seeing, without processing.

It was glorious to return to the peace and silence of it.

98 “This is my girlfriend, Lexi,” he said to his mom on the couch. The one light in the room

did not do well against the incense’s swirling fog. Despite the sheer density of it, it smelled like

nothing.

“Oh, hi,” she said, looking up at me to smile briefly before averting her eyes. “How are you?”

“I’m good,” I said. “And you?”

“Oh, you know. I’m just fine. It’s nice to finally meet you.” Her gaze met mine and flicked away again, back to her hands which busied themselves sorting and re-sorting bills.

“It’s nice to meet you too,” I said and then leaned in to whisper, “I’ve heard some very

cool stories about you. I think you’re pretty darn awesome.” I was referring specifically to the

way she’d blackmailed a couple priests in order to get her son into a private school. She seemed

smaller than I had imagined, but she was seated.

She laughed a little. “I do what needs to be done,” she said.

“Max, say hi,” my dude said, and I looked at his brother, watching me from his

wheelchair, a small quirk in the curve of his lips.

We exchanged greetings, and my dude ushered us down the hallway and into his room.

My little brother, the same age as Max, would have flipped us off if I’d told him to say hello.

Max, I supposed, didn’t have enough muscle control to do that even if he’d wanted to. Cerebral

Palsy. I was glad I’d had the foresight to look it up before I met him. Still, he seemed sweet, and

I didn’t think he would’ve wanted to act like a jerk.

My dude sat in a rolling chair at his desk and motioned for me to get on his bed. I stood

still, my arms held close to my chest. I couldn’t sit on his bed. Was he sure it was okay? I felt

99 like I would be crossing a line. I couldn’t intrude upon his space like that. It wasn’t even a hotel bed this time. It was his.

“Go on,” he said. “My mom washed the sheets yesterday.”

“Oh, wait, wait!” his mom said, suddenly hobbling into the room. She was hump-backed as well as small, and I wondered if her back was hurting like my dude’s often did. “The cats peed on the sheets while you were away again. I forgot to tell you. Here, let me.” She grabbed onto the door frame for balance as she stepped over the downed pile of laundry that partially blocked the doorway.

I shoved myself as far back as I could go to make room for her, ramming into the drawer behind me that wasn’t closed all the way. His enormous TV wobbled behind me, and the sloth stuffie at the top right corner dangled. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that five empty solo cups were stuffed in the drawer.

“Why do you have so many plastic cups? That’s not very good for the environment.”

“I know, but our sink doesn’t work, so we can’t clean anything.” His fingers flew over his keyboard as he typed in some strange box with white text and a black background. Some other day, I would use the only bathroom in the house and notice a pool of stagnant water in the sink and another red solo cup for scooping.

“What are you doing?” I asked, frankly relieved that he was occupying himself while I observed. We paired well because of our shared awkwardness, though I was pretty sure that my awkwardness was even worse than his.

“I’m downloading a boot disk to reformat the computer. It’ll make it faster.” He had a

Macbook on his lap, even though he was anti-Apple.

“Whose computer is that?”

100 “My coworker’s. He asked me to fix it for him.”

“Is he paying you?”

“No.”

Was that selflessness? Or complacency? Part of me was put off at the wasted opportunity.

It wasn’t something I would have thought about until seeing his house.

His mom was spraying Febreeze on the spot now as she explained that I had to wait for it to dry before I could sit there. Then she left the two of us alone. Between the downed laundry hamper in front of the door, and the overflowing trash can behind it, our privacy was limited.

The cord passing through the opening didn’t help either. His room wasn’t wired for electricity, he explained later, which was why that bright orange extension cord was interrupting the smooth journey of the ant horde trekking from the dresser to the bed. If they didn’t have to pay for it, would they welcome a deep clean?

Five minutes later, he spun his chair around and looked at me. “Sit,” he said, getting up from his chair.

“Where?”

“Here.”

“Uh…”

“Sit,” he said again, this time in a voice that allowed no argument. I sat. And he settled on my lap, spinning us around to face the monitor again. At some point, I started hugging his belly like he was a human-size teddy bear. When I realized what I was doing, I dropped my hands, but he caught my wrists and brought my arms back around his body. I let them stay there this time, having received sufficient permission.

He grabbed a screwdriver and started unscrewing the back of the Macbook.

101 “What are you doing,” I screeched, watching his work from under his armpit. He smelled

like Old Spice deodorant.

“Replacing the parts,” he said.

I heard a tiny thump, and the chair moved an inch. I looked up. A cat was perched on the

top of our chair now, its claws digging into the meshy material, its body flush against the thin

ledge.

“Ya crazy,” I said to it as it watched me. I paused. “He crazy too.”

It just stared. I looked away and decided I liked the cat.

There was a big electric box on his desk next to his computer. I knew it was the brains of the computer, the “tower” as he called it. The see-through panels allowed me to see the LED- lighting cycle through the rainbow.

“That’s cool. Where’d you get it?”

He looked at where I was pointing. “I built it,” he said.

I blinked. It always surprised me when he showed his intelligence, and to some degree, my surprise worried me. I didn’t know if it was my own biased thinking or if he hid it on purpose. If it was about bias, then I was more like my mother than I thought. I shuddered. We left soon after.

On my way out of his house, I almost tripped over an old suitcase that sat among a whole pile of debris. It completely blocked the third door in the middle of the hallway. I asked my dude what was behind there, and he said it was technically his mom’s bedroom, but there was too much stuff inside, making it uninhabitable. I was also told the ghost of a Mexican sailor lived there, but that’s a story for another time.

102 I walked through the hallway, leaning heavily on the right wall to keep my footing. The trash bags, the boxes of diabetes needles, the cans of chocolate-flavored nutrition supplements, and the old braces for my dude’s scoliosis made it a hard path to clear.

His brother was sitting in his wheelchair still, his arm bent at an odd angle. “Say goodbye to Lexi, Max,” he ordered.

“Goodbye, Lexi,” Max whispered, his head turning with effort to follow us out the door.

The slight upturn of his mouth was gentle and soft and obviously the most he could manage to move his lips. Max would sleep in that chair tonight and every night after that. I’d been told he was too heavy to move now, and his wheelchair wouldn’t fit in the hallway whether it was clean or not.

His mother was fast asleep on the couch next to his chair. The overdue bills she’d been sorting earlier were everywhere, the corners dipping into a styrofoam box coated in an old steak’s dried blood.

He walked with me to my car door, which was suspicious because presumably he would sit in the passenger seat as he usually did, but I didn’t comment. He held me captive against the cool metal, boxing me in with his arms and pressing close. “Tell me what’s on your mind,” he demanded.

I watched the four stray cats that were hiding under his neighbor’s car across the street, and he swept my hair to one side and bit my neck. It wasn’t a hickey. It was a bite, and I squeaked at the pain, knowing I’d have an oddly shaped bruise in the morning.

A fog of numbness disappeared from my mind with the shock of pain, and I turned my attention to him. It was hard to think of him as my boyfriend, let alone my dominant, but the bite

103 was an expression of control that reminded me of what he was to me, and I wished so strongly that he would do it more often. “Answer me.”

“Why can’t I go with you to your game?” I asked. He searched my eyes, knowing that wasn’t what had kept me quiet most of the day. It was on my mind, though. Had been for a while.

“You mean game?” He refused to use a definite or indefinite article to describe the thing.

“I’d like you to come, but I don’t host it. It’s at a friend’s house, so it’s his invitation to extend.”

“Okay.” I didn’t mention that he could ask his friend to let me come.

He waited, and he would keep waiting until I offered the information he wanted.

“I’m worried, I think.”

“About what?” he asked, his expression gentled, his body moving subtly closer to mine, and I relaxed into him. It occurred to me that showing me his house might have been hard for him, and that was why we’d waited so long.

“We live very different lifestyles. I didn’t realize how different it was, and I’m worried you hate me now.”

“Look at me.” I was back to focusing on the cats over his shoulder. “Look at me,” he said more firmly, and I looked. “Did I hate you before?”

“No…”

“Why would I hate you now?”

“I don’t know. I’m such a spoiled rich kid.”

“Princess, I don’t think of you that way.” His words lingered as if his sentence hadn’t reached its end, but he couldn’t go farther than that. He did that sometimes now. It was likely

104 because of the ban on compliments, but he would never violate a limit. He sighed, seeing in my eyes how I struggled to believe him.

“Anything else?”

“I-I hate that I can’t do anything to help,” I added, pulling my back away from my car to readjust. My back was sweating, and I saw beads of sweat on his forehead. Mosquitos eagerly feasted on my bare legs. Shorts were not much protection.

“You already help, Princess.”

“What’s our first stop?” I asked, and he kissed my forehead and walked around to the passenger seat.

Silently, I acknowledged that anything I did to help him would almost certainly give power to my mother’s oh-so-sweet warning, “He’s only with you for your money.”

***

After helping him accomplish some errands and catching dinner together, I dropped him at his house and drove myself home, pondering, for perhaps the first time, my Infiniti SUV. I thought about my little brother in his designer sweatpants and his designer T-shirt scoring yet another soccer goal in front of his hired agent. I thought of my little sister practicing on the full- size piano in her room while she watched the sun set over the Miami skyline. I thought of my mom, sleeping in her giant bed in her silk sheets while the housekeeper took the service elevator down fifty floors to catch a bus home. I thought of our sinks with their adjustable water pressure, our cups with the fancy signatures on the bottoms.

That night, curled up with my little kitten in bed, I wondered how much I had missed.

When my teachers had talked of America’s unbalanced economy, I hadn’t imagined anything

105 close to what I saw today. Were they just messy? Or was that the natural state of a household that

couldn’t consistently feed itself? How similar were my mother and I, really?

I was at the top of a tower, but my hair wasn’t long enough for anyone to climb.

On some other day, I would watch as he checked his bank balance, and I would see a single digit number and fear for him in a way he didn’t seem to fear for himself. So I couldn’t stop supporting him in the few ways I did, even if it did lend strength to my mother’s words.

106 16

At the half-a-year mark at my job, there was a performance assessment. It helped to

determine whether or not someone got a raise, a bonus, or a promotion. A demotion, a firing, or

nothing at all were also viable options.

I sat in a cushioned fabric chair, the person who’d hired me sitting at the desk in front of

me. She had an Apple laptop open in front of her, separating the two of us. I was nervous in the

way I’d often been nervous when flipping to the back of a graded essay in school. It was a

mixture of elusive confidence based on my previous record and a sharp, jittery fear that perhaps

my luck had expired.

The office was fancy with floor-to-ceiling windows that showed off downtown Miami.

This was the part of Miami where the skyscrapers soared in abundance, the ocean sparkling in

the sun through the crevices. Below, traffic was jammed, and a woman was walking between the

cars trying to sell bottles of water and bags of Guava. I was surprised I couldn’t hear the honking

of the cars.

“Sit down, Lexi.”

I dropped into my chair, spine straight. Only about twenty percent of my butt actually

touched the surface. The majority of my body was hanging off the edge, supported by my toes.

“How are you?” I said.

“I’m well. You?”

“I’m good.” I should’ve said well. Good wasn’t proper grammar, right? Could I have corrected myself at that point? Probably not. Damn it. I should’ve said well.

107 “So I’d like to congratulate you. You’ve been doing a very good job. Your direct superior

said that you’ve learned quickly and are rapidly improving. You are getting the research done at

a rapid pace in an organized way. We appreciate that.”

I could feel like the “but” coming.

“However,” she continued. “Your research isn’t always from high quality sources, and weeding out the source is not a job our superiors want to engage in. While I understand that

Google is easier, you should be getting a lot more than you are from the data sites we’ve provided you access to. Additionally, we’ve accessed your computer history logs and have found you consistently accessing YouTube videos in the middle of the work day. That is unacceptable behavior and will not be tolerated.”

I swallowed. My face was burning. “It’s only music. To play in the background while I--”

“It will not be tolerated.” She shuffled some papers around--though she hadn’t been

looking at them during the conversation--and stood. She offered me her hand. “I wish you luck.

Considering how well you’ve taken direction thus far, I am unconcerned. By this time in six

months, I expect to enjoy the privilege of giving you a bonus.”

I couldn’t meet her eyes, so I stared at her hand as I shook it, my arm as limp as a noodle.

I didn’t look up again until I was in the car and had no choice but to look at the road.

I pushed the panic away all day, but it crowded me, a dark presence in my skull that

weighed. Ten minutes after I got onto the highway, the tears bubbling on my lower lashes were

blinding me. I tried to blink them away, and one precariously balanced teardrop slipped down

my cheek. Another appeared, an oversized blob making the road swim before me.

When I tried to switch out of an exit-only lane, I nearly crashed into someone. They

slammed their hand on their horn and didn’t let it go until I’d disappeared off the exit, still miles

108 from home. I spotted a Walmart. It had a huge parking lot, and there were few lights in a secluded section near some generators. I parked and shut off my car.

The night before, a side character in the book I was reading had cut herself. The main character had reacted terribly, of course. Cutting was supposed to be a tragic thing, and for the most part, I’d always just gone along with that. But why did so many people do it if it didn’t feel good? I’d brought a knife to my skin before, but I’d always chickened out, afraid of the pain. But

I knew I liked pain in some ways now. It could make me feel alive. It could bring me relief. I could handle pain. I wasn’t weak. I was strong.

I grabbed a small eyebrow razor out of my glove compartment, and I climbed onto my center console to lower the seats in the back. Once they were down, I crawled back there. My trunk was larger than my sofa-bed at home. My car was more private, and it was the only place that was mine.

I was already wearing shorts as I often did, as most did in Florida, but I removed them so

I could aim higher. Right at the juncture of my thigh, I settled the small blade against my skin.

Purell.

I needed Purell. I needed to disinfect the blade and my skin. I had some in my front seat, but I didn’t grab it yet. Curling up around the blade, I lifted the dam and let the flood of self hate flow.

It was my only virtue. School had always been my only virtue. As dumb as I was, as incapable of holding an intelligent conversation as I was, I could maintain my grades. I could get an A on an essay. I could graduate with honors, even though those who graduated around me were leaps and bounds smarter. That was all I’d ever been able to do. That was the one thing that

109 held me together, so on the rare occasion I got a B on a test, it devastated me. A C would have

crushed me. A D would have obliterated me.

Now, the tests were gone, and I’d been stupid enough to think that meant I was free from

the stress of failure. What an idiot I was. That last thread that had held me together had snapped,

and clearly, my performance at work was not the same. I wasn’t a straight-A worker bee. I was a failure. A defective drone. I was an idiot.

I was a terrible driver and an idiot.

I was ugly and a terrible driver and an idiot.

I was disgusting and dumb and ugly, and nobody loved me. No one. How could they? I

was disgusting and dumb. My hair was a mop. My face was shit.

All I did was take. All I did was burden others.

Everyone who met me regretted it. I made everyone around me suffer for my stupidity.

I was a pig, a pig, a pig.

Get out of my house. Get out of my sight. Get away from my children, my mother said to

me. Get away from my children. Because I wasn’t one. I was a ghost. I may as well have been

dead already for all she wanted me. For all anyone wanted me.

Dragging myself into a sitting position was a struggle. I was dizzy, and the sun had all

but disappeared, leaving me in the dim light my tinted windows afforded. I couldn’t sit up

completely because my car ceiling was too low, but that was all right. I had to slouch over

anyway to watch the blade.

I sanitized it and my skin without emotion. The feelings had deadened inside me, the way

it used to feel before I met my dude. That was how I’d coped before him. I’d allowed the

pressure to build and build until it had exploded, and I‘d cried myself to sleep until I was too

110 tired to feel anything at all. Then I’d hold onto that emptiness, cling to it for dear life through slight and slander, until the cycle was forced to repeat. But I’d promised my dude that I’d be as open as I could, that I would try, at least try, to believe him. I remembered the visit to his house, the way the sharp pain of his bite had brought me back.

My phone rang. Groping for it in the dark, I hit my head on the ceiling. I dropped the knife like I’d been caught red-handed, and the small stick bounced off my thigh.

“Hello?” I said, trying and failing to hide the stagnated breathing my tears had left behind.

“Princess? Are you okay? You never texted me when you got home from work. It’s been almost three hours.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry.”

“Are you okay?”

“I guess.” I glanced at the outline of the knife in the dark. I’d never come so close to doing that before.

“What happened?”

“I got--” I hiccupped. “I got a bad review at work. T-they said I wasn’t doing good enough, and I felt really bad. So I pulled over. I’m in a parking lot.”

“You’ve been in a parking lot this whole time?”

“Basically. I’ve been crying.” I felt around for the knife’s cap. I didn’t have to tell him, did I? I hadn’t done it, but I was sure he wouldn’t react well, anyway.

“Princess, why didn’t you call me? I could’ve helped.”

I hiccupped again. “I don’t know.”

“And you are feeling better now?”

111 “Mostly, yeah,” I said, putting the phone on speaker while I shoved the Purell and the eyebrow blade back into their place.

“Okay.”

“I’m gonna start driving home now, Sir. I’ll text you when I get there.”

“Okay. I love you.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and did my best to muffle a quiet sob. “I love you too, Sir,” I said.

I’d tell him if I came that close again. Only if it happened again.

112 17

Two days later, I felt like glass. My feelings couldn’t seem to figure out where to settle without shattering, but when my mom started screaming, I looked as normal as ever, sitting at the counter in the kitchen with a bowl of cereal in front of me and my laptop beside it. I was watching YouTube, and droplets of milk speckled the mousepad. Behind me, a wall of windows faced the ocean, and the leaves of a snake plant rustled in the wind on the balcony.

My brother had moved back in the day before. They’d received an email from his school informing them that he needed to take a handful of recovery classes if he wished to graduate.

He’d failed out of the vast majority of his classes the previous semester--the consequence of his being at an Airbnb alone. I’d been kicked back to the laundry room, where another load was running. Even from the kitchen, the sound of the machines thumping and buzzing, thumping and buzzing, penetrated.

“You fucking asshole! You psychotic asshole!” I heard, and I turned up the volume, pressing my earbuds deeper into my ears.

Something moved behind me, and I heard “You touch me, and I’ll kill you!” in my brother’s still-maturing voice. Another body disappeared behind me, a raised hand just visible in my peripheral vision, and my brother rounded the counter. I glanced up at him curiously, and then he ducked. A black flip-flop hit the cabinet--it would have nailed him in the face--and the cabinet popped open as the shoe slapped to the floor.

I noticed my cat hissing from the doorway, her hair raised, back arched. My gaze involuntarily drifted back to my laptop, torn between ignoring the situation and a sense of duty.

Somehow, I was almost amused. Chancleta. The only latino in my family was the Miami air we

113 breathed. Was this considered abuse? It was kind of silly, wasn’t it? Although, my brother’s face

did seem unusually pale. I started to stand.

“I haven’t even been living in there lately!” my brother yelled, dodging the second shoe.

My mother froze, and the fury seemed to ratchet up another notch as she processed that information. She whirled on me, thankfully out of shoes. The only other throwable objects in the

area were antiques, and I was confident she wouldn’t dare hurl those.

“You did it? You?!” she roared. “Get out!”

Very calmly, I cocked my head. Fragile or not, my emotional shutters were firmly in

place, had been since I’d nearly cut the other day. They needed to be blown away before the

glass could shatter. “What di--”

“Out!” She threw both hands up and rushed into the laundry room. By the time I was near enough to see, multiple of the fabric bins I’d just spent hours filling with my clothes had been removed. I watched her through the empty cubby as she pulled more bins and dumped my clothes into the bright red duffel bag at her feet.

I was being kicked out of the house.

My brother was standing beside me now, watching her as well. His expression was contrite, and his hands fisted in anger. His lower lip was trembling.

Under my breath, I said, “What happened?”

“She found the hole in the wall behind my bed.”

Ah. From when he’d gone into a video game induced rage and thrown his controller. The

hole had been there for months.

She didn’t fill up the duffel bag to the brim, only until it was about half full, but by then,

her burning fury had turned cold. She marched out of the laundry room with the bag in her arms

114 and her eyes looking through both of us. With deceptive calm, she chucked my belongings into the entryway.

“Poor Slvaskis,” she said as she brushed by me. “If only you could’ve traded fates.”

The shutters didn’t fly away. They were stabbed right through. Even as shock rang through me, even as I struggled to remind myself that this wasn’t an unusual scene, that she’d once tossed us and our luggage onto the curb a block from our uncle’s house. Even as I told myself that surely--surely--my mom did not just imply that she would’ve preferred I’d died, I broke.

The heavy door to the entry swung shut, cutting off my view of the bright red bag.

“She’s not serious,” my brother whispered, guilt heavy in his voice, and as much as I wanted to make sure he knew that the blame did not lie with him, I couldn’t muster anything in the moment.

In a daze, I walked back to the laundry room, grabbed my phone and charger. Then my laptop and charger from the kitchen. Was there anything else I needed? The dolls.

I grabbed a couple of stuffed animals that I’d received as gifts from my dude as well as my cash stash and headed for the door. My lips were numb as I mumbled, “If I forgot something…”

“No worries,” my brother said. He stayed inside the apartment while I waited for the elevator.

It was only after the elevator door had cut off my phone signal that I realized I wasn’t sure where I was going. I wanted to call my dude. That was my first thought. I could probably get a hotel room or an Airbnb, even on this short notice, though I couldn’t Google to confirm until my phone signal returned.

115 It would be easier to get my own hotel room. Wouldn’t have to bother him. But he’d be mad at me. If I didn’t, at least, tell him...I had to tell him. That was too much of a betrayal of trust. On top of not telling him after the other day?

My thumb was trembling, hovering over the call button when I stepped off the elevator into the empty lobby.

Ring. Ring. Ring. “Hey, Princess,” he said. “I’m at game.”

“Oh,” I said, and I couldn’t tell if my voice sounded hollow to everyone or just to me. Of course. He was busy.

“What do you need?”

“Well, I just wanted to let you know that my mom kicked me out.”

“What?” On his end, a chair scraped backwards, and confused mumbles filled the brief silence.

“Yeah,” I said, held the phone to my chest and mustered a smile as I requested my car from the valet. “She packed my bag and everything,” I muttered into the phone once the valet was off.

“Are you going to your dad’s?”

I blinked. “Oh.” My father. Right, my father. “No.... I’ll probably get a hotel room.”

“What? No. Stay with me. Sorry,” he said, muffled now. “I need to go. Family emergency.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Family, he’d said. But I wasn’t. And he had one, I remembered.

“Sir, I-I can’t. I can’t intrude on you.”

“You have thirty minutes to get to my house. Drive safe.” He hung up.

116 Those thirty minutes were enough for a layer of ice to settle between the pain and I, but I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t want it. My dude had already wondered at the monotonous nature of our interactions since my job review, and this time I wanted to feel the hurt that my mother had inflicted. I’d always known I deserved it. I’d always internalized her words as truth at some point or another, but I also always hid as long as I could behind these walls of mine. No more. I wanted the pain.

When I got to his house, I parked, grabbed my eyebrow razor, and my small Purell bottle.

That my windows were tinted, that the daylight negated that fact--those things didn’t occur to me as I climbed into the back, the seats still down.

I didn’t hesitate this time. I jerked my shorts down, squirted hand sanitizer on my upper thigh, and let the eyebrow knife bite into the skin at the juncture of my thighs.

I gasped. It hurt more than I thought, but I loved it. It sent a dizzying rush through me-- one different from anything I’d done before. It was like I was a cartoon character drinking coffee, one moment dead on my feet, the next fit to run a marathon. I plopped onto my back, my little blade still clutched in my hand. I didn’t bother to blot the blood. I’d made a tiny slice, after all. Already, I wanted to do it again.

I was riding on the release. The high. I felt jittery, and before the rush could pass and leave me with despair, the car’s front door opened.

“Prin--” He stopped. My brain moved too slow. I hadn’t even scrambled to hide the evidence before he’d looked at me. He slammed the door and came around to the backseat, reached for me. By then, I’d pulled my shorts back up. The baby knife with the flecks of blood was abandoned in the back.

117 “You cut yourself?” He wasn’t looking at me, his hand on my upper arm as he tugged me

along.

I swallowed. “Yes.”

“Have you done this before?”

“N-no. This was the first time.”

“And the last,” he replied and pulled me along to his bedroom. His brother was at school.

His mother was at work. It was a Monday morning, bright and early. More likely than not, his

gaming thing had run through the night. He looked haggard.

He slammed the door behind us, but it bounced back a little bit, ruining the impact of it. It still couldn’t close thanks to that orange cord. It didn’t seem to bother him.

He pointed at the bed and ordered me to strip, his voice unyielding. I did, shaking with the cold and the fear, the anxiety and the shock. He checked me, running his fingers over my body, over the scar I’d left behind. The cut was longer than I’d realized but relatively shallow.

As he traced over it, wetting his finger in the weak dribble of blood, some of the tension in his shoulders eased. He was shaking.

“If you had lied, we would have been over,” he said, stared into my eyes. Anger and frustration, and maybe fear, too, seemed to swirl in his brown irises, but he was unwavering. He grabbed my thigh, leaving a blood smear far below the cut, and in a steel-lined voice, he said,

“This”--he squeezed--“is my property. I don’t care if you think you’re worthless. I don’t care what your mother tells you. You’re mine. I love you. I think you’re worth everything. And you are never. To cut yourself. Again.”

I sucked in a harsh breath. I’d known he’d do this. I’d known. But it was a horrific thought, a terrible command. And just after I’d gotten that taste of bliss.

118 He dabbed at the blood and disinfected the angry red line in silence, and when he was

done, he led me to the bed and held me as I cried myself dry.

“Can’t I do it just one last time? To end it? To say goodbye to it?”

“No,” he responded, groggy. He’d fallen asleep. I convinced myself to let cutting go.

“But I need closure,” I said anyway.

“No. And since you pushed, you're going to therapy, too. I’ll help you find someone tomorrow.”

“But--” I stopped, finally realizing the water that had dripped onto my shoulder was his tears. I’d made him cry.

“I can’t be your therapist, Princess. It’s not fair to me. You go.”

Or we’re done.

He didn’t voice the threat, but it screamed throughout the empty house.

I knew what a vanilla person would say. I should go because I was ready to believe that I was loved and loveable. I should go to heal. I should for myself.

“Yes, Sir,” I whispered, wiggling closer to him until no space was left between us. I would go to please him.

Maybe, in the light of day, I’d admit that the pathetic truth--I was simply unwilling to

leave the warmth of my Sir’s arms.

119