Breakfast in Stilettos (7 page)

I didn’t want to go there. The tying up and spanking seemed plenty. I steered the conversation back to safe ground.

“So people go to
t
he Salon
to either watch or participate in scenes that somehow resonate with their sexual proclivities.”

“I
t isn’t necessarily
sexual
. That’s a stereotype. But it is safe to say that there will be sexy scenes taking place.”

I nodded, feeling like I needed to ask about fetishes. “Your website says that you are ‘fetish-friendly.’ Do your clients come to make peace with their fetishes or get rid of them?”

Dr. Steiner arched one perfect crescent of an eyebrow. Suddenly she was all business. “Get rid of them?
Ms
.
Royce
, a fetish cannot be cured, if that is what you are suggesting. A fetish is most often a fundamental part of a person’s sexual identity, like homosexuality. These people can’t be
cured
, for they are not
diseased
. People come to me to help them survive in a judgmental and intolerant world.”

My insides constricted at her tone. In our family, you only spoke someone’s name when you were angry with them.
Emily Royce, where are your manners?

I sensed I had offended her, though I suspected this might not be difficult to do. I plowed onward. “Do any of your patients
wish
they could rid themselves of a fetish?”

She finally smiled. Slightly. “Oh, of course. But they come to understand such issues very quickly. There’s no reason for false hope. There’s nothing wrong with a fetish and many more people have them than will admit it. Sometimes people just need to augment the actuality of their fetish.”

She undoubtedly viewed anyone who sat in
this
chair as a sexual denial-in-waiting. For what seemed like the fiftieth time since Kenner assigned this story, I wondered what dark fetish would rise to the surface from my repressed depths.

“What’s the most common type of fetish you see?”

She leaned back in her chair and, with her elbows on the overstuffed arms, steepled her fingers in front of her chin. “Clothing fetishes—shoes, corsets, gloves, uniforms—are the most prevalent. The preference is for leather, spandex, vinyl and nylon, etc.” She shifted in her chair, looking a little bored. “But people who come to me often have more extreme fetishes than the average person. Inclinations that tend toward pain inflicted either upon themselves or others, and issues around fear and control.”

There had been no shortage of that in the sites I had visited online. I didn’t really understand why people enjoyed pain, and I said as much to the doctor.

“Pain and fear can be very compelling. Fear provokes physiological reactions. For some, the moment of relief after fear is the most erotic. For others, the thrill revolves around the love received after the hurt.”

I tried to imagine Frank attempting to inflict me with anything remotely resembling pain and I had to stifle a laugh. But then, maybe it wasn’t only physical. I’d certainly had my fair share of emotional pain bestowed by His Truly. “So, can pain be emotional instead of physical?”

She gave me a scathing boil-the-idiot look.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” I backpedaled. “I just wondered, because there can be so much emotional pain in a relationship. Is that a form of fetish?”

“Is there so much emotional pain in relationships?” She looked at me intently. When I didn’t answer, she continued, “The question one should ask is whether one enjoys the pain or not.”

I didn’t think I liked pain, but “one” might make an argument that I did. At least my friends, family and boss would have given a big “maybe” to the idea—considering all my on and off whining about Frank. I decided to skip down to questions about BDSM. Bunglesome. Discombobulated. Self-conscious. Muddled.

“I’m curious about Dominants and
s
ubmissives. Do they share defining traits that make them easy to spot in a crowd?”

She separated her steepled fingers and leaned forward as though interested in the conversation for the first time. “In other words, can I tell if you are a Domme or a
s
ub?”

I twitched in my chair. “Uh. I guess.” I didn’t want to look into her eyes, afraid I’d give something away, but then I felt stupid for the thought. I sat up, giving her my best
regard
sévère
.

This made her laugh. “No, Ms. Royce, I can’t tell if you are one or the other. Some people will tell you they have this skill, though I’ve never met anyone who genuinely could. Not with any consistency. But, if I were to hazard a guess, I would
say
you suffer from assertiveness-deficiency.”

She acted like this would mean something to me. I asked her to clarify.

Nodding her head—as if this lack of comprehension on my part was a symptom—she explained. “A person may have dominant tendencies, but be confused or hesitant to take full control. This is typical of younger women. I could recommend a book on assertiveness if you are interested in some self-appraisal.”

Well that jived with the online test results from last night—that I was assertive but held on to some degree of submissiveness. That I did not identify with either. Back to
even-steven
. Did I want to be more dominant?

I was hesitant to ask the larger question, but I sensed that I wasn’t the first woman in this chair to have this issue. She looked at me intently, an X-ray vision stare that made me feel extremely vulnerable. This woman could somehow see into me, to that hidden person—the one I did not wish, under any circumstances, to reveal. But she saw that person anyway. A short conversation ensued. Not one with words, but that rare exchange that occurs when someone looks both at you and through you. Her eyes seemed to say, “It is time you stood up and faced yourself. Reveal that hidden person. Take control of your own power. For once.

There was something very strong about that “for once,” and I wondered how she could possibly know. But there it was.

I sat there for only a minute or two, frozen like a
Star
Trek
crewman stuck in
the Enterprise’s transporter beam
—unable to budge, but knowing full well that I was being conveyed on a molecular level to somewhere entirely new.

The moment passed and the world sprang back into normal focus. Dr. Steiner was still looking at me, with her clear, direct, no nonsense look. “In the world of BDSM, you can’t stand on the fence. You can be a switch—moving from the submissive to the Dominant and back, but you can never be indecisive or wishy-washy. This is all about power. The giving or taking of power. You are too much of a controller to relinquish and too shy to actually take command.”

It wasn’t a question. She was giving me her executive summary. I could do nothing but nod. It was all true.

“If it is any consolation, the vast majority of
D
om
me
s don’t emerge until they reach their mid-thirties.
I
t
can
take years of work to integrate conflicting inner thoughts and feelings.” She smiled. “I’m here if you ever need to talk about it.”

The rest of the interview was fairly uneventful and ended with Dr. Steiner handing me a printout of her recommended books. From the list, I had the sense she must see a lot of
D
ominatrix clients in need of continuing education credits. I took the proffered list and thanked her for her time, making sure
as I exited her office
to make no parting comments that
might be misconstrued by whoever was waiting their turn while seated in the chair version of
ménage
à
tro
i
s
.

The rain had let up by the time I came out of Dr. Steiner’s office and got into my car. A patch of milky blue was peeking out through the gray clouds like a robin’s egg nestled in a basket of dirty cotton.

I wasn’t in any hurry to go home to a cold house, so I decided to take the book list to my favorite literary shrine—Third Place Books—to see if they had any of the titles Dr. Steiner had suggested. I wasn’t sure whether to buy into the idea that I had some sort of assertiveness deficiency, but there was no harm in doing a little research. The list contained about fifteen titles, all dealing with improving assertiveness or self-esteem. All seemed geared toward women. A few examples:

Civilized Assertiveness for Women: Communication with Backbone ... not Bite
;

Stat: Special Techniques in Assertiveness Training for Women
;
             

How to Be an Assertive (Not Aggressive) Woman in Life, in Love, and
o
n the Job
.

The implication was that women needed special guidance in assertiveness or else they would become aggressive bitches. And while I had a notion that this was true, given the impressive lineup of bitchy women I knew, I wondered if women were being secretly brainwashed into believing that men were
properly
assertive. Asshole Bob et al. Though maybe there were books like
Civilized Assertiveness for Men: Communication with Bite
…
not Backhand
. I had my doubts.

I used to have an ongoing argument with a male co-worker who insisted that men had to be aggressive because they had egos to deal with. Women on the other hand didn’t have egos, so we could be happily passive. And perhaps I
was
being passive when I didn’t punch him in the face.

The bookstore was only a short drive from The Hill and, besides, it was on the way home. Third Place was a sanctuary for me—a homey collection of new and used books with that heady aroma of moldy pages and fresh ink. Chairs were scattered throughout the place, plus they had free wireless and ample amounts of tea. Their book selection was eclectic so I doubted that all these titles would be on the shelf, but I always managed to find what was really important, even if I’d been looking for something else.

As was typical of a Friday night in Seattle, the parking lot was nearly full as I drove in. I nudged into a spot at the end of the row and passed the line-up of smokers standing outside. They tended to huddle around the very out-of-place Maharishi-style fountain on sunny days and, on rainy days, under the awning where they could read the pin-up board listing just about anything imaginable for sale or rent.

Racks of forlorn bargain books sat on either side of the front door. I never saw anyone perusing these books and I felt sorry for them, sitting like homeless people begging at intersections. I always felt tempted to slip a dollar inside the cover of one at random in hopes that the book would take on a certain glamour and entice someone to rescue it from the stack and take it home.

I stood at the rack and ran my fingers over the spines as I read the titles. One felt rough with age as I plucked it from the shelf and turned it over to read the title.
Bottoming for Beginners
. I felt a little shiver of serendipity; something that one should never shy away from. The back flap read “the classic text on how to be the bottom of your dreams.”
OK
. That was creepy. I paged to the Table of Contents where I saw the header, “Where Is Your Power?” That was a very good question.
On
impulse, I tucked the book under my arm and made my way inside. Something in the book called me, and I wasn’t going to ignore
an enigmatic
omen
, even a second-hand one.

It took me a good five minutes of wandering around the bookstore before I found the self-help section. I just smiled and shook my head at the three clerks who offered to assist, but, if I couldn’t find the self-help section myself, I suffered from larger problems than even Dr. Steiner had intimated. Of course, asking for help might have been more assertive, but there was no need to rush into things.

The section was in the far corner of the store, closest to the restrooms. Half of the shelves were self-help, while the other half represented every religion imaginable. Two people were already ensconced in the stuffed chairs in front of the stack, clearly deeply involved in their own personal healing. I refrained from trying to read the covers of their books. Self help and religious study both require a certain degree of privacy. I hoped they would accord me the same courtesy.

It didn’t take me long to realize that Third Place Books was soft on aggression. Of the few titles they carried, only one was on Dr. Steiner’s list. I took this as a sign and grabbed the battered copy of
Assertiveness and Equality in Life and
Love
.
I wondered how one’s life and relationships could be so clearly divided into sections—as if one had no life when in a relationship and no relationships when having a life. But then maybe there was truth in that. Relationships really require sharing the weight of decisions and choices with someone else
.
Clearly I was having a life, however relationship-free it was. So perhaps I could practice being a bit more assertive with myself.

A quick scan through the book revealed a few self-tests, and that most of them had been filled in by the previous owner. I could compare my answers with someone,
even if she was a serial killer
.

The idea of taking a test, especially one graded against other people, always excited me. In school, I loved tests, especially the drama of waiting for the results. In college it got so bad that I refused to look at my score until I got outside the classroom, just in case I didn’t get an A and burst into tears. Lucky for me, I usually got an A. Elated, I’d float though the next class or two. Maybe that was why I never needed to take drugs.

These test questions, however, didn’t appear to have right or wrong answers; rather, they were meant to provide a qualitative sense of my own
sub
-
assertiveness issues. I
felt
a little queasy, but I was ready to take on my vacillation
.
One way or another.

I looked at my watch. It was a little after five o’clock. Sal would be home by now and have raised the temperature in the house enough to roast vegetables. I took my two books to the counter, paid and was pulling into my Asshole Bob-free driveway within fifteen minutes.

Sal yelled a greeting from her bedroom as I walked into the house, where I was met with a blast of heat. I headed straight to the thermostat and punched the setting down to sixty-eight degrees from its reading of eighty degrees.

Sal popped her head out of her room. “A portent of evil arrived for you today. It’s on the kitchen table.” She gave me a disapproving look as though something unethical, like a rack of veal, had been shipped to the house.

I walked hesitantly into the kitchen. There, on the table, sat a large bouquet of long-stem red roses with a white envelope perched in the midst of the arrangement. I pulled out the card, knowing that Sal had already done the same. As I had suspected, the flowers were from Frank.

He had written a verse in his erratic scrawl.

Roses are red,

Just like the Door,

Please take me with you,

I promise you’ll score.

Good old, suckier-than-suck Frank. I inhaled deeply. They smelled good—sultry sweet. I was trying hard not to read too much into the flowers. They
were
from Frank after all.

“I thought you two had broken up.” Sal walked up beside me, arms crossed, still glowering.

“We are. We
are
.” I set the card back in the midst of the flowers and gave them a final nose before grabbing the stack of mail and beginning the daily sort.

“So why the flowers?” She sniffed at them as well. Women have an almost Pavlovian need to smell roses. The fragrance links us instantly to our fondest romantic memory, even if it is one we made up.

“Oh, he wants me to take him to
T
he Slutterati Salon
tomorrow night. I’m not sure why.” And it was the truth. I wasn’t sure why he wanted me to take him. He obviously had gone there alone before. He didn’t need me.

“Are you even considering going with him?” She was tapping her foot hard on the linoleum.

I knew it was a bad idea to lie to Sal. She knew me too well. But if I told her
what I was thinking
, I would be writing my next Strange and Unusual article in a body cast. I smiled. “Of course not.”

“Good!” She sounded relieved. “I was afraid I’d have to stage an intervention.” Pulling out her chair with a loud scrape, she plopped into the seat and began picking through the stack of mail I had sorted and piled neatly in four piles: hers, mine, ours and dyslexic postman.

Sal never went through the mail first, though she was usually home before me. She always let me organize it. Maybe this was her way of being polite—it was my house after all. But some people seem to wait just long enough for other people to step in and do things. I didn’t mind, but I wondered if this was another indication of my submissiveness.

Our conversation settled into a discussion of the grocery list and then to the evening’s plans. Sal was having dinner with some classmates and invited me to go along, but I wasn’t in the mood for a two-hour debate on the merits of buckminsterfullerene molecules, no matter how much they tried to sex them up with a name like “buckyballs.” Instead we decided that I’d catch up with them later for drinks and a bit of clubbing.

Sal headed out shortly thereafter, and I was left picking at three-day-old leftover lasagna accompanied by the last of a young cabernet and the aroma of a dozen red invitations to hell.

I was feeling a vague unease, torn between my glandular urge to call Frank and certain knowledge that I should be reading my assertiveness book. Whenever I was in such a quandary, I turned to the trusty Google Oracle to help guide me. I needed only to launch my browser and type “Emily needs” (quotation marks essential) in the Search box and I would receive a plethora of helpful tips.

Once the digital sibyl beckoned to me, I wasted no time, and rolled up to my computer.

My search returned approximately 13,000 results, which sounded a bit needier than I felt. However, it was only the top ten that really counted, according to Google Oracle lore. I scanned down the list. The first one didn’t make sense, not at first.

1. Emily needs to remove that one frame from her animated gif avatar.

Huh? I re-read it several times before I had a sudden flash of insight. If my life was an animated movie that repeated over and over, and the avatar was how I appeared to the world, then the one frame that kept showing up—to everyone’s dismay—became all too obvious—the Frank frame.
OK
, s
o that was one vote for not calling Frank. I decided to ignore it for the moment and go to number 2.

2. Emily needs real love.

OK
. Pretty self-explanatory. On to number 3.

3. Emily needs a MAN!

Right. Well to have number 2, I’d need number 3. Or change my sexual persuasion. Next.

4. Emily needs to devise a budget and stick to it.

Not pertinent to the current conversation no matter how accurate. Number 5.

5. Emily needs to live in
Tahiti
and
grow
pineapples
.