The Pleasure's All Mine: Memoir of a Professional Submissive (14 page)

    “Here, here’s twenty dollars so your feelings won’t be hurt, okay?”

    Stanley ended the impasse by pulling a wrinkled bill out of his pocket and holding it out to me. I looked at his hand, looked at Hillary, looked back at his hand. My pride wanted me to take the money and rip it in half right in his face, to tell him sarcastically that my hurt feelings were selling for considerably more these days. But then I thought,
the way things have been going, this may be the last twenty dollars you see for a while, lady.
I knew then that it was time to go. I grabbed the bill without saying a word and stalked into the television room, yanking the curtain closed behind me. Taylor sat in one of the overstuffed chairs, reading a magazine as usual. Angela was sitting near the TV set, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, attempting a casual look on her face as she scanned the furniture and walls of the room.

    “He wants to session with you instead, Angela,” I said. “And I’m done. I quit.”

    
“What?
Marnie, no! What’s going on?” Taylor dropped her magazine.

    “Bullshit. That’s what’s going on.” I saw the look of horror on Angela’s face and felt even worse. “Hey, it’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re just very cute; that’s nothing you’ve done on purpose. I’ve been thinking about leaving, anyway. It’s not your fault that guy’s a dick. I’m upset with him, not you,” I finished, and went to the closet to grab my stuff.

    “Don’t leave like this! I’ll go talk to Hillary,” Taylor insisted, coming over to me.

    “Thanks, Taylor, but please don’t. I really liked hanging out with you between sessions, but I can’t stay here. I’m not making any money, and now I’m doing free five-minute humiliation scenes! Wait — my mistake. I did get paid twenty dollars.” I scowled and shook my head.

    “Angela, could you come out here, please?” Hillary’s voice cut into the room.

    I waited until I heard Angela walk Stanley into the back before going out to tell Hillary I was leaving. I wasn’t sure what to say. I felt badly that Hillary had said nothing to Stanley about treating me like that, but then I knew she wasn’t in the business of teaching men to act right. She was in the business of getting their money in exchange for sessions with her “independent contractors.” But what kind of independence was this? Could I really have expected her to try and shame him into seeing me instead — a session neither of us would have enjoyed at that point — or risk losing his business altogether?

    “I’m sorry, I can’t work here anymore,” was what I finally managed. I held my breath.

    “Okay.”

    Hillary didn’t look up from the ledger she was writing in. At first I thought she must be mad at me, but then I realized it was probably just resignation. Maybe, since our talk about outside sessions, she had been expecting me to leave at any second anyway. It made me sad that I wasn’t leaving on better terms. I had felt so happy here, such a short time ago. But since I had, in fact, been planning to leave, maybe this was as good a way as any.

    As soon as I got home, I went online to look up the only name I could remember from Vanessa’s lecture and the ads in
Whips and Chains.
I found Mistress Catherine’s phone number on her Web site and called to find out if she would rent her space to me by the hour for my two potential sessions. When she offered to do whatever I needed to make me safe there as well, some of what I had just felt at the Dominion started washing away. It still felt as if something solid had given way underneath me, but for the moment, listening to this stranger assure me that with the right ambition and advertising I could soon have my own bustling pro sub business, I still felt cheerful. Maybe I had made a grave mistake, and maybe this was the universe’s way of telling me to go back where I belonged. But maybe not. A few days later I’d booked my first appointment at Catherine’s. The client, the one who had e-mailed to ask me about peeing in a bowl, had agreed to my asking price of two hundred and fifty dollars per hour, fifty of which would go to Catherine. I had agreed to bring my own bowl.

    If I’d known their last names and home addresses, I would have sent Hillary and Stanley thank you cards.

    

    

    
“BACK HERE,
MARNIE!”
Catherine’s voice came from the far end of a long, wide hallway.

    I’d been buzzed into a large brick warehouse somewhere near the garment district of downtown Los Angeles. The neighborhood was deserted, even though it was only around seven thirty. Inside Catherine’s front door was a steep set of hardwood stairs, at the top of which I found a huge open space that made up the front part of the loft. The “dungeon” rooms were in the back half — three large areas separated by thin plaster walls and heavy wooden doors.

    I had heard muffled conversation as I entered, and wondered who else was here. Maybe another mistress had a session scheduled around the same time as mine? When I got to where Catherine was, I was surprised to see her stretched out, face down, on a massage table. She appeared to be nude, covered from just below her shoulders to mid-calf with a thick terry cloth towel. Her head was turned toward a small, half-naked man at her feet.

    “That was good, Bob. You can go clean the bathroom now, and then draw me a hot bath when you’re done.”

    The man nodded silently and snapped the lid closed on a bottle of massage oil, setting it on a shelf next to various sizes of clamps, cuffs, and small paddles that were arranged like so many knickknacks against the wall nearest the door. His eyes never left the ground, and Catherine did not introduce us before he hurried out of the room to complete his chores. I watched him go, his blue boxer shorts rustling between his short legs as he passed me on his way into the hall.

    “Hey,” Catherine’s voice was low and relaxed.

    “Hi,” I smiled.

    The parts of her skin that I could see were shiny with oil from the massage. There was something about the scene I’d walked in on that felt even more exotic than any overtly kinky exchange I might have otherwise witnessed. A session where a servile man pampered her and did her household chores, without any stern tone of voice or pain involved? It was a different view of male submission than any I’d seen so far.

    “I put a space heater in the room in case you get cold,” Catherine said, sitting up and letting the towel fall from her torso.

    Her dark blonde hair fell in waves down her back and across her shoulders, both revealing and covering her small white breasts as she hopped off the table and exposed the rest of her long, slender body. She had even creamy skin, wide red mouth, and black-lined eyes.

    “Thank you,” I said, feigning an interest in some of the floggers I’d spotted hanging behind the door.

    I wondered if I was the only woman who felt like a happy peeping Tom every time another woman decided
it’s just us girls
and casually bared all in front of me. It wasn’t as if I felt the urge to go fondle myself in the bushes after seeing live naked women, but that I wondered if it made me more of some
other
kind of pervert for liking it so much, the way that I thought an innocent but horny sixteen-year-old boy might.

    Catherine retrieved a short silk robe from a hook on the wall and tied its sash around her small waist.

    “Do you want me to check in on you once you guys start?”

    I snapped out of my reverie and gave her question some thought. I did like the idea of more, rather than less, safety now that I was on my own. Having Catherine close by would actually be more reassuring than anything I’d felt at the Dominion. At the same time, I knew that if I were to succeed as a pro sub on my own, I would need to present myself, as much as was reasonably possible, as being entirely available to each man who wanted to session with me. If I gave any impression of “belonging” to a mistress who was watching out for me, it could interfere with the fantasy I knew these men were looking to fulfill.

    “Would there be a way for you to look in on us without it being very obvious?”

    “Yeah, that’s what the curtains are for. See?” She walked past me to the open door and pushed it closed. There was a large round window in the middle of it, covered by a velvety material hanging on a dull metal rod. “Every door has a window in it. Just pull the curtain open before your session, and if he says anything, tell him it’s the house rules for all your new clients; nothing you can do about it. I’ll walk by once or twice during your session to have a peek, and he’ll never know I’m there.”

    It sounded great, but then I realized she’d be seeing what
I
was doing as well. We hadn’t talked yet about any rules she might have for people who rented from her. I guessed they might not be as restrictive as the rules at the Dominion, but I didn’t want to find out in an awkward way that I had crossed some line.

    “I feel like I should tell you that I plan to be totally naked in my sessions if my clients ask for that. If that creates any weird kind of legal liability for you and you’re not okay with it—”

    Catherine cut me off with a short laugh. “I don’t care about that, Marnie. Don’t all subs get naked?”

    “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “We weren’t allowed to take off our G-strings at the Dominion, so I figured it was against the law everywhere…” I trailed off uncertainly.

    “From what I’ve heard, all the subs there are doing it, anyway.” I looked at her in genuine shock. “Really?”

    “You seriously didn’t know?”

    “They told me it was against the rules!” I said, feeling slightly defensive.

    “Welcome to the real world,” Catherine snickered. “Anyway, I don’t care
what
you do in your sessions, as long as you’re happy doing it.”

    “Okay.” It sounded so heavenly already — my own rules, no competition swishing by to bum me out, and a person whose sole concern was to keep an eye out for me. I did miss the comforting busyness of the Dominion a little, but every day I’d been away from there had brought back a little more of my confidence. I was falling fast for Catherine and her private dungeon space.

    “This is the room you’ll be using,” Catherine walked past me and I followed her across the hall.

    I looked around the cavernous room and felt that familiar mixture of nervousness and excitement that I still got in graphically kinky settings. The huge, low bondage table in the middle looked like a water bed to me, with its slightly puffy black leather mattress and the thick wooden frame surrounding it.
We could do a whole session on that little island alone,
I thought, even after noticing the large iron “bird cage” and old fashioned wooden stocks at the far end. Every wall was a cluster of implements hanging on sturdy black hooks — floggers, leather wrist and ankle cuffs, long whips, wooden and leather and even Lucite paddles. There were also latex hoods that looked like faces sucked empty and moaning with vacant eye and mouth holes. The hoods creeped me out. I would never be able to wear them, even if I wasn’t so uptight about having things touch my face. Anyway, I didn’t want to play with anyone who needed not to see me while they did things to me.

    “We aren’t clock-watchers around here, so I’ll just knock after it’s been more than an hour if I don’t see you,” Catherine said.

    A loud
ding-dong
bounced through the loft.

    “That must be Marcus,” I said, announcing the name of the client who’d made an eight o’clock appointment with me.

    “I’ll be in here if you need me.” Catherine motioned toward the room where Bob had been massaging her. “Have fun.”

    Marcus had wanted me to be completely nude for our session, so I hadn’t needed to change into anything before he got there. I swung open the front door and stood nervously in my jeans and T-shirt.

    “You must be Marnie.”

    Marcus smiled at me without moving for a few seconds. He was striking. He looked to be in his late forties, with dark brown eyes, cherry red lips, and white hair that fell in soft waves to his earlobes. He was about a foot taller than me, on the lean side, and the skin of his palms and fingers was soft and cool from the night air when he took my right hand in both of his.

    It made me nervous to be staring so directly into a stranger’s eyes, but I felt immediately like this tension was something he intended, and I didn’t want to spoil it by looking away. Still facing him in the doorway, I took one step back and to the side.

    “Would you like to come in?”

    Marcus followed me up the stairs in silence, walking a couple of steps behind me, even though his longer legs could have outpaced me easily. I knew he was watching me, and I felt a jolt of excitement at the idea of being looked at so penetratingly once I took my clothes off. Contrary to what I would have thought before getting into this business, the experience of being examined when I was in my most vulnerable state made me feel less, not more, self-conscious about my body. It was some weird form of validation for me —
If he’s not looking away or asking for his money back, I must not be as unfortunate-looking as I feel when surrounded by the Skinny Big-Boobs Brigade of L.A. outside of session.

    Speaking of his money, it was the first time I would be dealing directly with such matters myself. Although I hadn’t asked Catherine about it, I’d seen enough hooker scenes in movies to know that self-employed sex workers were supposed to get the money up front, no exceptions. As Marcus sat down on the edge of the bondage bed, I tried to think of the least tacky way to phrase my request.

    “Are you nervous, Marnie?” A half-smile played on his lips as he crossed his legs and cupped one knee with interlaced fingers.

    “Yes,” I answered honestly.

    “Why don’t you take off your shoes and come sit next to me for a minute to relax.”