Domina

2011-10-25T21:31:00.000-07:00

Helen pinches my chin between two fingers and shoots a staple through the flesh pouch, pain spiking up my tooth roots. Then she rips off my poultice and releases one into my inflamed left cheek. I almost cry out but manage to fight down the utterance. Amplifying my other senses to suppress the prostaglandin surge, I notice her pussy stink is stronger, and my breathing more circumscribed. Then I realize: she's stapling her underwear to my face.

"In this couple's case, achieving integration meant better controlling the bottom's age regression," Helen says. "They'd determined quite thoroughly how to trigger the alter, but not so well how to banish him or moderate his appearances. All the modalities that I tried with them failed miserably. Discipline didn't work. Ordering him away only entrenched his hold. Bathing, cuddling--steps that calmed other patients' alters--drew the opposite reaction than intended: a child's blind rage.

"Then one day the top, who'd begun to enjoy the alter's visits, finding in his unpredictable violence relief from the rigidity that once plagued their playstyle, saved herself from another shaking by cupping her hand over the alter's ballsack, sending him into a narcotic trance. The next day she freed her partner's penis, which had been infibulated with needle and thread since they'd met, part of their bondage contract. The alter appeared immediately and tried to sink his teeth in her throat. She managed to get a hand on his genitals, swollen blue from six years' abstinence. At her first touch the bottom's dormant personality returned. When she stopped stroking, the alter surged forth. And so on.

"It turned out the alter, so resistant and unreasoning toward endearments, dissolved in genital contact. I determined that the alter represented not the preverbal child self the couple had assumed, but the bottom's imprisoned penis embodied in a dissociative fugue state. You'd think that would be the end of that, but instead of returning to their old arrangement, the top encased her partner's penis again, this time using epoxy laminate, and continued summoning the alter for increasingly barbaric visits, until he now controls the bottom's body most of its waking hours and treats his former dominant as an entirely compliant toilet slave."

Helen pinches my eyebrows one by one and shoots a staple into each pouch, sealing the panties tight. Enough opioids are flowing now that I hardly feel the puncture wounds, but hormones don't quell humiliation. She adjusts the leg holes so I can see my way out of the office.

"You're to wear them home on the bus," she instructs. "In fact, sleep with them on, too. And spend some time thinking about how to more respectfully address your betters."

"Why should I?" I say.

"Your voice is quaking, Philip," Helen says. "Don't worry, I won't tell ( ) you cried on your first visit. But prepare yourself better next time, please. Use your amyl nitrite, at least."

"Doe she know you're doing this to me?" I manage to ask.

"She's your dominant, not mine," Helen says. "Now vanish, pisspants. You've bored me more than enough for one evening."

2011-10-23T20:23:00.000-07:00

Helen's behind me now, a surgical stapler propped on the armrest, its tip within my peripheral vision. I crane my neck in the opposite direction.

"( ) noticed cane tracks on your legs last night," Helen says. "Have you been visiting S&M clubs between sessions? Why not get your stopgaps here, from a professional?"

"Professional?" I say. "Did you read Mistress Viper's Slave Training Tips for pointers?"

"I'll take that as a 'yes,'" Helen says. "And for that crack about vaginal odor, you can wear these."

She stretches a pair of panties over my face, her pussy stench suffocating me. Blindfolded, I hear the stapler make whip-crack sounds as she discharges a few test shots.

"What shall it be, Philip? Seal your insignificant prick behind your scrotal sac? Turn you and Stuart into twins? You've never tried penis encasement, have you? Why not, needles leave you weak-kneed?"

I force a laugh. "Sewing circles are for sycophants."

"Don't be so dismissive," Helen says. "Infibulation can produce interesting side effects."

A staple pierces my uninjured cheek, sending shooting pains through my eye socket. I summon an analgesic response with two belly breaths, numbing my upper lip and jawbone.

"I treated a couple last year who were experimenting with age regression," Helen says. "The top, who was female, would burn the bottom's scrotum with cigarettes, mirroring childhood sex abuse, until a preverbal 'alter,' a subpersonality, as Rowan calls it, appeared. The top hoped that caring for the alter, letting him suck her dry nipple and so forth, would heal the repetition compulsion that drove her partner to bouts of self-mutilation. But instead of the passive, languid baby that the bottom recalled being even under the most abject abuse, the alter was a demon child. He'd emit incessant screams at the pitch of a torture victim, beat his forehead black and blue on the floorboards, smash every plate and glass in the cabinets and then carve his own flesh with the shards.

"The bottom weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, and he nearly broke his partner's neck the first time the alter appeared, shaking her by the shoulders like a potato sack when all she'd done was stroke his hair. Worse, once he'd been summoned, the alter refused to relinquish control, going dormant only after collapsing for a nap following some paroxysm of rage. Things worsened when the alter began appearing outside sessions. The bottom was a banker, and one day he didn't show up for a meeting on a large construction loan. His colleagues found him curled up under his desk in a urine pool, hands pressed over his ears. When his secretary, assuming he'd had a stroke, tried to take his pulse, he bit her arm to the bone. That's when the couple came to me."

2011-10-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

"Like most masochists, you wouldn't dream of suicide," Helen says. "You're far too narcissistic to rob the world of the gift of you. Your sense of omnipotence is as grandiose as a lunatic's. You submit only to your own projected ego-ideal."

"Can I tell the doctor that during my next ER trip?" I ask. "It might help explain the electrode burns."

"The only reason you'd visit an ER is to shock vanillas with your paltry scars," she says. "Hardly worthy of Socket and the other idols you aspire to. I doubt even Stuart would stoop that low."

"We'll never know, since Stuart has to ask permission to poo-poo, let alone leave the premises."

"Easy to mock a live-in. Harder to take the leap yourself. I doubt you'd last a day in ( )'s household," Helen says.

"Playing nude butler's not my style," I say. "I prefer straight wall current."

"Sure, as long as the scenario's static, so you can reenact your little psychodrama ad infinitum without taking any real risk," she says. "Why not let me have a turn with you? Worried you couldn't withstand it?"

"Static?" I laugh. "I'm up eight milliamps in three months. More, after last night."

"Are you certain?" Helen says.

"She tells me the amperage."

"And you take ( )'s word for it?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"What's the advantage for her in risking killing a client? Wouldn't it be easier to lie and rely on placebo effect?"

"Filthy slit," I say. "You don't know that."

"Don't I?" she asks. "Your infantile incitements aside, would you like to know your actual amperage?"

"Not from you."

"How about Stuart's, then? You two being such competitors?"

"He told me he's reached forty."

"For a psychological screener, you're quite gullible."

Helen gets up and walks toward the rack of flogging gear. Her stride is surprisingly lithe even in that pantsuit. To stay focused, I picture wrinkled, liver-spotted skin underneath.

"Last night must have been frustrating," she says, opening a cabinet. "You're positive I can't help settle you? You dabbled in body modification before turning to electrotorture, didn't you?"

"I also dabbled in strained carrots before I started eating steak," I say.

2011-10-21T21:28:00.000-07:00

"Before your pregenital provocations put me to sleep," Helen says, "why don't you tell me about last night's session? Was the electrotorture within your normal range, in your estimation?"

"I can't remember, I was busy transmutating my death instinct," I say.

"I'm glad to see you've dabbled in Freud," she says, "but it's a shame you're unaware his third etiology of masochism has been discredited for sixty years."

"Who then, Reik? Fear of orgasm?" I say. "That's my favorite."

"I covered his work my second year as an undergraduate, Philip," Helen says.

I stand up. "So our work here is done."

"Leave," she says, crossing her hands behind her head. "You know the consequences if you do. Back to silly props and false dungeon wall panels and nominal dominants who cringe if they so much as break your skin."

I sit down.

"Wise choice," Helen says. "Now, ( ) told me she cut last night's session unusually short. Any thoughts on that?"

"Stuart may have some thoughts on it," I say.

"Let's discuss that assault, indeed. Rather out of character for a masochist, I'd say."

"I might have wiped a shitstain off the pantry floor."

"Do you wish you could attack me too?" she asks.

"Who says I can't?"

"Society, your true despot. The same master that declares your instinctual sexuality aberrant, even unlawful."

I wring my hands. "I can't help it. I'm insensible to the normal charms of the opposite sex."

"Hooray, you've skimmed Krafft-Ebing too. What do you make of his view that masochism reflects psychical impotence?"

"Ask my old girlfriends," I say.

"So you didn't have performance problems during vanilla sex? Why seek out erotic power transfer, then?"

"Because I thought motorcycle boots were groovy."

"The trendiness of S&M disturbs you?" she asks.

"Not at all. Electricity's much more fun when an amateur forgets to set the circuit breaker."

"( ) also told you one more trespass and the two of you are through. Did that concern you, given your dependency on electrotorture for symptom palliation?"

"Not after I swallowed all those sleeping pills," I say.

"I'm not required to institutionalize a patient if I deduce he's making suicide threats only to stonewall me, so you can drop that strategy, Philip."

"Good," I say. "I'll take a hundred more when I get home."

2011-10-20T21:39:00.000-07:00

I arrive at the analyst's office that evening with only five minutes left in my hourlong appointment. The door to Helen's suite is open when I step off the elevator, and I walk in without knocking, finding her at her desk. Along with the standard shelves of psychiatry texts and matching love seats, her office contains a hydraulic ob/gyn chair, a spanking bench, and a rack of flogging gear. I go to the rack and take out a rubber buggy whip. It's authentic, but all the equipment is sissified, with the edges beveled and safety knots tied in the tails.

"We can begin that way if you wish," Helen says, closing a file folder and setting aside her spectacles. "Some patients choose to start with corporal punishment and ease into analysis. Others like the penalties interspersed throughout the visit, as punctuation marks, so to speak."

"Can I wear these safety goggles?" I ask.

"They're for the state licensers' benefit," Helen says, coming to stand beside me. "What's your preference, then? Pliers? Scissors? Ben-wa balls?"

I sprawl on one of the love seats, kicking my legs over the armrest. "I'll just take my cure now, thanks."

"If I wanted to cure you, I'd prescribe medroxyprogesterone acetate," Helen says. "But it's much more entertaining watching a paraphiliac twist in the wind."

"Trying to speed transference by mirroring an erotogenic object's indifference," I observe. "That's the strategy I'd choose too."

"Transference is hardly what I'm after," she laughs, taking the opposite seat. "Are you sure you can't be coaxed into some body work?"

"It's not permitted," I say. "I'm the property of another."

"Not that I'm aware of, Philip."

"I don't know anyone named Philip."

"I'm cognizant of your foolish trade name, but I prefer to use birth names in analysis," Helen says. "In any case, you're not (   )'s property; her live-in Stuart is. They've affirmed their household contract with foreskin infibulation and a perineum brand. You're simply one of her clients--one of many."

"I don't know anyone named Stuart."

"Yes, you do, Philip, you've known him for quite a while. Since before you met (   ), as I understand."

"I might have seen a shitstain on the pantry shelf."

"Let's establish a few facts," Helen says. "(   ) and Stuart enjoy their arrangement and have no plans to end it, whether you remain her client or not. So if you have delusions of taking his place, it's time you were disabused of them."

"I'm disabused." I check my watch. "Time's up."

"Incorrect," Helen says. "You're to stay here and talk for the full hour, and you're to arrive on time for all future visits. I phoned (   ) when you didn't show up and she relayed those instructions, among others."

"Reeking, diseased canker-sore cunt," I say. "Shriveled, sexless sack of scrotum fat."

2011-10-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

"I have debts," I say. "Sometimes I miss payments."

"That may be the explanation," says Javier. "I'm not convinced. I'll puzzle it out, though. I'm always reading people." He frames his eyes with thumb-and-forefinger goggles. "When I ride the subway, I test them. Just before my stop, I'll approach a passenger at random--maybe to ask the time, maybe to compliment their eyes, maybe to make like I'm going for a knife--and see if they react the way I forecast they would.

"Take this morning," he says, "why I was late for work. Heading here I spotted a Scientologist clit on the B train, nose deep in that Dianetics book, which I've read myself several times for inside dope on influential practices. So I set myself a challenge: crack their mind control with my own. I goosed an old bag to clear a seat beside the cultist and started up a conversation with her. I played confused college dropout at first. 'What was I learning there? Sitting in an amphitheater so big you needed binoculars to see the teacher, listening to some canned lecture?' 'It's all a corporate swindle,' she agreed, 'it's all about profit margins.'

"Partners in crime now, we hopped off the train and hit a Morningside Heights coffeeshop together. The clit started in with the sales pitch before I'd taken a sip of my drink. 'Life isn't as complicated as we think. We just need to clear our engrams and exteriorize.' I had to find a way to trump her play. I'd been reading about serial rapists who fake being paraplegic or what have you to snare victims. So, presto: I had ballsack cancer. I was refusing treatment; that explained the hair." His palm caresses his pompadour.

"I wanted to go out the way God intended me to appear. That part was working, but I needed tears to complete it. I thought about the prospect I beat on last night, her missing bicuspid tooth, how I'd have to pay for a crown or prorate her asking price. I got the Scientologist crying along with me. 'You're so young, so lovely.' The miscegenation angle didn't hurt any. I saw the truth in L. Ron's teachings but I needed answers today; no time for a six-month audit. Oh, fuck it, I'd just finish myself off, the hell with hospitals and God, beats wasting away, less trouble for everyone.

"'No!' she said. 'There's still time for Life Repair.' 'How can I go through that,' I wept, 'when I'll die a shucked husk, a dud seed, a withered chrysalis?' That's right, Sylvan, I was a terminally ill virgin. I never would have piled on that hard except this clit was maybe six months past swearing on the Tooth Fairy. She stuffed her pamphlets back in her handbag and we went to a church next door, fucked lying between two pews. I gave her a minute of windpipe pressure once I'd finished to instruct her to be more circumspect. But that's how it is, I'm always on the lookout for new screen tests. I'm assembling a body of knowledge that's going to come in useful, that somebody's going to want. It's all building to something, this education. But where are my manners? I'm interrupting your lunch."

Javier stands, restoring his chair to its place. Turning to study a passing receptionist's rear end, he says, "Well met, then. Let's reconvene soon to draw up an org chart and plan schematics."

"I'm not interested," I say.

"So you keep protesting," he says, heading in the receptionist's direction, "when all the evidence tells me you're already under my wing."

***

2011-10-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

"Hands off," I warn, pulling back.

"Settle down, Sylvan," says Javier. "You think I'm the only one here working angles?" He nods around at the cafeteria full of substrata screeners chomping energy bars and whispering a mile a minute on cell phones. "Shiva uses the interviews as a front for his bookmaking business. Sambo recruits candidates for phony investment seminars. You're the only screener who plays the job straight, and that's just because you're so zoned out from your outside shit."

"My outside shit," I say.

"Don't despair, I haven't pierced your secret," he says. "All I know is what I behold. Look at your condition today, for Mary's sake. The way you dress, I know you're not making money from it, so I'm indifferent. Bringing you on board would double my talent pool is all."

"I'm not interested," I say.

"I feel you'll reconsider." Javier reaches in his pocket and drops a pair of nail clippers on the table. Lisa Leafblad's, and it still bears bloodstains. The bastard must have raided my desk the other day.

"What's that?" I ask.

He smirks. "Once we join forces, you can make her your private stash. You wouldn't be wasting your time, trust me. You could explore whole new frontiers with that one. She had some things to show even me."

"She was my prospect!" I shout.

An Occipital executive walking by with three Twinkie packs frowns at my outburst. Javier gives her a finger-twiddling grin, leaving his middle finger aloft as the elevator doors close on her.

"And your point is?" he says. "Can you even conceive what the competition's like in this city? I leave a prospect like that to wander, she'll be turned out within a week. But think of the advantages, Sylvan. No need to recruit at bus stations or domestic violence shelters. We choose our crew right here. And if you need a hook, you just keep promising them an office job. By the time they see how much money they're making in street trade, they won't be so eager to spend all day transcribing letters for some banker whose hands smell like ball sweat."

"She stole my wallet," I say.

"I know. I put your driver's license back in your desk. She'd spent the cash on meth before I could get to her. The credit cards are anyone's guess."

"I don't have any credit cards," I say.

"Chapter 7?"

"Long story."

"Once you sign up, I'll have your credit report zapped," he says. "I know a hacker with access to Equifax. You'll need a card for hotel rooms, outfits, whatnot."

"She's a drug addict?" I ask.

Javier shakes his head. "I doubt it. No track marks. Amateur table dancer before this. I knew you were sweet on her, Sylvan. I see a bright future for you in this industry."

"I'm not interested," I say.

"I suspect otherwise," says Javier. "Only you'll need to come clean about your outside shit if we're going to put our heads together. Let everyone else keep thinking you're some chubby chaser who spends your shift lurking in porno chat rooms. I dislike surprises."

2011-10-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

A finger of Javier's free hand traces a lazy figure eight before dive-bombing his eye to dig out sleep crust. Ignoring my warning, he says:

"As it happens, I'm currently courting a prospect whom I've had the opportunity to supply with a temporary living arrangement. I try to emphasize to her that I have no control over the hiring process. I tell her Potential Appraisement simply evaluates candidates; Client-Consumer Cynosure handles prospect placement. I'd like to explore more enriching dinnertime topics--what's in the news, how were our commutes, what have you. But every night, all I hear from her is, 'What did they say today?' 'Has anyone hired anyone?' 'Did some other girl get interviewed for my spot?' It makes it very difficult to share a domicile with the rat gash."

"How do you even know they're considering her?" I ask. Normally when a prospect leaves Potential Appraisement it's as if they've been wiped off the planet. In my six years at Occipital, I've never seen anyone I interviewed resurface in the building. Then again, our security tags only allow us access to the ground floor, and this is a skyscraper.

Javier blows tear-duct debris off his fingertip. "I know things few like you fathom I do," he answers. "Anyhow, the prospect in question is doing some freelance contracting to help cover housing expenses while she awaits a reply on the job possibility. Last night I sent her on assignment with an urban networking executive. Out-of-towner, top hotel, here on some scam about using sewer pipes to run bandwidth. My girl comes back from the engagement, right away I can see she's acquired an attitude. Staring around my apartment like it's all of a sudden second-rate. Not a pleasant word for her host, just a series of smirks and sneers, when most nights she talks so much my houseplants suffer carbon-dioxide deprivation. Finally I'm tired enough of that treatment that I stiff-arm her in the mouth to remind her I'm in the room. That kicks off a crying jag even though I've smacked the twitch five times as hard and gotten nothing but stoneface in return.

"Then it all comes out: Stephan--first-name basis they're on after one date--needs an assistant, he lives in Seattle, he's a partner at his own start-up, secretaries there get stock options and profit-sharing, so I'd better get on the stick with this Occipital job or I'm going to lose my window. My window? My cunt-fucking window, Sylvan. I don't blame the client; I've sold plenty of stories in my day. But I bend over backwards to grease this twitch's application--I doctor her substrata inventory on my own time--I let her stay in my place--and now I've got a window.

"The upshot," he says, "is I explained to her how she could better render thanks to those who help speed her career path, we disagreed on the details, and now she's unavailable for assignments until the healing process moderates. You screen any promising candidates of late?"

"Javier," I say, "are you prostituting job prospects?"

Leaning forward, he presses his thumb to my cheek poultice until my eyelid starts to spasm. "I don't know, Sylvan, are you playing touch football with freight trains?"

2011-10-16T17:45:00.000-07:00

FOUR

I'm eating lunch in the Occipital cafeteria the next day when Javier Mendez pulls up a chair, his cowlick still slick from showering. His candidate packets have been gathering dust on his desk all morning while his prospects studied self-help pamphlets in the holding tank. With the Department of Human Potential Appraisement's high employee absentee rate, often a half-dozen forgotten prospects can be found futilely awaiting interviews. Some leave within minutes, cursing the firm out loud; others go desk to desk demanding to see a supervisor until they realize our department is largely autonomous; but a surprising number wait all day, trapped in job-seeker's stasis, neither employed nor excluded. Javier's eight a.m. prospect was still napping when I passed the holding tank for lunch, a string of drool spotting the shoulder of his thrift-store sportcoat.

"Late night?" I ask.

Javier turns his chair backward and sits, considering my injuries--shoulder sling, homemade cheek poultice, rainbow-colored wrist contusions--without comment. His suit catches the light like fish scales and hugs his hips so tight it seems he's wearing a garter belt. He's the flashiest dresser at Occipital, piling his hair in a pompadour and wearing pimp suits and cufflinks; I've even seen him carry a vanity cane. Yet he doesn't appear ridiculous, only shiftily sincere, a sincerity reserved for the born-again and half-witted, which he isn't. He stares rivets at you as he speaks, adopting a lower sightline than yours, as if to burrow his way into your good graces. It's hard not to get intoxicated, to let down your defenses, to want his arm around you in camaraderie, even if it holds a knife blade to your carotid.

"The man I've been thinking of all morning," Javier says, lifting my bruised wrist from the table and rotating it. "I'm in need of sage counsel, Sylvan. Remind me again how long you've been employed at this establishment?"

"Six years," I say.

"And roughly how many prospects would you say you've screened in that period?"

I calculate. "Six thousand, give or take."

Javier looks side to side, then asks, "Ever had occasion to convey one of them home with you?"

In fact, I have. In the early days, when I was still trying to inflict S&M on vanillas, I turned to the most readily available dating pool, my Occipital prospects. It was easy enough to start the involvements; the women who apply here are far more beggars than choosers. But each relationship imploded when I went from asking for spanking and tit-pinching to hog-tying and handballs.

"That's grounds for dismissal," I observe.

2011-10-10T20:50:00.000-07:00

I reach, eyes still shut, for (   )'s feet, but her steps recede into the living room. The slamming door sends my heart, immune to the cock prong's amperage, into palpitations. Lying there, nerves on fire, every body hair charged with static, my urine forming a lily pad on the linoleum, I start to sob.

My strategy backfired. I had her on the edge, perfectly straddling wrath and restraint, and I pushed her out of balance. That's why she stopped. She knew organ damage was next. Forcing a specialist of (   )'s pedigree into session cessation may be an unrivaled triumph, but instead I feel I've lost everything. Three prong strokes, even at that amperage, will never carry me to our next session. If there's even to be a next one. For now, in the afterburn, pain-numbing opioids ebbing, spinal buzz devolving into the usual colossal headache, striving to recall how much sodium pentothal I have left, I understand what eluded me in my anticipation--that she's quitting me, that we're finished, that the analyst visits are intended to wean me from her client list, that our sessions will end, that this one, given its circumstance, may have been our last, leaving me back in the cycle I remember so well from the old days: long, fruitless negotiations followed by halfhearted canings or flagellations followed by suicidal reveries in bed, only this time knowing I once found salvation and sabotaged it.

On my way out I pass Stuart, squatting gagged and crimson-faced in the pantry, butt plug holding in a two-quart Beefeater enema, his penalty for antagonizing me earlier. He gives me a parting wink. Wrong move in my mood.

I check to make sure (   ) is in the bathroom, then slip into the pantry and stand over him. My first kick folds him in half, the gin scorching his intestines. I hit him in the kidney, the solar plexus, the ribs. He writhes on the floor, kneecaps pointed together like a schoolgirl. I snatch a soup can from the shelf and use it to amplify my last swing, opening a gash above his right eyebrow.

At the bus stop I notice that my hands, which have been shaking all week, appear steady. Odd; it usually takes at least a half-dozen prong strokes to stop fasciculation tremors. The wind has picked up and a waiting passenger's wide-brimmed hat blows off her head in my direction. I catch it cleanly, impossible only an hour earlier. Smiling benevolently at her, I restore it to her head with an unfettered flourish.

2011-10-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

Current sears up my spine and lodges in my brain stem, a flaming ball of pain that I can't shake away, even as I whip my head side to side and pedal my legs wildly in midair. My body's upside down in its suspension cuffs and my bad shoulder screams like it's been popped from its socket. She's never held the cock prong on me this long and my body stretches full length as if staked to a bed's four corners before the current frees me and I fall, skull cracking the linoleum, another awful yank of my shoulder finishing the job; it's dislocated for sure.

I lie in wait. I'm prostrate on my back, my cuffed wrists tugged ceilingward. ( ) surprised me yet again; she never hoisted the pulley cord. Near blacking out from shoulder pain, I shift my weight to my good arm for an inventory. My wrists feel sprained, maybe, but not broken; I can still rotate them in their restraints. I smell smoking skin but I can't distinguish the spot where she applied the prong; my entire spinal column still sizzles like a downed power line. Other than that, just bruises. My pulse is already nearly back to baseline. What felt like two full seconds on the cock prong and nothing but bruises.

Again. Do it again.

The second stroke starts in my groin and my body clenches fistlike to prevent it, then unfurls into another spread-eagle as electricity rips up my limbs, forcing my fingers to full stretch. I smell fried fabric and pubic hair; a snowfield blinds my eyes; for a long moment I don't know right from left, high from low, consciousness from coma. When it stops I'm on my belly and my torso erupts into seizures, my forehead and knees banging the floor repeatedly. I heard a scream, I think mine, during that stroke. I'm angry I allocuted already but pleased that I haven't yet defecated.

The third stroke catapults me to my feet and I begin frantically climbing the pulley cord to escape it. But this is a downtick from the last stroke, I can tell. We're back to thirty milliamps, my old level, or less. That first stroke was thirty-two, maybe even thirty-three. If that was the start, then I was able, for once, to let myself anticipate an end that would also be a beginning, that would take me back to my origin, erase all my travails in the trenches. But now the prong is off me entirely and I'm in fetal position on the floor, cocking my head stupidly for ( )'s footsteps.

I feel her unlock the wrist restraints. "Dress and get out," she says.

"But I--"

"This minute."

2011-10-08T19:48:00.000-07:00

I gathered myself. "Ma'am--"

"What now?" she said again.

"Ma'am, this slave requests--"

Her laughter carried her to the corner of the stall and back. "'This slave?'"

"Ma'am, what would you prefer it call itself, ma'am?"

She considered, then giggled, "Try lickspittle."

"Ma'am, this lickspittle failed to follow your staff's orders to wait motionlessly, ma'am. It shifted its weight at eight minutes twenty seconds due to unacceptable muscle cramps. It stumbled clumsily when its dominant addressed it."

"Why?"

"Ma'am, this lickspittle lacks the discipline to block out distractions, ma'am. It refuses to exercise frequently enough to build the muscle structure required to carry out instructions. It--"

"So boring," she said. "Pillory."

"Ma'am, if I may, in correcting this lickspittle's behavior, could you kindly use your most convincing positions and instruments? Often this particular lickspittle fails to receive the full benefit of moderate or even heavy--"

"Pillory."

I knelt before the frame, nestling my neck and wrists in the grooves. ( ) dropped the contraption's top half and snapped the deadbolt shut. Then she kicked my thighs apart, leaving me no way to brace myself. Two unyielding shoves drove my rear end aloft, and the knobby thing I'd felt prodding my ass crack was suddenly knuckling my gut, my windpipe clamping in reflex heaves, my puborectal muscles gripping her wrist. A full fistfuck. With no lubrication. That took strength.

"Don't counsel me again." The next thrust had her full body weight behind it; my shoulders rocked the pillory off its braces and back; I vomited everything in my stomach in one chunk-filled gulp.

"And don't use courtesy titles. They're tedious."

It felt like both my lungs followed her fist when she withdrew it. She forced her fingers against my tonsils, making me lick them clean of food fragments and feces streaks. Then she opened the frame and made me eat my vomit off the floor. When I was done, I squatted, shivering with cold, upchuck and shit coating my chin, and vomited once more, dousing my lap and thighs.

She made me lick it all up again.

Next she locked my wrists in shackles linked to a ceiling pulley. Two cranks of a handle yanked my arms upward; the third left my toes brushing the floor as I spun slowly, suspended. She left the stall and came back with a glass penile sounding rod, tapping it against my pelvic knobs.

"If you twitch, this will break inside you, lacerating your urethra," she said. "Then when you piss, urine will dribble out your ass. That will irritate me."

2011-10-07T20:59:00.000-07:00

Then (   ) emerges shirtless from the living room and my gaze grazes her Star of David nipple rings, only a split-second trespass, but severe nonetheless.

"Dunk," she orders.

I shuffle to the bathroom, eyes fused to my shoetips. I kneel before the toilet bowl and submerge my face ears deep. Water-muffled screams--surely Stuart's--reach me from the pantry. I didn't have time to inhale and soon my lungs are heaving furiously as I fight to keep my body still. A fist takes hold of my hair and shoves my face against the bottom of the bowl. Water floods my ears as the toilet flushes. My lungs have reached their limit; it's either breathe deep or risk an unacceptable muscle twitch. Fluid fills my windpipe as I gag up bile and bubbles. The hand wrenches my head airward; my nose sprays two flem-laced nozzles; I cough pisswater all over the wall.

"No more taunting," (   ) says from above. "No more testing. No more problems from you at all. Clear?"

"Clear," I gasp.

"I hope it's not. I truly do," she says. "Because just one more and we're done."

"But my--"

"Crouch."

Hacking watery coughs, I head for the cesspool. The room is empty of furniture save for a bare wood pillory, the linoleum floor sloping slightly toward a central drain. Leather cuffs hang from a ceiling pulley; I fix them to my wrists and kneel with buttocks on heels. The gravity of suspension is made more dramatic when you're yanked aloft from a squat.

The screams from the pantry have stopped. Senses on alert, I hear only the cars speeding by below. I attune myself to the shape of the room, its contours and obstacles. I must be prepared for prong strokes both in and out of suspension. In suspension, your body flails wildly, risking muscle sprains, but untethered, you might rush skullfirst into a wall. The effects of electricity are impossible to predict; it's why even most edge players won't risk anything heavier than a cattle prod. Before (   ) would consider me as a client, I had to get a treadmill EKG from an S&M-friendly cardiologist; mail the results to a post-office box; then sign a stack of consent forms sent to me anonymously. I understood: in electrotorture there's only a millimeter's breadth between irreplaceable headspace and cardiac arrest.

Our first meeting didn't take place in (   )'s apartment, but in a high-security S&M club called New Roissy, which featured private stalls, soundproofing, and, supposedly, a direct alarm to One Police Plaza; rumor had it half the police commissioners were clients. The stall (   ) used, like her cesspool, was bare but for a wood pillory. I was escorted there by staff, told to strip and don an executioner's hood, then left alone.

I assumed the "attention" pose from long practice, hands slack at my sides, face lowered, right foot raised an inch off the floor. I stood there long enough for my weight-bearing leg to go numb. It wasn't unusual for dominants to leave a client struggling to hold position for two hours and then pass that off as a session, and I was beginning to fear such a disappointment, one in a long string, when a voice in my ear whispered, "What now?" My heel nicked the floor for a millisecond--a trespass, I admit, but I hadn't even heard the stall door open.

2011-10-05T22:13:00.000-07:00

Stuart stands blocking my path to the cesspool. He's bone thin and slug-belly pale, and there's a bootprint-sized dent in his chest, toward which his entire body, like bathwater tugged drainward, seems to cave. His torso and thighs are streaked with dried feces. As always, (   ) knows how to humiliate. Yet Stuart still manages to summon scorn for my visits. Though he's only four inches taller than me, he acts as if the difference is four feet, his gaze barely skewing my scalp. I outweigh him, however, especially these days. If we ever fight for real--when we do--I'll go for his knees, take him to the ground, neutralize his greater reach. Then I'll hook two fingers in the infibulation ring that seals his foreskin over his penis and pull until I turn his intestines inside out.

"So tell me, Shunt," he says, "have you added your little nickname to your birth certificate yet?"

"You only wish you had a trade name," I say.

"Yes, just like I wish I had a de Sade mask, dilettante."

"Was Socket a dilettante?"

"Ah, your idol," he says. "If you hope to follow his lead, you're ill-equipped."

I cut to business. "Where does she want me?"

"Nicknames and fairy tales," Stuart sneers. "A second-stringer still. Haven't uttered her name to this day, have you? It's not the tetragrammaton, you know. The sky won't roll back like a scroll, the mountains won't erupt blood."

I study him under the light. Despite his braggadocio, it's clear that being housebound is weakening him. Along with the weight loss, his eyelids are scum-crusted, his lips split. His fitness was always suspect; he survived on a near-supernatural proclivity for pain sublimation, hiding the aftermath by retreating to his inherited townhome to recuperate. Now, exposed around the clock, he's degenerating. I'm almost sympathetic. An hour twice a week with (   ) tests my limits. He's here every minute, performing endless chores, forced to withhold bowel movements for weeks, confined for the slightest violation in a rib-compressing torso corset.

"If you could only fathom your self-deception," Stuart says, sensing my thoughts. "Pity for me? When I'm privy to (   )'s post-session reflections? Would you like to sample some of her nicknames for you? How does 'a death wish in diapers' grab you?"

I seize his biceps and backstep to the threshold of his neck fetter. Caught off guard, he gags from whiplash as the shackle stretches taut. Then I shove him into the pantry, where his foot slips on his shit dish and he falls to all fours. He doesn't rise right away, trying several times to catch his breath. The same thing happened when we fought during my last visit. Frequent exposure to the cock prong could be causing him heart arrhythmia.

I walk toward him to take advantage.

2011-10-04T19:44:00.000-07:00

A look at my watch restores me. Less than forty seconds till deadline, and one of ( )'s vanilla neighbors is on the front porch checking mail. I slip in the side gate and take the back stairs in pairs. But after ruining my heart rhythm to avoid tardiness, I have to knock breathlessly eight times to summon that bootlick, Stuart.

He slowly unfastens all four locks, leaving the chain latch attached. Even the slice of his naked body I spy through the gap rivals mine in scars: coat-hanger striations, black spots of dead skin from the cock prong, a fresh red burn the shape of a household iron. A household iron? My gut jumps so hard it sends a spasm up my spine; I have to fake a belly cough to conceal it.

"You're expected?" Stuart drawls, staring scornfully at my cheek contusion.

"As you're aware," I reply. "Hennessey said come at eight."

"Yes, the therapist," he feigns remembering. "Did the two of you have a good cry together? Recall how your mommy caught you masturbating and twisted your little tinkler?"

"Jealous?" I ask.

Stuart presses his shaved, lice-scabbed scalp to the doorjamb, eyes theatrically wide. "Of?"

"She thinks I'm spiraling."

He gasps back a laugh. "Poor blind mouse. Preposterously taking pride in it."

I check my watch; a full three minutes past deadline. The parasite seizes any chance to provoke me. He was the city's undisputed ace bottom until I climbed the ranks to crowd his rarefied air. I challenged his congenital genius with bullheaded tenacity, and surpassed him more than once, scared him, drove him to extremes hazardous even for him, housebound slavery among them. He'll never again grace Justine's stalls with his famous pain dance. The first thing ( ) did to mark him as her property was to cripple his feet with steel vise shoes. Now he hobbles around on his neck fetter as if walking on lobster claws.

"You've never been sent," I remind him.

"Only to emergency rooms, Shunt. Not to navel-gazers."

"Open the door," I say.

"Not sure I'm permitted," he replies. "Tardiness is a trespass. I might be forced to report you."

"I'll say you answered late," I warn.

"It is rather hard to move after this morning." Gripping the top of the doorframe, Stuart bows his body into a tendon-snapping stretch. "Ten strokes at forty milliamps, lovey-dove. You reach double digits yet?"

"No chance you're at forty," I say.

"Don't worry, you'll get there. Have a nice sleep the other night, by the way? I did." He pirouettes to show off the red bullwhip marks crosshatching his back.

"Open it now."

"Blast from the past, wasn't it? Made me wax a bit nostalgic," he muses. "Remember those days at Justine's? You still had to bite a soap bar to keep from screaming."

"Open it or I kick the latch off the wall."

Unhooking the chain, Stuart smiles. "That won't get you what you're seeking any more than spitting on the shrink did, sycophant."

I step inside. "Burn in hell."

2011-10-03T20:18:00.000-07:00

At the bus stop I suck on my pocket amyl-nitrite inhaler to numb my neural receptors for what's coming. I always ride the bus to session instead of the subway to give me more time to strategize. It demands a relentless campaign to keep a dominant off-balance enough to take the risks I require. Even edge players too easily fall into rituals, become tribute-envelope prostitutes, blunt the wrath that distinguished them from the stiletto-shoed flock. But the worst part about other dominants, worse than knowing I could withstand the next penalty, was knowing precisely what it would be. Paddle to strap to cat to cane, the old four-step, stale as square-dance footwork. Five fewer counts between strokes to crescendo, then ten extra to cooldown. After one session you knew just what to expect at each moment and could steel muscle and frame mind for it.

Not with (   ). She never unveils a pattern, never devolves to simple retaliation or reward. Our first several sessions, she didn't even use electricity--the only reason I'd sought her out--yet I left each visit stripped skinless inside, my superego flayed bare. I still do, even though we recently celebrated our fiftieth session together. And she accomplishes it without props, without role-play, without a sound. But for all her aptitude I've still had to maintain her malice. Her self-control is so total--crucial for an electrotorture specialist--that the most I get for my efforts is a split-second longer application of cock prong to epidermis, or a hair's breadth more proximity to cardiac tissue. It takes a singular effort to earn an uptick in milliamps. Last night's trespass--staining her friend Helen with spittle--ought to qualify.

The bus clatters to a stop in front of (   )'s three-flat. As usual, my anticipation fled during the Queensboro Bridge crossing. After seven long days of waiting, now I can hardly muster the strength to lift my afflicted legs from the bus seat. Disembarking, I steal a shaky glance up at (   )'s apartment, praying light won't fill the window chips, willing the buzzer to go unanswered again. But all the chips are lit and I can see a shadow moving behind them.

Now's the time in my preparations when reality crash-lands my flights of fancy. It was the act of an imbecile antagonizing a dominant who attacks my limits even in a neutral mood. Now she'll exact her payback. She won't slip and cripple me, she's too disciplined for that; instead she'll find a penalty I can't take, she'll search out my thresholds and shred them, leaving me a blubbering, pisspants baby. I've seen her do it to others, seen the broken faces on the stairs, heard the stories of upchuck and excrement and sessions cut short and hardened kamikazes gone suddenly vanilla again.

I can't let that happen. I've worked too hard to seal my status. I search down the street for the next bus. She may not have spotted me out here. I could catch a cab, find a new club, trick another amateur into edge play, use a sedative to sleep afterward. I could return to my old pseudo-dominants and boost my session count to check the lessened intensity. Or break in a newcomer, a young spirit not yet straitjacketed by S&M convention. (   ) wouldn't come after me. She wouldn't seek a reason. She has a perpetual waiting list anyway. No one would know but me and her, and she wouldn't give a damn.

Me and her and Stuart.

2011-10-02T17:18:00.000-07:00

THREE

I wake rigormortis stiff, pain in dozens of places, dull, pulsing post-caning pain, mixed with bone bruises from my alley beating. My biceps femoris muscles have cramped at full flex, and when I brace against the bedframe to extend my legs, the blistered skin behind my knees nearly splits. My feet are so abraded from cane strokes that I doubt they'll take my weight without bunion pads, and my cheekbone or jaw feels broken; I can only crack my mouth wide enough to slide in a spoon or straw.

I phone in sick to work as instructed, then feel all over my body, distinguishing cane tracks from boot scuffs from old keloids of scar tissue. I didn't shower when I got home, and my bedsheets reek of beer and garbage; I roll them into a ball along with my filthy clothes. I hobble naked into the bathroom and run steaming water in the tub, then take out arthritis cream, cortisone needle, box cutter, codeine.

The nail-clipper wound, now twenty hours old, is a swollen red hole oozing a wagging finger of pus; I douse it with rubbing alcohol and slather it with Betadine. In the mirror I see my left cheekbone bears a multicolored bruise, its puke-yellow perimeter reaching as high as my hairline. I give my cheek a cortisone shot and add one in each kneecap. Then I use the box cutter to slit a two-inch incision behind each knee, stanching the blood with my knuckles and forcing my legs straight. I half-crawl, half-roll into the tub, lying submerged to my ears as the water smokes.

But none of this damage will last, I can tell already. Nothing to add to the honor roll: the adhesion of fascia and muscle tissue in my forearm that left my right pinkie paralyzed; the ten-foot fall from ceiling suspension that shattered my coccyx tip; the long-term kidney trauma that stains my urine brown. I inventory my new injuries to see if any will present handicaps for tonight's session. No, my aerobic capacity should be uncompromised and my range of motion maximal, even with these blemishes. And I have all day to replenish my spent well of stamina with belly breathing. But first: rest. Lacy blood streams from my leg wounds slither to the water's surface and form concentric circles; imagining them crimson-tinged solar systems, I drift into limp codeine sleep.

By nightfall I've propped myself up with a sodium pentothal injection, and, stepping into the city, I let the lingering sting of my beating sift through me as prelude, feeling pity for the passersby who lack that luxury. The constant old-man ache, the sharp stabs and shooting pains with each footfall, the wriggling dance to keep clothes from chafing raw skin, are privileges lost on vanillas who dread rectal exams and dodge bumblebees.

2011-10-01T18:19:00.000-07:00

I take a tether from my pocket. "Ma'am, this subject has an offensive habit of breathing audibly during instruction. Would you fasten this to its neck to correct it?"

She ties it good and tight, ratcheting it up a few notches at my hand signal. I'm dizzy in thirty seconds and my limbs go floppy soon after. Now I just have to convince her to give me a hard flogging. That's about as far as anyone at Lashes will go, but it might let me sleep tonight, assuming she accidentally breaks the skin.

Each theme room has a choice of whipping equipment, and I urge her to "correct this subject's sloppy work habits" with it as I take my tongue to the toilet bowl. She monitors my progress, barking commands, pushing my face into the pisswater; soon she spots a feces streak I've missed and goes to the wall rack to select a weapon. She separates my knees with a spreader bar and starts flogging my bare feet with a rattan cane. That's heavier than I expected for a Lashes patron; it takes me nowhere, but at least I can feel it. She doesn't make me play counting games, like requesting each cane stroke to prove I'm not unconscious, and she hasn't bothered giving me a "safeword," which sissy submissives use to cut short a zealous session.

Next she bares my ass--I hear a quick gasp at the scarring--and delivers a few buttocks blows, then turns the cane upright to spank my perineum. I might get somewhere with this girl. She's at the right stage, just discovering this thing in her, still appalled enough by it to go overboard. I can't decide whether to fake pain sounds or stay quiet. A submissive's silence can trick an experienced dominant into exceeding her limits, but with this girl, I sense the more she thinks she's hurting me, the more she'll want to.

I let out a yell as she starts caning the soft skin where my thighs and calves meet. The cane does sting nicely there; I don't have to entirely prevaricate. "Shut it," she says, taking a harder swipe. Good cane pain follows, waves of it, two or three jolts for each stroke, as if she's whipping me triple speed. The skin there's likely to split if she continues, so I boost the volume on my outcries to encourage her. "Shut," stroke, "it," stroke, "pissant," stroke. She's landing a blow every few seconds now; footsteps and murmurs tell me a ragged crowd has gathered. Flogging for an audience is bound to excite her, though if she's like most newcomers, she'll wake up racked with self-hatred later.

"Please stop it!" I scream. "Please shut it!" she replies, landing a blow across my shoulder blades. No, the legs again, amateur, you were near laceration. She's having fun now, making stripe marks up and down my back, but I can tell she won't lose control enough to cut me, and the cane pain has lost even its small appeal, reduced to a nagging, achy itch. I stand up and face her; she halts a cane stroke in midair and the thin rattan stalk snaps whiplike. I look down. The backs of my knees are crosshatched red and white, but the skin is intact. The amateur has worked up a sweat, her breath rocks her body; she stares past the still-clenched cane and through my inflamed skin into a future of suicide attempts, subterfuge, and, probably, her first orgasms.

A bouncer monitoring the flogging appears to have recognized me and his wrist-mike alert has summoned two colleagues. They walk me away, one explaining, "some kamikaze who used to do fucked-up scenes in here." I'll be back on the blacklist, so no more Lashes visits for a while; there are a half-dozen other clubs in the city now, but they're even more chicken-livered, and I don't need them anyway, I have ( ), we're still together, and tomorrow in session I'll answer all her questions; I'll do whatever I need to make us right again; I'll offer my whole body up to her like never before.

That's the thought that stays with me as the bouncers shove me out the door--the back door, I notice, which leads to a wet alley, in which they encircle me, one saying, "You like hits?" He gives me one, a short backhand punch in the mouth, followed by his colleagues, a kidney shot, an ear clout, a head butt; through ringing ears I hear, "Think a guy with these scars is going to call the cops?" None of the rest of it reaches me, though it lasts five or ten minutes and leaves me immobilized on my back in dumped keg suds and ashtray trash; I'm already in tomorrow, in session, in oblivion.

2011-09-30T20:43:00.000-07:00

I hurry for the theme rooms, where the crowd is thickest. The club has doubled in square footage since my last visit, taking over an adjoining payday loan store and kickboxing studio. Originally for members only, it opened to the public two years ago, and now sells six-dollar drinks to voyeurs who match mild, sexless S&M and think they're experiencing the underground.

I was barred from Lashes as an unsafe player, a submissive who wouldn't follow their cardinal rules: "No blood, no sex, no scat." I violated all three, convincing an amateur dominant to fistfuck me gloveless in the restroom, drawing a bloody torrent of diarrhea, as I hadn't yet learned to purge my bowels beforehand. That was my last straw; I'd been banned temporarily three times before that for permitting skin laceration during whippings. After the fistfuck, my name and photograph appeared on Lashes' blacklist, along with famous kamikazes like Spout, who once had fifty penny nails pounded lengthwise into his skin, and Socket, who suffered four separate cardiac arrests during electrotorture sessions. Part of that company now, I adopted my trade name, Shunt.

The club's first theme room is dedicated to infantilism. Middle-aged men in diapers crawl in frantic circles, dominants flogging their bare backs; one man straddles his dom's knees for a hairbrush spanking, whining "I d-didn't d-do nothin',"; another scrawls "Me no poop my pants" repeatedly on a chalkboard. Most of these men are doctors, prosecutors, school principals. Several are exposed every time the club is raided, and the thrill of risking discovery only adds to their titillation.

The closest thing to edge play in this room is a screaming, beanie-capped man undergoing retrograde orgasm--his urethra pinched shut with a cock ring so his semen is diverted back to his bladder--so I move on to the depersonalization room. Here naked, immobile subs play the part of footstools, hatstands, end tables, ashtrays. Sometimes a depersonalization dom will get bored enough stubbing out cigarettes on her submissive's asscheeks to engage in rough stuff with a newcomer. But there are only three dominants in the room, and I recognize two of them; I sessioned with one in the old days, acting as her rug for eight hours until she refused to spread broken glass on my back or heat her boot soles on the stove burner.

Next in line is the hospital room, tonight mostly devoted to men in stockades getting enemas, the surgery gurney standing empty. I've given up hope and am heading for the exit when a bouncer runs by, saying "Hot spot, hot spot" into his wrist mike. Sensing promise, I follow. In the "toilet boy" room, a skinny submissive wearing a frilly maid suit swings his plunger in roundhouse swoops and howls at the ceiling tiles. Three bouncers converge on him, but he's deep into psycho space and fends them off for a full minute, baring his teeth and spewing drool.

Finally one bouncer pins the sub's neck with the plunger stem and the other two hoist his legs. As they carry him out, I spot his dominant, sitting discouraged on one of the room's dozen toilets. She's not in costume, just leather pants and a sports bra. She looks amateur, but if she hit an experienced sub's hot spot, she must have some talent. As the other toilet boys return to their chores, I drop to hands and knees before her, my nose touching the sudsy cement.

"Ma'am, this subject presents itself for instruction, ma'am," I say.

"Why, you going to flip out on me too?"

"Ma'am, not in this lifetime, ma'am."

She sighs. "I don't know. I should just go home. All I did was play-pierce his belly button."

"Ma'am, it's a subject's obligation to develop the mental and physical fortitude to withstand correction before requesting it," I tell her. "One who abuses this expectancy deserves the consequences of any trigger it leaves conspicuous."

"Yeah?" she says. "What's your trigger?"

"Ma'am, you'd be more likely to cure cancer, all due respect, ma'am."

"Really. What makes you so tough?"

"Sixteen split canes, ma'am. Six detached whip handles. Two blown cattle prods."

I hear the toilet creak as she stands. "Fine. Clean it, pissant. With your tongue."

2011-09-29T18:48:00.000-07:00

That night my impulses win out and I take a taxi to Lashes. I was barred from the club years back, but with its membership booming I can usually blend in with the crowd if I make it past the bouncers. I wear a sensory deprivation hood to hide my face and a leather neck collar with a hidden release spring. The gear identifies me as a submissive, and a woman behind me in line whacks my shoulder with a phony riding crop, its tip made of plastic, not fiberglass. I drop to hands and knees and tilt the collar's eyehook toward my assailant. I hear a leash latch snap closed on the hook. Part of a "couple" now, I'll beat the bouncers for sure. A foot puts cautious pressure on my neck. "Keep your snout to the ground, dog," my idiot "owner" says as the line shifts.

I shuffle through the door on all fours, enduring kicks in the ass from my owner. Once inside, I stand up, unfasten the collar, stuff the hood in my pocket, and begin prowling the crowd for edge play. My owner runs to catch up, smacking my back with the spurned leash. "Prostrate yourself for boot tribute!" she says.

I turn for a look at her. A typical Lashes dominant--forty pounds overweight and ugly, using S&M as a dating substitute, failing as badly here as in the vanilla world, since any submissive could tell she'd be exhausted ten minutes into session. She wears swashbuckler boots, a polyvinyl chloride miniskirt, and elbow-length mesh gloves, all bought off the rack at Hurts & His, the city's S&M clothier.

"Where's your police cap?" I ask.

"Questions? Ten cane strokes!"

I point to her belt buckle. "Use that."

"Orders? Ten more!"

Her friends have caught up with her. They're real posers, don't even wear full outfits, just throwaway accessories like stiletto shoes and bustiers. I snatch the riding crop from my owner and hand the butt end back to her. Then I unzip my ass fly and bend over, hugging my knees for stability. A dozen tourists, holding bottled beers and mixed drinks, crowd around for a look. My owner still hasn't moved. I shout back, "Are you blind?"

I'm risking recognition by staging a scene so close to the bouncers. I wait another ten seconds. The crop's butt end probes my crack with all the impact of a wet tampon.

"Useless," I say, zipping up.

"I'll tear him a new one," boasts a muscleman in the audience.

"Really?" I lift my shirt to show him the scar where my left nipple was ripped off during a stretcher-bar session. He throws up an arm and turns away; his girlfriend buckles as if kidney-punched.

2011-09-28T18:53:00.000-07:00

Then the hag is squatting behind me, her fingertips pressing my temples. Her voice, nearly inside my ear, is too proximal to tune out. An angry counterboy sets our table back upright and gathers the scattered condiment bottles. I must have mimicked whiplash. But I can't enjoy the aftermath with the hag squeezing my skull like this. If she's going to deny me headspace, she could at least use her fingernails.

"Extratemporal stimulation averts fugue state, Philip," she says. "Other options are open to you, though. You could approach this as a dialogue, for instance. Live up to your nickname. Break the glucocorticoid circuit for ten seconds."

I try to jerk my head from her grip, but she's surprisingly strong, and I can't get much leverage since the whiplash left me recumbent. "What do you want?"

"That's a boy." She returns to her seat and takes up her fresh tea cup, oblivious to the room full of staring vanillas. "My name's Helen Hennessey. I was an advisor of (   )'s at Beth Israel. She asked me to examine you. She feels you might be starting to spiral. After meeting you, I agree."

I rise to my knees. "There's no need."

"Yes, patients with your paraphilia detest analysts--you mimic pedophiles in that respect--but you've no alternative," she says. "It's (   )'s wish."

I stand up. "No."

"I'm told you're quite clever in deducing loopholes, but you can consider any equivocation a trespass against (   ) herself that will be reported promptly for follow-up," Helen says.

"No!"

"It's not my preference either," she continues. "I've much more rewarding work awaiting me than a run-of-the-mill algolagniac. But (   ) is a friend, so I've agreed. I only ask that you strive to show a symptom or two that isn't as thoroughly textbook as your presentation so far."

I walk to the college girls' table; flathand the airshaft from their hookah, scattering charcoal and tobacco; and lift the vial of tar water to my mouth. I gag back the first swallow all over their beansprout soup. Now I'm back in (   )'s cesspool, the girls' screams in my ear mine in the dark, a coat hanger lashing my buttocks, blood on all the walls. Two counterboys rush to my side, but I won't let go of the vial until they bend one of my fingers backward. Every customer in the coffeeshop is standing now.

"Our first visit is Thursday night," Helen says from her table. "(   ) instructs you to attend."

The counterboys take my arms and start walking me toward the door. I bite my tongue with my canine teeth and spit bloody flem in Helen's hair as I pass her. Then I go slack, dead weight; the counterboys nearly drop me, then shift positions so they're propping me up and pushing me simultaneously.

"'Masochists forced into therapeutic settings may react histrionically by resorting to auto-injury,'" Helen calls, blotting the blood from her hair. "Keep trying, child. You must have a surprise inside you somewhere."

***

2011-09-27T19:06:00.000-07:00

Blinking away the hot sauce, I look back at the woman. She's a middle-aged hag, face at once inquisitive and pitiless. Her military crew cut screams leatherdyke but she wears a pantsuit and half-moon glasses like any vanilla. Her rheumy eyes trace the black spots of dead flesh near my sternum. I left my shirt collar open on purpose so (   ) could admire her handiwork.

"Shunt indeed," she nods. "I've only seen one other masochist with electrotorture scars above the waist."

Stuart. So she's been to (   )'s apartment. Not a surrogate, maybe, but an associate. Or a client? No, I'd spot the hallmarks. I lower my head again, confused, then raise it.

"Don't know quite how to behave, do you, Philip," she says. "Must every interaction be an archetype? That's the problem with your paraphilia, isn't it. Incessant refrains. Infant-level fixity. All a witless attempt to rehash object relations."

I watch her, awaiting orders.

"Ever consider riding it out?" she asks me. "Putting that willpower to use for once? Cresting the hump of your repetition compulsion and discovering what lies on the greener side?"

I watch.

She leans forward to engage me, my body balking at the proximity. "Now, how many days has it been since your last session?"

"Six," I say.

"How were you at work today?"

"Tense."

"You're to phone in sick tomorrow. Then go to (   )'s apartment at eight. She'll have session with you then." A pause. "You understand (   ) will see you tomorrow?"

Session.

"Philip." She pinches my wrist pulse points until my eyes refocus. "No headspace yet. I haven't finished."

The atonal drone of her voice is obviously modulated to calm. I dim it to blend with the counterboys' background banter. Now instead of kneeling in this coffeeshop I'm crouched in (   )'s cesspool, wrists in suspension cuffs, waiting to be yanked aloft. The room is dark. I face the outer wall. From this side the paint chips in the windows reveal tiny skylines. I let my breaths spread through me, assuaging muscle cramps, preventing telltale twitches or tremors.

I hear the cock prong shoot sparks.

2011-09-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

When I get back to my basement apartment I find a phone message from (   ). She wastes no words as usual. "Be at Clairvoyant's at seven." I play it a dozen times, cock stiffening, then put a fresh tape in the machine and add the used one to my collection. (   )'s phone style, always thrillingly cryptic, has grown even more abrupt during our six months together. I love that she doesn't bother with salutations or sign-offs. I love that she finds it unnecessary to use our names. I love that she doesn't tell me what or where "Clairvoyant's" is.

I find it in the phone book: an Indonesian coffeeshop twenty minutes away by subway. In the shower I scour my ballsack and sphincter until the sponge comes back bloody. I must present myself to (   ) with no stain or odor. The shower also gives me time to plan my strategy. I assume she's meeting me publicly to castigate me for my trespasses in a place where she's prohibited from violence. That means I've succeeded at step one, arousing insuppressible anger. Step two is to make the violence she's dodging possible.

I get to Clairvoyant's at six-thirty to scout a secluded table. All the patrons sit on pillow piles on the floor. The tables between them have candles, but they're probably paraffin, a sissified combustion point compared to beeswax. Two college girls in a corner are smoking a hookah; perhaps I can have one brought to our table for potential neck bondage or branding. I'll also need to order an appetizer that comes with a steak knife. There seem to be no free tables and I'm wondering which of the vanillas to eject when a hand grasps my ankle and a woman's voice says, "Join me, Philip."

Chin to sternum. Eyes to toetips. Hang hands.

Measured breaths. Level out unacceptable heart palpitations.

"I asked that you sit, not strike a silly pose," the woman says. "(   ) must be slipping if this is what she lets pass for discipline."

I kick aside the pillows and kneel, buttocks on heels, before her. An act of contrition is needed to excuse my ignorance. I cast my lowered eyes about the table until they light on the condiment tray.

"Eye contact is permitted, Philip," she says. "Or shall I call you Shunt? Yes, (   ) told me your trade name."

I snatch the picante sauce dispenser, tilt my head back, and squeeze a stream into my right pupil. My pisshole would be preferable, but we're in public. I fight back the burn and suppress my blink reflex even as my eye lining sears and pink tears streak my cheek.

The woman chuckles. "An impressive self-penalty, Philip, except I'm not a pinch-hitter."

The dispenser pauses above my other eye.

"No, (   ) hasn't offered you to me," she says. "You've mistaken my purpose entirely."

2011-09-25T13:15:00.000-07:00

As soon as Lisa's gone I search her purse for instruments. I find nail clippers, eyebrow pencils, barrettes; no scissors, no razor blades. Make do. I unfold the cuticle cleaner from her nail clipper, grip it between two knuckles, pull up my pant cuff, and stab the thing hilt deep in my left calf.

With measured breaths and metronomic calm I process the pain. I level out the puncture sting to less than a needle prick, while letting a uriney warmth spread partway up my leg. My penis, dormant for six days, has at last started to stir when Lisa opens the door and reseats herself as if to resume our interview. She doesn't seem much surprised. Blunted affective responsivity. Suspect childhood sex abuse.

"That was speedy," I say, teeth set.

"There were a bunch of guys out there staring me down," she replies.

"Our best and brightest."

"I got shy."

My fist, tight on the nail clipper, serves as a tourniquet. If I withdraw the blade, blood might spurt, and I have nothing to clean it with, except more of Lisa's cosmetics.

"Obviously, I have some predilections that have nothing whatsoever to do with you or your visit here today," I begin.

She points. "Don't drip."

"I promise I'll send your paperwork upstairs with a passing score," I say. "But I don't decide who gets hired. I don't even know your real last name."

"Leafblad."

I blot a blood trickle with my sock. "Lisa, can I borrow a tissue or two?"

"You need to tie off the artery. Here." Using a key edge, she cuts a knee-high seam in her pantyhose and peels off the bottom half.

"That won't look good for Team Breeding," I say.

"I wasn't going to get a job here anyway," she says. "I only go on these interviews because the unemployment office says so." She talks on, employing the same flat tone with which she answered the substrata inventory, as she wraps the panty leg around my calf. "I was a topless dancer but I got laid off. Have you ever heard of that? It's this economy. I told unemployment I had secretarial experience so they wouldn't send me for waitress jobs. That's what the club put down, that I was a waitress. Let go."

She pries my fist off the clipper, works the blade out of my leg, and stanches the blood with a maxipad. Then she lowers my pant cuff over the bandage and stands. "You're brand new."

"How can I thank you?" I ask.

"Oh, someone will do something nice for me later, then we'll be even," she says. "I believe things happen for reasons. Like last month, I wouldn't dance for a guy at the club because he had a lazy eye, and the next day I heard a hooker was found dead in a car nearby. I bet he did it."

The bloody nail clipper still rests on the table. "I'll get rid of that, unless you want it back," I say.

"No," Lisa says, shrugging into her jacket, "you should have a souvenir of our meeting too."

"What's your souvenir?"

She's ten minutes clear of the office and I'm packing my briefcase for sick leave when I notice my wallet's gone.

***

2011-09-24T14:15:00.000-07:00

"Lisa, I'm going to ask you a series of questions," I begin. "Some of them might seem unusual, but they're scientifically designed to help us learn if we're a good match. There are no right or wrong answers, so don't overanalyze. I like to tell candidates to think of it as a first date--we want to have some fun, but at the same time we're evaluating you for relationship potential. Okay?"

"Okay," she says.

I jot a hash mark beside "dysthymic disorder."

"Lisa, do works of art that lack figures or objects make you anxious?"

She looks down at her palms, which rest atop her pocketbook, which rests atop her crotch. "I guess it's up to the colors."

Overly punitive superego.

"Would you drink from a carton of milk one day past its expiration date?"

She checks her hands again, then says, "I guess it would depend how it smelled."

Inclined to paranoid ideation.

"If you could live ten extra years only if your pet lived ten years less, would you?"

"Oh, no, because my cat, Christian, only has one ear. He lost the other one in a fight with a possum. He's been through a lot already."

Incorrigible suicide risk.

"Shorter answers, Lisa. Would you rather die by drowning, fire, or a fall?"

"Wow, I don't ... I like the ocean ... shorter, I know. Drowning."

Fixated at pregenital sexual cathexis.

"With what part of your body do you feel you have the best relationship?"

"My stomach. It'll eat anything."

Acute gender dysphoria. But I really need to calm down now. My fingers have gone numb from clenching my pencil. The sweatstains from my speedwalk, instead of evaporating in the air-conditioning, are seeping down my sides to soak the waistband of my underwear.

"Lisa, would you climb a tree if it were upside down?"

"I don't know, if I fell out would I fly away?"

Possible static left temporal lesion. "Feels about like break time, doesn't it?" I say, performing a knuckle drumroll.

"Seems soon," she says.

"There's a smoking alcove right off the lounge," I say. "Why don't you take ten." As she stands, I add, "Since you don't have security clearance you'll need to leave your pocketbook behind."