“What do you have in here, anyway?” she asks.
I don’t answer.
“Place the bag to my right and stand three feet in front of the sofa, facing the window.”
She tugs on her belt, pulls up her jeans, and files into place.
“On your knees,” I command.
Jake slowly drops to the floor. Raising her hand to cover her mouth. “Like this?” she mutters, stifling a laugh. Ignoring her brattiness, I pull my blue riding crop out of the bag and casually rap the stinging end of the whip in my hands.
I pace in front of her.
She stares at my faded, ripped blue jeans and scratched motorcycle boots.
“First: ground rules. You are to respect what I say. You will learn to anticipate me, but for now I will give you directions and you will follow them.”
Jake murmurs something under her breath. I step closer to her and pull up a chair. My crotch is at the same level as her face. I lean in closer.
“Second rule: Don’t think for one moment you’re going to get away with any bullshit with me.”
Jake raises her right hand to her forehead and salutes. “No bullshit. Got it.”
“Third rule: Don’t speak unless spoken to. The most important rule: Call me Sir.”
A muffled growl hisses from Jake’s mouth. Two fingers pressing underneath her chin, I coax her to standing and command her to get against the wall with her arms at her sides.
Casually, I say, “Tell me all the places you’ve fucked inside your apartment.” She feels yoked by my request before another roll of cockiness covers her demeanor.
“I’ve fucked on my bed, in my bed, with my eyes open and closed…”
I stop her. “This lesson is called call me Sir. You will repeat your boastful sexcapades in military fashion and with proper intonation. Begin and end each of your sentences with ‘Sir.’”
Jake shifts her weight from one foot to the other, drops her hip, and looks up at the ceiling. “What the hell? Are you going to chastise me all night?”
I walk directly in front of her, pull her head down so we are standing face-to-face. I skillfully trace her neckline with the flat end of the whip. A bead of sweat lingers on her brow. I pull out my trusty forest-green-colored hanky from my back pocket and wipe it off. She winces when I crack the whip on the wall right above her eye.
“If I want to chastise you all night, that’s what I will do.” I move closer, as if I were a field officer sharing a survival secret with a new recruit, and whisper, “You fuck with me again, we’re done.”
Jake’s body reacts in a shudder. Stuffing the hanky back in my pocket, I turn and walk over to the window to compose myself.
I pull back the blinds.
A stealth femme is walking a three-legged Chihuahua on the sidewalk.
A red neon Coca-Cola sign flashes over an old-fashioned doorway.
The little fucker’s obedient breathing pulls me back into the room.
With a shit-eating grin, I turn and walk toward her.
Jake punches the air like a cheerleader, rolls her eyes, and with a testy smile, spits: “Sir, I’ve fucked women on my bed, in my bed, with my eyes open and closed. I’ve fucked in my kitchen, bent them over my computer desk a few times. Sir. I even fucked a girl on my fixie over there in the corner.”
Her gaze lingers straight at me while she flings a pointed finger to the corner where a shiny blue one-speed “fixie” bicycle leans against the wall.
“Are you a good fuck, loudmouth? Are you as good a fucker as you are a disrespectful bullshitter?”
“Better,” she says defiantly.
What am I going to do with her!
“Okay,” I say, “you obviously crave being broken. Show me where you sleep at night.”
She leads me to her bedroom. We sit on her bed. I command her to wear a blindfold and strip down to her briefs. She strips clumsily, arms and legs flapping around, wrestling the orange T-shirt off and over her head. I notice a gallery of tattoos painted across her body. The one sprawling from the base of her armpit up a few inches and down the right side of her rib cage is my favorite. It’s a giant octopus with crisscrossed pirate swords behind its placid head. One of the tentacles waves a tattered Jolly Roger skull-and-crossbones flag.
I hold out my hand and lead her from the bedroom over to the “fuck desk” she so confidently described a moment ago. I’m strapped under my jeans. I trace my finger along one of Mr. Octopus’s stripy, black-patterned tentacles from her navel to her shoulder and push her to her knees in front of the desk chair, grabbing her modern mullet haircut with my fist.
“Tell me why you want me to do this. Be respectful.” I squat down next to her ear and whisper, “I only fuck with respectful faggots. Are you a respectful faggot?”
“What the fuck do you mean, am I a respectable faggot?” she fangs.
“Correction. What the fuck do you mean, SIR.” A fistful of hipster-than-thou hair twists in my fingers. I pull off her blindfold, pushing her face down to my boots.
“Lick them,” I command.
Smiling, she doesn’t move a muscle. I can see fear steeped in attitude boiled hot to perfection in her eyes.
I repeat firmly, “Lick my fucking boots, loudmouth brat.”
She bends forward, presses her dirty pink lips to my scratched-up boots. Even slips her bratty tongue around the toe of my left one.
“That’s better.” I pull her back to kneeling in front of me and stroke her hair. She breathes in through her nose and out her mouth. I’m standing directly in front of her, and I notice her eyes staring at my cock.
“You still want this?” I grab my crotch. “Yeah?” I move in front of her. I take a step back, ring my thumbs through the loops of my jeans, and flare out my fingers. “Now, let’s see. Tell me why you want this.”
Jake smiles, looks me up and down, and says, “Why do you care?” She winks.
Some loudmouths just don’t ever learn, do they?
“Get against the wall.”
She rises, hands to her sides.
“Are you forgetting something?” I ask.
Jake shifts her weight, puts her hands on the waistband of her underwear, and stares at the sofa in the corner.
“No. I’m following your orders.”
“Eyes forward. You are following my orders, Sir! Say it.”
She drops her hands and looks at me. “I am following your orders, Sir.”
“Better,” I sigh.
I walk over and push her up against the wall. She’s facing me. I dip down into my bag and pull out a set of ankle spreaders: a two-foot metal bar with ankle restraints on either side. I take some rope and tie her wrists behind her back.
“Turn around and face the wall.”
“Okay, fine, Sir,” she spits as she turns to face the wall. I grab the spreaders and fasten them to her ankles. I take a piece of paper and move over to the wall.
“Hold this to the wall with your nose.”
She wriggles her bound arms and shimmies her ankles before lowering into submission, uttering, “Yes, Sir.”
I step back to look at my handiwork before reaching back into my toy bag and pulling out a copy of
Becoming a Police Officer: An Insider’s Guide.
“Remember to pay close attention to this lesson, little fucker. Now, I know that hot temper of yours has gotten you in trouble with the law. I’ve seen you downtown in your orange T-shirt ticking out community service hours. Sometimes the best cops are the ones who’ve been on both sides, if you know what I mean.”
Jake grimaces. I notice the paper slip a bit.
I walk over, open the book, and read into her ear, “‘Do you like the smell of danger, the victory of helping the helpless?’” She’s turned on. Her heavy breathing and clenched jaw are dead giveaways.
“I like watching you squirm, little fucker.”
Her nipples are getting harder by the second. She lets out a moan, starts shaking just a little bit. “Is my star pupil getting restless? Do you need to be steadied?”
I lean in and put my hot mouth just on the outside of her neck without actually contacting it. She’s finding it difficult to control herself. Just as her ass starts to melt into my crotch behind her, I sink my teeth into her skin, slap her ass hard with the palm of my hand, and step back. She turns her head a little bit, trying to get a glimpse of me. The paper slips and nearly drifts to the floor.
“Tsk, tsk.” I release her binds with one tug of the quick-release knot, unfasten the ankle spreader with my foot, and pull down her tight pink boi briefs. Sighing defeat, she steps out of her underwear and rests her forehead against the wall.
“Drop and give me twenty,” I command.
Jake slaps the wall, turns, and drops to the floor.
I stand over her while her body dips up and down. I watch her arm muscles pulse. She’s groaning like a boy now. Defiantly counting off: “Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen…”
“Are you showing off for me now?”
“No, it’s just that twenty push-ups are no problem for me. I want to do more.”
“Get up,” I demand.
She rises.
I move right in front of her face and shout, “You want to do more, what?”
“Sir!”
“This is the last fucking time I’m gonna say that. Get back against the wall.”
I bind her wrists behind her back. Put the paper back under her nose. Casually dangle a set of nipple clamps connected by a heavy silver chain from my fingertips in her peripheral vision.
Her left eye shifts suddenly to meet mine.
“You wanted more? Here you go.”
I play with her nipples before securing the clamps one at a time on her red buds.
“Yes, Sir,” she submits under her breath. I smile and continue.
“You like the police talk, don’t you?”
Her shoulder twitches, her face falls. I can tell this is a mixed bag of emotions.
“You are a star faggot, aren’t you? What we’ve got here is one law-abiding faggot.”
“Sir, I am a fucking faggot.”
A weary expression crosses her face. Her mood shifts. The paper flutters to the floor. I move over to her. Has she had enough? But then I notice her body flush with excitement. A dual effort like she’s got a freight train running through her mind and a vibrator on her clit. Excitement trilled by vibes of fear. There were three people against the queer bashers that night, but she was the only one who got dragged down to the station. The cops saw her do it, and they profiled her because of the way she looked.
“Did the cops take you down that night?”
A tear escapes her eye.
She stammers. “Yes, Sir.”
I feel suddenly awkward. It feels like I’m standing in the way of control. I can’t go back in time and fix what happened in the past.
I slide the nipple clamps off. I notice the blood has drained from her hands and I loosen the rope that is binding her wrists to bring back circulation. I walk behind her and press my chest into her back. Wrap my arms around her and hold her in my arms like a long-lost friend found again.
Squeezing Jake’s body gently, I say, “Tell me what happened that night.”
Rubbing her wrists, she says, “Me and a bunch of my friends were on our way home. Some men started yelling at us. They were calling us dykes, spitting at us. Then two cops came, a woman and a man. They let the others go but they grabbed me.” She rubs her brass knuckle tattoo and chuckles. “I guess I looked like trouble.”
“Cops can be ugly,” I say. “Serve and protect—so long as you look the part.”
She twitches a bit, but there is a new light in her eye.
“They yelled really loud, and when I yelled back the man cop told the woman to ‘get ready,’ and the next thing I knew I had the wind knocked out of me and my face was on the sidewalk and my arms and legs were tied together with a plastic zip tie. He was so forceful. The cop used far more force than he needed to. I just lay there on the sidewalk while I listened to the cops take down the queer basher’s information. It sucked. I was in pain.”
I imagine her hands bound behind her back, her legs tied together, her entire body arched into a taut bow, held immobile on the worn, gum-stained Seattle sidewalk.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen next. It was horrifying and exhilarating at the same time. And to this day, all I want to do is take back that night. I want to try on that feeling of helplessness, knowing that I will survive it this time, you know?”
I move to face Jake. I pause. This is serious shit.
“Let me take you there,” I say.
Jake carefully runs her fingers through her hair, resting her hand on the back of her head. She shifts her weight. Looks down on the floor before meeting my eyes. She looks straight at me with inquisitive, defiant, yet trusting eyes. She cocks her chin out again, and in a child’s voice says, “Okay.”