White Tiger on Snow Mountain (22 page)

I sighed as she pierced me and attached the electrodes.

“Too strong? Pain?”

“Good, good,” I said. Lightning sparkled up and down my arms, twitching my nerves like prickly heat. My skull vibrated like a gong. I ground my teeth. But I had learned that the power came in waves, waves that swelled and towered, and just when you thought they were going to take you under, they broke. So I hung on.

“Good,” I said, as the needle in my third eye danced, puckering my forehead skin. And oddly, while my left eye gazed calmly at the calendar and then went to sleep, my right eye, aimed at the blank wall, began to weep for nothing. I wasn’t even sad.

I started chatting with a new girl, who went by blkrose. She was, her ad claimed, a “submissive masochist seeking dominant man.” Sort of. It was all very complicated and vague: She had been a good kid and a virgin until a slightly older girl became her mistress at fifteen. However, a lot of what that mistress had her do was “service” men. At twenty-one her contract expired and she was “free.” She was sometimes dominant with other women but never with men unless ordered to do so by a dominant woman or man. As of right now, she was her own mistress, dominating herself, which seemed not only less than satisfying to both parties but also extremely awkward and frankly exhausting.

So what do you do to yourself?

lots of stuff

tell me some details

lots . . . of . . . stuff

You dont want to say? I know you cant really humiliate yourself alone in your room . . . haha

i humiliate myself plenty, thanks, most of it not alone in my room

like how?

like lots of ways. why do you wanna know so bad?

no big reason . . . just bored. Nevermind.

what do you wanna know? i’ll be an open book.

ok well, the last time you played alone . . . what did you do?

bondage, clamps, wax, plug, ball gag, collar, corset, ballet boots.

slapped myself, spent the night in my cage

what are ballet boots? Toe shoes?

they are fetish shoes. feet on point with a heel

how do you bind and gag yourself? your hands are still free . . . I cant picture it.

i do really complex ties i couldn’t begin to describe

but there wasn’t alot of free movement sans immense pain going on

and how does the humiliation and degradation come in if there’s no one to see?

among other things i moonlight as a stripper

you find that degrading?

Yes! dude go into a skeezy strip joint some time and watch how girls get treated.

We get slimeballs. it’s a rundown place in the middle of nowhere new jersey like a 20 min drive in either direction to civilization. i found it when i got lost in Newark trying to find the turnpike way the fuck out past the airport.

fully nude or g-string?

nude

you make a lot or not cause its out in bumfuck?

I make alot more at my real job

What kind of work? Office you said, right?

I said I work in an office. non secretarial.

Still thats a lot of dough for filing or word processing no?

I don’t file or word process unless you count memos or emails. I’m not in a support position. that’s why I specified non secretarial.

then I guess everything is “office.” Lawyer, real estate tycoon, dentist . . . hey a masochist dentist! I bet there are a lot

lol I work for a private investment firm. I oversee the buying/ selling/leasing of real estate. I’m like all kinds of underqualified for the job. I only got it because my father’s very good friends with one of the directors.

you sound smart to me . . . all that math and stuff . . . I can barely add and subtract

not much math, really. that’s for my pa

So you dress all conservative at work? Skirt suits?

in the office? casual. if I’m meeting a client it depends on what they’re like

do you wear a butt plug or clamps ever to work?

yes

nice . . . you feel like a whore talking to clients and your dad’s friend?

he just got me hired i don’t interact with the directors

do you give lap dances at your strip club? hustle drinks?

yes

you give handjobs?

over the pants . . . yes, many. out, less.

you find that degrading huh . . . having to touch the sleazeballs

i find the whole thing degrading.

the chumps come in their pants?

i take it you HAVE never been to a really skeezy club. this place is great for someone who really enjoys suffering

anyway i think its just a front for drug money anyway

a laundry

yes. everything about this place is weird. i feel like i’m on drugs when i’m there. a totally different universe from the one everyone else operates in. Even how i found it.

How?

dude. alright, i was out meeting a client at a site but i got lost, there’s NOTHING on this road, just warehouses and like a closed gross clam restaurant. it’s dark, i’ve been driving around in circles and finally i see the sign for this place in the distance, like revolving, so i pull up and there’s this guy standing outside smoking so i get out of my car and ask the guy where the highway is he tells me where the highway is and i start to walk back to my car and just on impulse i ask if they’re hiring

keep in mind i’m driving a 50k car and i’m wearing, like, very nice conservative clothes, expensive jewelry

haha

the look he gave me was priceless

so what happened they made you try out?

i had to give the ‘management’ a private show

you showed your pussy?

i took everything off except my shoes and my jewelry

they put a song on?

yes

what?

Cam’ron

?

Oh Boy a Cam’ron song it was popular a couple years ago

I dont even know what the fuck that is. Ha

lol

what do you dance to now? you pick yr songs?

i have my own cds, actually

whats on there?

black eyed peas a couple britney spears songs. Fergie

At least I know those names

Shakira. the ying yang twins

Shakira I heard of . . . but I dont know her song . . . ying yang I dont know, ha.

download dangerous by ying yang not shakira that’s my current favorite

that and I got that boom boom which is britney and ying yang

it’s an r*b song although it’s got a “rock edge”

I like r&b but to me thats like james brown

Where’s your straight job, in NY?

they’re both in NJ but different planets

hey

you want in on my big secret?

sure

i’m planning my destruction.

?

of my life

how?

everything. that’s what the strip club’s for. a place to land.

so you dont mean suicide.

no i don’t mean suicide i mean permanent suffering

I suffer every day baby

lol

so tell me about your plan for total suffering?

i’m going to be a 24/7 slave without an owner

whats that mean? like a wandering samurai? a free lance warrior?

???

Nevermind. Explain.

i’m gonna turn myself into a bad joke at work until i’m fired. im going to stop making payments on the car and the house. burn through my savings and then after that i’ll be my own mistress. torturing myself and ordering myself around 24/7, cruel and vicious as i can be. i’m gonna live out every single fantasy i’ve ever had

such as?

dude the shit i’ll do to myself i don’t even know where to start.

for a masochist i’m the most twisted sadistic person you’ll ever meet

nice combo

what do yo imagine most?

sorry sailor bed time

On the way home from my run I swung north through the NYU campus, impulsively, randomly, perhaps stupidly seeking Lyla, the daddy’s girl, who had told me she was prelaw. I scoped out the law school, sloshing through a lake of gray slush under the brick arches, wandering in and out of doors, smiling and nodding, impersonating a busy grad student on the move. Crisscrossing Washington Square, I saw a dozen Lylas: in their Uggs and sweats with “NYU” stamped across their rumps, in their Wellies and fur-trimmed parkas, their jeans and boots and clown-sized wool hats. For an instant, across the street or around the corner, each one became my nymph at play in the city. Each turned into a different human girl when I approached. Snow fell. I could feel the sweat chilling along my scalp and spine. An older black lady, in a heavy coat, said, “My, don’t you look lovely!” And when I glanced in a shop glass I saw my hair was beaded with frozen crystals. I hurried home.

Still, searching for Lyla became another of my strange compulsions, my secret habitual rituals. Every time I cut through
Washington Square, I looked. Every time I saw a blond girl, I wondered. I worked the law school and library onto my routes to and from the river. Once, when she claimed to be surreptitiously typing to me and even touching herself under the table while studying in the student union, I entered “BRB,” putting her on hold as it were, and dashed over, wandering the hall, scanning the faces. None seemed like hers. Was she lying? Had she moved? Was she even in New York, even a girl? Once we spoke on the phone and the voice matched, female, young, Long Island accent, but beyond that she could have been anyone. I didn’t know her last name and doubted of course that Lyla was her first, but while the odds of finding her in this downtown jungle of young blond women seemed ridiculous, it seemed equally bizarre that this person I was in intimate communication with was hidden a few blocks away. But “looking” for her only made this paradox more palpable: Searching snowy lamp-lit streets for the tracks of a girl I’d never seen felt like walking into a fairy tale, while shut in my room, seeing her words appear and form lines across the white box, she felt, if not exactly real then present, and if not present then at least closer, as close as anyone else, right there, almost, breathing behind the bright glass.

IM with blkrose 1:32 AM

hey

hey, whats up?

not much, down in georgia on business trip

hows it going? been slutting it up lately?

lol do you know what i did last night? i almost didn’t get out of it. you know those stupid hangers they have in hotel rooms?

the kind you can’t steal?

Yeah i hung myself on one by my nipples, standing on my toes

nipple clamped or pierced?

clamped but i also bound myself i thought i’d be able to like lift myself up a little higher with my toes but it turned out i couldn’t get high enough

see this is where you need pics to send me!

lol seriously though i was stuck for like 6 hours

hahaha . . . the real humiliation wouldve been if the maid came in and found you!