Marketplace (21 page)

Because she didn’t go, I
spent most of the night just kind of standing by the bar and
watching things. You see, if she had been there, we would have
walked around a lot, talking to people. Everyone liked to talk to
her. But by myself, I could just fade into the background, drink
until the room got fuzzy, and then try to sober up enough to get
home by myself. Instead, there I was by the bar all night. And
that’s how I saw them.

This guy kept coming to the
bar and buying one drink. He was dressed a little warmly for the
night, with a turtleneck sweater and a jacket, I remember. He’d buy
the drink and almost dash back into the crowd, like a linebacker
who has the ball. And then he’d give the drink to this blonde
woman, and stand next to her. He never had a drink of his own. And
he never spoke to her. She would be talking to someone else, turn
to him, and off he’d go for another drink. He would light her
cigarettes, too, but he didn’t smoke himself.

They were so obvious, I
couldn’t bring myself to believe it for at least two hours.
Instead, I watched them. I watched him, the way he stood behind but
next to her, attentive to her every gesture. I watched the way she
flicked ashes onto the floor, carelessly close to his leg
sometimes, and how he never moved out of the way. People would
sometimes greet them, and he’d shake their hands, but never really
participate in the conversation.

By the end of the evening,
I knew I had to meet her. I wandered close to them, close enough to
eavesdrop on more than one conversation. By the time I was very
close, my palms were wet. I had to keep rubbing them against my
pants leg. I was so nervous! What I was going to say became a kind
of cruel game my mind was playing. People passed me by and I
couldn’t say who they were, or even whether or not they said hello
to me. It was like the whole room had shrunk to me, that woman, and
her male companion.

Finally, I was close enough
to actually look like I was interested in the conversation. And
this I remember well. She was talking about a fashion show she had
gone to, where the models were dressed in fantasy clothing, like
leather and lace and rubber. The people around her were amused and
titillated. I thought my heart was going to pound its way out of my
chest in another second. When a break in the conversation came, I
stuck my hand out and said, “Hi! I’m Robert. Sounds like you go
interesting places!”

I’m sure I must have had
the sickest-looking fake grin on my face. Even as the words left
me, I felt weak in the knees. I must have looked and sounded like
the worst kind of moron.

And do you know what she
did? She looked down at my hand, and put her cigarette to her lips.
I thought she was going to leave it there and shake with me, but
instead, she took a long draw and put her hand back down. I was
left holding my hand out like an idiot.

“Not as interesting as the
places you should be going,” she said calmly.

I could have died. To the
snickers of the people around me, I put my hand down, and tried to
match them with a laugh of my own. But it was useless. I was
already beaten. I couldn’t stay, but I couldn’t walk
away.

I didn’t try to engage her
in conversation any more. I just faded slightly into the background
and continued to watch her, this time from up close. It may sound
strange, but I was happy just to be like that. I felt like I was
orbiting her. And then, suddenly, she made some kind of gesture to
the man next to her, and he passed me her card. Before she left for
the night, she said to me, “Call me on Monday evening at
6pm.”

I went home feeling like I
had cheated on Angie. But I couldn’t bring myself to throw the card
away. I opened the window of my car while I drove up the
expressway, and I actually held it outside for a while, letting the
rushing air blow against it, but I was really helpless. I put it in
my business card case.

I stayed awake all night,
next to the body of my faithful, loving wife. The mother of my two
great kids, and the woman I promised to love, honor and cherish for
the rest of my life.

You see, even when we had
gotten married, I still had fantasies of powerful, controlling
women. Even on our wedding day, as I stood in front of the
minister, I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could take the
vow to obey her as well? Wouldn’t it be great to have her put a
gold collar on me instead of a gold ring? But Angie was... is... a
strong believer in individual strength. She could never have stood
for the kind of man I really am.

I called the Mistress on
Monday, from my desk at work, promptly at six. She told me to come
to a certain address by seven, and hung up.

I called home and told
Angie some story about late meetings. She took it in stride.
Business was going through the roof, and I was an important
man.

Two hours later, I was
crawling naked across a bathroom floor, begging to lick the rim of
a toilet seat.

I know what you’re
thinking, and you’re right. I was a heel. A jerk. A bad husband and
a poor father. But how can I possibly explain how fulfilled I felt
when this woman I had only met two days before put a chain around
my neck and told me what a weakling I was? How can I put words to
it? It was so right! I was really home! This was what I should have
been doing all along. I was perpetuating a huge fraud on the world,
masquerading as a good man, a husband and father and hard worker.
Deep inside, I knew, and she knew—I was nothing but a weakling. A
pathetic shadow of a man.

I made time for her every
week. I told Angie that I was spearheading a special program for
accelerated training for regional managers, or something like that.
And every Monday night, I would go to her East Side home. I’d take
off all my clothing in the hallway and crawl into her presence.
Then, after a while, she would recognize my presence and begin my
training.

It was all designed to make
me suffer for my audacity. You see, according to my Mistress, this
charade of mine was insulting to every woman who lived, and I
deserved to be punished for it. I agreed, and I looked forward to
every correction she offered. When she beat me, I cowered and
shrank into the floor. When she had me shackled and tormented with
tiny metal clamps all over my body, I cried like a four year old
who lost his parents at the mall. I was shameless. Sometimes, she
would have some other slave present to watch what was happening to
me. I used to think that those times were the worst, because she
would be even more vicious and cruel. But I was still ignorant and
selfish then. I didn’t know what true suffering was.

She would assign me books
to read, and then quiz me on their contents the following week.
That was hell, because I didn’t have anywhere I could hide them
except for my office. I began locking my filing cabinet, and my
secretary became annoyed. But I had no choice. I couldn’t bring
them home, could I? Finally, I bought a cabinet just for the things
my Mistress made me accumulate, and started a collection of
pornography, sadomasochistic literature, and sex toys. And I kept
everything right in my office, right under all my framed pictures
of me with famous people, my diplomas, and my community recognition
awards. I was an even bigger sham than before.

After she got to know me,
my Mistress began to slowly change my training. I was still going
to be punished regularly, but now, she was going to begin to make
something out of me. I was so happy! At last, I was going to be
molded, trained and fashioned for a woman’s pleasure! I was eager
to receive this training. I was so hungry for it, I didn’t realize
what it might mean until it was much too late.

One of the first things she
did to teach me my place was fuck me. Oh, how she drew out the act!
First, she beat my ass until it was so tender I cried when she just
tapped on it. Then, she brought out her collection of... dildos, I
guess, fake cocks of all kinds. And she made me kiss all of them.
And, and... lick them. And then she asked me to choose the one that
would take my virginity the way men had ripped it from women for
thousands of years. The first three I picked were all unsuitable.
For the first one, she put heavy clamps on my nipples. For the
second, she put a leather parachute around my balls. It hurt like
hell! It had little pointy studs lining the inside. For the third,
she put a terrible black hood over my head. It had a removable gag
and blindfold, which she put on the side. But even without them,
the whole thing felt like my head was in a tight cage. Finally, I
chose one she approved of.

Then, she sent me into the
bathroom to clean myself out. She never watched. Doing it for the
first time, with a hood on, and the parachute swinging between my
legs and those clamps on my nipples, was a terrible, terrible
experience. She had to send me back. I didn’t know the first thing
about how long I had to wait, how much water I should use, or
anything. She was very, very angry with me. When I finally came
out, she told me that because I was so inept, she wasn’t going to
fuck me at all. I had to grovel for over thirty minutes, begging
her to do it, before she relented. I must have looked like a great
big shaggy dog, whining and squirming on the floor with my ass high
in the air, waiting for her to open it. By the time she got ready,
I was crying a river of tears.

She put the blindfold on
me, snapping it onto the hood with loud snaps. Then, she produced
the gag that went with it. I couldn’t see it, of course, but she
told me all about it. It was shaped like a cock head. She told me
that she was going to use my mouth after my ass-pussy, so I better
get used to having it filled. And then she pushed it into my mouth,
and snapped it on. Thank God I could breathe through my nose,
because that thing stretched my mouth so wide, I could barely
breathe around it.

And then, she beat me
again. When my ass was so sore that the flicking touch of one of
her nails made me screech into the gag like a cat in heat, she
opened the cheeks of my ass and slammed her cock into
me.

It was then that I came to
the greatest understanding I will ever receive in my entire life.
For all the agony men have caused women through the ages, for all
the rapes, the wedding night horrors, and the terror we inflicted
on them just because we saw them as weaker, men like me deserved to
suffer. Even as I screamed a muffled cry of anguish and pain, I
cried for all the women I had possibly harmed in my
life.

Including poor
Angie.

Angie noticed that I seemed
sore the morning after my Mistress used me sexually. She expressed
concern. Did I have a back problem? Was I getting a cold? I told
her that I pulled some muscles out of whack in a tougher than usual
gym routine, and she seemed to believe it. I had taken care not to
be naked in any well lit room with her for the past several weeks,
so I thought she probably didn’t suspect that I had any marks to
hide. And actually, I would have never had the kinds of marks she
would have understood.

How wrong I was. She found
blood spots on the sheet, probably about the same time I found them
when I happened to look down while in my elegant executive
washroom. When I came home that night, she confronted me about
them. Bleeding hemorrhoids? she asked, her face full of concern.
Did I see a doctor? Why didn’t I tell her?

That night, I realized I
couldn’t lie to her any more. I took her aside, in private, and
began to tell her what kind of a man she had really
married.

The divorce came shortly
after that. Not only didn’t I contest it, but I insisted that she
get everything. The house, the car, everything. After all, nothing
I could give her could ever erase the shame of having been married
to a wimp, to have thought you loved him, that he was a good,
strong man. I didn’t even argue when she had her lawyer tell me
that she didn’t want me to have unsupervised visits with the kids.
It hurt, sure. It hurt like hell. But I could see her reasoning.
Who would want a pervert to have access to their kids? She was a
great mom, very wise. Very strong. Why should her kids be subjected
to me?

But it still hurts. I go
see them when I can, and I send them cards and presents all the
time. And Angie agreed not to tell them what I really am. She and I
tell them that we just had grown-up disagreements, and that we
still love each other and that we both still love them very much.
That’s the right thing to do, I guess.

I moved into a studio in
the city, near where my Mistress lived. I told her that she could
have greater freedom to do as she wished with me. The first thing
she did was order me to shave off all my body hair. And the next
time I arrived and stripped, she had an outfit ready for me. It was
black and white, with a short little skirt and a white ruffled
apron. It was French maid’s uniform, made for a man like me. When I
put it on, I felt like I was putting on my real clothes. From
there, I went to high-heeled shoes, make-up, and cock and ball
restraints under everything. I even wore them to work. She had a
locking belt that held them on, and sometime she would lock me into
it for a few days at a time. While I wore it, I couldn’t piss
standing up. I had to sit down, like a woman. And then there were
the days when a belt locked a butt-plug in me, and I had to call
her to get permission to remove it to, well, you know. There’d be
times when I was leading a big, important business meeting with a
fat plug up my ass and my cock locked in a little steel cage, and
no one there had any way of knowing.