Submit (Songs of Submission) (5 page)

I swallowed. Did I want him? Jesus fucking Christ, I’d never wanted anything so badly. I took a sip of water. “While you were away, and the last words I heard were Jessica’s, I felt emotionally heightened. Sometimes, I just shook with rage. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t do anything, or didn’t do much, or that you had to kiss her to get over her. The fact was, I had a hard time functioning. That’s why I don’t want a relationship. And the trouble is, you can’t promise me I won’t feel like that again.”

“No, I can’t.”
Plink, plink.

“But how am I supposed to walk away?”

“You can’t. You’re mine. The minute I told you to spread your legs and you did it, you were mine. When I told you to beg for it and you did, you were mine. When you put your hands behind your back without being told, I owned you. You never had to say a word. You’re a natural submissive.”

Plink.
When he turned away from the bowl to look at me, he had a nutmeat in his fingers, ready for my lips. His face, which had been so close to mine, slid half a step away. “Why the look?” he asked.

“What did you say?”

He smirked and got his face close again. “You are a natural submissive, Monica. You enjoy being obedient. You cede control with both hands. It’s exactly right.”

I was shaking. I wanted him, and five minutes ago, he was mine. He’d given up on his wife and wanted me, and the ache of holding back my feelings for him was quelled, if only for a moment. Until he called me a submissive.

I took my own fucking nut and cracked the meat out. “What were you thinking about us? You gonna put me on a leash?”

“You just turned into stone.”

I chewed, not commenting. I wanted an answer. He stalled, pouring himself half a glass of Perrier, and I was immediately reminded of the glass I’d spilled on the floor.

“Women I take to bed, mostly they defy me, or act cute, or overdo obedience but don’t mean it. Many pretend to like getting tied to the bedpost. One was so pliable it was disconcerting.”

“And this Sharon person?”

“She’s a submissive. That’s what she does. So she nailed it, but it’s not that kind of relationship. I could talk to her about what I liked, and we could try things together, but it’s not like you. I want you. I can’t get enough of you. You’re strong. I want to see how you look with your wrists tied to your knees. I want to spank you red in the ass. Because you can take it.” He paused, looking at me. “And I think I scared you. It’s not what you think. I don’t want anything from you that you already haven’t offered.”

“With both hands, apparently.”

“It’s beautiful, Monica. Don’t make it ugly.” He tilted his head, as if trying to see through me.

I tossed my pistachio shell into the bowl with a
plink,
feeling surly and confused. “Was Jessica submissive?”

“No. I think it’s what drove her away.”

I couldn’t help but think Jessica’s refusal to be dominated meant she was respected more than I would ever be. I’d always be the child, the one who could be bossed around, dismissed, belittled, and abused.

“Monica, what’s on your mind?”

“No,” I said.

“No, what?”

“No. Just no.” I grabbed my bag. “But thanks for asking.”

I took big steps in my high heels, nodding to Larry, who I’d probably never see again, and went out to the hall, where the elevator waited. There was an image in my mind, a thought, and I was keeping it at bay. Something about the nuts and the things he said was bringing a memory back to me.

He caught my elbow as I pressed the elevator button. “Monica.”

“Don’t touch me.”

“What is it?”

The doors slid open. I didn’t think he’d follow me in, but he did.

“Leave me alone.”

“No. Fuck, no!”

The doors closed him in, and we headed down.

He took me by the biceps. “What is it? Is it the word? We’ll pick a different one.”

“It’s not what I want. Please. Just forget everything. I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“Why?”

I didn’t want to think about why. I didn’t want to answer. I looked up at him, thinking maybe I’d find some words to string together that would be reasonable or acceptable without letting through the image I held at bay. His face, his posture, everything told me I’d hurt him.

“I’m sorry,” I said as the doors opened. I ran out, into the hall, through the lobby, and into the parking lot. Lil sat with the other drivers and got up when she saw me, but I ran past. I got into my car and put it in drive before the engine was even engaged.

The downtown streets jogged the car. I couldn’t drive correctly. My mind was a soup of images I wouldn’t acknowledge. I pulled over in front of a set of bay doors on an empty dead end street and put the car in park.

My hands were shaking. I had to calm down. I had to cut a song in an hour. In Burbank. Who knew what the traffic would be?

Breathe. Breathe.

As I relaxed I felt a cord of arousal under my skirt. I closed my eyes, thinking about the silly junk I was going to have to sing, the clichés and simple chords. I had to add
me
to it. I had to breathe life into something dead. That was all I should be thinking about.

I heard a
plink
on the roof of the car. Then another. It had started to rain.
Plink, plink.
Through my relaxation, the memory came. The one I’d tried to shut out.

A club. Kevin and I went places and did things at night, in the odd hours, in the corners of the city, seeking out subcultures and twisted paths. Because we were artists, nothing was beneath our understanding or experience.

The club was dark. I’d been there before. There was nothing at all special about it. We sat at the end of the bar, by the wall. I’d been drinking something, and Kevin had my hand in his. His fingertips were cold from the ice in his glass, and I enjoyed the way he drew circles inside my wrist with them. I felt delicious and loved.

I heard a creak of old hinges above me. I looked up. The wall above seemed to have a hidden door, and a shelf and false wall swung out. A blindfolded woman about my age was tied to the shelf, on her hands and knees, hands and head facing the room. She wore configuration of leather ties that bound her wrists to her knees. A silver ring with the circumference of a castanet kept her mouth open and her head raised. The leather harness holding it in place was strapped around her head and connected to a hook on the wall.

The bartender slapped a metal bowl under the shelf holding the girl and got on with his business, as if girls were tied to the wall all the time. Kevin barely glanced up, and though I tried to keep my mind on the conversation we were having with Jack and his girlfriend, my eyes kept going to the girl. She wore pink cotton panties that didn’t go with the black leather garter pressing her tits to her ribs, but when I noticed a carefully placed mirror, I knew why. Her panties were soaked through at the crotch, and the pink showed off her arousal in a way leather wouldn’t. I turned back to some conversation about process art in the 1980s.

I heard a
plink, plink
and followed the sound to the metal bowl. I craned my neck. It contained a few drops of clear, whitish fluid. I looked up. The girl, her mouth forced open by the ring, was drooling spit and semen down her chin and into the bowl.
Plink, plink.

I caught sight of her eyes in the crease under the blindfold. She looked away when we made eye contact. I realized then that she could see through it. The blindfold wasn’t there to protect her identity, nor was it to protect her from seeing us look at her, but to protect us from seeing how turned on she was.

I wasn’t her.

That was submissive. I wasn’t that. No, no, no.

Kevin and I had gone home, and neither of us ever brought up the drooling girl. We never judged. We were too sophisticated and cosmopolitan for that. We were too fucking cool to even let on that we’d noticed. I hated us. The people we were had been hateful snobs who never asked questions about anything real. Like why a woman would want to drool her master’s load into a metal bowl and show her wet cunt to everyone.

So there I was, shaking in my Honda, because Jonathan had seen that girl in me. On his command, I’d opened my mouth as big as a castanet so he could fuck my throat.

Stop it.

I had to stop. I had to sing. But every time I heard the
plink
of rain on my hood, it was a pistachio shell, and I was drooling Jonathan’s load into a metal bowl.

CHAPTER 6

On the way to the 101, I realized I still had that stinking diamond in my navel. It felt like a harness. I’d drop it at Hotel K after my session. My phone danced on the passenger seat. It could be Jonathan, but it wasn’t as though he was the only thing I had going on. I was really glad I looked at it—WDE.

“Hey, Monica.” Trudie said.

“Yeah, I’m on my way up there.”

“We had a change. The set’s at DownDawg in Culver City, not Burbank.”

“Oh. Did you call Gabby?”

“Yeah, I talked to her. Here, let me give you the address.”

I pulled over and wrote it down. I was glad I didn’t need to call Gabby because it would probably take me an hour to get there without yacking with my pianist for twenty minutes, dissecting all the possible reasons for the venue change.

I did take a second to scroll through my recents. Nothing from Jonathan. Both my relief and disappointment were palpable. Then the phone dinged and buzzed in my hand.

—
I’m calling you now. Answer.
—

 Oh, wasn’t that just a juicy command? Answer the phone. Spread your legs. What was the difference?

When my cell rang, I rejected the call and sent a text.

—
I have to go to Culver City. I can’t talk
—

—
Let’s talk about it again. I’ll use different words
—

He was no one to me, really. If I never saw him again, my life would be no different than it had been a month ago. No, that wasn’t true. My life would be the same in all the surface ways. I’d live in the same house and have the same friends. But somehow I’d changed. He’d woken me from a dreamless sleep, and I couldn’t roll over and close my eyes, because in my wakefulness, I’d started dreaming.

I read his text again. I could think about what he said, but I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t be who he thought I was, but if I couldn’t be that, then who would I be? I couldn’t go backward, and somehow, in such a short time, he’d become the conductor of my forward motion.

I am not submissive.

I am not submissive

I am not submissive

I chanted the mantra all the way to Culver City, deaf to the buzzing phone and any thought for where I was headed or what I was to do there.

I didn’t get my head back  until I parked the car.

My name is Monica, and I am
not
submissive. I stand six feet tall in heels. I am descended from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. I can sing like an angel, and growl like a lion. I am not owned. I am music.

CHAPTER 7

DownDawg Studios wasn’t some little grunge house with egg-carton Styrofoam on the walls. It didn’t smell of tobacco and fast food, and it most certainly wasn’t a place we could have afforded on our own. There were three in Los Angeles. Burbank, which spent a lot of time servicing Disney, Santa Monica—home base for rich kids and middle-class rappers of the west side—and Culver City, where Sony did their ADR and apparently where WDE had their scratch cuts done.

The building was on Washington, in downtown Culver City. The renovated industrial box had the original casement windows in the front half, where they matched the three-ton metal-frame door. The back half was bricked in, a windowless green box with orange trim, the perfect modernist nonsensical combo.

A valet parked my car. A receptionist with more earrings than a Tiffany window pillow guided me to the back. I was seven minutes late. My excuse was the venue change. Right.

I opened the door and entered the engineering room with its bank of dials and window looking into the sound room. A man about my age with sandy hair and a linen shirt with the tails hanging below his sweater spoke to a guy with dark skin and a stiff-brimmed Lakers cap.

Sandy Hair held out his hand. “I’m Holden, your producer. This is Deshaun.”

Deshaun offered a hand. “Sound engineer. My lady heard you play Thelonius a few weeks back. Said good things.”

“Oh, thanks.” I blushed a little. “Seems like ages ago.”

“You got the song?” Holden asked. “What do you think?”

I thought it was a piece of shit, but honesty would get me nowhere. “We have a couple of takes on it. Gabby’s on her way.”

Holden got off the stool and threw himself on the couch. “Tell me how you’re doing it.”

I clutched my song sheet. I could do this. I could talk about the music. I knew what I had to do, and I was good at it, but the conversation with Jonathan had infected my mind, and I kept talking to Holden and Deshaun about dynamics and harmonies while thinking they somehow knew I was submissive. They were going to walk all over me and tell me how to sing the notes, how to breathe, how to open my mouth wide enough to take a cock. I knew they weren’t laughing at me and my pretensions of vocal control, but I also knew they were.

Holden glanced at the clock. “It’s getting late.”

“Let me text Gabby,” I said, slipping my phone out of my pocket. “She’s probably in the parking lot.”

—
Where the fuck are you?—

—With Jerry, waiting for you
—

I started getting a really bad feeling in my guts. I turned to Holden. “You know a guy named Jerry?”

“He does some production at the Burbank studio.”

“Does he know Eugene Testarossa?”

“Yeah. Works with him all the time.”

I typed fast. —
There’s been a mixup, I’m in Culver City
—

There wasn’t a text for a minute or more. “She’s up in Burbank. She’ll never make it here on time.” I glanced toward the sound studio. A keyboard was already set up in there.