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“Did you get your first Barbie when you were little?” Tandy asks, and the question catches me so off guard.
“I always wanted a Barbie but never had one until I was old enough to buy one on my own.”
Tandy doesn’t reply. She just looks at me, making me fidget. “There wasn’t a lot of money, and I always wanted them so when I got older, I’d get them for myself. Silly, right?”
“Hey. What did I tell you?”
I catch myself. “Yeah, no apologizing or acting like what I like is weird. I just…sometimes I worry about revealing too much of myself, you know. It’s hard to know how someone will react.”
“Why?” she asks.
I close my eyes. In my mind I see Selma, standing on the lawn of our little rental house clasping her broken wrist. She’s looking past my raging father to where I’m standing at the window. Even then she was more worried about me than herself. We both knew everything was about to change. I remember my father slamming the door, turning to me, turning on me.
I feel Tandy’s hand on mine. “Bliss?”
“Sorry,” I say. “I just….” I shake my head and take a deep breath. I need to change the subject fast.
“So, what’s with that picture of you in the hallway of the shop?”
She doesn’t immediately answer. It’s obvious she recognizes that I’ve shifted the conversation and is deciding whether to press me on my reaction. Fortunately, she doesn’t.
“I was a professional domme,” she says. “Do you know what that is?”
I nod. “Like…a mistress? Whips and chains and stuff?”
This makes her smile. “Yeah, that’s how most people think of it. There’s more to it, though.”
The waitress comes over with two sodas Tandy ordered earlier and puts them on the table. I wait until she leaves to continue.
“How is there more to it?”
“Well, a domme is a dominant. But it’s like yin and yang, right? You can’t have a dominant without a submissive. Dominants crave taking control. Submissives crave being controlled, being made to obey. They crave it emotionally, sexually…”
I can feel her gaze on me even though mine is on the lid of my cup. I’m fidgeting with it even though there’s no need. I feel the heat of blood rushing to my face. I imagine her in her black outfit, standing over me, controlling my body, my pleasure. I squeeze my thighs together to try to stop the pulsating ache of need.
“You’re so nice,” I say without looking up. “It’s hard to think of you wanting to control someone. What’s in it for you?”
Tandy chuckles at this “Being nice is what makes me a good dominant. It’s about caring, about meeting needs. And, of course, I get something out of it, too. I can’t turn off being a dominant any more than I can turn off being gay. I’ve always been a take-charge type since I can remember. I love playing my partner’s body like an instrument, moving her pleasure up and down like scales on a piano. I love the whole of it – the trust, the fear, seeing the strength it takes my partner to submit.” She smiles wistfully. “The aftercare. That’s probably my favorite part.” She cocks her head, studies me. “I used to do scenes at Club Cross—that’s a BDSM club…”
“I know where it is,” I say, finally meeting her eyes. “It’s that little black building on Railroad Street.”
She laughs. “I guess it has a reputation. It’s been around for ages. Doesn’t look like much from the outside, but if that basement could talk…” She picks up the shake cup and swirls the last bit out with her final French fry.
“You don’t go there anymore?”
Tandy shakes her head. “Nope.”
“Why not?”
“I wanted something more, you know? Something real. I made a lot of good friends at Club Cross. It felt good, having my needs met while meeting the needs of other people. What do they call it? Symbiosis?” She chuckles. “But when I turned thirty-five, things just kind of changed. It started to feel performative. I wasn’t making the connections during scenes. It just felt … hollow.”
“That’s sad,” I say, and I mean it.
Tandy nods her head in agreement. “It is. It put me in therapy and with some work I realized I wanted something more. I wanted to find someone who needed what I had to offer, but not for play. I wanted someone who needed it for real. My therapist really had an excellent analogy. She said it’s like getting burned out making commercial art. You still love art. You just want to make custom commissions.”
Thinking of Tandy sad makes me sad. I tell her this and she smiles. I ask her if she ever had a girlfriend from the club.
“A few, but Club Cross is a tight-knit community. Everybody knows everybody. Whenever I started a relationship there was jealousy and gossip. It caused too many headaches to date the people I was playing with. I also realized that I didn’t want a traditional BDSM relationship. I wanted…” She stops and looks down at her watch. “Geesh, it’s nearly ten. They’re going to throw us out.”
