Swallowtail Ch. 04

Swallowtail is a novel that traces the narrator's gradual acceptance of submission.

Previously: Following an anonymous coupling in an art gallery's washroom and after having met several of Dex's subsequent challenges, the narrator is given carte blanche.

***

"I realize that I've been placing a lot of demands on you."

Dex and I are meeting for a coffee. It's the first time we've met outside of whatever sexual adventure she has orchestrated for us. It feels weirdly normal after the normally weird meetings between us. Here we are, two people casually meeting at a coffee shop. It happens every day. Yet I can't shake the feeling that this simple act, arising as it has from Dex's unexpected invitation, is somehow significant. We're meeting publicly and though no one in the cafe could possibly give a shit about us, it is a public moment and I find it more exciting than the coffee that sits in front of me. I have no doubt her friends and mine would be bewildered in equal measure that we should be sitting here together in earnest conversation. We're very different. As always, Dex is swathed in layers of black and sports aggressively hued makeup beneath a crown of thorny black hair. Her multiple piercings—ear, nose, lips—glint in the artificial light. Her other piercings, those I now know of—nipples and clitoral hood—are on my mind like a precious secret that only we share. As always, I am the picture of a youngish professional—shiny shoes, pressed pants, crisp shirt, tailored jacket and tie. We're close enough in age that I would not be seen as the girl's father, but far enough that the notion of any physical relationship between us might raise eyebrows or envy.

Her booted leg rests lightly against mine. I'm suffering the distraction of a Pavlovian lust response, which makes me feel like a teenager for whom any physical contact or random gust of wind is likely cause a tingle of carnal anticipation.

"I haven't been complaining," I say.

Yes, she has been placing many demands on me, compelling me to do things that I would have scoffed at before or with anyone else. The memories rise and then submerge, one after the other. Our first anonymous coupling at an art gallery, finding myself on my knees before her in my office, engaging in self-conscious onanism while she watched.

She sips her beverage. I forgot what she ordered. She'd asked for something with more nouns and adjectives than a dictionary. I'm amused that her pinkie sticks out like that of someone who has been to finishing school. "Whatever," she says impatiently, as though my lack of complaint were merely an inconsequential coincidence.

I realize that Dex's simple statement masks a concession of sorts. She probably doesn't need to concede anything, but there it is. She's serious and my levity doesn't work here.

'I might not have been entirely fair to you," she says.

"I don't do anything against my will."

She nods and her lips curl ever so slightly into a smile as though she's humoring me and knows better. She locks eyes with mine. "I'm free on Friday. If you're interested, I'd like you to take the lead. Whatever you want, I'll do. Show me what you like."

There's no coyness or come-hither subtext to what she has said. It is an invitation, a simple offer. It's said with the same intensity that one might be offered a sample of croutons or beef jerky at Costco. I'm tempted to ask her why but hold my tongue when I notice that her smile belies a certain tightness of expression. The offer represents more than a concession. It's bigger than the off-handedness of tone might suggest. I realize that it's a risk for someone who has controlled everything thus far. It isn't lost on me either that the permission to do as I please with her is a gift rather than an assumption this early in the game. I'll have to chew on that one later.

I nod solemnly and Dex relaxes. Message received.

Dex's attention is momentarily captured by one of her black-clad tribe loitering outside the coffee shop. I lean back in my chair and ponder the offer. I have carte blanche. For the first time in our relationship (if that's what you call it), I'm in the driver's seat, if only by invitation. I think of the possibilities for a moment. Various scenarios flash in my mind like erotic postcards. The license to do whatever. I grow dizzy with the possibilities. Finally, the beginnings of inspiration. "I'd like to take you on a date," I say finally. "A real date."

Her brow furrows. "A date?" she asks with the vague squeamishness of a gentile invited to a bris. "To where?"

"A nice restaurant, perhaps. Maybe a show."

Dex shakes her head. "I can't."

"You eat, don't you? You go to shows?"

She rolls her eyes.

"What is it?"

She's angry at me for forcing her to spell it out. She huffs and fingers the stud in her nose. "I don't do nice restaurants. I have nothing to wear to a nice restaurant," she admits. "I wouldn't know what to get."

She's right. My favorite restaurants would look askance at Dex and her coven-appropriate finery. "Okay, then this'll be part of it. I'll take you shopping. It'll be on me."

"No way."

I wonder whether she's embarrassed to be seen with me. No, that can't be it. She's here with me now, after all. I put myself in her platform Gestapo boots. Perhaps she's embarrassed to be seen shopping with an older guy. I can see how the implications would make her uncomfortable.

I mull it over. "How about Sharon? She can take you."

"Your business partner? The woman at the gallery?"

I nod. If anyone can unload a wad of money on clothing, it's Sharon.

"I don't know."

"I still have to ask her, of course. But if it's okay with her, is it okay with you?"

"No," says Dex. "I don't want to be in your debt."

"What happened to me taking the lead? I want to do this. There's no debt in a gift."

"There's always debt in a gift."

***

"She's an interesting girl," says Sharon. It is Thursday and Sharon has just returned from a lunch hour shopping excursion with Dex that has bled far beyond the lunch hour.

I position my mouth into what I hope looks like a knowing smile. Sharon's opinion matters to me and I'm worried that she might see something in Dex that is unknown to me. I don't want to be in the position of defending myself or Dex for fear of unveiling my own murky motivations and general ignorance of the girl who has dominated my thoughts altogether too much of late.

"And a little..." Sharon searches for the word.

"Surly?" I offer.

"Young," says Sharon.

I shrug. "The wrinkly ones were taken."

"I suppose. At any rate, I've done my duty. She's all set for you. Are you sure she's a girl?"

"Quite," I say. "Why?"

"Her shopping aversion."

"Shopping aversion? Be still my beating heart. She's a keeper."

"The weird thing is, for someone who doesn't seem to care and makes a great show of that fact, she has expensive tastes."

"Oh?"

"Very expensive tastes."

Uh-oh. And I'd offered to bankroll the expedition. "What am I on the hook for?"

"Nothing. She paid for it herself."

"Seriously?"

"Cash. Didn't bat an eye."

"You sure it was Dex?"

"If it wasn't, then it was her twin."

That's as far as Sharon's willing to go. She's not convinced about Dex and has graciously suspended judgment. I mentally thank her for not adding to my own reservations.

***

I've offered to collect Dex at her place but she insists on meeting me at mine. I have no idea where or how she lives. I'm dying to see her inner sanctum but she doesn't yet seem to trust me enough to let me in.

I open the door and am momentarily paralyzed.

"Holy..." It's all I can manage.

Dex has removed the more radical pieces of metal from her face, leaving only her ears and nose tastefully adorned. The black makeup that she hides behind has been replaced by the same aggressive eyeliner, but is complemented by a hint of smoky eye shadow. Her lips appear full and red and shiny like in the commercials.

She still wears black but is now the picture of elegance. Her slender legs emerge from a black pencil skirt. They seem impossibly long, perched as they are atop a pair of Louboutin boots that I recognize, being in advertising and all, from their red soles. Sharon, it seems, hadn't exaggerated. No expense has been spared. Dex's slender torso is swathed in a grey lace blouse that is unbuttoned just enough to hint at the generous cleft between her breasts. A thick silver choker encircles her neck.

"Are you going to let me in or do I have to stand here like we're negotiating price?"

"Sorry." I move aside and enjoy the view of her backside as she brushes past me.

"Wow," I say.

"I feel like an imposter," she says, tossing her clutch on a table.

"You look beautiful."

"Exactly," she huffs.

I'm not sure how much is an act. "That's because you are beautiful. From the very first time I saw you, I saw that you were beautiful."

She scowls gamely, but I can tell that my words have registered. I approach her and wrap her in my arms. I sense some resistance at first but then she softens against me. Her lips part with the beginning of some contradictory statement. I muffle the words with my mouth, lipstick be damned. Her tongue finds mine and I feel the hard nub of another piercing.

The verve with which my desire bounds to the fore takes me by surprise. For all of my planning and scheming and intentions to hold to the script and comport myself like the worldly and experienced guy I am, Dex has unlocked the hormonally imbalanced inner adolescent in me. After some searching, I find the zipper to her skirt and attack it with all of the fumble-fingered ineptness of my first encounter with a bra clasp.

"Whoa," she says, twisting away.

"What? Isn't this my night?"

She laughs and takes a step back. "You're right," she says. With a little shimmy of her hips, the skirt slides down her legs and she steps out of it. "Happy?"

I gaze at her. She is wearing garters and stockings and, as is her wont, no underwear. "Getting there." My voice is muzzy with lust.

I approach and unbutton her blouse. She pushes away from me just as the last button slips the confines of the hole. "I don't want to ruin you for whatever it is you had in mind."

"But..."

"This couldn't be what you had planned, is it?"

"No," I admit.

I am the architect of my own anguish. Dex elects to tease me mercilessly by cavorting around in nothing more than garters, stockings, and four-inch heels.

"I know you like them," she says, fingering the garters.

It's clear she likes them too.

"At any rate, you performed for me. It's only fair that I give you a little show as well."

She goes about her business in the house dressed in this way as though it's the most natural thing in the world. She moves with a certain loose-limbed grace and an easy confidence that I haven't seen before.

Her casual partial nudity allows me easy access to her body. My efforts to heat her into submission are expertly rebuffed, although I can see by her flushed countenance that she is wavering.

My inclinations are less easily concealed.

"Save yourself," she says.

"You'll pay for this," I growl.

I don't know where this lust comes from. It's almost adolescent in its single-minded intensity. I haven't felt the like in years. That Dex has awakened it isn't surprising but it is disconcerting. The advantage and shame of age and experience is the ability to suppress the baser impulses and blanket them in sound judgment. With Dex though, that blanket is threadbare.

There's still some time before we are to leave to the restaurant. We neck. We drink wine. I dribble some into her belly button and lick it out. Dex gives me license to be as dorky as I want to be.

"We should be going." I say reluctantly when it's time to leave.

I watch her as she gets up and slides back into her skirt. I'm sorry to see her covered but just as excited to behold the contours of her black-clad curves.

"What?" She asks when she catches me staring.

"I'm appreciating you."

Dex actually blushes and turns away.

***

I've chosen a restaurant that is this month's place to see and be seen. The chef is someone, I've been told, whose name I should recognize. He's a knife-wielding celebrity. It seems that chefs have groupies now. I had no idea. The restaurant is crowded with beautiful people but I've reserved a secluded table. Men do a double-take when Dex passes. Their partners scowl. Dex breezes through it, studied haughtiness disguising her discomfort. She ignores the effect she is having.

Dex defers to me when ordering. I suggest prime rib and she smiles. "I like meat," she says in a tone that causes my heart to skip a beat.

"I don't know anything about you," I say after the appetizer has been cleared away.

"What's to know?"

"How old are you?"

"Old enough to have wine slurped out of my belly button. Does it matter?"

"Why do you always answer my questions with questions?"

Another question dies on her lips. "Twenty-four," she says.

I'm thirty-six, old enough that I should be nothing to her. Twelve years her senior, I muse. Jesus. I was stealing smokes from my dad when she was puking up breast curds.

Does her age make me a lecher? A cradle-robber? Someone to be envied? What does that make her? Weird, certainly, but I already knew that. Perhaps she's just drawn to older men. Perhaps she's attracted to success. My thinking slows at this point. I wonder how she makes ends meet. How much money is there in aerating people?

"It doesn't matter," she says, closing the matter. "I'm more comfortable with older men."

I want to ask how many there have been, but don't. Instead, I say, "And you're a piercer."

"You know that."

"Anything else?"

She shakes her head.

Maybe she is a gold digger. I have to guard against that.

"I have other means," she says, reading my mind.

I let the matter drop when the waiter arrives with our prime ribs.

"Yum," says Dex. She's not deterred by the size of the cut.

I laugh when she eagerly tucks into the meal.

"What?"

"Nothing."

We quickly come to the end of the first bottle of wine and I order another. I'm starting to feel a glow and resolve to go easy. I have to drive home and have my wits about me later.

Dex comes up for air and catches me studying her. Her eyebrows rise. I ask the question that has been in the back of my mind since that first time with her in the bathroom of the art gallery. "Why me?"

"I liked the look of you," she says. I frown. I hadn't expected anything so superficial. "And I felt something about you."

"That I was an easy mark?" I ask, the wine allowing my insecurities to escape.

She surprises me by agreeing. "You had a certain world weariness that made me think that you'd be open to trying something new."

I muse about this. Of her many talents, Dex appears to be insightful as well. "Fair enough."

We remain silent for a while. I refill her wine glass like an attentive and considerate host who hopes to get his guest drunk and malleable. It's a comfortable silence. Neither of us feels the need to fill the air with words. Dex, however, does feel the need to fill the space between my legs with her booted foot. I am happy to accommodate her.

"So what is it that we have?"

The wine glass pauses on its arc to her lips. "A beginning."

***

Over dessert, Dex asks, "How is it that you're not married?"

I'm surprised. The question invariable comes up. For some reason, I hadn't considered it coming from Dex.

"I haven't yet met the right woman."

"Uh-huh." Dex doesn't believe me. I don't believe it myself. It's my stock answer. The truth is more complicated and less flattering. Should I tell her? Would she understand? The truth is that I get bored easily and despise patterns. Life has a habit of settling into routines, patterns of behavior that lull you into numbness by their very predictability. I'd seen it in my parents and too many of my friends. I'd been on the threshold too, where life and love adopt such a predictable, banal choreography that you want nothing more than for the actors to take a bow, for the curtain to fall.

I look at my plate and I think back to my last serious relationship. The excitement of discovery for those first few months. Learning likes and dislikes, exploring new geography and discovering the idiosyncrasies. Then the moment of having discovered all that the other is willing to disclose, everything else defined by a line, a fence, a wall, that defied trespass. And then, inevitably, the establishment of the patterns that would define an eternity.

"You're relatively successful, handsome," she continues. "You're a good catch."

"Maybe I never wanted to be caught."

Dex laughs.

"I got close once," I say. I can picture Moira again, a woman I hadn't thought of before she'd come unbidden to my mind the last time I was with Dex. It makes me uneasy, thinking of her again now. I wonder if she's married.

"Oh?"

"We were young then. Grad students, but naive. I realize now that it's easy to consider sharing yourself with someone when you have nothing. You've got nothing to lose and you think that what you have with her is the only thing of real value in your life. It skews your judgment."

"What happened?"

"Boredom. Some basic incompatibility. I don't really remember."

"And now that you're older and wiser?"

I decide to be blunt and lay my cards on the table so that there are no misunderstandings later. "Now that I'm older and wiser, I know that I'm not really marriage material. It's not that I'm against monogamy, but the institution leaves me cold. I've had too many friends who have been taken for everything. The institution has gone from whatever it was to the best insurance policy there is for the person who brings the least to it. I've been accused of a fear of commitment, but it's more a fear of losing half of what I've worked so hard for. So as I got older I saw what was happening to too many of my friends and acquaintances and decided that the risk was too great."

I've been studying Dex while I speak, looking for a sign of disapproval or disappointment. There's none of that. Only curiosity.

"You're not lonely?"

"No. Certainly never that lonely."

"You make women sound like gold diggers."

"I haven't known too many women to choose a man of lesser means."

"Men usually have greater means."

"But that's changing, isn't it?"

"Perhaps," says Dex, "I see your point though."

We make some progress on our dessert. Dinner is winding down. Dex doesn't seem put off by my diatribe.

"And you? Do you have matrimonial aspirations?"

Dex smiles. "I'm not marriage material either. And I'm also too good a catch."

I laugh.

***

Clothing litters our path from the front door to the bedroom like breadcrumbs.

I disengage with difficulty. The rush into consummation threatens to derail the plans that I've been fantasizing about for the last few days.

Dex is breathless and a little tipsy and more disheveled than usual as she lies on my bed. "What?" she asks.

"You're not the only one with ideas."

She throws her head back on the pillow. "Jesus."

"This won't take a minute."

I root around the bedside table and finally find the spool of thread that I've placed there. Dex looks at me uncomprehendingly and I'm glad that I'm able to surprise her for a change.

I tie a thin strand around her wrist and fasten the other end to the bedpost.

"I didn't know you were into bondage," she says quietly.

"Is that what this is?"

She doesn't answer.

I tie the other wrist.

Dex smiles. "I'd never have guessed."

"Don't break it," I say, trying for a playful tone but even to me my voice sounds thick and husky. "I'll be angry if you do."