1948 - A Switch in the Suburbs

"So, if ya could, we sure would love it if you could keep those leaves off that part of our lawn, ya know? Good fences and all that hoop-de-doo."

The face that said that was smiling wide, very wide. The kind of wide that when I was in Germany would have made me suspect secret Fascist sympathies. I used to shoot smiles that wide. I got paid by Uncle Sam to shoot smiles that wide. I had spent three years in Europe during the war, fighting Germans and then hunting down holdouts after the peace. It was vicious work, but Fuck a Duck and Hitler in a Truck, I'd rather be back there than standing in front of my house listening to this toothy fuck lecture me about some fucking leaves that fell off a goddamn tree.

"You bet. Carl. I'll have a word with that oak tree right away. He had no business to drop those, what? Thirty seven? Yup. Thirty seven leaves on your lawn."

Carl blinked a few times and then laughed uncomfortably. A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead from his Vitalis soaked hair. "... ha, well, just, you know, trying to keep things ship shape."

Man, I wanted to shoot this fucker.

"There are no ships here, Carl." I said in a tone straighter than Gary Cooper.

Carl paused silently and then burst into a cheery good bye. "Okay Then! Thanks Ted! See you at the block party next week!" He then fast walked back to his square yard, into his square house and into his square life. And as I turned around, I saw that I was about to walk into an almost identical square yard, square house and square life. Yeah. Sure. Carl's the asshole. I'm the fucking genius.

As I stared at the house I hated, wishing I had just one pound and eight ounces of C-4, my wife's Blonde haired head popped out the widow and through the blue curtains. "Ted, oh TED! Can you fetch some eggs and milk? And the good eggs, the white ones. Thanks, Ted!" and without waiting for an answer she withdrew her perfect housewife's face back to her domain... and my prison.

I hopped into my new Mercury Eight Convertible and and took off for the store. My wife, Brenda, hated the car. She wanted something more suited for a family. I wanted a motorcycle, like I had in Europe. I wanted a lot of things like I had in Europe. We compromised on the car. Me and Brenda had been compromising a lot. I was getting sick of compromising.

I got the errands done quick, told Brenda some excuse about work and drove downtown to The Schroedinger's Cat, a place run by some Hungarian and Italian Ex-Patriots that serves espresso coffee and hosts art showings and poetry readings. They had opened up right when the war ended. The espresso they serve is what brings the Vets like me around. We miss that good fresh coffee. We learned over there that American percolators turn coffee into shit. As I walked through the beaded curtain just inside the front door, I saw the usual crowd, half vets in dungarees and t-shirts with military haircuts, half college students and artists from the city. Oddly, the two groups got along pretty well. But this was 1947, and artists still had a little more common sense, they were still trying to say something to everyday people. And a lot of veterans in '47 were a lot more liberal than you'd think. Both artists and vets were trying to find someplace to fit in inside the new victorious America. Most folks seemed to fit into their lives just fine. Some, like me, didn't. So I got coffee at the ' Cat. And, I get something else as well...

I ordered a doppio from Janush, the six- foot-nine-inch Hungarian Gypsy who owned the place. His intimidating bald head, black mustache and perpetually frowning face kept order in the cafe. His partner, Carlo Bianco, was an Italian barrista from Rome, and he was all the warmth and smiling conversation that Janush wasn't. Together, they made a wonderful person. I took my demitasse and sipped the robust espresso. Instantly, the deep, complex flavor made me feel like a human, like a person, like a real creature in the world and not just a mindless result of someone else's mundane decision. Janush watched my reaction, no emotions crossing his tanned face. My eyes rose from the cup, and met his. As Janush glowered at me I nodded purposefully. He nodded back.

As I found a seat in the back of the cafe next to a Mondrian- inspired painting of three apples and what seemed to be a Rhinoceros' ass, Janush caught the eye of Ilsa, one of the waitresses. With Ilsa's eyes trained on his face, he looked at me sitting at the table, and then to the other beaded curtain which led to the back room. She gave a small nod, set down her tray and walked towards me. Her whippet thin body moved like a cat, all sinew and meaning. She claimed to be from Austria, but her accent put the lie to her. It wasn't her fault, how many Americans could tell the difference between a Munich and a Vienna accent? I could, but I never brought it up. Her blonde hair was framed around her face, similar to the style that Veronica Lake actress uses, and the look made all the Teutonic shadows and highlights of her angular face even more mysterious and sexy. That face was well cared for, and it pulled off the impression that she was 25 or so years old. Her hands said she was 36, a hard 36. But that hard part of her years is why I was here, why I nodded to Janush, why I waited for Ilsa to walk by my table, never stopping or looking at me, but barely brushing against my shoulder as she walked on to the other beaded curtain, and into the back room. I drained the last of my espresso, waited ten seconds, and followed her through the beads.

As the beads stopped clicking and clacking, my eyes adjusted to the small hallway that was lit only by a bare red light bulb, the classic sign of the red light districts in every decent city on the planet. I smiled and went to the last of three doors, which was slightly open and waiting for me. I walked inside and closed the door behind me.

The room was as it always was. About twenty foot square, painted a deep brick red but for the wall facing the door, which was lined with roughly hewn wooden planks. Upon these planks were bolted various restraints and chains. Some old and rusted, others gleaming with a shiny newness. There was only one light in the room, and its harsh white beam fell on the wall of restraints only, leaving me and Ilsa to prepare ourselves in the shadows. Ilsa had already started to change her clothes. She put up her hair into a tight pony-tail, and had taken off her blouse, revealing a tight black bra covering her small chest. Leaving her long peasant's skirt on, she slid her hands into two long black silken gloves before opening a doctor's bag and removing a thick piece of buffalo leather about three feet long and three inches wide. She also took out a classic cat-o-nine tail, like you see in the pirate moves. She held each in her hands and faced me as I stripped down naked.

"The money first, Herr Thaddeus. Twenty five." Ilsa sounded a little testy. I felt her eyes on me, judging my 28 year old body, counting my scars from the war. As I pulled the cash from my pants pocket, she almost grabbed it from me. "I have not seen you in some time." She griped.

"Did you miss me?" I spat back like a dime store detective.

"Miss you? Miss what? What should I miss about your pathetic self?"

"Stow the slap downs, Ilsa. You know I don't go for that."

She smiled a little. "It's a shame. I am very good at it. My reputation for insults are whispered of throughout all of Europe."

"Yeah, well, the US Army insulted me plenty, and my wife is doing okay in that front as well."

"Wives. Ugh. So provincial." Ilsa said with disgust.

"No argument here."

"So, up against the wall, and you do not need to be restrained, as usual?" She sounded sad.

"Nope."

"Not even a little?"

"Nope."

"Fine. It's a good thing you can take so much pain..." I moved up to the wall and leaned against it, my hands above my head and out to the side a little as she continued. "... and that your back and buttocks are so pleasing to look upon. It is such a pleasure to make them red with my whip. It is such a pleasure to make your back my whore." The last sentence dripped from her lips like burning honey, as the professional Dominatrix and Sadist Ilsa Sturm, took over for the German Ex-pat Ilsa Kliener. And it was the Sadist Ilsa that I had come to The Schroedinger's Cat to see.

She started by running her hands all over my body, not with tenderness but with a clinician's precision. Everything was checked and examined. She lingered only for a second on my balls and cock.

"I should be caging these. Your cock deserves a good fucking. See how it twitches at the very sound of Ilsa's voice?" Her words throbbed with genuine desire. "How can your pathetic American wife satisfy you? Your little Betty Crocker will not suck on your prick like me." Her lips brushed the back of my neck.

"Stop it Ilsa." I said with devastating casualness.

She pushed herself away from me and filled her hand with the cat o' nine. "You are a strange one, Thaddeus." No shit, I thought to myself. In Europe, I fucked whenever I could. As a result I got hooked on good screwing, the kind of sex Ilsa was purring about. But my wife fucked me like a prisoner, and whenever I would try some of the stuff I learned overseas, she acted repulsed and insulted. It was making me hate her, but I wasn't going to cheat. I wouldn't give her the satisfaction. But even when Brenda deigned to let me screw her, it just left me wanting more. By now it had been six months since I'd had any sex, and the only thing that abated the lust, not the erections, but the longing that comes from deep within, was Ilsa's whip. A German prostitute in Frankfurt had been the first to show me stuff like all this, and though I liked it, it was hard to get more of it. There weren't a lot of books around about it, and it wasn't something you could ask your buddies at barracks.

"Your sicherheitswort is 'Green'. We will begin."

Ilsa began to lightly whip me, warming up my skin, introducing my body to the leather. I forced myself to relax, to not resist the sensations. Ilsa began to whip me a little harder, incrementally, bit by bit, growing harder or faster depending on what part of the body she was whipping. Damn, she was good! The stinging grew more intense as she worked my legs and ass, and then my back, constantly working my skin, never ceasing as she filled the small room with the sounds of her flail crashing against my flesh. After fifteen minutes, my entire back was alive, tingling, glowing and rippling with small waves of sensation.

"Turn around." Ilsa commanded. I slowly flipped over, exposing my front to the hard breathing Ilsa. "This will be new. I must attempt new techniques on you, as you grow more resistant to my ministrations. So...." Ilsa rubbed my stomach a little and then stepped back from me and gave my stomach a mighty swipe, without any build up or warning. She swung with all the strength of Major League Baseball player, using every ounce of her sinewy form in her lashing of my sensitive gut.

"Gahh!" I cried out, more from shock than the pain. It was intense, yes, and different as it was on my stomach and not my back, as usual. I caught myself, and took a deep breathe. I straightened up and glared defiance. No safe word. I trusted her.

"Oh ho, you did not care for that? Too bad. I must make you feel things here....." She threw her arm back and crashed down on exactly the same spot on my gut, giving me about twice the pain. I didn't cry out this time, but my flaring nostrils and strained muscles showed her I felt it. "....in order to make you feel what I demand you to feel on the other side. Ja, liebchen, I must cheat to break you. Prepare... yourself."

With a precision and a strength earned from a lifetime of beating men, she gave me three more huge belts with the cat o' nine, counting as she did.

"EIN!" The slashes of pain across my stomach turned into fire.

"ZWIE!" The stripes of fire became a patch of searing hurt.

"DRIE!" The hurt seeped deep into my gut, into my spins, into my brain as the last stroke blistered my skin. She approached me and peered closely at my stomach, lightly pressing her fingers on her handy work. Even her smallest touch stung.

"Ja, perfect. It is welting up, but no blood. Now, face away from me." I slowly turned and face the wall. I heard her pick up another weapon, and I awaited the leather. Good, I needed this. I needed to feel, to burn, to burn all the way to my soul....

WHACK! The buffalo leather strap sliced across my back.

"Oh Hell Yes!" I blurted. It wasn't pain, it wasn't, it was....

KA-SMACK. Again the thick strap carved a ribbon of ecstasy on my flesh

Through gritted teeth I begged her, " Do it! Do it! Give it all to me!"

"Silence!" She yelled as she began to lay into me. Directing her blows to where it would make me dance the most. I soon found out why she had given me the stomach beating, as it stung every time I was pressed against the wall, giving me a whole separate vector of pain.

Across my shoulder blades....THWACK.

On the backs of my thighs....CA-RACK.

On my lower back....SWAAACK.

"Ja! Ja!" Ilsa was muttering with every stroke. Few of her clients could take her full strength for long, and she was now reveling in pushing herself to the limits of her powers. Despite her delight, I knew she would always stay in control.

Again and again she lashed away with the thick, almost pounding sensation of the buffalo leather strap on my body. I stopped tensing up, and let it happen. The spots where the strap landed, became expected, and I no longer flinched. And as I began to expect the feeling on every inch of my body, the actual feeling of the strap began to rise on every inch of my body; one stroke anywhere became a stroke everywhere. My senses had filled my entire being, and all boundaries between sight, taste, sound and touch had disappeared. I knew myself, and felt myself in entirety. As the ecstasy grew, my mouth hoarsely growled out a deep "Green. GREEN!"

The beating stopped.

I fell slowly to my knees as Ilsa came to me. Emptying her hands, she wrapped her arms and body slowly around me, cocooning me with her warmth. "Ja, you did very well, very well indeed, Ja, ja...." She kept softly crooning in my ear as I lay there, throbbing with all the feelings a person could have, all of them, all alive and aware and real...Ilsa held me with total abandon and complete acceptance. For above ten minutes, we lay there, basking safely behind a locked door in the only feelings we needed to survive.

I stirred and dressed first. The doors and walls of these back rooms are sound proofed from the old speakeasy days, so nobody on the cafe had heard a thing. I walked out, leaving a fin on the counter for Janush and left.

I picked up a bottle of bourbon and parked the convertible on the outskirts of town next to he train yards. I got out and sat on the hood of the car, sipping at the bottle and luxuriating the fresh pain on my back. Yeah, just pain. Not suffering, just pain. Berlin in 1945 was suffering. Hell, this train yard back in 1935 was suffering. I remember when this was a hobo camp, full of guys and families who'd been thrown out on their ears and asses. But now everything is hunky-dory and all the bad guys are dead and all the problems are fixed. There's Hershey bars and nylons for everyone, and America has the biggest dick in the world. So why do I need to get my ass beaten by a German chick in the back of a beatnik coffee house in order to stay happy?

I didn't get any answers from the trains or the bourbon, so I headed home and snuck into bed. The next day was Saturday, and Brenda had to go to an all day event with the Junior League. I was out back trying to fix up my work shed. I had learned some woodworking in Germany when I wasn't fucking or killing Nazis, but I didn't have many tools or a decent workbench yet. I was struggling with a broken chair when someone knocked on the shed door. I slid open the old fashioned shed door to reveal Shirley, our Mail man...mail woman, I mean.

"Hey there Ted, got a package here I wanted to put in your hands. It seems important." She pointed to a large brown paper package she was pulling in her cart. Shirley was a petite redhead with a great attitude and a big smile for everyone, even dogs. She was about my age, and had served during the war with the Women's Air Corps, and actually got caught in some combat in the Pacific. That's probably why we got along. After the war she campaigned for the job of Mail Man, and got it by bullying everyone at the Post Office. She was still single, which made some guys at the bar wonder if she was a dyke. I didn't care. Other than trying not to stare at her large tits, which seemed larger than they were due to her tiny frame, I didn't care about Shirley at all. I had my own troubles.

The box was heavy, and had a Dusseldorf address on it. "Hey! These are the tools from Germany I've been waiting for! Thanks, Shirley."

"No trouble, Ted. Have nice day now." I turned away to open the box, and stopped have way through the thick paper to notice that Shirley was still there, staring at me with a quizzical look on her face.

"What?" I asked. "Is there a postal charge?"

"No, ah..." She looked even more puzzled. Without a word, she slid the shop door closed, and turned to face me, her arms across her chest.

"Hey Ted, we're both vets. We can be straight with each other, right?"

"I actually prefer it."

"Okay then." She took a deep breath. "When I was a WAC, sometimes women would get hit by men, their husbands, boyfriends or just random jerks. Sometimes they would try to hide it. So you would get good at noticing things." She paused, uncertain on how to continue.

"I have never raised my hand to my wife." I said with all the seriousness I could muster.

"Oh hell Ted, I know that, but....I'm actually.... worried about you. Look, you're wearing just a T-shirt, and I can see someone is ...beating you. Even through the cloth, your back looks like the guys who were in the POW camps in Japan. Damn, Ted, its weird to have to bring it up, but I can't walk away from it, just because you're a man. Are you okay? Is someone... giving you trouble?"

I laughed out loud in relief. And then stopped laughing as I tried to put into words what was going on under my shirt.

"Ah, look Shirley, It's hard to explain....", I was embarrassed. I actually blushed, which Shirley noticed.

"Ted, are you blushing? Hell, I've never seen you...oh...Oh." Her last 'oh' was one of profound realization, and her entire demeanor changed. Her arms uncrossed and she took a hard look at me, which I returned with my own quizzical look. She then put her arms on her hips akimbo style and walked up very close to me, closer than she had ever been before.

"When's the last time you've been in a pussy, Ted?" She said quiet and natural, like she was talking about stamps. She was looking up into my face, and for some reason...the ghost of the scars on my back, the weight of carrying my bullshit alone, her Veteran's attitude,her fantastic tits... I just said it. I just started telling the truth.

"Six months." I was almost whispering. I was telling a strange the truth. It was more intimate a moment than when Ilsa was beating me.

"Six months, with Brenda in the house the whole time." She didn't ask, she stated it. She nodded her head slowly, displaying her understanding how not fucking when you can't fuck is easy. But not fucking when you could be fucking, is tortuous.

"You haven't cheated, have you?"

I shook my head no.

"But you've been going and gettin' some hurt, to take your mind off it?"

"Only thing that does."

"At The Melon Baller or The Schroedinger's Cat?" The question surprised me.

"The Cat. You know it?"