Ruth and the Toppy Bottom

Ruth is cleaning her strap-ons at the reception desk when the man in the footie pajamas eases through her door. He looks up at the bell attached to the doorjamb, waits for it to stop tinkling; he pulls the door shut slowly, tries to close the latch without setting the bell to jingling again. It makes noise anyway, and he winces.

"Sorry, Mistress," he says once the bell is quiet again.

Ruth puts sets her strap-on aside and looks him over. The newcomer would be about six-four if someone beat some posture into him, with a gut more fast food than spirits. Mid forties, maybe fifty. The aforementioned footie pajamas are lime green and covered in fuzz--someone needs to learn how to use dryer sheets. Wile E. Coyote slippers cover his feet. Wild tufts of orange hair curl around and into his oversized ears. He completes his look with a hot pink backpack, to which he has stapled an autographed photo of Kelly Clarkston.

"What are you apologizing for?"

"Making noise, Mistress. The bell?"

"It's supposed to make noise."

"Sorry, Mistress."

Jesus Tittyfuckin' Christ, one of them.

"Have I beaten you before?"

"No, Mistress."

"Then I'm not your Mistress."

"Sorry, ma'am."

Ruth sighs. "What can I do for you?"

"What can I do for you, ma'am?"

She hands him a menu from the desk. "Did you want to negotiate a scene?"

The man takes the menu. His nails look like he colored them with Crayola markers. Pale bare skin rings one of his left fingers. She wonders if the missus at home knows that he's here.

"Ma'am?" he says after a long minute of looking at the menu. She stares until he licks his lips and continues. "What's CBT?"

"Cock and ball torture."

"Oh. Is that where you do bad things to my wiener?"

Ruth has a sudden craving for a cigarette. Days like this make Ruth wish she'd taken her mother's advice and become an anesthesiologist instead of a pro-domme. "Yeah."

"Oh." He looks back to the menu, runs his fat finger down the columns. His lips move as he reads each option silently. "Okay. I want some flogging, some CBT, and some..." He hands over a sheet of paper. It looks to be part of a Wikipedia article. "Some shibari. That's Japanese for ropes. If that's okay, ma'am?"

She tells him it is and takes him back to the dungeon room. His name is Ashley. He fills in the consent forms without a peep, nods his way through her explanations of what flies and what won't. When she's finished he hands over his backpack. "I brought my favorite toys," he says and giggles like a girl half his height.

Ruth goes to work on him with a flogger for a while. He's liberal with Thank You, Mistresses, but at least he's not apologizing for everything. Five minutes in he makes his first request.

"Mistress, can you get the orange from my pack?"

There are two ways she sees this going--three if he wants to pay extra for the food fetish. Chances are that orange is going in a sock or up his ass. Men always seem to want something up their asses in her profession. So Ashley surprises her when he begs her to slice the orange in half instead.

"Okay, what did you want the orange for, bitch?"

"Oo, Mistress, please squeeze the juices into my eyeballs!"

"What the fuck? Really?"

"Oh please, Mistress, please drip the acid secretions of your citric cunt in my eye pussies!"

Huh. Why does this shit always happen on her days here? Valorie--sorry, "Domina Phantasia"--gets all the cute boys and girls who just want a hair-pulling-assfucking on her walk-in shifts. "That's be a hundred fifty extra."

"Anything! Please?"

Ruth shrugs and squeezes the orange halves into Ashley's eyes. Ashley jerks and howls, eyes squeezed shut against most of the downpour. "Oh yeah! Fuck you, Florida, fuck you!"

He's going to need a minute so Ruth takes a seat in the nearby bondage swing. Drool and juice runs down Ashley's cheeks and chin, gluing fuzzy orange clumps to his face. She wonders if any call centers in the area have openings.

"Thank you, Mistress. I'm sorry I closed my eyes."

"That's okay." She doesn't want to ask, but curiosity and this month's mobile bill get the better of her. "Any other requests?"

"The CDs. They're in the side zipper."

She digs through the pink backpack and takes the discs out: Don Knotts Sings the Christmas Hits and The Fountainhead as read by Leonard Nimoy.

"The duct tape too," Ashley says. "Now pull my nipples through the holes in the CDs and use the duct tape to keep them there."

"Um," says Ruth, "that'll be ninety bucks."

"Please, Mistress, anything!"

It takes a little work getting to his nipples because the zipper on his footie pajamas runs down his back.

"Now draw a star on both CDs with the glue stick and then splash some glitter on there."

She has a feeling he's fucking with her at this point, but his card is on file so what the hell.

"Praise God, yes! The Head and Shoulders, hurry!"

Ruth pulls the dandruff shampoo out of the pack. His scalp looks like it could use some Head and Shoulders, but she doubts that's what he has in mind. Shaving? She winces when he begs her to drizzle the shampoo on his "teensy and weensies." His phrase, sure as fuck not hers.

Her second oldest brother tried this once in the shower. He should have known it was a bad idea from the outset because the suggestion came from Donnie, her mother's live-in sub. It was also Donnie who got her youngest older brother to douche himself with a half bottle of Old Spice cologne. Well, that's the way Ruth remembers it, at least. Ruth's mother, MzTemptress29 on a bevy of fetish groups and sites, got her jollies on having reasons to punish her subs. The disruption of her household and children were common themes.

Ashley's dick has taken on a bright pink glow. She knows it's just a matter of time before his foreskin begins to chafe and peel in tiny white strips like a day old sunburn. No extra charge for this one.

"Now spank me! Spank me and tell me I'm a ba-aa-ad yak!"

Ruth smacks his right butt cheek. "You're a bad yak!"

"No, Mistress, I'm a ba-aa-ad yak!"

"Bitch, you're a ba-aa-ad yak!"

"Oh I'm sorry, Mistress, I'm sorry for being a ba-aa-ad yak!"

This fucker had better tip.

"Now, in my pack," Ashley says. His pimpled ass radiates heat. The footie pajamas are down around his ankles and his hands are still bound to his thighs. "There are some LEGOs in there."

Ruth looks to the clock and sees they've been at it a little over forty minutes. Special requests make the time go by, at least. She digs around and finds a Ziploc baggie full of off-brand building blocks. Most of the pieces are either hot pink or chocolate brown. She really doesn't want to hazard a guess at this point. "And why should I let you have these, bitch?"

"My hands, Mistress? Please free my hands."

She does, and Ashley opens the bag of blocks. He pours them on the dungeon floor and sifts through the mess, places similar blocks in different piles, then goes to work. Whatever he's using them for it's sure as hell not an official design. He constructs a series of boxes around his dehydrated, flaking penis, connected with longer pieces. In a few minutes he's completed his own homemade gates of hell made entirely out of imitation dollar store LEGOs. He looks to Ruth for her approval.

"Do you think I want to look at that pathetic thing?"

He squeals and bends over, ass in the air. Ruth was just being honest. She knows what comes next, and saunters back out to the front desk. The sky blue strap-on, since she was polishing it when he came in. Sometimes the Universe gives you a hint.

Back in the dungeon, Ruth steps into a set of adjustable straps and pulls a condom over the plastic dick. Ashley is on his belly when she turns back around, humping at the groove in the dungeon floor that leads water to the drain. His LEGO gates of hell remains intact, but The Fountainhead looks to have slipped off his nipple. She's not going to bring it up unless he does first.

"Oo," Ashley says when he sees the strap-on, "that's what my wiener looks like when I wrap rubber bands around it and slam it in the dishwasher door!"

"Well there's no dishwasher here so we'll have to improvise."

"Thank you, Mistress!"

"Get on your knees."

She waits for him to clamber back off the ground and listens to the breath rattle in his lungs. Pine green snot drips from Ashley's nose; she can hear the congestion in his sinuses every time he inhales. Ruth has seven different kinds of shampoo and four different kinds of bodywash at home and will be using all of them tonight. "Now, what--"

She hears the bell from the other room and looks to the clock. Still another 45 minutes before Valorie comes in for the evening shift. "Stay here," Ruth says. "Don't touch anything, especially yourself."

"With pleasure, Mistress!" Ashley says and twists the LEGOs around his dick. He sucks in a wet breath, falls over on his side, gets up and does it again. Ruth shakes her head.

A cute boy in his mid-twenties stands at the reception desk, dressed in a Domino's uniform with a pizza under one arm. This fantasy again? Some men watch too much porn. Can't they think up something more creative than the delivery boy?

Then she notices the steam rising from the pizza box and her stomach churns. Not in hunger.

"Uh," the delivery boy says when he's done staring at her strap-on, "is there an Ash Long here?"

"You've got to be fucking kidding me." Ruth pokes her head back into the dungeon and yells. "Hey, bitch! Get out here!" Ashley grins and starts to crawl on hands and knees across the dungeon. "Get up, goddammit. Hurry." He gets to his feet and sidles the rest of the way. Even with most of the shibari ties undone the footie pajamas around his ankles make him take tiny, careful steps.

"Yes, Mistress?"

"Did you order a fucking pizza to my dungeon?"

He beams, and the force of his smile causes a snot bubble to inflate at the end of his left nostril. "Yes, Mistress."

"Why?"

"Little boys that play hard have big appetites," Ashley says, "and I wanted to give you a slice as tribute, Mistress."

"Uh," says the delivery boy.

Ashley hands the delivery boy a twenty and waits patiently until he has his change. The delivery boy sets the pizza on the reception desk and pauses, stares at Ashley like he might grow an extra nipple on his chin in the next few seconds. Ashley grabs the pizza and hobbles back into the dungeon, bare red ass cleavage jiggling with every hop.

"You're cute," Ruth says to the delivery boy. "Come back Friday at 1:30 and I'll give you a tip to make the trip worth your while."

"Uh, I'm working then."

"Then bring me a garlic chicken when you come."

"Uh," the delivery boy says and lets himself out the door. The bell's still swinging when Ruth gets back to the dungeon. Ashley is attacking his third slice of meatlovers with extra cheese. Sauce from the first two slices dribbles down his chins like a half-assed water feature in a meth-addicted gardener's yard.

"Pizza, Mistress?"

"Fuck no. And you've had enough."

"Alright." He shoves the grease-stained pizza box aside. "Can you get the DVD out of my pack, Mistress?"

"There's no TV in my dungeon."

"We don't have to watch it. I just need to see the case."

Ruth gives the clock another look. Half an hour till her shift is up. There sure as hell won't be any overtime on this one. She finds the DVD case at the bottom of the pack, Bob Vila's Top 10 Do It Yourself Projects. The last two discs wound up on his nipples. Where's this one going?

"Okay," Ashley says, "now tell me I'm a bad boy for watching cartoons. I should watch Bob Vila like an adult. Please, Mistress?"

"Cartoons?" Ruth smacks his ass with the case. "What kind of fucking manchild are you?"

"Oo, more!"

"You'll watch Bob Vila and like it!"

"Thank you, Mistress!"

"We're going to learn how to build an oak cabinet and then I'm going to slam your bitch dick in the drawer until it's flat."

Ashley squeals when the case hits his ass again.

Ruth wonders how he got so fucked up. That's not a judgment, more just you know it when you see it if you've been there. Funny how a fucked up childhood can determine crazy and specific sexual cravings as an adult. Shouldn't she know. Her own kinks have been with her all her life.

She was aware of kink from childhood; her mother never hid her predilections, from her children or the rest of the community. Her perverted passions put food on their table, and never mind all the chaos that came into their lives from the same source. Ruth couldn't bring herself to hate her mother despite all the shit she put the family through. She couldn't hate her brothers because they were the better part of what she had that was good in her life. Instead, she decided sex itself could go to hell. She would be celibate for the rest of her life, and see how MzTemptress29 liked that.

"Oh," her mother responded to the news, "didn't you like the toy I got you last year?"

Ruth served a week in detention for telling her friends at school what her mother considered an appropriate gift for a 13 year old girl, and didn't want to reopen the subject. "I just hate sex."

"Honey!" Her mom laughed. "Maybe at least try it when you're older."

"Whatever. I don't want anything to do with dick."

"That's okay, Ruthie. I'll get you a wand instead. What's your favorite color?"

That was how sex talks always went with mom. It wasn't until high school Ruth realized what a big part exhibitionism played in her mother's life. But that's an entirely different story.

Ruth might have stubbornly remained celibate and vanilla for life if she hadn't met Gene junior year. His hobbies included reading shojo manga, watching streamers play games he bought but rarely played himself, and lighting anthills on fire. Sometimes, when he talked about music or he bitched about how stupid everyone but the two of them was, he reminded Ruth a lot of her oldest brother. The worst were the times he made Ruth feel like her mother. Gene was a virgin 17 year old boy, and he hung on every (usually true) word when Ruth told stories about her mom's exploits. But she could put up with that.

The problem was Gene's sense of humor. He loved to play practical jokes on people (which, whatever) and animals (not so cool). Then he'd break things and start fires if he thought anyone was having fun at his expense. Those were the times Gene reminded Ruth of Donnie, who had finally gone to prison for identity theft when she was 15. Ruth wanted that association to piss her off, but mostly it just made her thighs warm instead.

"Mistress!" Ashley wails. "I promise I'll stop watching Bucky O'Hare after school!"

It all came to a head with Gene three days before the end of junior year. They were sitting in Gene's Camaro listening to AM radio because FM only got the country and Jesus stations. Gene was bitching about his math teacher's fascist grading policies and Ruth was sucking down poison from another Parli, pretty normal Thursday. Then Gene set her pants leg on fire.

"What the hell?" Ruth slapped at the flames on her jeans without much effect. Gene pocketed his lighter and leaned back in his bucket seat, pock-marked face split by his awful horse-laugh. She used her jacket to smother the flames but her jeans were already ruined. Worse, the heat in her lap wasn't fading.

"You fucking asshole!"

Ruth punched him in the chin. Gene's head snapped back and hit the headrest, but he kept laughing. She hit him again, in the leg and arm. He didn't do a thing to stop her. She wasn't pissed, she was... Was she horny? Goddammit.

The next punch landed on Gene's cheek. "Cut it out, ya fuckin' bitch!"

She hopped over the middle console and socked him in the mouth to shut him up. Then her hands were in his lap and she was working on their zippers. Gene stopped his blabbering as he felt her mount up. "I thought--"

"Shut the fuck up, Gene."

She worked her way up and down, tried to take it slow. She wasn't sure she even wanted Gene to orgasm. Ruth's fingers worked under Gene's shirt and pinched his nipples. "Ow," he said, and she tweaked harder. "Ow, Ruth!"

"I told you to shut up." Amazingly, he did, at least until he started to spasm. She dismounted before he could spurt and slapped him across the face. "Fucking loser." She wasn't mad at him anymore, though. She felt--well, not better, but not worse either. Maybe more honest with herself. Her sudden lack of aversion to cock barely registered. No, it was the violence that did it, the power play, that gave her this eerie flutter in her belly.

Those three minutes of sex with Gene made Ruth understand her mother in a way she never had before, and she felt like throwing up. She walked home, locked herself in her room and douched like she'd never douched before.

She bought her first flogger at the local Castle the next week. Her mother was so proud.

She saw Gene a few more times over summer break but never bothered visiting him after he got sent to county for burning down his foster-parents' garage. Her mom asked about him once halfway through senior year; Ruth asked about Donnie in response and the subject was dropped forever. At that point MzTemptress29 was concentrating on teaching her daughter about riding crops and RACK. Digging for dirt wasn't worth blowing the recent mother-daughter bonding over bondage.

"Ow." Ashley snorts another wet snot bubble. "Mistress, my bottom hurts."

Ruth shakes herself out of nostalgia and lets the Bob Vila DVD drop. Welts rise from the craggy flesh of Ashley's derriere. How long was she spanking him with the DVD case? The clock says a good eight minutes. He never said the safeword, but he strikes her as the type who wouldn't red if she pulled his spine out his asshole.

"I'm tired of looking at your ass," Ruth says. "I think it's time we plugged it."

"Oh yea!" Ashley claps his hands. "I love this part, Mistress!"

"All my pets do. The boys as much as the girls."

"What?" Ashley spins around to face her, still on his knees. "Excuse me?"

"No matter your pronouns, if you come here, chances are you want your butt played with."

Ashley's face twists, and he rubs at his nose and eyes like they're full of pepper. "You mean to tell me you have sex with other women?"

"Is there a problem?"

"Whore of Babylon!" Ashley clenches his fists at his sides. "Jezebel! You lay with another woman in the way god has made you to lay with a man. You are an abomination before heaven!"

"This isn't a fantasy I do," Ruth says.

Ashley pulls the duct tape off his chest and squeaks when oily black hairs come with it. The faux-LEGO gates of hell comes off in a few quick snaps. Ashley zips his footie pajamas back up and storms from the dungeon, pink backpack bobbing with his haste. Ruth follows.

"I have half a mind to call my lawyer," Ashley says as he steps to the door. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go get tested. Bitch."

Then he's gone. Ruth waits until the bell is silent before she lights up a cigarette. Valorie should be coming through the door any minute now.

Life is tough sometimes at Portland's premier walk-in power exchanged parlor. Ruth wishes she could say that's the worst walk-in she's ever had. To ease her mind a little, she makes sure to add on a nice tip when she runs his card.

The door opens and sets the bell to jingling again. Ruth looks up to tell Valorie about the day she's had. Then pauses. The pizza boy from earlier approaches the reception desk.

"Uh," he says, a blush creeping across his cheeks. "Turns out I'm done for today. Did you have any openings?"

Ruth smiles. Maybe she'll put in some overtime today after all.