The Bug Man

Author's note: This is a work of fiction. The chapters presented here are the first two installments of a multi-part story about personal discovery and the journey towards an intimate partnership between an unusually blasé dom and a very kinky gurl (in need of some very private tutoring). At the beginning they are strangers on a train, but by the end they become... well, follow along and find out.

THE BUG MAN

Chapter 1: CHANGES

The first thing that I noticed about her was her nose rings. She had two of them in her left nostril and another one hanging from her septum. They were bold and their placement was perfect; I quite admired that. Even though her face was mostly hidden behind an oversized pair of Tortoise-shell framed sunglasses and a dog-eared copy of Franz Kafka's Die Verwandlung, her jewelry still caught my eye.

I watched her for much longer than I normally would have because, at first glace, she seemed to be oblivious to what was going on around her in the subway car. She didn't seem to pay any attention to the noisy tourists, or their loud children, even when they were pointing at her. In fact, she didn't seem to care about the other people on the train at all, she just sat there and ignored everyone and everything and kept on reading. Or so I thought, at first. But as I continued to observe her I discovered that, actually, the exact opposite was true. She was, in fact, keeping track of everything that was going on around her and she was being pretty sly about it, too.

While pretending to read her book, she would nonchalantly let her sunglasses slide down the length of her nose until they came to rest against the two aforementioned rings. Then, glancing up from Herr Kafka's prose, she'd make a quick sweep of the other passengers sitting nearby. The only part of her body that moved was her eyes. Then, after briefly studying the assembled masses around her, she would push the glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose and, her surveillence completed, resume her reading.

She did it every few minutes. Her glasses would slowly slid down her nose—I couldn't tell if it was gravity or something she'd practiced—and she would subtly take in her surroundings. When she was finished, she'd extend one of her black polished fingernails and push the glasses back into place. To the casual observer she was completely uninterested in the people around her, but to a watchful eye it was obvious that she was hyper aware of what most of them were doing. Fortunately, I have a watchful eye.

She was in her mid-twenties, dressed all in black (naturally), and doing her best to blend into the background, although there seemed to be little chance of that. She stuck out like a sore nipple. As I continued watching, I noticed other bits of jewelry that were hidden beneath her dark blue page-boy haircut. Cut on a bias, it exposed the back of her shaved head and hung down past her chin in the front, like anime character. Once, as I watched, she paused in the midst of her sunglasses ritual, to toss her hair to one side; a gesture that briefly exposed her left ear and a row of beaded earrings that ran all the way up and around its rim. For a moment they twinkled at me and then disappeared again behind her hair. I was impressed.

She held the book she was reading close to her face and moved it only when she had to turn the page, (she licked her index finger before each turn). The third time she turned the page I saw the tip of a stud in her tongue. Seeing it there made me want to smile, but I managed to suppress the urge. I couldn't tell if she had noticed my interest yet and I didn't want to lose my advantage if she hadn't. Did she know I was watching her? She never looked directly at me when scanning the other riders, but I couldn't be sure that she hadn't been staring at me through her dark glasses the whole time. I thought it wise to be discreet.

As the train rattled through the next two stops I continued watching her and as I watched I notice that she kept shifting her body weight from side to side, as if she was trying to find a different way to sit. She seemed unusually antsy. Every few minutes she would squirm and wiggle a little bit in an effort to situate herself. She tried repeatedly to cross her legs, but they didn't seem to want to cooperate. Her scuffed up Doc Martins wouldn't stay in her lap for more than a few minutes before slipping back to the floor in a most ungraceful manner. Her posture seemed unusually stiff and the way she moved was most unnatural. She reminded me of a ballerina at the barre, fighting in vain to hold an impossible pose.

These struggles seemed to leave her breathless and at one point I watched as she had to pause to get her wind before shifting positions again. It was clear that something was making her very uncomfortable and that she was having no luck in her battle to overcome it. As I watched her twisting in her seat I began, for my own amusement, to make a mental list of what might be bothering her. From what I'd been able to observe so far, I knew that she was obviously a very unusual young woman, and I knew that my list of her potential predicaments would have to reflect that quirkiness. It quickly became a long and rather eclectic list.

Eventually she managed to find a certain stillness of being and a way of sitting that seemed to soothe her discomfort and allowed her to resume her reading. But it wasn't long before her sunglasses had once again slid down her nose and her eyes were darting frantically from side to side in an attempt to determine if anyone had noticed her awkwardness. They hadn't. Secure in her invisibility—she still hadn't looked in my direction—she leaned back and let the top of her head rest momentarily against the partition behind her seat. She closed her eyes and breathed with a slow measured rhythm until a hint of a smile crossed her face. She appeared to have at last found some relief.

Sadly, her escape from discomfort was short lived. After a few minutes of bliss, the rolling stock jerked clumsily as it rounded a sharp curve and shook her back to reality. She sat upright with a start, her head snapping forward in synch with the train's change of direction. It caught her off guard and, in the confusion of the moment, the book she'd been reading slipped out of her hands and fell to the floor. Her eyes followed its trajectory and she swung her arms out in front of her in an attempt to catch it, but without success. I was fascinated by her odd physicality as she repeatedly tried to pick the book up off the floor. Her body language was decidedly strange: she'd lean forward in her seat, her fingers pointed towards the spot where Gregor Samsa's story had landed—ironically, on its' back—but she couldn't quite seem to reach it. She'd bend down to where the book was laying and then stop abruptly. She seemed unable to proceed any further; she was simply incapable of reaching down far enough to actually pick it up.

I watched in amazement as she tried repeatedly to fold her torso in some way that would enable her to finally grab it, but her body was just too rigid for the task. At one point the book had been only inches from her fingertips, but she still wasn't able to retrieve it. Glaring down at the book, she appeared to be trying to use the power of her mind to bring it back to her. Unfortunately, the book ignored her psychic summons and refused to budge even an inch. Finally, she closed her eyes and snorted with frustration.

Before she got a chance to try again the train hit a bump in the tracks and caused the whole car to shimmy and shake repeatedly. The book slid across the floor again, landing even further away from her. Effortlessly moving itself across the linoleum flooring, it stopped at my feet. I reached down and picked it up without taking my eyes off of her. She was in the middle of making yet another contorted attempt to reach for the book when she realized that I already had it in my hand. That stopped her dead in her tracks. Her eyes moved from the floor to my hand and then continued traveling up my arm until they got to my face. I smiled. I think that's when she realized for the first time that I had been watching her. "Shit!" she grunted.

As she stared over at me, I smiled knowingly and touched my finger to the side of my nose. Frozen in the moment of her discovery, her mouth hung open—that's when I noticed the other two studs in her tongue. I think I may have actually laughed out loud when I saw the surprised expression on her face. Clearly embarrassed by my attention, she slowly retreated and slid back onto her seat. Her cheeks were flushed from the exertion and she was panting like an overheated puppy. After a few minutes she regained a small amount of her equilibrium and began to scowl at me over the top of those damned sunglasses, her arms crossed defiantly in front of her.

Although I would have preferred to prolong her embarrassment, I finally relented and offered her the book. I sat forward in my seat so she wouldn't have to reach so far this time—though I must admit that I enjoyed watching her struggle. She hesitated for a moment and then, with only a small measure of difficulty, reached across the gap between us and took ahold of the book, griping it tightly so she wouldn't drop it again.

She pulled on it, but I resisted her and held onto the book for a long instant before abruptly letting go of it. The recoil sent her backwards into her seat. The book itself, however, never left her fingers. I toyed with snatching it away from her again, just to tease her, but then thought better of it when, to my great surprise, she looked up and sheepishly smiled at me. I tried to keep my cool.

"The original German, huh?" I said to her, referring to the book. "I'm impressed."

"Thank you," she said as she wiped off the cover. She spoke with a slight lisp.

"Thank you, sir," I corrected her. My response seemed to surprise her and she looked over at me with an expression of wide-eyed recognition and then, after a moment looking directly into my eyes, she looked back down at the book in her hands and smiled again. She understood what had just taken place between us. I had guessed correctly.

"Thank you, thir," she replied earnestly.

"That used to be restricted reading in the old days," I told her. "Especially in the original German."

"I know that—thir," she said with a slight hesitation. "But I only allow mythelf to read it in the original text. It'th a part of my—" she hesitated before finishing her sentence. "It's part of my training," she said.

"Are you studying Kafka?" I asked, ignoring the implications of her use of the word "training."

"You could say that. Yes, thir," she answered.

"How many times have you read it?" I asked.

"Thith ith my firtht time," she replied, speaking so softly that I could barely hear her over the rattle of the train. She was still rather breathless, which made her seem much more vulnerable than her severe appearance allowed. She was really quite charming and feminine and her breathy whisper reminded me of a Victorian debutante.

"Your first time?" I was surprised by her answer. "That edition is in tatters," I said her. "You must have been reading it forever?"

"Two yearth," she whispered.

"Two years?" I laughed. "What's taking you so long? Are you writing a dissertation?"

"No, thir," she said, bringing her black tipped fingers to her face so I couldn't see her nervously biting her lower lip. "It'th taken tho long—" She stopped to exhale. "—because I don't read German."

"You don't read German?" I was flabbergasted.

"Well, I can now, thorta," she said. "I'm teaching mythelf."

"Now I am impressed," I told her. "But why would you do that when you could easily have found an English translation? Is that part of your training, too?" I lingered on the word to emphasize its meaning.

"I gueth tho," she answered.

"But why Metamorphosis?" I asked incredulously. "Why not read Naked Lunch if you want to learn about insects?"

"That'th not it," she sighed. "I'm trying to—I just wanted to know what it felt like to be different—to be ch-ch-changed," she stuttered.

"To be changed?"

"I kinda want to know what it's like to go through a metamorphothith of my own, I gueth," she continued. "I want to understand the mind of thomeone who had been through a change, thomeone like Gregor Thamtha." Her lisp was fuckin' adorable, due no doubt to all that lovely surgical steel imbedded in her tongue.

"You know, Gregor's change was not very pleasant. Changing isolated him and put him at odds with the world," I told her.

"That thoundth fine to me," she sneered. "I've been at oddth with the world for ath long as I can remember."

"What do you mean?" I asked, being serious for the first time.

"It don't matter," she said petulantly, putting on her sunglasses again. "I've thaid too much already." She straightened herself in her seat. "You wouldn't understand," she told me.

"I understand alienation," I said. "Are you alienated?"

"I thaid you wouldn't understand."

She was beginning to disconnect from our conversation. This obviously wasn't the first time she had tried to explain herself to someone. Her dour attitude betrayed her failure to make herself understood.

"I understand a lot more than you think," I told her. "It's obvious that you're looking for something. You say you're trying to learn about what it's like to change, but I'd have to say that you've obviously gone through quite a metamorphosis of your own already, haven't you?" She rolled her eyes and opened up her book. She was trying to tune me out, trying to become invisible again, but I surprised her. I bolted out of my seat and snatched the book right out of her hands. That got her attention.

Grabbing the two poles on either side of her seat for support, she launched herself at me. She didn't get very far. I stopped her in mid-lunge by standing up and wrapping my left arm around her waist. I pulled her against me and neutralized her feeble assault. That's when I confirmed one of my suspicions about the cause of her awkwardness: She was very tightly corseted. No wonder she hadn't been able to bend over to pick up the book.

"Who do you think you are, athhole?" she asked in a tiny furious voice. She tried to pull away from me, but I lifted her up off the floor instead and held her in my arms.

"I'm the man who can teach you how to be a bug," I whispered in her ear.

As soon as I said it, she stopped resisting me. Her feet dangled a few inches from the floor and all the fight went out of her. I could smell the faint scent of talcum powder on her skin as I held her. Her eyes were the color of chocolate and there was a spray of freckles across her cheeks. It was the first time I noticed how uniquely beautiful she was.

"Wh-what did you thay?" she stammered.

"I said that you had better check the crowd again," I told her. "I think they're watching you this time."

Her expression morphed immediately as she looked over her shoulder towards the rest of the passengers. The color drained from her already pale face and she tried to pull away from me again. That's when I got my own view of our audience. Everybody in our part of the car was watching us and I thought it was probably time to put her down before somebody got the wrong idea.

"Can I have my book back now, pleathe, thir?" she asked politely, without making eye contact.

"No, I don't think so," I said. "I think I'll keep it as a memento of our first meeting."

She looked surprised and tried to snatch the book from my hand, but I held it out at arm's length—just out of her reach. It was easy, I knew that she was just too confined to be a threat to anyone but herself.

"A little something to remember you by," I chuckled. A look of panic crept across her face as she watched me. When I took a pen out of my shirt pocket and scribbled something in the front of the book, she squirmed in her seat.

"You can't do that," she shouted. "That's my book." No lisp this time.

"Not any more," I said. "I've written in it now, so that makes it mine." I smiled a wicked smile at her and for the first time during our ride together she became quite timid and unsure of herself—her pretenses were all gone.

"Please, thir --" she pleaded again. "I haven't finished it yet. I have to finish it." She held her hands out to me, like a starving child begging for bread.

"Well, this is my stop," I told her. The train had begun to slow down and people were moving towards the doors. She looked like she was going to cry. All I could do was smile.

"I taught myself German, for god's sake," she sputtered (no lisp, again). "Two years—" I shrugged at her.

I was standing next to the doors with the book tucked under my arm as the train reached the platform and began rolling to a stop. As people prepared to exit the car, I stepped over to where she was sitting and squatted down in front of her. She was teary-eyed and had a little white ball of spit in the corner of her mouth. I reached over and brushed it away. She stared at me and, without thinking, mimicked my action, licking the same spot with her studded tongue.

"I was going to give it back to you all along," I whispered, pulling her close to me. I could feel her breath on my cheek as I ran the tip of my thumb down the length of her heavily pierced ear.

"Thank you, thir," she said timidly.

"Call me when you've finished the book," I told her, "and we'll continue your training."

"My training?" she asked, a hint of surprise in her voice.

"Your metamorphothith," I replied. A fresh group of riders had begun to board the train and I stood up from where I had been kneeling to make room for them.

"But how can I call you?" she asked. "I don't even know your name?" There was a surprising hint of regret in her voice.

"Don't worry," I told her, "I'm in the book." I held the Kafka volume open to the title page where I'd written my phone number and the words, "The Bug Man."

She nodded again and looked at me over the top of her glasses. The train signaled it's imminent departure and as I turned to leave I extended my arm and offered her the book. She smiled, bowed her head and held out her hands in anticipation of its weight settling in her palms. After several empty seconds she looked up again and realized that I had slid away from her and was standing in the open doorway with her book still in my hand. She looked confused.

"But sir, you said I could have it back," she shouted over the noise of the boarding passengers. Her lisp disappeared again when she yelled.

"Indeed, I did," I hollered back at her. "But I never said I would make it easy." Stepping out of the train and onto the platform I tossed the book back onto the floor of the subway car. It landed about three feet from where she was sitting. She looked down at it and then turned back towards me with a look of total disbelief on her face.

As the doors closed I could see her trying once again to pick the book up off the floor, though it didn't appear that she was having too much luck. I saw her look at me again through the window as the train started to pull out of the station. I smiled at her and held my thumb and forefinger up to the side of my head and mouthed the words, "Call me!"

I couldn't hear what she said in reply, even though I tried to read her lips. It was two words. The second one was definitely "you," but I couldn't make out the first one. I'm pretty sure it must have been "thank," though I could be mistaken.

And then she was gone.

Chapter 2: STRANGEWAYS, HERE WE COME

It took me about twenty minutes to walk the eight blocks from the station to my house, but by the time I got inside the front door she had already left me a message. I could see the blinking red light through the window as I unlocked the door. Although that isn't unusual—I have many friends, co-conspirators, and minions who call and leave me messages at home because, for a variety of reasons, they are not allowed to have my cell number—but this message wasn't from any of them. None of them speak pidgin German with a lisp.