As She’s Told

It was the beginning of Anders’ busy time, and he worked hard during the next couple of days to keep his mind off that conversation. Still, he found himself abstracted at break times, and on a couple of occasions let his crew direct themselves, with mixed results. The temperature had dropped again; the sunshine was hard and bright, but shadow’s words evoked in his mind the smell of warming soil, and darkness.

There was a munch that Saturday, chiefly for x-girl’s birthday, to which a number of d/sTO regulars were invited. Anders tried not to kid himself; he’d never seen someone with the nick ‘shadow’ at any function, and discouraged as he had been, he’d still gone to enough of them to know who was who. ‘She might have changed her nick,’ a voice whispered. ‘She might be there.’ But though the chatroom was supposedly Toronto-based, people came through from all over. He hadn’t had time to check her location. She could be from Australia. And if she was there, she could be fifty. She could be repulsive. She could be a man.

The restaurant was jammed and noisy, the group dispersed over several tables with everyone moving around to lean over and talk and go to the buffet. The fetish wear was subdued; a studded collar here, a PVC skirt there, nothing you couldn’t see on Queen Street West any time.

Anders scanned the room for sources of information. A familiar voice came to him, raised over the babble. He tracked through the crowd to its source: Leda, in full narrative flight. Leda was a kind of Kevin Bacon hub in the local d/s world; any ‘six degrees’ fetish community sequence would have to include her. Multitudinous play parties aside, she’d befriended half of the men and nine-tenths of the women, including, at one time, Anders’ ex. Leda was telling a story to her table at high volume, but when she caught sight of Anders she jumped to her feet.

‘Ooh, Joachim!’ She curtsied and craned her neck up at him. ‘How can I serve you?’ The table roared. This was a running joke from the IRC chats, where she routinely served cyber refreshments to the room, with a servile running commentary. The clamour of voices and clattering plates made it hard to hear.

Anders bent down to her ear. ‘Leda, do you know someone called shadow?’

‘Who?’

‘Shadow!’

She surveyed the crowd. ‘There,’ she pointed. ‘In that booth in the corner. The girl with the dark hair.’

He stared in disbelief. ‘No. Are you sure? Shadow who was on IRC the other night?’

‘Probably. I don’t know another one.’ People began demanding the punchline of the story, and the table reclaimed her.

The booth was across the room and people kept walking in between, blocking Anders’ line of sight. He took a long look, and felt his heart bang high in his chest. The woman, when he could see her, looked young and slight. Her skin was pale olive, and her hair massed out in waves to her shoulders. She was wearing something russet and inconspicuous, and was sitting back in her seat across from a very young Goth pair who seemed to be absorbed in their own conversation. Her dark eyes were following the dialogue, but she wasn’t talking. She looked still and solitary despite the company, and very small.

Anders made his way toward her, feeling heat radiating from his centre outward. The woman had dark-rimmed eyes, oval cheekbones under warm smooth skin, a bow-shaped mouth, all very still. He couldn’t see much of her body behind the table, but though slender there was a hint of shape that drew him faster. The pair across the table turned toward her and appealed for her opinion on something, and she smiled and looked down, but didn’t say anything. They went back to their dialogue; the appeal had been form only.

Anders reached her side and swiftly crouched down next to her.

‘Shadow?’

She stared, startled, and her lips parted. Then she swallowed. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m Joachim.’

Her face lit up. ‘Joachim? From the other night? Really?’

‘Yes, really,’ he smiled.

‘That’s – you – ‘ She made a confused gesture that ended with a hand momentarily against her mouth. Then she slid over toward the wall to make room for him.

Anders sat down and they looked at each other. Again he was aware of a thumping in his chest, and he could see the flush colouring her skin. Both of them were breathing faster than sitting down usually requires. At last when she wrenched her eyes away, he spoke.

‘I looked for you…’

‘I – I couldn’t get back on that night, I’m sorry. And then…’

He took a deep breath. ‘My name is Anders.’

‘Maia.’

‘Why ‘shadow’?’

‘I lurk in corners.’ This made him laugh.

‘Why Joachim?’ She pronounced it almost right.

‘Middle name. I didn’t know you’d be here. I didn’t even know if you were in Toronto.’ She smiled shyly, and his hand wanted to touch her. It was a conscious effort to hold it back.

‘I’ve never come to anything before.’ She had a low, husky voice, and despite a strained undertone of nerves the voice was touching him, entering his pores somehow, reaching the back of the neck and gently running down his spine. ‘But Nikki – x-girl – has been very nice to me…’ she smiled wryly ‘…and she’s very determined.’ She looked past him rather fixedly, and he wondered if she had come with the same hope as himself.

Anders examined her face. With mild surprise he saw that the thick-fringed eyes weren’t some trick of makeup; they were all hers. Her nose, long and straight, gave her a look that was decidedly non-Western; some ethnicity he couldn’t place.

They talked about the chat room. They talked about his work and her school. They touched on politics, and with silent but profound relief found that their views were similar. (It’s possible to be intimate with someone whose politics you hate, but it’s not easy.) After that first long look she dipped into eye contact as if into too-hot water, before flushing up and retreating. When the dark brown eyes did focus on him, Anders had a sense of depths and possibilities that threatened to shut down his capacity for speech. Maia kept going silent in the middle of a phrase. But still they talked. They talked about the movies they liked and the bureaucracies they hated, the books they had read and the fiddle music he played in his spare time. He made her laugh with stories about a succession of strange characters he had employed doing renovations, like the one he’d found early one morning sleeping it off under a half-finished deck, directly below the feet of the oblivious householder.

What they didn’t talk about was their exchange earlier in the week.

Anders had the feeling she would fly in panic if he brought it up too soon.

He took care to sit back and not crowd her, very aware of his size in relation to hers, and the fact that he was blocking her exit. She was like a small bird on a branch, nervously flicking its wings. He watched her hands tremble whenever he took a deep breath, watched them still slowly when his next words were something safe. But their first exchange lurked behind every subject: an unspoken theme, a hidden texture. It coloured the air around them, lurid colours, no matter how decorously she sat, no matter how careful he was to keep his long limbs out of contact with hers. He watched the quick rise and fall of her breasts – not slight, as far as he could tell – felt the warmth in his groin, and talked about bluegrass clubs and the labyrinthine ways of the City Hall building permit department. The crowd was thinning around the food bars, and it occurred to them that they had forgotten to eat.

They got up and Anders took a better look. The girl was even smaller than he’d thought; barely above five feet. At the sight of her miniature beauty he felt a wave of impulses: protective, possessive, lustful. He had to turn away, hide his erection behind steam tables. They consumed their food without much interest, surprised that they could talk around the tension and enjoy it.

He led her around danger zones, asked questions about her papers that she said she wished someone had thought of before she’d handed them in, mentioned his own university years.

‘Political science; I enjoyed it,’ Anders said. ‘The courses that fed into my shit-disturber side, anyway. But I did renovation work in the summers, and when I finished school there were all these jobs waiting. Sometimes we end up doing what we’re meant to do. I was always meant to be a builder.’

He described the real handyman’s special of a house he’d just acquired for himself. He encouraged Maia through tales of the hectic house she had shared. There was still a small group around Leda and Nikki. When Anders realized he was hungrier than he had thought and went back for more, Leda motioned Maia over.

‘You two are eating each other up.’ She grinned wickedly.

‘Do you know him?’

‘I do indeed, honey, and he is okay,’ Leda assured her, answering the unspoken question. ‘He and my friend Janice had a thing for six months last year and he was as sane as can be, according to her. Though he had a fantasy about master-slave relationships going into the absolute; that’s what broke them up. Watch out for that one. But he won’t force it on you; not if I know anything about it. And he is some gorgeous. Lucky you.’

‘Thanks,’ Maia said gratefully, and like a compass seeking magnetic north, turned back toward Anders. He watched her return, subtly more relaxed, and sent a silent thank you to Leda.

***

I sat down again and managed a longer glance at the man beside me.

The Goth couple were getting up to go; it just about occurred to me to nod a vague farewell to them before turning back to Anders. Those disconcerting light-grey eyes were on my face, and I dropped mine hastily and said, ‘Are you really from here – I mean Canada? Your name and –’ I looked up and gestured at his hair, which was straight, a little shaggy, and pale as Ikea pine; the blondest I’d ever seen on an adult – naturally, I mean, and this clearly wasn’t peroxide. It was the first time I’d taken the lead. I was bad at it, awkward and embarrassed, and I tucked my gesturing hand back below the table so he wouldn’t see it shaking.

He looked kindly at me. ‘No, not from here originally, but it’s been what?’ he calculated. ‘Christ, seventeen years. We moved here from Denmark when I was ten. So – no accent. If you move before you’re an adolescent you take on the new accent; after and you’re stuck with the old one. Some language learning area in the brain that shuts down when the hormones start. I can turn it on any time, though,’ he said, and suddenly the voice and rhythms matched the Nordic looks. ‘My parents and sister have gone back; not my brother, though.’

I smiled at the accent, conscious of my breathing. I could have listened to the sound of his voice forever, in any accent: complex, deep harmonics that shook me. ‘Why did they go back?’ In the next sentence he was back to pure southern Ontario, tight vowels and all.

‘Got homesick, I think. My father manages building projects, that’s what brought him here in the first place.’

‘Building?’

‘Right. I must have inherited a building gene.’ He tipped down the last few inches in his water glass, and I watched, secretly enthralled by the long, moving throat with its big Adam’s apple, the muscles sliding from neck to shoulder like magnificent tree roots. He’d been trying not to crowd me, I could tell, but he couldn’t help taking up most of the booth. The glass came down, and I tore my eyes away, breathing in his atmosphere: wood resin, faintly and soap, and something else that made me long to taste his skin. He continued, ‘Once my sister was through high school my dad got a project to do in Denmark. What about your family, where do they come from?’

‘Oh, I’m a mix.’ His look was inquiring; I half shrugged. ‘Well. It’s complicated. On one side, there’s – let’s see – Chilean marries Russian Jew.’

‘Really? How did that happen?’

‘My Jewish grandpa got around a fair bit, so I’m told. Spent some time in Santiago and started a business there. Married my grandmother. They moved to the U.S. after a while, and then he left her and started another family in New York, and they got divorced. I never met him, though he’s supposed to be still alive somewhere. My dad was brought up by a very anglo stepfather.’

‘And the other side?’

‘On the other side I had a grandmother who was mostly Cree. She married an Irishman. You name it.’

‘Wow! All sorts of possibilities.’

‘For what?’

‘Identity, I guess. Culture.’

I laughed uncomfortably. ‘No. Not if your parents turn their back on it all. Then it’s just exotic-looking window dressing. Anyway, too many ethnicities kind of cancels out, I think. What do you pick?’

‘Are your parents from here?’

‘They aren’t here at all; I’m from California. Oakland. There’s a culture for you.’ I fiddled with the salt shaker. ‘Actually, I was born in Winnipeg, where my mother’s from, but we moved to California when I was little.’

‘What for?’

‘My dad’s family was there. We went back so he could get in on the Silicon Valley thing, but he was a little late. He ended up chasing his dreams to L.A., then Oakland. We moved a lot.’ I could see him mulling that one over. Damn it, why had I said that? Now he was going to think I grew up all pathetic and friendless and was looking for some man to latch on to. But he moved on. ‘And why don’t you sound like a Valley Girl?’

I opened my eyes wide at him. ‘Like, I always hated it, okay? Omygod, I try not to sound like a total airhead.’ The voice was so familiar I could turn it on like a tap. It was my turn to make him laugh. ‘Is that why you went to school here? To change your accent?’

‘Totally.’ We both laughed. ‘In fact, I went to San Jose State first.

Valley like you would not believe. Then I transferred to U. of T. in my third year.’

‘Why?’

I was about to give him the usual explanation, the one about U. of T.

having better courses on rare manuscript research. But something else came out of my mouth instead. ‘You’re going to think this is very weird.’ Dammit, why can’t you keep your mouth shut?! I gave him a pained look, took a breath, then let it out slowly, feeling slightly desperate. Oh, what the hell. ‘I couldn’t take it. The race stuff. People being sent to prison for years for petty crimes. The hatred, the fear. Violence. Toronto’s heading that way but it’s a different feel; it’s nowhere near as scary.’ Oh, god. Why had I told him that?

Any reasonable interpretation would have to drive him away.

He looked at me seriously. ‘The world out of control?’

‘Yes!’ I looked up at him, shocked, and laughed. ‘How did –?’

‘You need safety. Security.’

I stared at him. ‘Yes. I do. But most people would assume if I felt like that I wouldn’t want – couldn’t take – the kind of, well, violence that –’ I struggled, felt the blood rise in my face. He reached out and took my hand in both of his, and my voice stopped. Just stopped dead. I looked down at the enormous hands engulfing mine. Calloused, hard, long-fingered, warm.

Profoundly reassuring. Disturbing as hell. That first touch silenced me; for a long moment it silenced us both. I looked at his hands and he looked at me.

I finally took an audible, shaky breath and went on. I said things I’d never said out loud in all my life.

‘I spent years thinking I was – attracted and horrified by the same things

– pain, imprisonment. Helplessness.’

His grasp tightened. ‘I used to wonder too. How I could want to inflict such things. But really I knew it was different. The world’s violence and ours are not the same thing, Maia. One has victims. The other doesn’t.’

‘I know,’ I whispered. ‘Consent. Choice. There we go again.’ I turned my head away, took back my hand and laughed.

‘You do have a choice. I can’t help that. I won’t kidnap you.’ He smiled.

‘Unless you need that.’

I gave him a swift glance and laughed again, this time more genuinely.

‘No.’

‘What do you need, Maia? Believe me, I won’t keep consulting you if this works out for us. But I need to know if it could work at all.’

‘But if I tell you…’

‘I know, it’s taking control.’

‘No – yes – it’s more than that. I’m – I need…god this is hard…’ I gathered myself. ‘Look, what if what I am is too extreme and you think I’m

– I’m sick?’

‘I doubt it.’

I shook my head and looked down at the hands in my lap, plucking and folding my dress.

‘Do you want to be damaged? Scarred? Dismembered?’

‘No!’

‘Be used as a toilet? Have sex with animals?’

‘No!’

‘Do you want to be sold off to white slavers?’

I gasped out of tension, blurted a laugh and shook my head. ‘No.’

‘Then I doubt there’s anything you want that I don’t want more.’

The shock and clang of the last few sentences gradually faded. I looked up at him, painful doubt in my eyes. ‘All right,’ he said slowly, ‘let me tell you what I want. What I need.’

I nodded. I was relieved that he would be the one to say these things, these unspeakable things, not me.

His voice dropped to a low, intimate thunder that resonated somehow at the back of my skull. ‘I need to own a woman and control her, twenty-four hours a day. I want absolute control, not a vanilla relationship with some s/m trimmings, not some sideline bedroom thing. I’ve settled for less, and I may have to do it again, but that’s what I need. I don’t want to play games, I don’t want to scene, I don’t want to negotiate, I don’t want someone who’s free to walk away. I want a slave, a real one. Human chattel.’

His words entered into me at some level, along with meaning, but they had to sink slowly through the mire in my brain. The sudden heat of my body was slowing all my synapses. There was a faint ringing in my ears, and for a minute I could hardly see.

Through the fog came his voice, dropping another note or two. ‘If you were mine, Maia, I’d take good care of you. I’d take the greatest care not to damage you. But there would be beatings, constant control, humiliation – I’d treat you like an animal and worse. If that’s beyond what you can take, we might as well know it now. That wouldn’t mean there’s nothing for us, but it won’t be long-term.’

My vision was clearing; in my line of sight were his fingers, pressing the table until the nails went white. I could feel his desire coming at me in a wave, so strong it was all I could do to resist the undertow.

His words had coalesced in my head, and now were like balls in a basket that clicked as they collided and banged. …a slave, a real one… an animal…. A very small Maia lurked in a dark basement with two curved wooden blocks held around her wrist, secretly playing at being chained in a dungeon. I’d been four or five. By nine I’d spent each night in elaborate fantasies of slave civilizations. The stories by the age of twelve were darker and saturated in humiliating sex and fear. It was the one hidden, overpowering constant of my life.

And yet every other voice I’d ever heard had told me I was wrong.

Wrong to relinquish control, wrong to submerge myself, my being. Even the other subs.

I forced myself to glance beyond the intent circle of our two bodies.

Even Lena and Nikki were gone. The restaurant was in its mid-afternoon lull, and the waiter had long since given up on us. I suddenly noticed the noise of traffic from outside, something I hadn’t heard for hours.

The man beside me watched me quietly. I looked down at my hands.

They weren’t shaking.

‘Maia?’

I looked up into his eyes. Clear, aware eyes, kind eyes.

‘It’s not.’

‘It’s not what?’

‘It’s not beyond what I can take.’

The look he gave me was of such concentrated heat and sweetness that I felt filled with light, hollow enough to float. For a while I just focused on breathing in, breathing out. At last I anchored myself carefully, and found more words. ‘You just described me – what I am. Or at least what I’m meant to be. And the details – what happens – how far it goes – that’s not up to me.

What matters is who is in control. And it can’t be, it shouldn’t be – me.’

He let out a long, slow breath, and took my hand again, his eyes searching my face. At last he gave whatever he found there a nod of recognition. I felt his thumb stroke the back of my hand, back and forth, back and forth. ‘And are you saying it should it be me?’

‘I think so.’

‘You’ll need to think carefully. We’ll see. All right. We may have something here. If we’re lucky.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘There’s an understatement for you.’ His smile faded, and he gave me a look from beneath lowered eyebrows. ‘But we’re taking this slowly, do you hear me?

You give me your number, we go out, we talk, we get to know each other some more. No jumping into this. I could take you over too soon, and it could all go wrong for you and you might not be able to say so. No. We have a lot to work out, not least how you can have choice but no choice. That’ll take time. So I’m sending you home now.’

I was trembling both with frustrated lust and with the pleasure of being told what to do. I wrote down my phone number and watched him pay the cheque. He scared me just by standing up, he was so big . Six-foot six or seven, maybe? A foot and a half taller than me. There was a tough, supple quality to his body that I couldn’t tear my eyes from, now that he was looking elsewhere. He didn’t have the self-conscious stoop that some very tall men have, but occupied the upper atmosphere as if he owned it. Not a Norse god of the bulked-up gym-muscles type. A lone coniferous tree-god reigning high above the deciduous canopy. Or a god from somewhere else in the pantheon. One with hard hands and muscles that came from real work.

Wasn’t there something in that mythology about a giant master builder?

He walked me to the streetcar stop, his arm around me, his huge hand enclosing my shoulder. He was obviously walking slowly for my benefit, strolling. A wind gusted, swept shreds of clouds across the sky, played with my hair. This man’s body against mine was maddening. I hadn’t been anything like calm since he’d appeared next to me. I would have wanted to go to bed with him if I’d met him anywhere, but to have this golden giant find me there, turn out to be my brief miraculous mirror image of the chat room – that was good fortune beyond anything I could ever have expected.

And he was sane, and he understood me, and he wanted me. All those hours, inches away but not touching, tantalized, wanting, imagining. And he was sending me home.