If you have something to say, I can be contacted at the address in my profile.
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I am having second thoughts about my glasses. A clear indication that today's rendezvous is bordering on obsession for me. It isn't as if I didn't spend hours last night trying on clothes, jewelry and experimenting with my hair. It isn't as if I haven't planned this down to the last detail. Still maybe I am wrong about the glasses. I never wear them out, and my vanity can be a capricious companion. I twist the rearview mirror my way and try them on and off a dozen times. I don't like them, but I was right the first time; they complete the effect. They make me bookish and stern. They lend me an aspect of composure. I'm going to need it.
There is a coffee shop a few blocks away; since I'm early and have time to kill, I walk back up the road and buy a latte. It's been unseasonably warm for October, but a cold snap is due any day, and I can feel it in the air. The coffee takes the edge off. On the way back I pause to look at an antique desk in a shop window and catch my reflection. Except for my hair, which is now cut shorter than it's been since grade school, I look like the same girl in the photograph on my bookcase – the one of me in cap and gown, sandwiched awkwardly between my mother and father. It had been ten years since we had all been in a photograph together, and it will take a wedding for it to happen again.
I've been out of college for two years, which isn't terribly long, but has been terribly hard, and I expect my face to show the scars. Instead I see the same incongruously innocent face that for years has caused people to assume I am younger than I am. Is it forgivable that at twenty-three I still expect people to reveal their lives in their faces? I've read too much Oscar Wilde, I suppose.
A man passes behind me, and in the shop window I watch his eyes run up the slit in my ankle length skirt. Watch him follow the slit up over my knee, up my thigh, up to the lace at top of my stockings. He falters in his stride, the impulse to stop and stare tripping up his feet. I feel glad. I bought the skirt especially for today, and up until just now had my doubts about it. Saleswomen are notoriously unreliable. But I know his look, and there is no more honest critic than a man who doesn't know he is being watched. What I see in his eyes calms me, settles the butterflies in my stomach, and for the first time today I am excited about what is to come, not apprehensive.
The cemetery is one of the oldest in Washington. It sits in the center of Georgetown next to Dumbarton Oaks, and while the southern end is heavily trafficked, it quickly becomes remote and deserted the further in you go. There are cemeteries that are creepy and forbidding, but this one is more like a tranquil park. It's easy to get lost among the mausoleums and tombs, and sometimes if the sun is shining, I will wander aimlessly with my thoughts. Not today. Today I make a beeline for an isolated corner of the cemetery. It is my secret sanctuary where I go sometimes to read; three tall crypts form a box, and at the opening there is a wooden bench. It makes a private grassy theater; I've often daydreamed about what trouble could be got up to here without anyone knowing. I guess I'm going to find out.
Will this work, I wonder? Will you go for it? I sit down to wait for you. It's hard to judge someone I've never met. We have corresponded by email and instant message for six months, but that has its limits. You said I should plan something for today, something unusual, but I wonder if this is what you meant. Early on you made a remark that by nature you were a top, but had fantasies about the roles being reversed. You never mentioned it again, but I remembered. In my own life, I have always erred to the side of submissive, but for you I can make an exception. To a point.
The hard clap of footsteps, I turn my head and you are standing beside the bench. The photographs didn't do you justice. You look every bit the university professor in your blazer and open necked shirt. You have the poise and self-assurance of someone well educated and accustomed to being listened to professionally. You remind me of the professors I had crushes on in college. The older men who carried the knowledge of the world with them. I begin to doubt I can carry this off. My eyes fall to your hands and the worn, leather briefcase; I swear they must hand them out to professors at their tenure parties.
I stand, and you give me a hug; you smell warmly of aftershave, and you murmur in my ear how good it is to meet me. We exchange pleasantries and compliments; it's all part of the ritual letting the other know that we don't regret being there. You admire my skirt; I point out that it is just like the one you described. It's odd meeting someone that you already know intimately. Mutely, we stand putting a face to all the stories and confessions that we've traded for six months. You're nervous. I can see it in your face and suddenly my nervousness is gone. Emboldened, I ask if you brought them.
A smile crosses your face. From your briefcase you take a brown paper bag. Inside is a pair of metallic handcuffs and the keys. Watching you handle them, it occurs to me that you think they are intended for me. I take them from you.
"I'd like to handcuff you to the bench." I say taking the plunge.
"Me?" You look at the bench as though it will explain it to you. "I don't understand."
"You said I should think of something. Well..."
You weigh the request, wondering how well you actually know me, and if I can be trusted.
"Is that a good idea?"
"It's the only idea. Otherwise I'm going home."
"Really?"
"You said to think of something."
"Yes, but I thought. Well I guess I don't know what I thought."
"Trust me. I'm not going to hurt you. Much." I say it archly, not to intimidate but as a coy joke.
That makes you laugh and relax.
"Well." You chuckle to yourself like I'm a one of your students trying to talk you into an extension. "Well okay, Angie, I guess you're the boss."
You sit in the middle of the bench. I ask you to slide to over a little bit and you do it with a humoring, patronizing shrug of your shoulders. The same is true when I ask you to put your hands behind you, and I run the chain through the slats in the back of the bench. I snap them over your wrists. It's the first time I wasn't on the receiving end. I run my fingers through your silver hair. You are bursting with anticipation. I kiss you lightly on the lips.
"So what is on the agenda?" You ask.
"Patience."
I fish my cell phone from my bag and sit down beside you. Idly I stroke your thigh while I make my call. I can feel you burning lasers into the side of my head.
"Who are you calling?" You demand.
"Shhh, don't speak." It's from a movie, but you either don't get it or you don't think I'm funny.
The phone rings, and for a second my heart sinks thinking that he's backed out, but then he answers.
