Maggie and I stopped having sex a few months before our divorce, and two years later I was still in a dry spell. Yeah, two years and counting. I was told guitars are chick magnets, so I dusted off my old acoustic and sharpened my pencil. I ain't no Bob Dylan, but I was happy to be playing and writing again and I frequented coffeehouses with live entertainment. You readers know the type of entertainment; men and women, mostly bleeding heart liberals, singing their life stories. Once you own the guitar, it's a cheap hobby.
I can't say women flocked to me, but I'm attracted to just about every woman with a guitar, and so it was with pretty Nissa. As far as I could ever find out, "Nissa" isn't short for anything; it is her given name. I guessed her to be about my age, at the time in our early forties, maybe not as hot as she used to be, but she retained some of her younger glory. The reddish blonde hair was not as long as I imagined she wore it in her twenties, but it was still thick and wavy down to her shoulders.
I bought a CD Nissa recorded. The CD was her vanity project, and I'm sure she still has a couple cases of the CDs in a back closet somewhere that will never be sold. So, she appreciated the occasional fan. The singer-songwriter scene in our town was intimate enough that she and I were on a first name basis and would see each other at open mic nights or other shows a couple times per month. She signed the jacket thanking me for my support, but wrote nothing to suggest she thought about me when I wasn't around.
I thought about Nissa, though, and she met me for lunch once. We worked our day jobs within a mile of each other, so neither of us took it as a big deal, but I was attracted to her and we were both unattached. Nissa was a manager at an accounting firm by day. In my office, I'm one of the peons people like Nissa don't want to be any more. I didn't work for Nissa, though; to me, she was just part of our group of local songwriters.
Nissa was a bit softer around the edges than my ex-wife. Maggie was a manager of managers, a boss of someone like Nissa, and someone who stomps on worker-bees like me just before Christmas when corporate budgets are reviewed. Maggie shortened her hair and heels, maybe to become more like the male managers she admired. Nissa combined a softer, artistic side, with her managerial, type-A personality and I liked her.
I wasn't looking to marry Nissa, but I found myself comparing her to Maggie, so it was a shock to find out during our lunch conversation that my ex-wife and my coffeehouse crush were sorority sisters in college. If Nissa ever thought about me romantically, she seemed to lose interest after that revelation.
One acoustic show took place around the corner from her little Cape Cod. She had walked over before sundown, but later after the show, she asked for the quick ride home in my car. I was happy to oblige, and figured I'd still be home in time for the Friday night rerun of the old Battlestar Galactica TV series. In the driveway, though, Nissa mentioned she had been taking an art class and hoped I'd give her a really, truly honest opinion of her drawings. It occurred to me that an honest opinion wouldn't get me anywhere with her, but we had known each other a year without getting anywhere, so I figured I'd play it by ear.
"Etchings?" I asked. "Really?"
She laughed lightly at the age-old "etchings" joke, and I was sure she was thinking, "No, this guy's not getting laid tonight." On the other hand, she invited me in.
Sure enough, her living room was crowded with charcoal drawings on an easel and an angled drafting table. The drafting table was a solid hunk of professional furniture, with unusual brackets at the corners. I was considering my art review when Nissa appeared with a glass of red wine. She apologized for not opening a fresh bottle, but she thought it was pretty good Australian wine, and then she excused herself to "powder her nose". Several minutes went by and I realized I had just about emptied the glass of wine, and I stopped drinking so I wouldn't look like too much of a lush. In our time together, we had never drunk alcohol.
She returned and stood next to me. I glanced at her and she nodded back toward her drawings. I think I asked her about her sources of inspiration or something similarly corny, but she launched into a serious answer about some Ecuadorian impressionist I had never heard of. I couldn't respond intelligently, and there was a moment of silence.
I turned to say something, anything just as Nissa sidestepped behind me. She pulled my elbows back. She said, "We've known each other for some time. Aside from some songs which are mostly fictional anyway, neither of us divulges much personal stuff."
She pulled my arms back more tightly, but not roughly. Nissa continued, "There's something I want you to try. I hope you'll play along, and it will be our little secret."
OK, so Nissa was shy and didn't want anyone to know how inexperienced she was. Or, maybe she was embarrassed to be attracted to me. Whatever! I promised I could keep a secret, even though I didn't know what she was talking about.
She told me to put my eyeglasses on a small table. I leaned over to put the glasses down and she leaned into my butt. I stepped forward a bit for balance because she actually shoved me. She didn't hurt me, but I felt the push. I chuckled and straightened up as she flicked off the lights.
She slid a blindfold over my eyes. It was not just a piece of cloth; it was some sort of commercial product, with padded eye patches and a thin strap. I moved to straighten the strap on the side of my face, but Nissa grabbed my arms again and pulled them back.
In the dark, blindfolded, I felt a soft, fuzzy material against my wrists. Quickly, I felt the soft fuzz tighten around each wrist separately, like a Velcro bracelet. Or, maybe it wasn't so quick. My senses were confused, and I was wondering more about what would happen than what was happening.
I was gladly playing along. However experienced Nissa was or was not, she apparently wanted to try something new and unusual, in the dark, and she couldn't even bring herself to ask me.
I felt Nissa's hands slide down the sides of my legs. She untied my shoes and I slipped them off. She removed my socks, and I felt her slip fuzzy Velcro anklets around my ankles. She stood, still behind me.
She held me by my left elbow with her left hand, and ran the fingers of her right hand into my hair. I wondered if a man's head of hair was important to her, in our forties. I was graying, but not balding. Her fingers tightened and she pulled my hair enough to jerk my head. She pulled me quickly and rather roughly a few feet to the drafting table. I began to turn, maybe to face her, but she twisted my arm and pulled my butt into her abdomen.
"Don't move too much. I'll lead you where you need to go." She let go of my hair.
She pushed her abdomen into my butt again. She reached past my right shoulder, pushing me to lean over the angled drafting table, and she grabbed my right hand and pulled it toward the top right corner of the table. Still blindfolded, I heard a click, and my right wrist was stuck, bound to a bracket I couldn't see, attached to the fuzzy bracelet. I brought my left hand over to feel it. Nissa moved to the left side of the table and told me to feel her breasts. I heard her remove her shirt.
To you, reader, this all sounds so strange, and it really was strange. I reached toward her on my left, to feel her breast. She took my hand and put it against her chest. I curled my finger into her bra cup. She leaned with her breasts over the edge of the table and I slid my fingers into the bra fabric, but it was all a trick. With a slight push, she attached the bracelet on my left wrist to the unseen bracket on the left top corner of the drafting table. I could stand almost straight, but my hands were cuffed to the table. Apart from my footwear, I was still dressed.
I tested the wrist bindings. Maybe I could have ripped them apart or damaged the table, but I was tightly restrained. Nissa moved behind me and crouched, sliding her hands down my left leg. Another click, and my left anklet was attached to something. It felt like a wire attached to the left front leg of the table. I could move my leg and keep my balance, but I couldn't drag my left leg to the right.
"Well, you are a pushy woman!" I joked, but Nissa kept working. Still crouching, she reached up and fumbled nervously at my jeans button and zipper. She pulled my pants and underwear down and off my right foot. She twisted the pants off to the left side. She couldn't remove the pants without unhooking my anklet.
I said, "Sorry about the tighty whities. If I had known there would be an audience, I would'a worn my G. I. Joes."
"Quiet," she insisted. Her face rubbed the side of my left butt cheek and down my leg. Her right hand shot up the inside of my left leg, into my testicles. In retrospect, I should have known she would try to trick me into spreading my legs. A half hour earlier I was wondering about Battlestar Galactica, not about some chick's bondage fantasy. Pretty Nissa was fondling me, and I gladly shifted my right leg over to give her space. She moved and I heard the click. All my wrists and ankles were bound.
Nissa stood. "Listen," she said, "this is your last chance. You're probably not thinking what I'm thinking. Ask your questions now, and if you want to stop, I'll let you go. After this last chance, it's all a game, and we play it to the end."
