I live in an apartment right above this little factory that turns old clothes into rags for the metal-finishing trade. It's in Bridgetown, a run-down industrial part of the city that most businesses fled long ago, mainly because it sits in the shadow of one of the worst gang-infested housing projects in the city. Or did. The projects are gone now, torn down and replaced with luxury hi-rise condos, but the neighborhood still has the dark, haunted feel of gang turf, with decrepit and abandoned buildings and trash-strewn empty lots, urban wreckage everywhere. The neighborhood's pretty safe now, but the people in the hi-rises live behind heavy security and still drive through it with their car doors locked and their windows rolled up, eyes kept straight ahead.
Because of all that, urban renewal's been slow in coming, and rents are dirt cheap in the buildings still standing, and parking is easy on the deserted streets. The neighborhood's really a kind of hidden gem, and it attracts a certain kind of urban pioneers: outsiders, misfits, artists, drop-outs. Sexual outsiders too. The area's no-man's-land atmosphere seems to attract these little specialty kink bars with heavy front doors and barred windows, catering to a whole spectrum of freaks and deviants -- flaming gays, trannies, D/s and leather people, dopers, swingers. The area's getting a rep as a Mecca for kink tourism and we get a lot of people from the burbs and the better parts of town coming down to slum and show-off in a real life urban dystopia. That means we get a lot of amateurs and wanna-be's, but that's okay. They keep the place relaxed and there's rarely any trouble. It's lawless in the best sense of the word.
I ended up here after my last life crashed and burned, so I generally didn't take advantage of the various entertainments and opportunities at the kink bars. Sex had become kind of stale to me, and the whole idea of relationships just too complicated to deal with. It was a cold-cereal-and-TV existence, and it didn't help that this story happened during the winter, when the cracked sidewalks and potholed streets were already crusted with old snow and black ice. It was hot in my place, though, because the factory downstairs left the boilers running all the time and the steam leaked into my place through the ancient plumbing. So even on nights when the wind howled off the lake and rattled the glass in my windows, I could still sit around in my shorts, my apartment hot as a greenhouse from the leaking steam.
And I spent a lot of time sitting around in my shorts, staring at the lights of downtown and wondering how I'd managed to fuck things up so royally.
But on occasion I needed to get out, and when that happened I'd just walk a few blocks down to one of the bars, buy a beer and sit in a corner and watch people. That's as close as I really wanted to get to them. I liked Sal's 850 Club, an ancient workingman's bar that had somehow become the center for the specialty clubs, a kind of jumping off point. There were all sorts of pervs at Sal's, though the leather-and-Lurex crowd predominated. People drove for miles to get to Sal's, and after a while you recognized the same people week after week. That gave the place an unusually festive air for a BDSM joint. People came in groups to party and schmooze with their friends, so they didn't bother a solo drinker.
So it was at Sal's on a Friday night that I saw this girl sitting at the bar in a pink dress. She must have been there a while because I certainly would have noticed her coming in, but as it was, I didn't pay her any attention till I was well into my beer. She was a beautiful girl, dark and Spanish-looking, and her dress stood out mainly for its plainness. It was a nice dress but looked overly formal and old-fashioned for Sal's, kind of girly and wholesome. It almost looked like a prom dress, the kind they wore when I was in high school, and for a while I wondered whether she might have gotten lost on her way to a homecoming dance and had ducked into Sal's to wait for someone to come pick her up. She wore very un-promlike hi black boots with wicked heels, but maybe her good shoes were in her car. Or maybe she was a hooker who specialized in this homecoming queen look.
It all seemed very odd. She was alone at the bar with her coat draped over the stool, nursing what looked like a coke. People entered and walked by her without a glance, and she didn't seem very interested in them, so there went the hooker theory. She just sat there looking a little bit lost, but politely so. I couldn't figure her out—definitely younger than most of the crowd, with long curly black hair, and from what I could tell, a fantastic body. What really fascinated me was her look of wholesomeness. She almost glowed, like a rose in a briar patch. She intrigued me.
She had to be lost. She had to be someone whose car had broken down or had otherwise become stranded here and was huddling in Sal's awaiting rescue. It didn't seem like a good position for a girl like her to be in.
After a time, when it was just the two of us at the bar, I leaned toward her. "Excuse me? I don't mean to pry, but are you waiting for someone?"
Her look was polite and guileless and the innocence of her eyes surprised me. I was wearing a plain old sweater and jeans and must have looked pretty non-threatening compared to the rest of the crowd, and I'm older too, which sometimes has its advantages. She decided to trust me.
"Yes. Sort of. But he's awfully late, and I'm getting kind of worried. Maybe I should call a cab..."
"Oh? Is he a regular? Maybe he's someone I know. I'm here a lot 'cause I live just down the street. Does he live around here?"
"I don't really know where he lives," she said. "His name is Calvin but I don't know his last name. He says people call him Sir Calvin."
"Sir Calvin?" I asked. A lot of people here were Sir Someone or Lord Something or Mistress Whatever. "I don't think I know any Sir Calvins. What's he look like?"
She played with the straw in her drink and shrugged. "He had brown hair, around shoulder length? But he dyed it so he said now he's blond. And a beard, kind of like a goatee, but that's blond too now, with brown streaks. He said I'd recognize him from his brown leathers and his cowboy boots. He wears green cowboy boots, he said. He said everyone knows his boots."
I immediately knew who she was talking about: a loud and burly dom who liked leading his women around on a dog leash and making them kneel at his stool as he held court. The man was an asshole if I was any judge, one of those guys who confuses egomania with sexual dominance.
I didn't see any reason to tell her any of that, though.
"So you're meeting him for the first time?"
"Yes."
"Kind of a blind date?"
She shrugged. "I guess."
She turned those brown eyes on me. "I met him online. He's an online friend."
Down at the far end of the bar a man in vinyl chaps was leaning over and hooting in mock pain as a woman pretended to slap his exposed ass with a paddle. Friends stood around and laughed and offered advice.
I picked up my drink and moved over so I was one seat away from her. "Let me buy you a drink. You've been nursing that one for a long time, and I don't know if you really want to be sitting here alone. I'll keep you company till your guy gets here."
She sighed. "I don't think he's coming. He's like two hours late."
"No messages?"
"No. And he won't let me call him. He has a rule."
I nodded. I didn't know exactly what she was looking for down here dressed like that, but I was pretty sure it wasn't anything she was going to get from Sir Calvin and his dog leash.
I called Skip the bartender over and ordered refills. Skip was a flamboyant twink with an attitude, but we got on well enough. He poured me some Irish and made her a rum and coke and put the glasses down in front of us. I paid and slid him a five and signaled with my eyes to keep them coming.
I turned to her and put my hand out. "My name's Aiden."
"Becca." Her lipstick was fresh and shiny, and she had a gorgeous mouth, her lips full and a bit pouty and a beautiful contrast to the innocence of her eyes. All her makeup was perfect and flawless, which was something rare around here.
"Glad to meet you, Becca." I shook her hand, small and soft in mine. "Again, I don't know if this is any of my business, but did this guy tell you what kind of place this was you were going to be meeting him in?"
"He told me it was in a bad neighborhood, and that I should take a cab and not drive myself, but he said it was pretty safe once I got inside. He's supposed to drive me home. "
"Uh huh. But this...?" I nodded toward the spanking scene at the end of the bar, which by now had dissolved into general laughter.
She glanced over. "Oh, that? That doesn't bother me. I thought it would be something like this. That's why I wanted to come. I wanted to see what it was like."
