PART TWO OF A FIVE-PART SERIES
JAQUELINE
Friday's editorial board meeting starts off surprisingly smooth. I announce the new direction the magazine is going to take, and there is little reaction from the staff. They're all sitting around the conference room table with poker faces, worried that the slightest transgression will cause me to call Mason and have them summarily reamed-out on speaker phone. Their carefully calculated facial expressions remind me of that famous novel about communism where citizens could be arrested for committing facecrime--having a facial expression that the government deemed threatening or offensive. But could you blame them? They had every right to be afraid. Rumor had it Gwen Reese's lawyer made a feeble attempt to sue Mason for wrongful termination and verbal assault, but that Mason's team of attorneys were not only denying the claims, but were in the process of counter-suing for defamation, throwing an insanely large amount of litigation at Gwen Reese and her lawyer, Reginald Bixby, litigation that would take years of their lives and hundreds-of-thousands of their own dollars to fight in court.
Still, I enjoy the power I now wield in the board room. After I announce that Chantel is going online fulltime in January, I explain that the inaugural online-only issue is going to feature Paris Hightower on the cover, and that the theme of the issue is going to revolve around the little known but fully thriving underground Manhattan sex club scene. I explain that it's no secret that Paris Hightower is a big proponent of BDSM, and that it's Chantel's new mission to court Hightower, and to possibly get her to agree to appear on the cover in something controversial--perhaps a leather dominatrix outfit, or holding handcuffs or a flogger.
The staff reactions to my proposal are the same as before: carefully calculated poker faces. Gustav Ulrich, Chantel's photo editor, is the only one with the balls to express his reaction. He seems tickled by my proposal, as if he's amused or even aroused by it. I can see the way he looks at me as I talk about handcuffs and whips. I can sense his mind is picturing all kinds of things about me and Paris Hightower, some of them probably X-rated. And this isn't wishful thinking, or the result of an overactive imagination. Even now, as I'm talking about the need to contact Paris' agent, there's a look he's giving me, a look that says, I'm trying my hardest to be professional here, to keep my hormones in check, to view you as a professional and not as a sex toy I'd like to stick my dick in. I know that look. Stefan had it in his eye for 7 years.
Stefan.
Holy shit, that's it. That's why Gustav Ulrich seems so creepy: he reminds me of Stefan Vonnegut. It's his muscular build and shaved head, and the fact that he's around Stefan's age--close to 50. His bulky neck is just like Stefan's, too, and so are his forearms, although Gustav doesn't have any tattoos. He doesn't have any earrings, either. Not in his ears, or eyebrows, or I'm assuming, in the head of his penis.
Wow. His body, even his mannerisms, are Stefan. It's uncanny.
"So that's where things stand now," I tell my staff, some of them actually sitting at the table with their hands folded. I check my watch. "Unless anybody has any questions, that about wraps things up."
There are no questions.
The meeting ends, and everyone starts heading out for lunch. It's Friday, which means lunches will be a little longer, with maybe a martini thrown in the mix for good measure. I tell Gustav I'll meet with him later that afternoon, to finalize the photos for next week's print issue.
"Sure thing Jaqueline," he says, and goes down the hall into the elevator.
I go back to my corner office overlooking Times Square, oddly bummed-out. It's not that I'm alone on Friday afternoon, eating my homemade chicken Caesar salad and diet iced tea by myself, or that everybody in the entire building hates me. It's the fact that my relationship with Stefan is back on my mind, a period of my life I've been spending the past six-and-a-half years desperately trying to forget. It's over, I say to myself, he's gone and you're finally free. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Look around you, for Christ's sake. You're eating lunch in the Applegarth Media Building in a corner office with a breathtaking view of Midtown Manhattan! And you're the editor in chief of Chantel magazine, of all things! Stop worrying and be happy! It's time to forget the past! Stefan is gone, and can't hurt you anymore!
I can't forget though, that's the thing. When you've spent seven long years being controlled by someone, it's hard to just let that go. Especially when that person takes you in at the impressionable age of 19, and systematically molds you into a professional dominatrix by day, and makes you his personal BDSM slave by night. That's a crazy way to live, let me just tell you.
I remember the first day Stefan came into my life. He said he was going to make me a fashion model, of all things. No fucking shit. I was standing in a line outside Take Two Productions, a small-time Manhattan talent agency on W 23rd St., when Stefan pulled up in a shiny black convertible wearing an expensive suit and designer sunglasses. I figured he was someone important, because a bunch of the girls waiting in the line started making a fuss, going up to his car and talking with him. He didn't seem impressed with them, though; he had his eye on me.
Finally, I went over to his car, and asked him who he was.
"I'm Stefan Vonnegut," he told me. "A talent scout here in New York." He handed me his card and told me to call him, that he specialized in grooming young fashion models into international superstars. My first reaction was that he was full of shit. He looked like he was full of shit. I mean, what kind of businessman has piercings all over his face, and tattoos all over his body? Sure, he was vaguely handsome in an action hero sort of way, but I didn't believe a word that came out of his mouth. I was a freshman at Northern Manhattan University at the time, majoring in journalism, and was definitely not your typical young female idiot. The only reason I was in line at that talent agency to begin with was because I was looking for a part time job to help supplement my student loans, and figured modeling was easy and paid decent money. Plus, like most girls, it had been a childhood dream of mine for as long as I could remember.
I kept the card but never called the number. Not for almost a year. Then, during my sophomore year at Northern Manhattan, my entire world fell apart. In October, my mom passed away from cervical cancer, and six weeks after that, during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, my dad dropped dead of a stroke in the stands of a pro football game. It totally blindsided me, and knocked me through a loop. After the fall semester I withdrew from school, unable to keep my student loans without a cosigner. Both my older brothers were out of the house and in the military, one stationed in California, the other in North Carolina. I had no money, no job, and not really much family; I stayed at the houses of a few relatives on and off, but nothing permanent.
Then I found that card with Stefan's number on it. I was totally miserable and depressed, and thought, Screw it, Jaqueline, you have absolutely nothing to lose. So I gave the number a call. And the crazy thing was, things started to get better almost immediately. The very next day, Stefan called me back and said he was hiring me as a "utility girl," which meant I was going to be a jack-of-all-trades kind of model.
"We'll sign a contract later," he said, and started paying me enough money that I could move out of my aunt's house and get my own apartment in Bay Ridge. At first I didn't do anything at all, not any modeling, nothing. Stefan told me to just wait and be patient, that the modeling gigs would start to come.
They didn't come. Stefan, however, did. He started coming over to my apartment and hanging out with me. I welcomed his company, because I'd lost touch with most of my friends from school. And back then, Stefan was leaner, in better shape; I'll admit I had a small crush on him. He'd bring over wine and Chinese takeout, and we'd eat dinner, drink, and then end up having sex. I enjoyed fucking Stefan for that first year, and thought for a while that I might even be in love with him. He was older, mysterious, and got rough with me in a way that turned me on. And interestingly, I could manipulate him. I could get him to give me money and buy me things.
Eventually, I started going to BDSM clubs with him. Shitty ones at first, then higher class establishments, like Constantine's. I not only loved the lifestyle right off, but I was good at it. So good, in fact, that I became a professional dominatrix, with Stefan as my manager. We were great partners in the beginning--splitting everything 50-50, with Stefan handling the business end, and me entertaining the clients. We slowly built up a very profitable business that was in high demand. At one point I was charging married, 50-something businessmen a gratuity of over $750 an hour. In August of 2006, when I was 22, I was able to reenroll in Northern Manhattan University and continue working on my journalism degree.
This is when things started to change with Stefan, however. He started getting jealous of all the attention I was getting from other men, and over the fact that I was back in college and didn't need to depend on him as much anymore. This wasn't totally true, however; he was still my sugar-daddy, paying for all the playroom rentals at Constantine's, and even a chunk of my tuition at Northern Manhattan--which was being covered without any students loans. I'm not sure where he got his money, but I'm pretty certain it was from some kind of illegal activity, either drugs, prostitution, or some combination of the two.
To be honest, I didn't know and didn't care to ask. We coexisted for much of our relationship, and gave each other lots of space. Still, about four years in, when I was back in school, Stefan started acting funny. Our sex got rougher, more perverse. He started abusing me physically, slapping me across the face, punching me in the kidneys, and even choking me. He left bruises on my skin that my BDSM clients and college professors started asking about. And this was totally separate from our roleplaying sessions at Constantine's. This was just regular life with him, which was becoming more miserable by the day. And when he did take me into the dungeon for a play session, I have to be honest, I was scared shitless. I never knew what exactly was going to happen, if I were going to end up in the hospital, or even the morgue.
The last straw, though, was when he told me he had decided to start selling me.
"I have a new job for you," he said one day when I had come home from class during my final semester as an undergraduate at Northern Manhattan. He was sitting on my living room couch, drinking vodka straight from the bottle. "I owe some friends some money. A lot of money, actually. And you're going to help me pay them back."
"Oh yeah? And how am I going to do that?"
"I'm going to sell you to them," he told me, taking a swig of vodka. "You're a pro dominatrix, now you're going to be a pro submissive."
"I'm nobody's slave but yours, Stefan. You know that. I'm not going to start renting out my body to your friends."
He shook his head. "Oh yes, babe. You are. I have debts to pay. I'm going to start selling you."
"Selling me?"
"Yes. Did I fucking stutter?"
