Gnome hailed a cab going uptown, wiping his nose at the same time with his latest eviction notice.
As the Gnome got in, he noticed the driver staring at him speculatively in the mirror. Gnome took little notice of this, his mind on his latest graphic novel.
Suddenly, the cabbie spoke up in a somewhat grotesque southern accent.
"Hey, you know a guy called Magnus?"
"Mmh? Magnus?" Gnome shook his fat head, and bent to look at the driver.
"I know you, you're called the Gnome"
Ah yes. Mother scrawled that on my birth certificate before nose-diving off the Central West End Obstetrics roof onto the traffic congested area where Skimpole Avenue met Buttermilk Boulevard...Was it my oddly shaped head that made her-
Reverie interrupted. "You, um go to a group called the Tawse Society? I know you do."
Gnome shifted in the back seat.
Ah yes, the Tawse group.
The Gnome had gone to a few meetings of this BDSM group that was advertised in a local free weekly. When he'd realized the attendees were your basic normal types, or even a little geekier than normal...
Kind of like a bad Sci-Fi convention?
Gnome had been grossly disappointed. he'd hoped it would be more of the grist of his masturbatory mill, tall, mocking high chested beauties stalking around on high heel, but it wasn't.
They had "Win A Paddle" raffles and that kind of thing. Ugh.
The few vaguely attractive people at Tawse were quite cliquish, and had their own "only hottie" parties. So it was like high school...que sera sera.
Why couldn't it have been like it would've on a TV show? Everyone gorgeous, except Gnome.
Fascinating, of course that even the most grotesque gatherings, pervert groups, 12 Step programs, even grief counseling, always had the "cool table" people. Oh well.
Gnome had been court-ordered to a lot of weird shit, and it was always this way, but the Tawse Society was even stranger.
The women who looked as if they'd be vaguely dominant, the ones who headed up "Ageplay" committees and that kind of thing were often submissives.
Gnome was beginning to realize, just before he quit Tawse, that there were men who got off on submitting to women...
And women who got off on submitting to women, women who got off on submitting to men and women who liked dominating women...
And men who liked dominating women...but there were few women who were sexually enthralled by dominating men.
It almost seemed as if the few women who were "dominant" were so homely that the only reason they did it was to entrap a submissive husband, or any man at all.
So Gnome had given up the Tawse Society, preferring to onanise at home.
But this driver, an ex-Tawse, apparently couldn't shut up about it. He looked like John-Boy Walton after a nuclear explosion.
Since Gnome actually didn't have the fare for the ride anyway, he thought he might as well be magnanimous.
"Ah, yes. I'm the Gnome. I've seen you at the Tawse Society, good to see you again, old bean."
Gnome had actually seen the guy once at one of the uh, expos. Big demonstration with selling leather crap. He'd seen this cabbie, he realized...
The John-Boy had put his wrists and neck into a colonial stock and the sales person had locked it, and then forgotten about John-Boy Walton and wandered off to talk to some leather clad waitresses.
"Y'all don't go to the Tawse anymore, uh, Gnome?"
"No. It's-it wasn't much fun really I think I had one interesting back and forth with a girl who dressed like Wednesday Addams, but it's not my thing."
The driver was full of mea culpas.
"Yeah, they mostly ignored me there too. Especially that Magnus guy. He's a big shot there, you know."
"Oh, Magnus, the military guy. Kind of chunky. Yes, I've noticed he gets his ass kissed a lot. At one of the parties, some chick asked him to run a knife over her nipples."
The driver sighed. "Right. Don't no one want to hang out afterwards with me, especially Magnus. I called him an asshole, real loud in the parking lot, but he didn't hear me."