I'd gone to Paddles, a bondage club in New York City, originally for no other reason then to try and remove the dreams I'd been having as of late. I'm not sure exactly what started the dreams but some erotic literature I had received at my apartment had definitely brought them to the forefront of my mind. The dream was a recurring one and, nightly, at least it seemed that way, intensified.
At first the dreams was vague, unfocused and generally disorienting. I would awaken in the morning feeling less refreshed then before I went to bed. I could sense myself as a victim of some other person, but not see the person nor sense what they did to me.
Gradually, and agonizingly slowly, the dream came in to focus. I'd seen what I was bound to after about a week of nearly sleepless nights. Three days after that my captor, for lack of a better word, came into focus. After nearly two weeks I could not only clearly see the dream but remember it with absolute clarity.
Now, all of this took place when I was in college, so let me give you a little background on me at that time. I wasn't much different in college then I am now, at least physically, I am only slightly heavier than I was back then. Of course back then I was also running 10 miles a day, riding my bike everywhere even to Weight Watchers 12 miles in 1 direction, rowing every day of the week except Sunday and working out 7 days a week.
I am not a small guy, never was. I am 6' tall and, in college, was 175 pounds with washboard abs that came from doing 150 to 200 inverted, read that as hanging upside down, sit-ups a day. I also did military style pushups with a clap between each one and one-handed pushups that I alternated hands every time.
All of this working out gave me a body, not to mention an attitude, that fairly screamed, "Don't fuck with me!" Hell, I was even a bouncer for exotic dancers and went to with them to various clubs. Noone messed with them with me around.
So, what was a guy like me doing having erotic dreams of being restrained and whipped by anybody? In my dream I was restrained facing what I would later know to be called a St. Andrew's cross with a leather clad woman whipping my naked body. This dream was so real that I moved in my sleep when the whip landed on my skin in my dream. It seemed that it was not a dream, but reality to me at the time. Do dreams all you to smell the sweat on your skin, to feel your perspiration dripping off of you and hear it hit the concrete floor—a floor that felt ice cold under your feet? Do they allow you to hear the woman in the dream whisper into your ear as she squeezes your balls tightly unto the point of severe pain? Can you smell a woman's most private perfume waft into your nostrils? Do you flare your nostrils to get a better whiff of a scent in a dream?
Somehow all of this happened in a dream. A dream that had been haunting me for a while. What was I to do? Ignore it? See a psychologist? Or maybe a dominatrix? Commit myself to the insane asylum down the road? Drink it away? Maybe dope it away? I did have a friend who sold marijuana after all.
It took many weeks of me thinking about what to do to make a decision and it probably would have been much longer if the Fates had not chosen to intervene. You see, I lived above my landlord and landlady. He was a crotchety old fuck who somehow managed to marry himself an angel of grace fallen from heaven. Both were in their seventies and generally left me alone—except to bring me my mail from a shared mailbox.
I'd asked them to simply dispose of all the X-rated stuff I neither wanted nor desired to read. On this day though the old bastard brought me one that, I figured, he didn't want to read himself.
As it turned out it was a bondage fetish magazine. Not only did it contain stories and ads for clothing, of an exotic nature, and toys but it also contained ads of both a personal nature and for clubs for those who lived this lifestyle. Paddles is the ad that caught my eye.
To this day I am not sure what about that ad drew me to it but it was as if it had some enchantment on it and I could not resist. So, on one particular third Saturday of the month, I found myself down at this club not knowing what to expect of anyone there, myself included. The particular day of the month I went down was reserved for their monthly slave auction—fake money, real consequences. Third Saturday every month a local Mistress or Master would bring those slaves on stage to be auctioned, show them off, show how they responded to commands and offer them up for bids.