I met James through CollarMe.com. He was getting back out there after having lost his long-term submissive to cancer, I was getting back out there after getting sober & losing a hundred pounds. We traded e-mails until I decided he wasn't likely to rob and/or rape me, and then I agreed to meet him at a family-style restaurant. Well, he was a perfect gentleman. Originally from the West Coast, but he'd been living here in New York for ten years. He'd never been with an Italian-American before, his deceased submissive having been Native American...he said he'd been with her for over ten years. He was Jewish, of French descent. I'd known Jews before, of course, having lived my whole life here, but never really met a man of French descent before, unless you count French-Canadian, which I don't. But whatever, he had beautiful old-world manners, ordering for me at the restaurant without having to be told to do so. He talked of his childhood in Arizona, his family, his late partner. For my part, I spoke honestly about why I was not drinking wine at dinner, why I would never drink wine at dinner again in my life (sobriety, it means never being able to drink wine, or anything else for that matter, ever again) and he didn't scream and run the other way about that. He asked me why, why I had been an alcoholic, so I took a deep breath and I told him the whole story...the beatings my mother gave me, how my grandfather had raped me, how fucked up I really am.
When I finished telling, I looked across the table and was surprised to see him still there. I asked him to say something. He told me he didn't know what to say. That was fair enough. He was still there and that was good enough for me. That meeting ended in an open-mouth kiss and a promise to see each other again. And see each other again we did. We met for a stroll in Central Park, during which we alternately made out like teenagers and discussed our kinks. I have Little tendencies, he enjoyed being Daddy. I liked a spanking (flogging, whipping, caning), he loved to wield floggers, crops, whips, and canes. I don't like scat, underage children, knife play, gun play, or fire play, and he didn't either. He wanted to give me golden showers, and I was OK with that. He was into suspension bondage, which I'd never tried.
"It's ok," he said, "I'll e-mail you some pictures later so you have an idea what I mean."
After that "date" I got an e-mail with a picture attached. A picture of a woman in fierce red boots suspended high above the floor in sort of a doubled-over position, her legs spread wide. "Oh hell no," I told my laptop, upon seeing that. If James were to suspend me like that and whatever he suspends me FROM were to, uh, NOT HOLD MY WEIGHT, it'd be a long way down. And, I guessed, there'd be no walking away from it like it hadn't happened. No, most likely there'd be a resultant trip to an emergency room and people asking questions about what in the hell happened. And I never did like to answer those kind of questions. So I e-mailed him back, telling him I wasn't up for his suspension challenge.
He sent another e-mail. The position depicted in that photo was not for amateurs, I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to. He attached another picture, this one of a woman hogtied with leather restraints, suspended from the ceiling by a leash, her body horizontal, and she was mere inches from the floor. That position, he claimed, was more one to start with. He asked that I THINK ABOUT it. I agreed, as it never hurts to think.
He invited me to his home, out in Elmhurst Queens. He lived near the Belmont race track (where the Belmont Stakes take place every year, for those of you who watch the races). I don't drive, and Elmhurst is a fucking trek by subway, so I hired a town car and went out there in style. Being the gentleman he is, he gave me the grand tour. The kitchen, which was done in "country French" decor...not my taste, but then again, it wasn't my house. The dining room was done in brown and gold, visually gorgeous. The living room was white walls with black leather couches and a giant flat screen TV, very much a man's living room. The half-bath on the first floor was more of that "country French". Upstairs, the guest bedroom had been turned into a home office, very businesslike and boring. The master bedroom was decadent as all hell...all four walls were blood red, the ceiling was mirrored. "Who are you, the Marquis de Sade?" I asked him. "I mean, I read about Christian Grey's red room of pain, but this takes the cake."
"I love the color red," he said, grinning. "And I have one more room to show you," he said, "downstairs."
By "downstairs" he meant the basement. He took my hand and led me all the way down.
"Very subterranean gothic," I said, as we descended the concrete staircase.
"The house's original owners used it as a fallout shelter," he said, "y'know, in the '50s when people still thought the Russians were gonna drop the big one on us. It's scream-proof......err, I mean soundproof, bombproof, pretty much everything proof."
"Do you expect the Russians to drop the big one on us?" I asked, laughing.
"Fuck no," he said, "but you gotta admit a soundproof basement with no windows makes for the ultimate playroom." He flicked on a light switch and the overheads came on, illuminating his toy collection. A row of canes, crops, and floggers were neatly hung like pool cues along one wall. An array of silver butt plugs gleamed on a table.
