Swallowtail is a novel that traces the narrator's gradual acceptance of submission.
Previously: The narrator has given Dex blanket consent and is prepared to explore what submission to her might mean. As the narrator becomes more comfortable with submission, his dom continues to test his limits.
***
There are days, perhaps weeks at a time, when Dex and I live and love as other couples do and the floggers, whips, cuffs, and other devices remain tucked away in a large steamer trunk at the foot of my bed. Though they remain largely unseen save for the crop that leans against the wall by my bed, I cannot forget them. That they exist adds a certain potential to our relationship. Whenever I become too comfortable or Dex feels the need to reassert herself or it's simply time to play, she dons the mantle of a dom and I willingly submit to her. Then there is great pleasure or great pain and often both. Rather than being unsettling, this oscillation in our relationship is the forge that gives it strength. Comfort, I've come to realize, breeds laziness.
We're lying in bed on Sunday morning. The chastity device that she often makes me wear lies between our pillows. An hour earlier I chafed in its tight and implacable embrace; now I'm in no condition to protest should it be returned. Dex fingers the piercing that she inflicted on me so many months ago—a small bar that hugs the underside of my cock, just behind the glans. It feels like an age since I got it. I think back on my jaded innocence when I entered the tattoo studio that day. Things have changed.
"Can you be obedient?" she asks. "Do whatever is commanded, no questions asked?"
Dex has her head on my chest. Her hand becomes still on my cock, so I'm not sure to whom her question is addressed.
We've had this discussion before and I'm instantly alert. Whenever Dex probes my limits in this way, I know she's up to something. She knows that she has my consent and trust but occasionally needs me to articulate it. I'm grateful for it but I make a show of doubt, because that's part of the dance too. "I don't know," I say. "Depends what you ask of me."
Dex shakes her head. "Do you trust me not to ask something of you that crosses the line?"
"Do you know where all of my lines are?" I counter.
"I have a good idea. We've come up against several already."
It's true. I've been induced to do things that I couldn't have even imagined months ago. With few exceptions, Dex has anticipated my limits well. The whole question of lines and limits is a bit delusive anyway. Every line crossed with no negative consequences establishes the new normal and draws a new line in the distance. Lines are simultaneously limits and objectives.
"Do you trust me enough?" she asks again.
"I do, but on the off chance that I can't comply, what then?"
She reminds me of my safeword and signal, in case I can't talk at the moment.
I give in. "Why are you bringing this up now? What do you have in mind?"
"There's a party this weekend. I'd like you to come."
"What kind of party?"
Dex is stroking my cock again, playing her fingernails along its length. It's distracting. "Some friends of mine. People that share the same lifestyle that we do."
I used to think of it as dabbling in kinkiness. Now it's a lifestyle. As I said, things have changed.
***
Dex tells me that a dom she knows is having a coming out party for a new sub. It's an opportunity, she explains, for a dominant to present his submissive. For the latter, it's a public statement of submission. I shake my head. I don't understand why anyone would need to make a public statement like this. Dex tells me to think of it as a wedding reception, only in this case there's a different dynamic at play. I ask her whether there's some kind of wedding register I should know about. Maybe they need a new St Andrew's cross or something. Dex scowls at me and I shut up.
She explains that it probably won't be the kind of BDSM orgy that she knows I've explored on the internet. She says that her friends are my type of people—whatever that means—and that they have strict rules and none of them are particularly into depravity or humiliation. I voice some reservations. Humiliation is in the eye of the beholder, I say. Dex says it's in the eye of the sub. If the sub sees no humiliation, then there is none. If the beholder has a problem with it, the beholder can look away.
Even then, when I imagine this coming out party and all that it might entail, I can't help but to feel for the sub, for the treatment that she might be forced to endure. I realize that I've applied my own insecurities to this sub I don't yet know but for whom I feel some kinship. We're members of the same strange and complex club. I'm not sure what to expect and tell Dex as much. She tells me that she really doesn't know what to expect either. It might be a few drinks and idle talk or it might be more than that. It depends on the dom and the sub and what they've negotiated between themselves and what they feel comfortable with.
It's a coming out party of sorts for me too and I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with that either. For the last year it's been just me and Dex on our private little island of lasciviousness, exploring the possibilities of dominance and submission. Off that little island I'm just one of the guys—ogling pretty girls, forcing laughter at blond jokes, commiserating with my peers that women just don't know what they want. It's still hard to reconcile that version of me with the version that lets himself be trussed up and flogged and compelled to wear a chastity device and do all of these things gladly. And even if I am among strangers who, as Dex says, share the lifestyle, it's still a public affirmation of a private arrangement.
I try to explain this to Dex and she flashes me a look of understanding and concern. I sense that there's something else too. I've been so focused on my own insecurities that I haven't, until now, seen that Dex genuinely wants to go to this thing. It's important to her. She wants to introduce me to her friends. She wants to come out, with me.
"But you'll do it for me, right?"
I sigh. "I'll do it for you."
"Thank you."
"Does this kind of thing happen often? Coming-out parties?" I ask a while later.
Dex shakes her head. "Depends on the dominant. Some are exceedingly private, others are into exposure and the aesthetics of submission. Some like sharing or being shared." Dex smiles. "I'm one of the private ones, in case you were wondering," she adds, anticipating my unspoken concern.
***
We enter one of the swanky condos that line the waterfront like a concrete and glass curtain that shields those with less affluence from a view of the lake. The lobby is a temple to conspicuous wealth. It is a cavernous space of marble and stone and fireplaces that are more for show than warmth. The concierge glances up. There's a look of recognition that Dex ignores.
"Quite the place," I say.
"It's okay. I like yours better."
We enter the elevator. Dex presses 37. She stares at the number for a moment, mutters a curse, and then presses 35. The doors close.
When we arrive on the 35th floor, Dex makes no move to exit the elevator.
"What's going on?"
The doors close again and we move up two floors.
She hesitates when the doors open and shoots her hand between them as they begin to close again. She steps out and I follow.
"Dex?"
She closes her eyes for a moment. "This is where I live," she says.
I'm confused. "There's no party?"
"There is. Two floors down." Dex lowers her head. "This floor is where I live. Force of habit, pressing the number." She shakes her head, seemingly bemused.
I follow Dex to a door at the end of the hall. She unlocks it and invites me inside.
"Welcome to my home."
"You live here?"
Dex nods and turns on the lights.
The entire place is starkly white with some pieces of black furniture. It's impossible to tell whether it's an attempt at trendiness or an inability to decorate beyond the monochrome. I pass the kitchen on the way to the living room. An envelope on the counter catches my attention. I glance at Dex who is standing, arms crossed, by the front door. I pick up the envelope. It's addressed to Dorothy Xavier.
I remember the small boat at the cottage then. Dorothy Elizabeth. Dorothy Elizabeth Xavier.
Dex.
"I'll still call you Dex, okay?"
She nods.
The living room features a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooks Lake Ontario. The view is breathtaking and beyond the reach of most.
I enter the master bedroom, which like the rest of the place is neat and black and white. A pair of paintings hangs over the king size bed. I recognize them. They're from the show where I first met Dex.
I back out of the bedroom and glance into a second one, smaller, and done up as an office. There is a laptop on a desk and binders. There are graphs tacked to a board behind the desk. I take a closer look. They show stock prices of various companies, with lines and acronyms that I don't understand.
Dex has approached silently. I'm jolted when she speaks. "My dad left me more than the cottage. I invested well. That's what I do—investing."
"Not piercing?"
Dex laughs tentatively. "It's my hobby." She hesitates. "I own that too."
"What?"
"The studio."
I don't know what to say.
"I'm a silent partner," she says.
"Okay."
We return to the living room and look out onto the lake. "Why didn't you tell me?"
It dawns on me that I am here, finally, in Dex's inner sanctum. A place that she has guarded from me for almost a year. A place that should reveal her essence to me but does not. Or maybe it does. It looks like a show home, like a real estate agent could, at any moment, bring prospective buyers in. Nothing is out of place. All of it is spotlessly clean. What it doesn't do is reveal her personality to me, unless that personality is one of furious anal retentiveness. I compare this place to mine, where Dex has over a period of months slowly imprinted herself and the two are as dissimilar as they could possibly be. To my place, Dex has brought flowers. She has brought artwork that both of us have admired at one time or another. I see more of her at my place on the escarpment, overlooking the town, than I do here. I have no idea what it means.
"At first I figured it was none of your business. I treasure my privacy. Later it didn't seem to matter. You didn't ask and I didn't tell. Then it felt like it was too late." Her fingers brush my hand. "Do you understand?"
Lights blink on an island and I can see a freighter further out, bound for Hamilton or one of the states on the other side of the lake. "No," I say. "Not really."
I'm not angry with Dex for having so closely guarded her privacy. I can understand it. What I am, though, is disgusted with my own lack of curiosity about Dex and how long I've allowed myself to wallow in the treacle of ignorance, content to spend almost a year of my life with someone I know next to nothing about.
"What's wrong?" she asks.
I tell her.
"Ask away," she says.
"What's your birthday?"
