5. Jonathan.
A day later, on another rainy evening, I found myself sitting in a coffee shop on the East Side. The place was empty but I'd been told that Jonathan would be there at 7pm so I sat with a decaf at 6:50 in preparation. On time, the door opened and a tall man in shorts walked in. Immediately, a serious looking woman with a stained apron bearing the coffee shop logo, closed the shop and the blinds were pulled down. She disappeared down a corridor behind a counter and I heard a door close.
The cafe was badly in need of better lighting. It felt yellow and old.
Jonathan came to my table and sat down. I guessed his age to be in his forties. His shirt, shorts and shoes and the way he held himself, suggested wealth.
"You survived the flogging I see."
"Oh...oh yeah you were part of...it didn't hurt like I thought it would."
"What were you expecting?"
"Well, for it to hurt. That whip looked lethal."
"Oh, didn't you notice?"
"Notice what?"
"About the whip." He said raising his eyebrows.
"Eh?" I replied, puzzled.
"The whip. Didn't you notice it didn't move?"
"What are you talking about? It was moving when it hit my back, I've got sting marks everywhere."
He laughed. "The video must have been engrossing. So you never noticed that the whip never left the post?"
My mind went back to the post. I'd seen the whip hanging on the rail. A coiled snake hanging, menacing, waiting to strike with stinging venom. Then I remembered. It had never moved. When the video feed faded, it was still hanging on it's hook.
"Oh, fuck."
"They do things like that." Jonathan winked. "Scare the shit out of you."
"I hadn't even registered..."
"Too many other stimulations eh?" He grinned.
"Yeah."
My mind was a mix of the events of the evening. The tension of knowing what was about to happen. The vision, smell and sounds of the scene. It had all been intoxicating, so much that...
"I'm Jonathan." He said finally, jolting me out of my search for the whip.
"Oh, er....Peter..." I was about to extend my hand when Jonathan cut me off.
"Actually, to me you're slave P and, if you know me to be a master of The Code you should be on your knees." He laughed. "But let's not worry about that eh?"
"Oh, er sorry. Er."
"Let's just talk and I'll fill you in on what's missing if I can. C and C get a bit muddled when they try to explain things, especially with someone new."
It was my turn to laugh. "Are they always this contrary?"
"Ha ha, yeah." He smiled easilly. "Have they been making your head spin? They did to me."
"Yeah, it's like, one minute they are super friendly and next they snap at you."
"Yeah, they do find the owner/slave routine a bit hard to handle. Most of the others are much better. C and C are sort of old fashioned but deep down, they're great.
The take The Code very seriously so at least you have good owners."
"We've talked a bit about The Code but, it seems to me, from the way it's been explained, to be a sort of sex fetish club."
"Ah yeah. They got that bit wrong again. The Code is a lot more than a bunch of swingers with a few slaves thrown into the mix."
"Christopher said it was more of a fraternity."
"Yeah, that's not a bad name for it but...look, there's a reason it's called The Code for starters."
"Yeah, I'd been wondering about that."
"There's a bigger thing going on than just the sex and stuff. Nice though it is, there's this idea that we all are trying to work together on."
I was intrigued.
"The people in The Code are all intimate. "
"All of them?"
"Not necessarily sexually, but they're sworn to share their intimacies with each other so... Let's say I have a problem with some fetish or with some feelings I have about what I'm interested in. I can talk about it with absolutely any Code member and it will be respected. Intimacy, feelings. All those sort of quote, deep and meaningful, unquote topics that we always skirt around. That's what's important to us."
"So, it's a therapy group?" I laughed.
"Yeah, sort of but there's more."
"I'm all ears." I said frowning.
"We have this thing about judgementalism."
I cocked my eye at him.