Two days later, while I was on breakfast duty and just cleaning up, Mitch called me to the office. "There's a call for you," he told me. "He introduced himself as your father. Come to the office with me. You can take it there."
Astonished, I followed him. A phone call from my father was the last thing I expected. In the office, he pointed at the phone on his desk and left the room. I paused briefly to focus, and then picked up the handset.
"Hello, Dad?" I asked. "They told me you were calling."
"Yes, I'm still your father, and I still care about you. I want to start by apologizing for what I said about university and tuition at dinner, a few weeks ago. I was wrong, and I'm proud of you for standing up to me. I had a talk with your Mom, and she set me straight. You're a man now. You make your own choices. She and I will help you any way we can. You have only to ask."
Tears came to my eyes. "Thanks, Dad," I managed to answer him. "It's really great of you to apologize like that, even if Mom talked you into it. It sets things straight between us, and I'm happy about that."
"But I have to tell you, l like what I've gotten into here, and a year in this program before I start university won't hurt at all. So I don't need tuition money yet, and should be able to earn it myself. If I can, I won't need to ask you for money."
"That's fine," he said. "I know what you're into, and won't try to talk you out of it. Of course, I know what your mother did for a living before I married her. I was one of her customers. So if BDSM turns you on, it runs in the family. Find your own path in it, and follow it with my blessing. If you do need money, or any other help, just ask."
"With that out of the way, your Mom and I would like to have you over for dinner one evening soon. But before we do that, I'd like to take you to lunch - just the two of us." A man-to-man chat about the BDSM Scene, your training and your Mom and me, might help all three of us to drop the masks and be honest with each other."
"I'll confess up front that your Mom suggested this, but I think she's right as usual. I promise to answer your questions about she and I - our history as a couple, and my experience in the Scene. In return, I'd like to hear about your training, and anything you're comfortable telling me about your feelings in it. You're entitled to your privacy there, but we have something in common in that area, and I'd like to hear as much you're willing to share, offering you the same frankness. I'd even like to hear about your interest in history, if you're willing to talk about it."
"I'll be glad to lunch and talk with you, Dad, but may I ask where this is coming from? Frankly, this is striking me as a big change in your attitude, and not at all what I expected."
"I've already told you that it's your mother's doing. I might have come round myself, eventually, but it would have taken longer and been a whole lot more painful for all of us. I don't have to tell you that your Mom is an amazing woman. By now, you know that as well as I do. If the Guild trains you to be half as wise as she is, you won't have wasted your time."
"She just explained to me that regardless of age, and what the law says, you're an adult now and that all parents have this choice with their adult kids. I can recognize you as an adult and try to make friends with the man that you're becoming, or go on treating you as a kid and be shut out as a stranger. In so many words, she told me, 'If he shuts you out now, you have only yourself to blame.' She was right. If you didn't want to have anything to do with me after my response the other night, you'd be fully justified. I can only admit that I was wrong, say that I love and am proud of my son, and try to be his friend."
"OK Dad. The apology is accepted, and I appreciate your frankness about Mom's influence. As you say, she's an amazing woman. Let's have that lunch and chat, and see how it goes."
"It's going to take some arranging though, as I'll need to get permission to go out. I'm supposed to get one day off every week, but I don't yet know when that will be as I'm still waiting to be assigned to a training group and get a class schedule. I'll talk to Mitch, the man who answered the phone, and call you back at work. Is that all right?"
"Sure. I'll tell my secretary to put your call through no matter what. Do you have my number here?"
As I had it at home but not with me, I asked him to give it to me again and, grabbing a pen and notepad on Mitch's desk, I wrote it down. Promising to call back as soon as I could, we said our goodbyes and hung up. Then I went to find Mitch who was waiting just outside his office.
"How did that go?" he asked me. "Mistress told me once that you were having some trouble with your father, and that this was part of the reason why you were with us. But that's all I know."
"I'm not sure what I can tell you without indiscretion," I answered. "I don't want to get the cane again."
He laughed. "Tell me what you want to, and what you believe your father wouldn't mind. I won't rat you out to Mistress, and your bum is safe from me. On this occasion, anyway."
He led me back into his office, and I told him the whole story: My father's response to my plan to do a history major, his remark that I'd better become a geisho like my mother, and what followed. Then I told him about the phone call, his apology, and the invitation to lunch - without mentioning what Dad had in mind to talk about. Mitch listened carefully and said, "He sounds like a good man, and it seems important that you make it up with him. Since you don't have school yet, just chores, play and studying with us, you can go any time. Call him back and make arrangements; then let me know what you are doing. I'll square it with Mistress Lotte. She won't have a problem."
"Will she think I might be dropping out of training?" I asked him. "Because I can promise you that won't happen. I'm impressed that he's big enough to apologize, and pleased that he's now willing to pay my university tuition, but I want to be independent now, and I'm committed to the program here. I intend to stick it out and graduate no matter what, then decide what I'm doing after that. I'm happy to make it up with my Dad, but that isn't going to make a difference for you."
"Fine," Mitch replied, but that doesn't matter. Mistress and I like you and hope you'll stay with us. We both think you can make a fine geisho if you want to. But you need to do what's best for you; and if you're going to drop out, it's better that you do it sooner than later, so we don't waste time training you when we could be working with someone else. Mistress would say the same. So don't worry about us or the program. Just have lunch with your father, hear him out, make your peace with him and do as you please. Before school starts, for something this important, you can take time off from us whenever you want."
With that reassurance, I went to the lounge, phoned my father back, and made plans with him to meet for lunch the next day, as I didn't want to seem too eager, and wanted a day to think it over. Then I phoned my mother and told her about his call and his apology, thanking her for putting him up to it. "It wasn't difficult," she told me. "He loves you and was already regretting what he had done. He's disappointed that you aren't going to follow him into the business world; he was hoping that you'd come to work in his firm and take it over some day. But he accepts that you're entitled to make your own life."
She asked if I could come to the house for dinner after my talk with him, and I said I would. She said she loved me, and that we'd talk tomorrow evening. Then I went back to the office and told Mitch that I'd be taking the afternoon and evening off next day to settle my family affairs. I would be home that night. He said that was fine and that he would tell Mistress - then told me to get on with my day. I thanked him and went back to clearing away breakfast and cleaning the kitchen and dining room and leaving them prepped for lunch - which people would then take for themselves. Then, my chores over for the day. I went back to my room to study. But I had a lot to think about, and closed the screen when I found myself reading the same paragraph three times without understanding a thing.
In effect, what I recognized was that I was coming to understand my parents, their relationship and our family in a new and disturbing way. We do not like to think of our parents as sexual beings. Doing so, reminds us of the contingency - the accidental nature - of our own existence. I had already come to see the close resemblance in manner and attitude between my mother and Mistress Charlotte. After that phone conversation this morning, I could not help but see the kinship between my father and myself. He'd said, "Of course, I knew what your mother did for a living before I married her. I was one of her customers." That put their marriage in a transactional, D/s context: Originally, when they were just coming together, did he use her as a submissive escort - to put him on a pedestal in front of others and give him blow jobs for stress relief? Or did he come to her as his Dominatrix, on his knees, for stress relief - to be whipped and humbled and relieved of the burden of command that came with running a large and successful business? By now, I knew it was probably a little of both - and something altogether different from either, resembling the kind of D/s partnership that Lisa hoped for in the future. The kind of D/s partnership she proposed to try with me!
"So if BDSM turns you on, it runs in the family." That remark managed to be reassuring and scary at the same time. It was reassuring because it removed a barrier between us. I needed no 'closet' to protect myself from him. I could just 'be myself' without putting myself at a disadvantage - without giving away secrets that might make him think less of me. There need be no secrets, because his were the same as mine - or had been when he was my age.
But the remark also worked to undermine my freedom, my individuality. I only was what I had to be, what he had been before me. Less than completely my own man, I was the product, the partial copy, of one who had been here before me - an apple near the tree it had fallen from. This seemed to be an important truth, but nothing followed from it. I could only go on being what I was - what I had been all along. Within certain limits, I could turn my head, or my whole body, but I could only go where my own nose pointed.
In late afternoon, an email came, assigning me to a beginner's class with 11 other young men and women, starting just over a week from that day, on the first Monday of the month. Just as I finished reading it, the TimeKeeper App on my laptop dinged, informing me that it was time to prep for dinner. Remembering the reprimand from Mitch the other evening, I shaved quickly, applied some deodorant and went to the dining room - fifteen minutes early (as I'd been instructed) because I was serving. I set the table with implements, and a pitcher of water. I took an assortment of soft drink bottles from the fridge and placed them on a side table against the wall, next to steam urns of hot water and freshly made coffee. Then Gayle, who was cooking that week, helped me load the serving tray; and I wheeled it into the dining room at 7 PM exactly, just as Mistress Lotte was sitting down to dinner. "Come to the office after desert," she said "I need to speak with you."
"Joe," she went on, turning to him. "Jim will be serving dinner, but could you do the clean-up for him afterwards? I need to see him, and he'll owe you one."
"Yes, Mistress," he answered. "Certainly."
"Don't worry about it," he said to me. "I'll need a favour too some time."
I thanked him, and seeing that the others were all seated now, began to serve: Mistress first, then Mitch, then Lisa, and so around the table in order of seniority. Lisa smiled at me as I served her, and said "Thank you." I smiled back. The others just nodded or ignored me as I set their plates down. Then I went round the table again, taking drink orders and filling glasses while the others began to eat. Food served and drinks poured, I too sat down to eat.
