I get to the office on Tuesday, about noon. I check and double check both of the cameras. Everything is working fine. I'm not going to have a repeat of whatever happened last week. I've become more than normally obsessed with Sandy. I know my ruse will run its course eventually and I want to make sure that I have great recordings to watch, in order to savor the moments of pleasure I had with her.
At 1:30, there's a light knock on my door. I call to Sandy to come in.
She looks different. She's not dressed in the semi-slutty way that she was last week. But that's not what catches my attention. She carries herself differently—with strength and confidence. I gesture toward the couch for Sandy to sit down but she ignores me and sits at one of the chairs by the small table that's a prop to look like a place where business deals are closed.
"You should really sit on the couch," I say, frankly a bit flustered by her assertiveness. "That's where the camera's set up."
"Oh, we won't need that ... yet." What the hell did she mean by that? I don't know. But, I take some consolation in the 'yet'. That means that we're going to get around to my plan later, I figure. Okay. If she wants to talk, we can do that first.
As I sit in the other chair, Sandy pulls a tablet out of her purse. She sets it on the table, but doesn't turn it on yet.
"So, what do you want to talk about, Sandy?" I say, trying to reassert my control of the situation. "I don't have the whole afternoon so we'll need to get to making another demo tape soon."
"Oh, this won't take long. We'll have plenty of time for taping, Ralph."
"Good," I think, until the last word registers. 'Ralph' is my real name. I'd never told Sandy, or any of the girls, my real name. What the hell is happening? How does she know my name?
I'm in a panic but ... I'm an actor myself. What do you think being a preacher in a mega church is all about? So I keep calm, trying to see where this is going.
"Do you know this girl?" Sandy says, firing up the tablet for the first time.
It comes on with a headshot of a very cute 20-something girl who looks familiar, but I can't place her.
"I can't say as I do."
"Well, probably there have been too many girls for you to remember them all," Sandy says, her words dripping with scorn.
I remember the girl now. Not well. I don't remember her name. But I remember that she is one of the girls I scammed. She probably was one of the run-of-the-mill ones. If she'd been particularly good, or particularly bad, I would have remembered her better.
"Well, she's my cousin—more like a sister to me. She's been living with our family since her parents were killed eight years ago."
I don't really know what's going on here. I get it that Sandy's figured out my scam and is angry. But why did she fall for the scam just last week. Maybe, I think, she just figured out the scam in the past few days. Wait, maybe things are better than I feared. Maybe Sandy's not on to my scam at all. Maybe she's just talked with her cousin and wants to know why I've never gotten any gigs for her. Maybe I can bowl through this thing. But, what about Sandy knowing my name? I'm still not sure what's happening here. But my uncertainty doesn't last long. And the truth is worse than I'd feared.
"Carrie's a nice girl—a little wild and maybe too needy when it comes to approval from men—but a nice girl. And you took advantage of her naïveté. You raped here, really. Didn't you?"
"No see here. I've never raped anyone. Carrie ... that's her name, right? ... Carrie came here of her own free will and everything we did here was consensual." I feel like I'm on a moral high horse, defending myself from a scandalous and false allegation. "So let's not be throwing around words like 'rape'."
"Call it what you want. I call it 'rape by deception', and your description really doesn't matter."
"Courts don't recognize rape by deception, not when the deception is about an inducement to have sex."
What the hell is this? I think. Some kind of legal seminar? Why the hell am I explaining thing to this woman?
"Oh, you don't need to worry about courts," Sandy replies, with complete calm. "You can lie to courts, just like you can lie to yourself. " And here she pauses for an uncomfortably long period of time. I say nothing because I don't know what to say.
Sandy goes on, "but you can't lie to God" and she says 'God' like we bible-thumpers say it when we're preaching. "And you can't lie to me."
Okay, so it's clear she knows all about my "real" life. She was at my sermon on Sunday. She's right that my concern shouldn't be about legal issues. If what Sandy knows gets out, I'll be ruined ... completely. So now my mouth is dry and my pulse is pounding.
"I don't know ..." and my voice dribbles off.
"Don't play stupid, asshole." Sandy's voice drips with disdain. "You're a shit, but you're not a stupid shit. You know what the situation is."
"What do you want?" My voice is quavering now. I can't help it. I see my whole life crumbling. I knew I was playing with fire. That was part of the thrill—maybe a whole lot of it. But now that my life is getting burned up in the fire, I don't like it at all.
"Oh ... I want a lot. And you're going to give me everything I want. Or you're destroyed. You decide." Sandy's voice is confident, almost smug. "First of all, we're going to change the dynamic a little." She paused and I had no idea what she was talking about.
"Take off your clothes," she barked.
"What?"
"Oh, Jesus!" she says sounding exasperated. "You heard me. You've told enough girls to do that. And they did. Now take off your clothes. I mean it. Now!"
I stand up slowly, trying to figure out some way out of the predicament I was in. Without success. As I begin undressing, I realize that it is incredibly embarrassing—humiliating, really—to undress at another person's command. It symbolizes complete submission to their dominance.
"Come on ... hurry it up!" Sandy prompts. "I don't want you to put on some sort of a show. You're too disgusting for that. Just get your clothes off ... all of them."
As I slide my boxers down, I find myself shaking slightly. I try to control it; I don't want to give Sandy any more satisfaction than she's already getting.
"Now, put these on." Sandy pulls a wad of clothes out of her purse and tosses them toward me. As they fall on the ground, I see that she's given me a bra, panties, a garter belt and stockings—all in black.
"Oh, this is ridiculous," I complain.
"It's ridiculous, all right. But you're going to do it." She's determined. "And you're going to do it right now if you don't want to make me mad." Sandy smiles, "And I assure you, you don't want to make me mad."
As I put on the lingerie, feeling even more humiliated, Sandy digs into her purse and pulls out some black high heel shoes. Shit! She's like some X-rated Mary Poppins with never-ending string of things she can pull out of her purse.
"These, too," she says as I finish hooking the stockings to the garter belt.
The shoes are too small, but I manage to stuff my feet into them.