Light It Up

Lighting another cigarette, she stared hatefully at her desk. It was mocking her. Always reminding her she was a fraud. And sometimes she swore it stared back at her. Rolling her eyes and getting up from her worn Ikea desk chair. She cursed at it. Walking to the window, arms crossed, she stared out of her apartment window. Smoking and brooding.

Why is a blank page always the biggest slice of humble pie, she mused. She knew it happened all the time to writers. It was part of the process. She liked to think it was her mind just changing sets like a theater during intermission. A brief pause, nothing more. During that reset she'd usually go on a few long walks, bake, grab drinks with her friends, masturbate, and she'd be right as rain. A new idea or character would always show up ready to be unraveled and put on a journey she laid before them.

But this time, huffing and frowning, she looked back at that lit-up screen. Not one damn thing came to mind. She'd walked the whole of central park multiple times over. She perfected her macaron recipe and all its variations. She'd had magnum after magnum of champagne with her salacious friends, gobbling down their hilarious life stories on dating, being a mom, and finding the new mail room guy eating out the head of public relations on Wednesday afternoon on the copier. Masturbated until her wrists were sore, bed soaked, and her favorite vibrator was dead. And nothing.

This brief pause was feeling more like the theater was closing for business instead of setting up the next scene. Puffing on her fifth cigarette of the morning, simply for something to do, she walked over and flopped down on her couch.

Maybe she could redecorate. Change up her space. Brightening up, she could redo her bookshelves. Slap on a fresh coat of paint. She'd always wanted to paint that wall peacock. Damn, she thought, that all costs money.

She wasn't a terribly successful writer. She made enough to pay the bills, have a small savings account, and enjoy New York City and all it had to offer a single woman in her thirties. But that savings was dwindling, she had to pump out a new story for the small women's magazine and blog. And fast. She had taken time to finally work on the novel she'd always said she'd finish and sent it off to any publisher she could find. That work was her best work. She knew it. She knew it would get her on the radar for the writing she wanted to do.

Not the articles that she was paid to write. "Do Kegels every day really improve your sex life?" Or "How to get your man's spunk to taste better." Or her most recent addition to her dying career; "Top ten ways to get him to give you oral!".

She was grateful for the job, she was. And she loved sex and considered herself very sexually empowered. But Jesus, if she had to write one more article on pubic hair fashion trends or the best stretches to release your inner goddess, she was going to toss her computer out of her $2500 a-month studio apartment window.

You paid your dues as a writer. Taking jobs that you had to versus wanted to. Get some grit on you. Learn and grow along the way. But how much was she going to grow writing about a women's labia and how to make them prettier? It's a vagina, they're supposed to be that way. But her editor was a bit old school, to put it nicely.

Looking at her desk, that white page she imagined was giving her the finger. She rolled her eyes and looked up at the ceiling. She knew what she had to do.

She hadn't done it in a few years. It's not like she hated it, and it did bring in good money. It just took so much energy to get into that zone. But when she did, god, the words came out of her like a geyser. Chuckling at herself, she'd just have to get others to explode like that first.

In college, she found that whenever she had writer's block and needed some cash, she would become another person. She would become The Mistress. A friend had introduced her to that world at a sex club and she found she not only liked it, but she was also really freaking good at it.

The first time she brought a man to completion as The Mistress, she didn't even have to touch him. He did all the work in that regard, but even that was minimal. It was wild how much the brain could work at getting a person off. She of course had the wicked glee wrapped around watching him moaning and undulating his hips as she whispered in his ear how good he was being for her. Laughing to herself as he stroked himself to completion as she turned on the vibrating butt plug she had him suck on before lubing up and telling him to put it inside his virgin ass.

Why was ass play for straight men such forbidden fruit? They could always do it themselves, they knew that right? But, then she wouldn't have this little side hustle. She supposed permitting them to do something society has constantly told these men makes them a degraded version of themselves for wanting, made them feel safe. Or maybe it was because they were being told to do it, it was less shameful? Maybe it's that and so many other things beyond the simple enjoyment of it. Either way, she loved teaching men about the paradise that was their ass. Even in her vanilla relationships.

If she wanted, she didn't even have to do anything in person. We live in a virtual age of instant gratification. With a simple text, she could get a man to fully hand himself over to her, trusting her with his pleasure. After a few conversations, she'd have a couple hundred in the bank in no time. She didn't do it for the money though. Simply getting into that headspace, that persona, always did the trick. It always got her juices flowing, in more ways than one.

Standing and walking over to the mirror, she looked at herself. She wasn't, particularly what you'd call a natural Dominatrix. She didn't have anything in latex or leather. Often when it was in person, she'd just be in leggings, a sports bra, and her go-to shit-kicker boots. She didn't have toys or chains. She had words. And a hell of a creatively dirty mind.

Looking herself over in the tall warped mirror she found on the street in Brooklyn one day, she smirked. Yes, she had a presence to herself, she mused. She was tall, five foot ten, and curvy in all the fun places. But not Kardashian curvy. She had a bit of a stomach that stuck out a little, had what she liked to call 'Thunder Thighs', and she was proportionate. When she walked into a room, you noticed her. But she wouldn't say she oozed sex.

Her long brown hair was willow straight unless she curled and teased it into submission. Her full mouth was set in a round face with high cheekbones. Hazel almond-shaped eyes looked at her in the mirror, set under slightly arched almost black eyebrows. She knew she could be striking when she wanted to be The Mistress, but her daily look was pretty average. It seemed to get the job done though, she shrugged.

Sitting back down at her desk, she exited out of the cursed blank page and opened up her browser. Typing in the address for the forum and her profile, she hovered over the button that would reactivate her account. Taking a deep excited breath she clicked on it. Notifying all the channels she was on and all of its participants;

The Mistress is in.

She sat back and waited for that familiar ding of a message. She got wet with anticipation and lit another cigarette.