I suppose it was all my fault. Hardly a day had passed since I posted my story – Memoirs of a Sex Slave – before I started to receive messages from dominatrices around the globe offering to chain, gag, beat, clamp, whip, spank and keelhaul me, and then to punish my poor pussy in ways that I didn't know existed.
The prospect was terribly arousing (though, in most cases, illegal in Western countries) and rather whetted my appetite. So it was with a growing sense of anticipation that I settled down over a cup of cocoa and a packet of bourbons with my landlady, Mrs Barraclough, to sort through the pile of emailed responses.
Although Mrs B is a pillar of the community and a stalwart of the Women's Institute, the dear lady has been terribly supportive of my sexual endeavours. She says it's just that the opportunities didn't exist in her day. Otherwise she would have quite liked to try lap dancing and reckons that the late Mr Barraclough would have taken to the swinging scene like a fish to water.
'Good Heavens!' said Mrs B, flicking through the print-outs. 'This one's from a Madam Vegan. She wants to violate all your openings with cucumbers.'
'Oh, that's nothing. I said. 'There's one here from The Sushi Sun Goddess. She wants to thrash my backside with a conger eel and then insert live fish into me.'
'Wouldn't that be rather wriggly?' said Mrs B distastefully.
'It would be okay. I once had a boyfriend called Floppy Phil, but it's the fish I feel sorry for.'
There wasn't one suggestion that satisfied what I considered to be rather straightforward requirements of a would-be lesbian sex slave: namely total subservience, bondage, spanking, nipple clamping, exhibitionism and compulsory group sex, with a little light dusting and ironing thrown in. It was all quite dispiriting and, with a heavy heart, I started to prepare a standard letter of reply:
'Dear Madam Vegan / Sushi Sun Goddess / Lady Horsewhip / Iron Maiden / Mistress Thumbscrew / Birch Bitch
Thank you so much for your very tempting proposal. However, I'm afraid I will have to decline your invitation on account of my highly developed aversion to gourds of any kind / soy sauce / Paraguayan virgins' blood / barbed wire / execution chambers / gerbils (delete as appropriate).
I do hope that you are able to make alternative arrangements.
Yours obediently (in spirit)
Flora, aka Blue'
Mrs B offered me a consoling arm and, having finished our cocoa in disappointed silence, went to make another cup.
A few moments later she burst in and exclaimed: 'Flora! There's been another email. What do you think?'
She read it out: 'Dear Lesbian Fuck Slut ....'
'Well, it starts promisingly,' I said.
Mrs B continued: 'I want you now – bare-arse naked, handcuffed, pierced and clamped – to lick my boots whilst I beat your raw arse scarlet and then watch you fuck my maids of honour.
Email by return.
Mistress Purgatory
PS Transport can be provided on alternate Tuesdays.'
'She sounds nice,' I said. 'I'll email straightaway.'
Mistress Purgatory replied to my email the next day and asked to meet me at a bungalow a few miles away, but I declined. I much prefer to have such liaisons in public places ever since an unfortunate blind date with a pole dancer I met on the internet. On arrival at the given address I discovered that Bethany was a six foot two dockworker trying to get in touch with his feminine side. I would have given it a go (after all, I'd had a waxing especially) but he just wanted to swap make-up tips. I had to escape through a window when he went to touch up his mascara.
Instead Mistress P suggested we meet at two o'clock in The Pussy Pillow, a new bar just off The Hoe. Sounds perfect, I thought and immediately requested a full day's holiday in order to prepare for the appointment. At least that would spare me lunch with Maureen. She was planning to give me a blow-by-blow account of her weekend in Dublin with Frank, her new beau. Apparently they'd had so much anal sex that he'd re-named her Kerrygold. Well, that would be a relief (which, it seems, is more than Maureen's derriere had enjoyed).
Of course, I spent the whole morning dithering about what to wear. How does one dress for an interview with a prospective dominatrice? Rubber hotpants would be appropriate but did tend to squeak rather distractingly in mid-squirm. Nipple clamps or not? Bondage collar? Mini-skirt and no knickers? I didn't want to seem too eager. I imagined that Mistress Purgatory would welcome a little reluctance on my part in order to prove her erotic omnipotence. Finally I decided on a simple black blouse and grey, pleated skirt just above the knee, with lacy black underwear and low heels. Classily demure with just a hint of challenge.
I arrived ten minutes early and found the lounge empty apart from a rather delicious waitress leaning provocatively across the bar. I sat down and sunk into a pile of pillows, each shaped like a pair of swollen red pussy lips. Very sophisticated. After a few minutes a middle-aged woman walked in, sat a couple of tables away and summoned the waitress over. Oh, I hope it's not her, I thought to myself. She had a shapely figure and looked encouragingly stern but was rather, well, whiskery. I do like my lovers to have less hair on their lips than their pussies – it's just one of my silly dating rules. It makes 69 so confusing. Another of my rules is: never say to a woman police officer: 'I bet you can do some interesting things with that truncheon.' With Madeleine I discovered she could, and she did.
Anyway, when another, older lady joined the bearded one, I relaxed. I glanced at the menu on the table and decided a cocktail might settle my nerves. The waitress breezed over to take my order.
'I'm torn between A Long Comfortable Screw Against A Wall and A Legspreader,' I said, studying the menu contemplatively. 'Which do you recommend?' The waitress grinned down at me.
'The Nipple Kiss always does it for me,' she said.
'Mmm, I'm not sure. Do you have any other cocktails?' I asked.
'What makes you think they're cocktails?' she whispered and sat down beside me.