I was sitting in the break room at the spa when I got the text message. My sometimes play partner, Janet, had a death in the family and had to cancel on our plans.
'Shit," I said.
My best friend, Sheila, looked up from her phone.
"What?"
"My plans fell through for the weekend."
"That sucks. What went wrong?"
"Janet has an emergency and can't go. Now I can't go to the party and I can't get my money back for the hotel either."
"Why can't you go to the party?"
"No unaccompanied males allowed. They want to keep it balanced."
Sheila and I had gone to massage school together and become best friends. We were each going through divorces or breakups during school and bonded over our troubles. There was nothing between us other than being besties. She was also 14 years younger than me and still in the last few years of getting her kids up and out. And she knew that when I said "Party" I meant a play party. She knew that I like BDSM and occasionally went to the city for events. We shared everything with each other. We worked at a spa in North West Connecticut. Lots of money and snooty massage clients. But pretty good tips if you didn't mind their attitudes.
"Damn. Why not just go to the city and enjoy the weekend? Go out to dinner? See a show?"
"Meh. No fun by myself. You want to go with me? The room has two queen size beds. You could go and do some shopping or whatever?"
"That might be fun. Let me see if the kids are all set. When do you need to know?"
"I have the room Friday and Saturday night. I was going to go down Friday afternoon."
"I'll let you know."
I didn't think anymore of it. I figured she wasn't serious. I might go on my own, but I would decide on Friday. Thursday she sent me a text.
'I can go. Do you want to see a matinee of the new musical Saturday'
Not high on my list, but it might be fun and would salvage the weekend, I thought.
'sure. Sounds good'
Friday I picked Sheila up and we went to the train station. We got into the city and went to the hotel and checked in. We wandered around checking things out and found a not too expensive place for dinner. It was fun. She and I got along so well and always laughed a lot. We went back to the hotel, spent time on our own ipads or whatever and finally turned in. It was a little odd sharing a room but we had done so many massage exchanges in school and out it was almost normal to see each other in pajamas.
Saturday morning we had breakfast and did some shopping and went to the show. It was fun. I just could never take musicals seriously. People randomly bursting into song never made sense. We were walking around talking and just killing time.
"If I went with you, could you still go to the party?"
I looked at Sheila.
"What?"
"If I went with you, you wouldn't be an unaccompanied male. Could you still go?"
"I could, but you don't want to go."
"Maybe. Depends. Would I have to do anything? I don't want to get naked or be spanked or anything. But I could go with you."
"Yeah. You could go and not do anything yourself. But you're be seeing everyone play. You'll see naked people and lots of BDSM."
Sheila thought for a few minutes.
"Let's go then. I know how much you were looking forward to it."
"Are you ok seeing me naked? Or me playing?"
"I've seen almost all of you anyway. What's the difference?"
"Alright," I said.
"I don't have any leather, but I brought some black clothes. I wasn't sure I would go through with it, but I thought about it."
I looked at my watch.
"We've got about an hour. We should go get ready if we are going to go."