Sandra Gets Off Line

The week of her 13th birthday, Sandra decided to become a model. Her mom subscribed to numerous fashion magazines and had herself been a runway model years before Sandra's birth. Sandra took a dispassionate look at herself in the mirror and decided that she would never be tall enough to model high fashion, but she was determined to work in front of a camera if her life depended on it. With her mother's non-judgmental guidance, Sandra determined that her niche would be girls' swim and sports wear. She had lovely long legs and as a young girl, the fact that her breasts were nothing more than mosquito bites didn't matter in the least.

Sandra's first job was in her home town, Los Angeles. She tried out, along with several other girls her age, to be the season's model for the My Little CupCake line of party dresses, tee shirts, sweat shirts, shorts, and sleepwear. When her mother received the phone call, informing her that Sandra had earned a call-back with the clients and the photographer's chief assistant, Sandra was thrilled. Although the shoot was in Los Angeles, the client was French and the line of clothes was to be marketed in Latin America. None of this made any sense to Sandra, but she didn't care. She was off to an exciting career as the print model teen princess of the world. Her second big job was for VacationGirl, a line of mid-teen blouses and shirts that flew off the stores' shelves.

For seven years, Sandra and her mother traveled from country to country, staying is every imaginable kind of motel, hotel, estate and villa, depending on the budget and the importance of the clients. Every time one of her lines would post display ads at the bus kiosks in Paris, London, or Rome, or in an international teen-oriented magazine, or even in the Sears catalogue, her face and petite body not only appeared in print, but on the Internet as well. This was almost as exciting to Sandra as the ever-increasing amounts of money she earned each successive year. Where once she and her mom would take the bus from the airport to an inexpensive motel, now limousines would pick them up and take them to fancy five-star hotels in the best parts of town. Sandra and her mom expected and always receive a huge fruit basket waiting for them whenever they arrived at their hotel room. By the time she was 17, Sandra had not only amassed an enormous amount of money, all of which was scrupulously saved for her college fund, but she actually had the public notice and adoration any girl her age would want.

Sandra's modeling quote was $5,000 per contract. Some contracts involved a single day shoot at an indoor swimming pool, petting zoo, or horse ranch, while others were tedious week-long studio shoots with numerous changes of clothes and hair styles. The secret to Sandra's remarkable success was simple: She always did what she was told. It was rare for a girl her age to work such long hours under the lights and never, ever complain or become petulant. Often she would have to work with such jet lag that she had no real idea what country she was in, the time of day, or whether she had eaten or not. Nothing mattered to her but to do exactly what was asked of her with sincere grace and cheer. Everyone loved the fact that she never asked for a break, never complained that the creek water was nearly freezing or that the desert heat was making her delirious. Indeed, her mother had to be there to monitor Sandra's shoot since she would often outlast the photographers, who would platoon the shoots, giving each other a rest while Sandra always stood ready for more and more.

Many girls are excited to get their first training bra, wear make-up to make them look older or even whorish; it's a natural phase they experience. Not Sandra. Early on, she realized that the longer she could "look twelve" the longer she would last in the business. At home or in their hotel room, Sandra would spend hours in front of the mirror exercising her facial muscles and perfecting pre-teen expressions. "Cute" was her bread and butter, and she knew it. When Sandra first learned of JonBenét Ramsey and saw the late girl's pictures, she started to cry, not because the other girl was murdered -- although that certainly saddened her as well -- but because it was clear to Sandra that the people handling JonBenét had "the kid thing" as Sandra called her craft, completely upside down. The idea was not to make a sweet six year old look like an Army base whore or a pedophile's wet dream, but to work the sweetness, fitness, and innocence angle. Maybe the creeps who ran the types of circuits Ramsey worked made some money, but from Sandra's viewpoint, her own seven-figure bank account attested to the accuracy of her judgment.

"JonBenét is a poodle!" Sandra told her mom after reading the stories and seeing the embarrassing video tapes.

"Oh, Sandy! That's not like you!" her mother said, one eyebrow raised in disapproval. "That sweet little girl was murdered, for godsakes!"

"Oh, no, I didn't mean it that way," Sandra said, wiping a genuine tear from her cheek, "I just meant that they made her up the way people shave poodles for dog shows -- you know, so they look more like clouds than dogs."

Sandra used her Braun 3170 Silk Epilator every Wednesday to remove all hair and fuzz from every inch of her body from her neck down. She fought both acne and adolescence with vigor and discipline, knowing that the day she started to look her age, the money and fame would stop. She worked expensive lotions and homemade organic concoctions into her skin to keep "the kid thing" working. At 18, Sandra really did look 12 or 13, and she was quite proud of it. She always acted her age when she wasn't working. She matured intellectually and competed in age appropriate sports and contests through her private school, knowing that nobody really wanted an adult who acted 12 all the time. Well, almost nobody. The media loved her "just the way she is," so long as that meant she had "the kid thing" working when the cameras came out.

Unfortunately, Sandra could not fight her good fight forever. At 20, she had started to grow some very small breasts, a more womanly figure and, as she had feared at 13, the phone eventually stopped ringing for her. Sandra took all this in stride, however, and accepted the fact that it was time for her to change professions. She still looked 15 or 16 at most, so she thought she might investigate Internet porn modeling. After all, she was not a virgin, and since her 18th birthday, she had entertained clients to further her career. Her mother knew Sandra was doing that, but having come up through the fashion ranks herself, she allowed Sandra to make her own decisions.

For Sandra's eighteenth birthday party, an Eastern European client who had hired Sandra twice every year to model his line of girls' footwear, hosted a lavish party in her honor at Tokyo's finest hotel. He had the affair catered by a famous chef who only catered parties for royalty, famous gangsters and powerful politicians. True to form, Sandra outlasted everyone else at the party and still had plenty of energy, even as the cleaning crews rolled the table rounds from the ballroom and the folding seat team started stacking the chairs on their s-away pallets. The client was sitting passively in the corner, smoking a large Romeo & Julieta Robusto and clinking the ice in his drink.

"Did I do you well, my sweet?" he called across the room. Sandra ran over to him and jumped on his lap.

"It was the greatest party ever! Thank you so much!"

"Are you sleepy, little one?"

"You know me, I'm never sleepy when I'm excited."

"I know a special after hours club we can visit if you like."

The client took Sandra to ClubConquest, a members-only after-hours establishment that catered to members of the BDSM scene. The club had satellites in most large European and Latin American cities, and membership was by invitation only. As the client was part owner of ClubConquest Paris, he and his guests were always welcome at any of them. In addition to a formal and professional stage show featuring bondage and pain play on the main floor, the club also had a second floor where members would dress up and act out their fantasies while other members watched them. The second floor was divided into a dozen stalls or cubicles and members would entertain the crowd and themselves with dramas choreographed to be erotic and often a little frightening. Many of the performers made the furniture and apparatus used in their presentations themselves, proudly showing off their craftsmanship in the fine hardwoods and top grade leathers used. There was nothing vulgar about the presentations, and most of the members were accustomed to the recurring scenes or rolel-plays displayed.

Sandra's face fell and "the kid look" disappeared when she saw the performance in the first, very darkly lighted stall. A slender naked woman (the other player's wife, in fact) stood naked in front of an ornate wrought iron construction based on a climbing rose vine theme. She stood in front of the piece while the crowd settled and then, throwing her head back, she spread her legs and threw her arms high over her head and stepped back into the grasp of the spring loaded vines. Her wrists and ankles secured, she began reciting songs from the Bhagavadita. As she sang, her partner touched her skin here and there with a violet wand, causing tiny lightning bolts to lick her skin and causing her to scream out, her wild dark eyes franticly looking into the crowd as if to summon rescue. The entire performance lasted about 15 minutes. As the stall lights brightened, the woman removed her arms and ankles from the wrought iron vines and joined her husband in graciously bowing acknowledgement of the applause. As the clapping subsided the two of them, still naked, mingled with the other members and went to see performances in other stalls.

"I've never seen you flustered, Sweetie!" the client mused.

"Oh my God; I have never seen anything so beautiful in my whole entire life!" Sandra gushed.

"I should hope not!" the client laughed, "Who else but I would ever show you something like this?"

"I want it," Sandra said with uncharacteristic seriousness.

"The construction he made for her?" the client asked, knowing Sandra meant more than that.

"The whole thing. I want to be her. I want to scream out like that. I need that."

"You want the husband too or just the lady?" the client laughed.

"I didn't say I wanted her; I said I wanted to be her!"

"And the contraption too. I see. Not the wife or the husband, just their toy, right? I think I can get all three for a price."

"Oh stop. You know what I mean!" Sandra's face now had a quality the client hadn't seen. He put down his cocktail and his cigar and held Sandra's head in his hands, turning her little face up to his.

"You're serious, Sandra, aren't you?"

"I'm freaking graveyard serious!" With that, the client roared with laughter, bringing unwanted attention from others trying to enjoy the shows in nearby stalls. The other members knew not to say anything or gesture in any unfriendly manner, however, as his power and wealth were well known, and feared.

Sandra and the client moved to New York the following spring. Sandra's mother knew the client from years of business dealings on Sandra's behalf, but never developed a social relationship with him, as he traveled in circles she found unwelcoming. She nevertheless trusted Sandra's judgment and kept her fears about their relationship to herself.

The client had purchased what he liked to call his "artist's loft" in the Financial District of lower Manhattan. In truth, it was less an artist's loft than a luxury penthouse, but everyone who knew the client prudently avoided mentioning that to him. Indeed, the most bizarre aspect of the "loft" was that the client had installed a tiny elevator that went from the entrance hall of their penthouse straight to a small door opening on Cedar Street. That way, the two of them could come and go without running into other people. "When one or both of our faces are on ten percent of the grocery checkout stands in the world, the last thing we need is friends," the client often reminded Sandra.

It came as no surprise but was nevertheless greeting with joy when, on Sandra's 19th birthday, the wrought iron construction was delivered. She was delighted and the two of them enjoyed it often. For Sandra, having been in control of her life for so many years, she found an erotic thrill in submitting to the client, to the machine.

Although he had more money than he could ever spend, and contributed large sums of money to what he considered to be worthy causes both in the U.S. and abroad, the client felt useless unless he personally continued to run his business. Coming from Proletarian roots, he believed that a life without work was, for a healthy person, a crime against nature. To him, it didn't matter what a person did, so long as it was benign and they worked hard at it. Much of his ethos rubbed off on those around him, including his employees and even Sandra.

As the modeling jobs grew more and more scarce for Sandra, and the client's business kept him away for long periods of time, Sandra became restless and began to feel guilty that she had not done the work necessary to discard "the kid thing" and re-invent herself in some other productive form. The long summer had passed and Sandra got two bikini modeling jobs, a nightgown job, and a too-skimpy-to-be-decent net and lace "SexyGirl Work-Out Togs" job. It was the slowest summer of her seven-year career. She knew she had stayed too long at the fair, but inertia somehow kept her in place.

Sandra had no vices. That was yet another reason clients and photographers liked her. She wasn't anorexic, she didn't use cocaine or any other recreational drugs, she politely sipped red wine from her glass to be social at dinner. She never understood how perfectly reasonable people would become obsessed with self-defeating and self-destructive habits. But with the client being unavailable much of the time, either physically due to travel or emotionally due to his business focus, Sandra felt lonely, even when the two of them were together. Unless his business took him abroad, the client worked but a block or two from the penthouse and on pleasant days, he would walk to his office tower, merrily greeting the regulars he saw everyday.

Sandra had a web site which was managed for her by some people in Romania who she had never met. She had a Facebook account, but soon had 50,000 "Friends," which made her feel even more lonely. The movers and shakers at Facebook had made a special exception for Sandra, lifting the limit on the number of Friends allowed. When the number reached half a million, she quit logging on. She also had an account on National Online, which provided her with snippets of news, movie reviews, email, message boards, and chatrooms. Having learned her lesson by using her real name on Facebook, Sandra's National Online screen name was YakPus and her profile picture featured a decomposing animal hanging from a tree. That discouraged strangers from seeking her out and sending her unwanted QuickMessages, Emails, or requests to be added to her ChummyList. Her friends, of course, knew the real identity of YakPus and that kept the communication close and manageable.

When Sandra was bored, lonely, or both, she would seek amusement by searching the Unusual Interests chat rooms on National Online. As her NOL profile admonished others not to inquire as to the derivation of her screen name, she was able to wander from chat room to chat room, receiving little or no attention. For her, that was refreshing.

Sandra quickly learned that the so-called "chat" rooms on NOL actually had very little chat in them. The room occupants might number 35 but nobody would type a comment for an hour or even longer. Mostly, one would enter a room, say and do nothing, and wait for a QuickMessage from someone who might share your interests, based on the name of that particular room. She never stayed long enough in any single room but tended to frequent the same half-dozen rooms on a regular basis.

Early one morning, the client was his usual chipper self, fixing breakfast before sunrise, humming his merry little morning tunes to himself. Sandra was depressed and annoyed with herself but, like the good companion she was, she did "the kid thing" and was sufficiently bubbly when the client kissed her good bye, reminding Sandra that they were to have business guests in for cocktails at six that evening and then walk to one of the client's favorite restaurants at eight. Sandra nodded and held her effervescence long enough to get the client happily on his way for the day.

She lazily wondered back into their bedroom and thought about masturbating, which was one of her favorite morning activities. But something was bothering her and she couldn't concentrate. She gave up and decided to check her email on NOL instead. That, too, was boring, so she browsed the chat rooms in search of amusement.

Most of the rooms had at least six or seven people in them. One room, named "Clothespins" had but one person. Before deciding to enter the room, Sandra clicked the "Who's Here?" button to learn that person's screen name: Darkest Daddy. She knew better than to enter a room where the only other person was someone named Darkest Daddy, but before she could navigate her way from the highlighted chat room, she dropped her toothbrush on the keyboard. It hit the ENTER key and there she was, in Chat Room: Clothespins -- just YakPus and Darkest Daddy. Sandra quickly clicked out of the room and decided to look at the movie reviews.

Five minutes later, the QuickMessage screen popped up, telling her that Darkest Daddy had a message for her.

"Oh shit!" she mumbled to herself. "I just knew that would happen." She clicked to close NOL and went to the large picture window, deciding to wait and watch the sunrise.

"Why does he have to leave so freaking early?" she thought to herself. She knew that the client's contacts were mostly overseas, so his pre-dawn departures were designed to accommodate the mid-day business world thousand of miles away. But she didn't like that fact anyway.

Sandra sipped a cup of coffee and made the bed. She stuffed the rope, handcuffs, duct tape, TENS unit, and other toys from last night's conjugal romp, into their handmade Italian leather suitcase. She hung the suitcase by its sturdy loop handles on one of the out-poking "flowers" on the wrought iron bondage contraption and decided to take a shower.

She took off her robe and studied her naked body in the mirror. "No, honey, you aren't 12 anymore! The Kid Thing is dead. You are an old bag. You look like you must be all of 16! You're washed up. Eat shit and die on your birthday, bitch!" She laughed at her little joke and realized that she really was starting to look like a woman. Frustrated or not, she was determined to make the transition from Cutie-Pie to Internet Bondage Model gracefully.

She has seen many of the hour-long pay-bondage-scenes. Pretty girls were briefly interviewed and then they were tied, suspended, or otherwise immobilized on a foreboding looking studio set. Then, any number of humiliating cruelties were visited upon their helpless bodies as they whimpered and drooled through their ball gags. The whole scene was disgusting, of course, but as she watched one, then another, and then another and another, she became aware that the specific cruelties administered to the girls would change from girl to girl. She realized that this wasn't just some random smorgasbord of depravity where the man doing these things decided what he wanted to each girl. No, not at all. It dawned on Sandra that the girls themselves must have chosen each and every assault from some sort of list -- a menu! During each exit interview, also part of the show, the models would extol the virtues of one or more "favorite parts!" Sandra found that delightful, in a sordid sort of way.