"So, you want to know why I do it, why I'm like this?" she asked, taking a deep drag and exhaling the smoke slowly through her nose. "I don't know, honestly. Not fully. I mean, stuff happened early on. And later? I felt like I made it through all that. I stayed sane, true to myself, and pushed forward. I finished High School. A rarity in my family. Then after leaving them all behind, traveling halfway across the country to leave it in the past, I started college. All on my own." She took another deep drag and then fidgeted with her fingers, looking down.
"I even finished college. Got a good entry-level job. People would have called me a fucking success story. Small town girl makes it big. And by that standard, I guess I did. I was going places, a shooting star, going up, up, up. And then... life changed." She stubbed out the cigarette and got another, offering the reporter one. He shook his head and she shrugged before lighting up. The smoke curled in the small changing room.
"That seems like such a simple way to put it. Life changed. How does that sum up leaving that, leaving a law firm, to strip here 2 or 3 times a week? To cover yourself in tattoos? To give up your life and future like that?" he asked, incredulous. She shook her head, already frustrated with his line of questioning. Those outside the kink world rarely could.
"You're already off base, chasing down dust in the wind, while you're ignoring the storm. You say I gave up my life, my future, for this. But this, this is fun. This," she said, spreading her arms wide, "is exercise. It's a hobby, nothing more. No Sir, I didn't give up my life or future to strip. I gave it up for him. For this." She leaned forward, tilted her head down, and threw her hair over her face so he could see the tattoo on the back of her neck. A literal bar code, with numbers, lay there. She snapped her head back and pushed out her chest, noticing his glance at her cleavage before he adjusted himself.
"That's a bar code? I don't understand, what does a tattoo have to do with anything," he asked, his brow furrowed. She almost envied that innocence. Once something like that is lost, it cannot be reclaimed.
"You know what Freud said, right? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar? Well, this is the opposite of that. Sometimes a tattoo is more than a tattoo." She grinned and showed him the back of her hand. On it, a tattoo of a keyhole was there, easily visible in dark black ink. She then spread her legs and pulled up the gown she had on, showing the reporter her shaved cunt. She noticed the subtle biting of his lip, the narrowing of his eyes as he looked at her, and the "Daddy's Girl" tattoo right above it.
"I have several tattoos as you can see, and more that you can't," she said, smiling and teasing him. "But the barcode, the keyhole, are different from the rest. They have very specific meanings and are part of the journey my life has gone on." The reporter looked back at her face, blushing a bit, as she re-crossed her legs.
"And those are? How can a tattoo change your life?"
"They can't," she said. "It's what they represent. The barcode is my registry number. I'm a slave. Willingly, of course. The keyhole? It tells any man who recognizes it that I'm free to use. To fuck as they please."