"What the hell are these?"
Mom threw several of my bondage magazines onto the coffee table in front of me with a sound that snapped me out of the late afternoon nap I had been taking. I was completely flustered. I didn't think she would ever find them.
"I asked you what the hell are these?"
I sat up on the couch and tried to shake myself awake.
"Magazines. Just magazines, Mom. Why are you so mad?"
"I'm mad because you graduated college last spring and it's now fall and you're still living at home with me, taking naps on the couch and you've got the weirdest magazines hidden in your bedroom closet."
I made a mental note to get a small safe just as soon as I got some cash together. I definitely had some things in my room that I didn't want Mom to see. I just wished that she hadn't found my bondage magazine collection.
"Just look at this girl on the cover," Mom said. "She's tied up so tight, I don't think she could move. And look at that gag in her mouth. She probably couldn't scream to save her own life! And she's only wearing a bikini. Where is she supposed to be? In a tanning salon?"
I could see that this was going to be a long afternoon. It made me wish I had gone out to the mall.The truth was, I was in the process of starting my own photography business. I had already booked several jobs. Some weddings. A few portraits. But, by far, the most fun and the best paying were the very kind of pictures that were freaking Mom out - bondage! There was a big market for bondage photography. Wives that wanted to surprise their husbands with a set of photos of them tied and gagged.
I also did more conventional "cheescake" photography. Some guys would contact me and say that they wanted pictures of their wives dressed in swimsuits. The wives told me that it brought the spice back into their marriage.
"Mom, what can I tell you? I like these kinds of pictures. Relax, the girl's aren't being hurt. They're being paid to pose like this."
Mom looked at the tied and gagged girl on the cover of the magazine, then she thumbed through the inside.
"Every one of these poor girls has a gag in her mouth. I hope that they at least clean the gag before they put in her mouth. What is it about these pictures that you like so much?"
"I just do, Mom. I just do," I answered, with a sigh.
"Well here, take these magazines back to your room and hide them where nobody else can find them."
I made a big theatrical turn around the living room.
"Somebody else? Like who is somebody else, Mom. You and I are the only ones living here."
I gathered up the magazines and started to take them upstairs to my room when Mom stopped me and took the top magazine off the pile.
"I'm going to hang on to this one for awhile, honey."