shades of grey (closed for perdita and patrick1) - puss puss, the prequel

[patrick1]

Grey watches her. One day, he doesn't exist: the next, he's sitting in Local History, surrounded by open books, and he's watching her.

Men watch Cate O'Meara, yes. (name-tag, left lapel of purple jacket, he saw when he entered, just after her eyes had hypnotised him) She's eminently watchable. Tall, lean, boy-cropped blue-black hair - and yes, women watch Cate O'Meara too. She's some kind of manager here. He watches as she murmurs an instruction here, strides over to smooth an argument with a customer there. He wishes her legs were bare, beneath a skirt, not hidden beneath the grey trousers.

When he shuts his eyes for a moment she's bare-legged, bare of everything and crawling through a favourite dream of his.

He makes himself open his eyes. He doesn't like to place real women in his dreams. Fantasy is fantasy, reality is - these books, reality is the story he wants to write about the world beneath the sidewalks of New York, reality is Cate O'Meara's life, vanilla for all he knows, lesbian for all he knows, happy for all he knows despite the melancholy tip of her head to one side, her left side, in repose, before someone asks her a question or the phone rings and she snaps into life again...

Grey watches her. There's something overwhelming about the need to watch her. Her almost flat breasts, her swift easy gait, the way her mouth curls up to the right as she speaks, the jangle of those silver bracelets at her right wrist...

Underground Manhattan. Write, Grey, write. He makes notes from the books and pamphlets around him, about the tunnels and corridors and hidden places beneath the streets - beneath the very library where he watches her - and his fingers want to tap into his laptop stories of a man and a woman and their dark dreams made flesh in tunnels and corridors and hidden places...

It's lunchtime when he has to leave. He tears off a sheet from his pad of paper and places it inside the Journal of New York History vol iv no. ix that he obtained from Cate O'Meara's young colleague earlier in the morning. He packs up his things and walks to the counter. He's surprised that he isn't trembling. At the counter he stops, takes the paper from inside the Journal and adds a few lines before replacing it. 'I'd like to speak to Cate O'Meara, please,' he says, in his clipped English accent, to the junior woman.

'Perhaps I can...'

'No, I'd like to see Cate, please.'

She's watching all this. He's been watching her through all this. How will she react tomorrow, when he returns, to continue his researches, his watching? After what he's about to do?

For now she smiles, just slightly, clicks the mouse of the terminal she's at, strolls over. 'Cate O'Meara, how can I help you?'

Wordlessly, he hands her the Journal with the sheet inside. He makes himself stop looking at her. He's late, he has to go. He hurries out, into the crowds, other people a blur, the geography of the city suddenly foreign to him, feeling strangely aware of the imaginary patterns beneath his feet, labyrinths of underground tunnels, corridors, hidden places...

 

[Guest]

Puss-Puss O'Meara

OOC: Cate Puss-puss O’Meara

44; Librarian at NYC Main, Circulation Manager in Local History; tall, lean and fit; very small breasts (like nipples attached to the undersides of small saucers); boy-cropped blue-black hair cut every three weeks at Bumble and bumble; dresses like a chic dyke in mourning; has lived half her life in a rent-controlled 3-bedroom apartment near Lincoln Center; subscribes to the NYC Ballet; attends Sunday Mass at St. Paul the Apostle RC church.

Knows Mr. Grey as library customer and voyeurism partner; they prefer to appear unacquainted in public. They have a very simpatico D/s relationship which is quite outside-the-box as those scenes go.

IC:
After our most recent evening’s experience at Pandora’s Box, Grey left me tucked in snugly in my antique four-poster, a gift from Gran. He had treated me to a lovely perfume-oiled bath, washing me tenderly head-to-toes, shaved my pubes (a weekly ritual between us), dried my hair, and massaged my body entirely with his gift of Perlier honey body milk. All this was done with no sexual inference; we were finished in that vein.

The ‘old man’ let me curl up in his lap first on my big old leather reading chair and stroked his kitty like the good master he is. I purred like a happy pet. After tucking me in he kissed my nose and let himself out. I lay peacefully rested and began to recall our first meeting.

I was at work behind the circulation desk in Local History at NYC Main. It was an ordinary morning in late fall and I had begun wearing my gabardines. I prefer them to the linens of warmer weather; I feel more secure in wool, just an idiosyncratic conceit.

I noticed the grey-haired man when he entered the department. He was tall and lean, angular, looked shabbily chic, and dressed for a much colder clime, as if for a personal security, I hoped. He called to mind the brilliant pianist Glenn Gould, my fantasy mate, and his personal fetish for keeping heavily wrapped, even in the warmest of temperatures.

He held tight to a small stack of books on a laptop, and a weathered notebook held as securely in his other arm. He went straight to a reading table. After settling himself, playing somewhat obsessively with the placement of his books on the table and similarly with draping his overcoat on the chair-back, he looked up and our eyes met. That was it really.

I became busy with the usual customer needs and directing my staff, but knew his eyes were directed at me often throughout the morning time. When he came to the desk for a specific reference volume I had to take a call, so one of the new librarians served him. I saw he was deeply disappointed I had walked to the phone just as he arrived at the counter. I was profoundly moved by his palpable sadness but kept to myself for the next two hours. I did not need to look his way to feel his gaze.

I myself felt a twinge of melancholy when he gathered his things to leave, but I have never been aggressive in meeting people who attract me. I was working at a PC at the far end of the counter and heard him ask for me by name. That was it too.

His voice was a deep baritone with a distinctive British accent. When he spoke my name my nipples hardened and sent their new pleasure to my cunt. The swellings of this triangle forced me to tremble imperceptibly. Walking to him I composed myself, a practice cultivated all my life.

“Cate O’Meara. How can I help you?”

He looked into my now impenetrable eyes for a moment only; then visibly forced himself to look down, placing the journal on the counter and rushing out.

I looked down at the book and saw the sheet of notebook paper sticking out. I put the journal on the shelving cart and took the paper to my office. I felt I had to sit down, alone.

Meet me tonight at 9:00, Café Jezebel

That was it.

 

[patrick1]

grey

Cafe Jezebel's not usually this quiet at 9pm on a weekday. Or maybe I'm just feeling conscious of the empty spaces around me. Of people who might watch us. The voyeur worries that others are his audience.

Worries. I clutch them to me like good luck charms.

Actually it's 8:54 pm. I like to arrive early for appointments, to fend off the worry of possibly being late. A pretty young gay man at the bar is the only who's looking. I grin at him carefully. 'Hiya Michael.'

I take the carafe of sauvignon and two glasses to a quiet cubicle, underneath the poster of Dostoevsky looking all bearded and sage-like with his words wrapped around him, 'If God does not exist, then everything is permitted.' Permitted, I like that. That even when anything can happen, there is still the notion of permission.

She arrives. She sees me straight away then glances around the walls and clientele before acknowledging me, second time around. I stand until she sits, opposite. I shake her hand; she is firm in response to my firmness. I tell her my name is Edward, but that I should prefer to be known as Grey, 'for the moment.'

'For the moment?'

'Perhaps you will find another name to use for me in due course.'

And she tells me her name is Cate and there is a little chit-chat about her work in the library and my researches into underground New York and she's just about to take her second sip of wine when my thin right hand reaches across to hold her wrist, to prevent her raising her glass.

'Cate, I appreciate this may herald the end of a beautiful evening, but...I wonder if you would indulge me? I should like you to place your hands behind you, criss-cross, as if your wrists were bound, and then allow me to tip the wine into your mouth by lifting the glass to your lips. After that, I should like you to tell me if you have ever dreamt of having your wrists bound, thus, by a man, and how such a dream makes you feel.' I release her hand. 'I realize, of course, that I am asking a lot.'

I sip my own wine. My grey-green eyes look steadily into hers. I wait...

 

[Guest]

Puss-puss O'Meara

He took my wrist like a quick whisper. Thin long fingers that recalled Gould’s for me. A Beethoven sonata movement (agitato) came to mind and my clitoris joined the tempo of it. My eyes opened. Not that they were closed, they ‘opened’, for him. His looked more green than grey now, suffused with that palpable melancholy I witnessed this morning.

Take care, Cate, be kind—and your self.

“Please release my wrist. . . Grey.”

It broke my heart to have him look down. I needed pause, and controlled breathing.

“Look at me, sir. You do herald a lovely evening. . . a de-lovely one. Do you know Cole Porter; I knew when I first saw you—You’re the tops.”

His eyes shone and ‘opened’ for me.

I leaned forward and placed my hands behind my back as requested.

“Anything Goes,” I sang softly in tune, then straightened my back so my wrists became uncomfortable.

“Grey, I know the quote above our heads. I read ‘the Brothers’ when I was just fifteen. I believe in God, but also that ‘everything is permitted’ . . . for everything is forgiven.

"I am not what can be simplistically labeled submissive. In what is also banally labeled ‘real life’, I am of a dominant nature; I’m a good and effective manager, and not merely at my job, but in what I make of my whole life and environs.

"My arms are beginning to ache and my spine is uncomfortable. But before you release me, I will take more wine from your hands.”

I sigh from the depths of my throat and soul.

“Grey, I have such thirst.”

 

[patrick1]

grey

'There's a Joni Mitchell song.' With my left hand I take hold of her hair and bend her head back a little; with my right, I tip the wine-glass to her mouth, and she drinks. I sing her the fragment of song: 'I've got a head full of quandary, and a mighty, mighty, mighty thirst...'

I sit beside her, to her right, in the alcove seat. She'll have to ask me, now, if she wants to leave it. From my inside pocket I take a plastic package containing a silver pen. I hold up the package so that she can read what's engraved on the clip: GREY'S CAT. She seems about to speak again and I put my finger to her lips: 'The engraver mis-spelt Cate , yes.' My smile says: Or maybe the spelling was what I intended.

I reach behind her back, and bring her hands forwards, placing them on the table. 'Let's not get trapped in conventional words like dominant and submissive , Cate. I'm interested in a more complicated narrative. Here's what I'd like you to do now. I'd like you to take the pen out of the plastic package and fuck yourself with it, here, now. Imagine all the stories I'd like to write for you, when I'm holding the pen you use to fuck yourself with. Feel free to hurt yourself with it, if you need to. Look into my eyes. Make soft, cat noises that only I can hear. No-one but I, and the camera I set up to record our meeting, are watching you.'

She looks around. Yes, there's a camera in the corner of the cafe: does it seem to be pointing at her? Her hands begin to fumble with the plastic package...

 

[Guest]

Puss-Puss O'Meara

‘head full of quandary’. . . No more, I think, no more.

Grey’s Cate. . . Grey’s Cat. . . His puss-puss. Yesssss, I will become his kitty, Kitty-kate. Pussy-Cate. A very special pet—his feline muse.

The pen was a brilliant stroke in itself. He’s an artist. No labels, no fuss. He wants narratives. He wants to write for me. He wants me to fuck myself in front of him. But—

“Grey, I cannot allow you to film me. Please don’t look away. As Mr. Rick said to Captain Renault, ‘I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’ Trust me, dear man, we have all the time and our imagination ahead of us. Let’s live there, not on magnetic tape. Let us be in Casablanca, tucked away in a corner, from the politics and shame. You said yourself, ‘for the moment’. For this moment then, I must refuse you this request.”

Grey nodded to me beneficently, went to the camera and turned it to the wall. When he came back I was seated in the very corner of our booth and had unbuttoned my shirt to the waist. I never wear brassieres except for decorative purposes. Tonight I was bare beneath my shirt and trousers.

He sat down again, shifting so that he was turned toward me at an angle. I raised and bent my right leg placing the heel of my boot at his crotch. The other leg moved out so that the slit in my pants spread into a long diamond shape. Grey looked pleased. From this moment on he hardly blinked, kept his eyes on me darting up and down, side to side. When they would meet mine I felt safe and free.

I took the pen and traced spiraling circles round a flat breast until they ended at my large nipple tip. Then I flicked the smooth round end of the barrel back and forth, back and forth. As I ended the spirals and began to flick the other nipple I began to murmur, lowly, deep from within my throat.

I’m purring. Puss-Puss is purring.

Grey looked into my eyes and saw that I had entered a new prime.

"Purrr, purrrr, Mister Grey. Please allow me to introduce myself—Puss-Puss O’Meara. Meaaooow. . ."

I put the pen in my mouth and puckered my lips drawing it out wet and shiny. I placed my other hand at my slit and pulled apart my outer vulva-lips. I fucked myself with his pen.

“Ah, Grey. I’m becoming a story. I’m writing with your pen in my cunt. Can you make it out? Puss-Puss is happy. Ah, ah. . . Meaow, meaow.”

He poured some wine in the cupped palm of his hand and held it beneath my chin. I lapped at it like a cat and let a few drops dribble down my chin. He moved in and licked them off. Then he took my hand and the pen out of my vagina and washed me with the remaining wine. He re-inserted the pen and with his free hand flicked my nipples, back and forth, up and down. I closed my eyes and moaned, purred, whimpered.

“Mew, mewww. . .”

He pinched a nipple and twisted it so that I yelped a little and shuddered in a fog of pleasure. He caressed and kneaded my little saucers. Leaving the pen in place he pressed a soft thumb on my clitoris, pressing, rubbing, pinching, pulling.

I felt my cunt dripping, my peppery scent rising like an invisible mist. Grey’s nose moved as if tracking it—here, there, closer to its core. I felt his breath mingle with the piquant proof of my fulfillment.

My orgasm was fierce but contained. I merely hummed low but within I was devoured by a biting fire—flames like little knives piercing every cell of my sex. He kept his thumb palpating rhythmically on my rosebud so that I returned slowly, back to ordinary time.

I opened my eyes and met his.

“Purrrfectly done, Maestro.”

He left me to recover myself and get two more glasses of wine. He sat down opposite me and began to speak. His baritone continued his caresses.

 

[patrick1]

grey

When I return the pen is clipped into the pocket of my pale blue shirt. I see her glance at it. The air is heady with the scent of her desire, her fulfilment: pepper, and some tang of the sea, and perhaps the sourness of some raw, exotic fruit cut open for me.

And so - it's my way - I talk of other things. Her cunt is the subtext of our conversation, and I rest the heel of my left hand against it as with my right I lift her wine-glass to her lips, then my own to mine, and I ask her about the library, her attachments, her dreams. I try to store her words, to understand later: her scents are too overpowering for me to concentrate.

She seems surprised when I stand to leave. But I need to get back to my lair, to neutral ground; to take out my pen, and begin a new notebook with the story of her. I reach up and turn the camera in the corner so it's facing her again. 'It's one of those with no mechanism inside, Cate. There was nothing to fear. But I know you must always have something that you can control.'

I bend to kiss her head, to touch her cunt one last time with the heel of my hand. 'When shall we...?'

I interrupt her question. 'I shall write to you. Thank you. Thank you so much.'

I squeeze both her hands in mine, then place them on her lap. Air. I need air. Or I shall...I don't know what I shall do...

<>

It's two days later when a parcel arrives for her through the mail, with his name, simply 'Grey', and a return address on East 54th. How does he know her address?

Well, he does. Within the brown paper is a whip. A 'cat', yes, a cat o' nine tails, as they call them, though this has, when she counts them later, twenty-four individual strands of leather.

It's the handle that first makes her gasp for breath, though. The handle is a thin, shaped dildo, black, rubber perhaps, flexible. Along its length, indented, are set rounded metal studs. It's only when she looks at them a second time, after the shock of holding the thing in her hands, that she realizes the studs spell out a name: PUSS PUSS.

There's no note, no explanation, no instructions. Just the whip, and the fact that he knows her address, and that he wanted to give it to her...

 

[Guest]

Cate

There was nothing to fear. But I know you must always have something that you can control.

God bless you, Grey.

“I have no attachments. One good friend, a Persian woman; I can rely on her for anything, but am careful in expressing my needs. I think we serve each other well, mutually. Her name means goddess in Farsi. You can look it up if you like, but I won’t tell you her name. I will speak to you about her sometime, you will like her stories.

"Attached—such a complex word. I am attached to my faith. I like the term ‘faith claim’, or ‘truth claim’. I won’t speak about it much, not to anyone who does not know it themselves. It’s very private, yet community is vital, so I go to Mass every Sunday at Paul the Apostle’s near home and Lincoln Center. I go at 8:00; I find the music and extra ceremony of the more popular times distracting. I like being and praying with others, with strangers; yet, we are there together—praying alone together. I like that.”

I paused and smiled at Grey, thinking of the incongruence of speaking of faith and prayer after having used his pen to arouse myself, having had my cunt washed with wine, having the heel of his hand on my cunt as I spoke.

“I receive the Eucharist every Sunday; you might know it as ‘communion’. I don’t go to confession though. My grandfather, a devout Catholic, never did. When I was young and worried for the souls of those I loved I asked him once why he never received this required sacrament. I’m grateful still for his answer. He said, “I will not tell my sins to a man.” He respected the priests for their work, then, but they were only men first, like him. Yes, Grey, I believe everything is permitted and forgiven. If you do not know it yet, you will. I have no shame. I rarely do anything for which I feel ashamed. Sometimes I am rude or even mean to someone for a moment; that is the closest I come to feeling ashamed, but I try to make amends. I like to apologize; it’s a satisfyingly selfish thing to do, and people appreciate it.

“My dreams, Grey? You have just shared one. . . of many I hope. We can speak of particulars another time. I have such thirst. . . you hardly know, even now.”

He left me unexpectedly, but he thanked me! He said he would write. When he squeezed my hands it was as if I recognized a new language—ours. His hands were articulate, like a great ballerina’s feet, like Gould's fingers on the keyboard. They spoke of more than love or passion. They spoke to me, to Cate Puss-Puss O’Meara. I was baptized that night, christened anew, but I need not renounce anything now.

It did not surprise me that he learned my address. He’s a brilliantly practical man. I know he will provide well for me. The provisions will not be ‘real’, they will be more precious. The cat-whip was brilliant too; a nuptial gift is how I received it, the pen was my baptismal present. I do wonder how it will be used. I don’t know yet, truly don’t, if I want it used on me, or him. . . or on or by some stranger he might provide.

He lives about a mile from me; we can walk to each other’s home. W. 61st and E. 54th—our circumstances.

I send him a gift too—Turgenev’s novella, First Love. I write inside—

Grey,
A dream—I want to be Zinaida.
Cate

OOC: Edits here and throughout will only be for correcting grammar and typos.

 

[patrick1]

What I should like you to do, reads his letter of the following day, the day after he has sent her the whip, the cat with twenty-four leather tails, whose handle is the rubber shape of a thin phallus, is to choose a day when your work at the library in the afternoon or evening is not onerous. I do not want to jeopardize your employment, but the performance I'd like to enjoy must happen there.

(The Turgenev is beside me, unopened as yet. Be patient, there are many interruptions to a life.)

Tell me in advance what this day will be. On that day, wear a long skirt instead of your usual clothing. I shall be in the library, studying my notes about underground New York. There will be no need to acknowledge me other than as a customer you faintly know.

When you are ready, pass by my table and signal to me. In the women's room, place the phallus-handle in your cunt. Emerge, the whip dangling, hidden, between your legs.

Go about your business, knowing that only you and I know what you are wearing, within your sex.

What if it falls? If your clenched muscles can't hold it in? That's part of the pleasure of performance, and I shan't script such an eventuality: I want to see what you do if this occurs.

But I should prefer for you to hold the whip-handle within you until the library closes, and then for you to go the women's room, and come to orgasm for me, quickly, and emerge, so that I see you, as I stand at the counter, waiting to be allowed to leave (so there will be something you can control), I'll see you flushed, barely recovering from your hidden pleasure, the whip in your purse now, soaked with your desire.

You can then accompany me for a drink at the Cafe Jezebel, where if you like you can find the confessional that you eschew on Sundays, by telingl me of your feelings, desires, life. This is all that I desire, Puss-Puss. Would you like to do these things for me?

Grey

PS I hope that my watching and following you, some days, is not an annoyance to you. Please let me know if it is, and I shall attempt to curtail the obsessive within.

 

[Guest]

Cate

Darling Grey,
I will gratefully wear a skirt Thursday next. I do have non-trouser-ed items in my wardrobe, simple and severe in the realm of women’s couture. I’ll wear riding boots to match the crop. Dare I say—bless you Grey. Thank you for all, and all that is to ‘come’. Your Puss

P.S. I enjoy being followed and observed, by you. Do not think of curtailing this obsession; it complements us as we forage through this underworld.

Thursday Next

I wake up to the immediate thought of doing Grey’s bidding. I choose my black Japanese suit, nub-textured gabardine lined in grey silk, but wear the calf-length riding-style skirt. The jacket buttons high enough so there is no need of a blouse, also choose garters and glossy grey hose; no panties of course.

When I return from my lunchtime walk he is there, writing at his usual table. He doesn't look up but he knows I've arrived. I become aroused right then. I have to check-in with my staff and return calls, but by two o’clock I walk to his table as if to pass by. I let fall a mechanical pencil on to his notebook.

“Sir, excuse me, so sorry to disturb.”

He still does not look up but I place a small folded note on his book and draw my fingernails across the top of his pale thin hand as I take up my pencil. When he opens the paper he will read, Zinaida is here.

The dildo with my new name spelled out in metal studs needs no lubrication as I slide it into my vagina. Cool and smooth but for the studs facing up so that I can read myself as they enter. A good fit, as I keep my cunt tight through those exercises invented by, or least credited to a man.

Bless you too, Dr. Kegel.

Returning to the circulation desk I pass more slowly by Grey, knowing he will catch the scent of my sex commingled with my perfume, le Feu d’Issey. The advertising is correct—the fragrance holds Bulgarian rose essence and coriander combined with golden Japanese lily and Szechuan pepper, a milky amber note throughout. This fire is lit, and it singes Puss-puss in delight.

The rest of the afternoon passes too quickly. I feel divided, like a multiple-personality neurotic, but I am utterly sane. Puss-puss watches Cate as she speaks to clients in various needs of desperation over bits of knowledge. She aches for Cate as she bends over or turns fast, leans on the counter, even sits down twice. Cate and Puss-puss sigh and purr within, waiting longingly for closing time.

At eight minutes to five I feel his greener eyes watch me as I leave to do his pleasure. In the stall I caress the sticky mess on my thighs. It had reached the tops of my stockings, fresh dew glistens on the matted stuff. I begin to fuck myself with the precious rod and pinch my clitoris to its extreme shape. I pant as the silk lining sets mutual sparks within my nipples. I purr my orgasm out slowly, piano, piano—pianissimo.

Quickly I put the cat in a plastic bag, to keep it moist and redolent of my scent for Grey. I enter the room and his waiting wild eyes ready to meet mine, still smoldering from the warmth of my pleasure.

“You were with me, you know. Let’s go to Jezebel’s; Puss and Cate are still thirsty, Grey.”

 

[patrick1]

Thursday night

Her scent almost overwhelms me. Rather: her scents. There are, first, the smells she wears for others, for the world, for her superficial performance (superficial but very attractive, enjoyable, I know I should admire her smile and so forth but I find myself particularly liking to watch her persuade another of something that must be done, as she moves about the library, her hand on an assistant's shoulder, her eyes reassuring a reluctant co-worker, the smells and sounds and touches eddying to and fro between them).

And then there is the odour she wears for me and for herself: the odour of her lust, of her longing and fulfilment. As we walk together along the sidewalk, she strides as if the dildo-handle were still inside her, as if the the whip's leather tails were still fluttering against her inner thighs: carefully, elegantly.

Or perhaps I imagine this. Wanting my desires, my particular wishes to show themselves in her demeanour, in her every move.

Part of her must always have been like this. To have drawn me so.

I'm not speaking, even as we walk together. Just to watch. To enjoy the scent. To savour the complexities of Cate...Zinaida...Puss-Puss...these are my new pleasures...

<>

'I had wanted...I had thought...but instead...'

We are standing by my favourite cubicle in Cafe Jezebel. Everything is permitted. Why is my voice so uncertain? I had intended to be suave, liberal, generous, and ask her quietly of her dreams and desires. But her scents and my own obsessions overwhelm me. I take out the plastic bag containing the cat o' nine tails. I tell her I want her to find privacy, and conceal the dildo-handle of the whip in her cunt again, and return to the table.

I have wine ready. There are stories tumbling through my head.

When she returns I stand, so that she sits within on the bench seat, trapped by me again unless I choose to stand and let her out. Which of course I would, if she simply asked. It's the permitting I need.

'Here.' I tip the wine-glass to her mouth. She drinks.

'Close your eyes.' She takes a lingering look at me, long enough for me to think she is going to demur. And then...her eyelids close. Her hands go beneath the table. One of my hands, my left, rests lightly on her right hand, so that I may feel where it delves. I take a sip of wine.

'Imagine,' I say softly. 'Let your hands delve as they will, and imagine. Come for me, if you will, as we imagine. A woman like you, is kept naked, imprisoned in her own apartment, blindfold, her wrists chained to the tops of her thighs, a whip-handle with the name PUSS PUSS on it in her cunt. A man like me keeps her imprisoned there, feeds her whatever she asks for, and promises her that he won't whip her with the twenty-four tails of the whip...as long as she begs him to whip her. Please whip me Sir she begs. The begging excites her. Her hands roam at her cunt. She smells how much he wants her, naked, chained, fucking herself with the whip handle, begging, Please whip me Sir, Please whip me Sir ...and will her pleasure continue forever, in waves and waves and waves? Forever begging to be whipped as the only way to prevent his whipping her? Or does she truly long for the lash, for her own cries, for the touch of the leather, as she begs, Please whip me Sir, Please whip me Sir...'

 

[Guest]

Thursday night cont.

Grey enhances me. A very young NYCB ballerina once said of Balanchine as a teacher, “He gives me myself.” She’s now a principal, a real prima. Grey does that for me, gives my self to myself. He illuminates me, opens me up to myself, canonizes me, enlivens my body and soul. I’m his debutante, his charge, his unearthed treasure, his muse.

He surprised me with his sudden inarticulateness. I wanted instantly to take him to me like a child, like a beloved brother. But, I want no banal sentiments with him. I waited with affectionate patience. Then he surprised me as only he can.

I insert the cat’s dildo again. It is still moist and easily slips into my still swollen cunt. I walk to ‘our’ booth beneath Fyodor, my tails swishing gaily between my thighs. I sit in the corner again, adjusting to the angle of the stem in my puss. I drink from the glass in his hand. I close my eyes as requested. He articulately places his hand on mine as I begin to fuck myself again. He speaks, he reads my dreams.

I am naked on my bed, blindfolded, my wrists chained to my thighs. I don’t know how long I’ve been like this, but Grey is my warden. He takes such care of me—feeds me, bathes me, gives me drink. He shaves me between my legs, so cleanly and carefully. He rubs the reddened skin with oil, soothes the burn, incites each cell outside and inside my sex.

I fuck and fuck with the cat, moaning softly, purring hard, whispering with a yearning like Tristan and Isolde—

"Please whip me, sir. Please whip me, sir. . .

"Please don’t whip me, sir. Please don’t, please don’t."

I climax as I imagine the strokes, his loving, enlivening strokes.

“Grey, will you come to my home? Let me tell you what I dreamt, what I saw while I fucked myself with your guiding hand and voice.

I want to be Zinaida, Grey. I want you to take care of me tonight, then tuck me in my bed and kiss me good-night."

Please don’t whip me, sir.

 

[patrick1]

grey

The whip remains in her cunt when we leave the cafe. I'm still savouring her pleasure: the way she murmurs the words I give her. Just as we're at the door, my hand's at the small of her back; she turns to smile up at me. I give her the sun-glasses from my inside pocket. 'I'd like you to try these on while we walk uptown. Trust me.'

They wrap close to the face. They're not transparent, they obscure everything, like a blindfold. Of course, she could just take them off, or even ask me to take them off her, but 'It's a question of trust,' she says, as if she's been pondering the thing, and has come to a conclusion. She 'looks', blindly, towards me.

I grip her left hand very firmly in my right. 'Step down, turn to the left,' I say.

A little light rain kisses our cheeks as we walk. Taxis honk, someone shouts, the traffic buzzes. Her steps are more confident than I expected, blind as she is. 'Road, wait. Ok, one step down,' I say, and she walks - sashays? - beside me.

But there are other words I use. A further story I murmur in her ear as we walk. He drags her naked through the streets of the city. She is tethered to him by the chains attached to the rings in her cunt-lips, chains that lead to the buckle on his right wrist. But he too is tethered to her, is he not? By those same chains? And every now and then she hears him say 'Yes' and then from somewhere the 24 lashes of a whip fall across her flesh - on her back, or her buttocks, or her thighs...

'Step up,' I say. 'The sidewalk is a little broken here. And onwards and onwards he drags her, stroking her hair softly, almost maternally, in contradiction to the cruelty of his other gestures and his words... '

<>

She's quivering when I take off the sunglasses. 'Here.' We're outside her apartment building. I embrace her.

'Please,' I hear her saying. 'Please...'

I kiss her on the forehead. 'You must go to your bed alone tonight, and imagine me watching as you come for me there, and telephone me to tell me...whatever you would like to tell me...I need to walk in the air.'

She clutches the scrap of paper where I've scribbled my cellphone number. I watch till I see that she's safely inside. She doesn't turn back. There is a slight shaking of her shoulders. I set off east, towards the park, switching on my cellphone. My own story revolves inside my head: He hurls her into her slave quarters, and marches off, his own unsatiated desire a steady pulse, a drum rhythm through his body. Nevertheless he smiles as he goes, imagining her whipped nude body, sprawled across the whiteness of her bed, writhing for him...

 

[Guest]

Cate

It’s a question of trust. Yes, yes. . .

The glasses exposed more profoundly my trust of Grey, to myself, to him. I was only his to abide as I followed his sensuously voiced directions while we walked. I am enthralled with his voice. I know its origins, I sense its body before it passes from his throat and out his sanguine lips. It is an entity I desire more than his body. Do I desire his body? No, I desire his voice and its charge. And his gaze, his recognition of me—whoever he wants me to be. It is who I am, who I have wanted to be, who I lost so long ago as a girl, who I have returned to—with my hand in Grey’s.

I lived from ‘stop’ to ‘turn’, only the thrill of the cat-tails between my thighs arousing a sense that I was flesh. I felt no fear, not a bit of anxiety as we seemed to glide amidst Manhattan’s traffic. I took each step confidently, trusting my walker, my watcher, my champion.

I was blind only to the ordinary world around me in the darkness, as if it truly did not exist. Grey held my hand firmly, kept me safe in our shadow-cosmos. I was free and as sovereign as a queen, yet bound by more than our locked hands.

His story about the woman—Cate, Puss, Zinaida—chained and led naked through the city streets by her master heightened the arousal of the dildo as I walked. I wanted to come, to climax yet again by Grey’s gift. Myself to my self.

The thought of being whipped, hurt painfully, is frightening, but Grey brings me to a desire to succumb, to trust his hand to the limit. I want him to tie me to my bed, bring me further into this new world that exists only between us.

When he takes me in his arms, outside my door, I know he will not enter. I make a feeble plea, “Please. . . please,” but he leaves me, with further directions. He will never disappoint me; he is a master in our phantom universe. But I wonder—what will satisfy him for all the satisfaction he brings to me? What does he want in return? I do not think it is my body.

I shower quickly, wanting only to go to bed and call him, tell him where I am, how I am, what I am now.

“Sir, I am naked and uncovered on my white-white sheets. My legs are spread wide and slightly bent, like a demi-plié. I waited until I was near ready to come, for you. I only had to take a moment to push the dial button, the remote receiver is in my ear; I am free to speak, and stroke myself—my breasts, my swollen sex. Do you know, it has been tumescent since two o’clock?

“Grey, listen to the sound of the cat in my cunt—sliding in and out, in and out. It's Puss-puss.

“Can you hear the wetness purr? Listen to my moans in the background. . .

“You are standing at the foot of my bed, watching my liberated nakedness. You can see my breasts swell, my nipples freeze into small pegs I wish you would touch, pinch, bite. Please, sir. . . please. See how I hold them out for your gaze, pleading for your pianist fingers.

“Oh! You pull the fake cock out hard and fast, spraying my liquid across my belly; it quivers at the coolness of my honey-dew.

“I pinch my clit and tell you I am ready. You pull my hand away and sweep the cat-tails back and forth, up and down the length of my sex. Each fragile moment on my clit keeps me in a climactic stasis. I am on tenterhooks. Listen to me mew and purr, Grey. Meaow, meaow. . .

“Listen to my story, remember it. Write it down. Use the pen that deflowered me.

“Breathe for me, Grey, breathe me to surrender. Yes, master, yes. . .”

He thanks me and says good-night. I return to the world and ordinary time, pull up the sheet and close my eyes.

 

[patrick1]

It's two mornings before there's a letter from him, hand-delivered, with a small package in glittering silver paper, awaiting her early in her mailbox:

I hope the whip-handle has pleasured you in my honor since I saw you last. Sometimes a darkness falls across me and I wonder: if I whipped you, in the flesh, would the shadow lift? Or reveal its colors, beyond the shades of grey?

Here is a mark I've conjured up. It's a Z, and yet has two P's in it as well. I imagine it on your belly, beneath your navel, above your pubic mound. Would you like to inscribe it there for me? In a deep blue?

Or perhaps there are other places you would like to be marked. Choose one, do. Or more than one.

The package is a webcam. I should like to be able to watch you on the Internet, sometimes: your voyeur. No, not your face, nothing that would identify you to anyone but me. I should like you to broadcast - having told me the time and web address in advance - simply a live image of a part of you that's marked with the Z which is also a double P. It would be my preference for you to be caressing yourself during your broadcast; for it only to end when you have sated yourself, dreaming perhaps of the slave Zinaida and her ruthless Master. I wonder if he, for instance, has told her that he would like to brand her with the Z/PP mark, using a hot iron - his words leaving her quivering in fear, and despair, and appalled desire.

Of course, I anticipate there to be something here that you would like to change. Write to me. I am out and about, but I miss having word of you.

grey

 

[Guest]

Letter from Cate

My dearest Grey,

I have had to wait two days to respond to your recent letter and gift. I knew at once after the first reading that I need be especially thoughtful and purposeful in my reply. You must know it pains me to disappoint you, to refuse you. Do give me the honor of reading why.

I want no visual artifice obstructing your gaze on me. I cannot allow you to film me in any way, but not for general fears. Our intercourse must be real and live, or it does not satisfy. If I had thought you were recording our phone ‘conversation’ I would not have called you. I trust you would have told me such, therefore I am certain you did not. As much as I would like a virtual keepsake of your voice I would not record it—I want real life in the moment only.

I was enthralled with your mark of ‘Z’, but this too I reject. “Zinaida” belongs to Turgenev and his art. She arouses and inspires me, yes, and I aspire to her character, but I do not fool myself, nor you—she is a dream and an unreality outside her text. Let us not abuse her in the way you suggest. Call me Zinaida, make her mark on me yourself, but let it fade and be interred in our memories. She rates much higher than a coupling with your Puss-puss. You see, I know humility—perhaps more than you imagined. I learned to recognize it in the works of another beloved artist—Oscar Wilde.
Dear Grey, we have only begun our intercourse. Obviously, as with any profound relation—and I have faith in ours—communication is essential. Wilde wrote that to Bosie from Reading Gaol. As you know, the manuscript became titled De Profundis. I aspire to Wilde’s sensibility of life also—that he made prodigal his art for life. You see, dear man, I am a profound reader, a quality you already appreciate as a writer. Write me, Grey, do not capture banal images on film.

You state your wonderment about the whip’s shadows on my flesh. That excites me dearly, but there is only one way—Cate Puss-puss O’Meara’s—to find the answers. It need not be you that brandishes the cat. We can be voyeurs together, Grey. Think on that.

I cannot be branded permanently. My body cannot be owned, but Cate and Puss-puss—those elusive identities—are yours, as Zinaida belongs to her master and to her author, as Bosie the darling boy belonged to Wilde’s poetry (though I do not mean his actual poetry).

Meet me this Saturday at nine in the evening at Jezebel’s. When you enter, be prepared to see me in our booth with my Persian ‘goddess’. Do not join us; I will be sure to reserve a seat for your viewing satisfaction. She will leave alone and you will then be able to take your usual place.

Anon, Sir Grey.

Your Cate

 

[Guest]

deleted

, , ,

 

[patrick1]

grey

Grey watches. He is a watcher.

Outside the library, he watches until he sees O'Meara is about to emerge. Then he turns away, walking in the opposite direction to the one he knows she will take. It's as if he must satisfy himself that she still goes about her business.

And was that him, in the doorway opposite her apartment late one night? Or just a ghost?

And is that him, his collar turned up although it's by no means cold, opposite the entrance to the Cafe Jezebel?

Melancholy hangs about him like smoke. His feet tap the ground hard, as if testing each paving slab for hollowness, as if underground Manhattan were potentially everywhere, a labyrinth of tunnels, corridors and mysteries just a few feet below the hurry and bluster of the streets.

Grey stands; watches. He struggles to understand reject and cannot allow as the words echo around him, illuminating the smoke.

Grey watches.

 

[Guest]

Cate

I wash my hands, mouth and cunt with plain warm water. I stare at my flushed face in the mirror and redo my lipstick. I wonder if Grey will be gone, or will rise to let me in our booth. I am anxious about my letter refusing his last request. I am uncertain—afraid for the first time about the man I want to whip me.

 

[patrick1]

grey

Dear Cate

Pardon me that I vanished from outside the cafe after your encounter with your friend. I found the performance sensual, elegant - but somehow I felt I was not the intended audience.

I'm not as enthusiastic about some of the classical arts as you, but here's a tale I have found among my researches that you might enjoy. Emmy Destinn, the greatest diva that the Czechs have ever produced, sang at the Met in New York for several seasons after 1908 (her classic recording of Carmen, sung surprisingly enough in German, still survives from that year). It seems that amongst her many lovers, Arthur Rubinstein enjoyed one night of pleasure with her. When she first showed herself to him, he says, she revealed on her leg a boa-constrictor tattoo, from thigh to ankle.

Imagine.

Well, my researches into underground New York are over for the present. Perhaps we shall bump into each other again, in other masks, at other masquerades. But for the present...

Yours, disappearingly...

grey