“Thank you for writing this,” she said. “It’s beautiful. I love when you write things for me.” She scooted closer and rested her head on my shoulder as she had before. As she scanned the poem again, she asked, “What are you working on now?”
“What?”
“At work. You always ask what I’m working on, but we never talk about your work. What are you working on at Eriksen Architectural Design these days?”
“Everything, all the time.” At her small grimace, I added, “Right now, we’re concentrating on some skyscraper designs for Jakarta. There’s an engineering aspect to it because of the expense, and the earthquake systems that have to be in place. Not to mention the corruption in the local contracting companies.”
“Will you have to go to Indonesia?”
“Eventually. Not yet. I have people to do it for me, people who work for me,” I said, referencing our earlier conversation.
She looked down at the poem. The driver stopped hard at a light, shifting us in our seats. A horn blared behind us.
“Do you still want me?” she asked, turning her face up to mine.
“I always want you.”
“You know what I mean.” Her jaw went tight. “Are you tired of me yet? Tired of dealing with me in your house? In your life?”
I gave her an arch look and tapped the paper she held in her hand. “Didn’t you read the poem, starshine?”
“Sometimes I think you only write them for me because you feel guilty. You always give them to me after I’ve been punished for something.”
It was my turn to look away from her, out the window. “That’s because I’m impressed by your strength,” I said. And afraid of it. I live in terror of the day you discover you don’t need me after all. “To answer your question, I’m not tired of you yet.” I turned back to her. “Do you think it’s easy to write those things? I do it so you won’t leave. If I wanted you out of my house, I’d stop writing poems for you. Once that happens, I’d give it about a week.”
She did what I hoped she would do, which was laugh and smile at me, and touch my hand. After that she folded up the poem and put it into her work bag with all her other notes and journals and plans. She thought I was joking, but I wasn’t. What did I really give her, besides a lot of pain and control? She wouldn’t take my money and I couldn’t offer any romantic ideal of love. What did I provide to make her love me?
Poetry. A ride to work every day. A collar for her neck and her finger, and hopefully enough earth-shattering orgasms to make her stick around.
* * * * *
Time flew by, hours at work, hours in the dungeon, meetings and projects and a couple more trips for Price’s work. Fall turned to winter, and Price and I celebrated our first naked Christmas and New Year’s together. I wish I could say things had grown more comfortable between us by that point, but they hadn’t, not really.
A lot of the tension came from my work, the challenge of trying to remain a surrendered submissive while I built an ever-expanding brand. When Vinod Sushil mentioned my aesthetic in an article for Modern Art and Design, things blew up to an alarming degree. A hundred people contacted me within a week: design houses wanting to hire me, agents wanting to represent me, rich, famous people wanting me to design exclusively for them.
It was hard to believe sometimes that a few years ago I was a sex worker with no motivation and no future. How things had changed from the Miss Kitty years. Of course, the more popular I got, the more I worried that one of my old johns would recognize me and show up at my studio to harass me. I felt afraid when I remembered my old life. I worried about who would crawl out of my past and try to destroy me by denouncing me as a fake and a criminal. I worried about losing everything if and when my old career was revealed.
I didn’t share any of this with Price. The work alone had already brought so much stress to our dynamic, and talking about my past always made things even tenser between us. Instead, I pushed it out of my mind and concentrated on work and inspiration, and tried not to freak out at all the demands for a “Starshine Original.” This success was everything I’d worked for, right? Andrew was thrilled for me, and Price…
Well, Price was supportive. He was happy for me, but he never let me forget that our dynamic came first, and in a way, that kept me on an even keel. It was hard to get an inflated ego when you spent almost every night on your knees having some type of torture inflicted upon your body. It was hard to get a big head when your sexual orifices were no longer your own, and when you were often forced to sleep in a chastity belt so you couldn’t soothe your aching pussy.