“Fair enough.”
Loren clasped her hands together in front of her on the table and lowered her voice after glancing to a nearby table where an older couple had just been seated. “I’m going to give you what everyone teases me is my ‘Newbie 101’ spiel. Just like everything in life, from golf to fishing to fantasy football leagues, to any pastime you can think of, there is a bell curve.
“Now, on this bell curve, you’ll have at the one end, let’s call that the vanilla end, the people who only dip their feet in every once in a while. You’ll have at the other end of the bell curve the really hard-core, extreme edge players who make some of the porn you watched look like a Disney cartoon. Then you’ll have the hump of the curve, where the majority of participants fit.
“The biggest misconception out there is that all people involved in BDSM are sex maniacs and swingers and every gathering is basically one big free-for-all sex party. And going by the bell curve theory, yes, you’ll have a few people like that, and maybe even a few gatherings like that. But they are the exception and not the norm. While sex is a big part of play for some people, for others, sex doesn’t have anything to do with their play or their dynamic. And again, there are people everywhere in between.”
Shayla nodded, her notepad and pen lying forgotten in front of her as Loren talked. This woman, if Shayla had to describe her, did not fit any kind of mousy, abused spouse stereotype she was aware of. In fact, if she didn’t know Loren was her husband’s slave, she would never have thought it. Not from the strength of her voice, or the intensity of her words, to the direct way Loren’s piercing gaze didn’t flinch from her own.
She didn’t know what Loren did for a living, but she suspected she was a formidable opponent when crossed.
“So we get all that fantasy crap out of the way for starters,” Loren continued. “There are people in the lifestyle from all walks of life and all economic backgrounds and all ages. There are professionals and blue-collar workers, everyone you can possibly think of. From college-aged to retirees.”
Ross spoke up, a quirky smile on his face. “There are an inordinate number of nurses.”
Loren laughed but gently nudged him again. “Yes, our local group does count more than our fair share of nurses amongst our ranks, but there are a lot of hospitals and doctor offices and senior citizens in this area. It’s a retirement and snowbird haven. Meaning a high demand for nurses and other medical professionals. If you’re in a large steel town, there are probably a lot of steel plant workers in the local lifestyle.” She glanced at him. “Are you done interrupting me?”
Shayla caught the twinkle in his eye. “Yep.”
She nodded at him and returned her attention to Shayla. “And as you can see from us, there are times we’re just a normal husband and wife. BDSM is one facet of who we are. Yes, it’s a large part of our lives. But first and foremost, we’re people. We never lose sight of that fact.”
“Why do people want to be in this lifestyle?” Shayla asked, unable to contain the question. “Why do it?”
Loren shrugged. “Why not?” She smiled. “Sorry. I don’t mean to come off sounding flippant, but the truth of the matter is there are as many reasons for being in the lifestyle as there are people in the lifestyle.”
“I just don’t get what makes a person want to be beaten is all.”
Ross burst out laughing and clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle it when the nearby couple looked at him. He lowered his voice. “Loren doesn’t want to be beaten.”
“Not all the time,” she said with a grin.
He glanced at her but picked up his thought. “Impact play is only one part of our BDSM dynamic, a small part, and not everyone is into impact play.”
Shayla tried to wrap her head around that. “Huh?”
He nudged his wife. “Use the diving metaphor.”
Loren nodded. “Are you familiar with scuba diving?”
“Um, not really. A little. I’ve never done it. I’m originally from Minnesota, and went to college and lived in Ohio the past several years.”
“Okay,” Loren said. “In scuba diving there is one common thing that unifies everyone in the sport, regardless of how or where or why they do what they do. Do you know what that one thing is?”
“Not drowning?”
Ross laughed again. “I like her.”
Loren smiled. “Besides that.”
Shayla shrugged. “Not really.”
Loren tapped the table with her finger. “The sport of scuba diving is going under water while breathing from an external air source. Got it?”
Shayla frowned, but nodded. “Okay.”
“Just go with me on this and you’ll see my point,” Loren assured her. “Some divers are basic sport divers, clear-weather and clear-water divers who do nothing but go out in the Gulf in the middle of summer when the water is warmest and when it’s clear and when it’s not rough. Okay?”
Shayla nodded.
“Then there are divers who are into spearfishing. Some of them are on the mild end of the scale and will only go out in summer, yadda-yadda. Some of them are avid spearfishers and will go out even in the middle of winter in five-foot seas.”
“She used to teach scuba,” Ross interjected.
“Hush,” Loren said to him. “Some divers are into underwater photography. Some divers are into wreck diving. Some divers are into cave and cavern diving. Some divers are into deep diving for whatever reason and use mixed gases like Heliox, Nitrox, Trimix, or something similar. Some divers are commercial divers. Some shallower commercial divers don’t even carry a tank, they have a line that runs from the surface. Some divers only do shallow dives in water they can stand up in. But what do they all have in common?”
“They have to breathe underwater,” Shayla volunteered.
“Exactly.” She gestured, making a circle with her hands before bringing them together again. “That’s the ‘umbrella’ that encompasses scuba diving. Divers breathe something underwater, regardless of the reason they’re underwater. You with me?”
Shayla nodded. “Okay.”
“So swap that out for BDSM. It’s an umbrella term that doesn’t even fully describe what it is that we do. The unifying idea is that the people participating in it are kinky. Or, not-vanilla. The term stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism. So just like ‘scuba diving’ is a generic term, so is BDSM.”
Loren made the circle gesture again. “BDSM is just a term with a unifying theme. But if I say ‘scuba diving’ with no other context to people who know nothing about scuba diving, a lot of people, depending on their age, they’ll either think
Sea Hunt
, or Jacques Cousteau, or Navy SEALS, or whatever their frame of reference is. Okay?”
Shayla nodded. “Fair enough.”
Loren clasped her hands together in front of her again. “There are people who, at least when writing it, use an acronym to better describe this lifestyle—WIITWD. It stands for ‘what it is that we do.’ Because you might have people who are kinky but who don’t consider themselves into BDSM. There are some people who’ve known all their lives that they were ‘different’ in some way, but it took seeing something related to BDSM for them to put their finger on what that something was. There are people who stumbled into it and discovered they liked it and they decided not to turn back. There are people who maybe like being tied up in bed, and that’s the extent of what they do. And there are people who spend their lives as dedicated service-oriented slaves, who never get tied up or beaten at all.”
Loren made the circle gesture one more time. “Umbrella of kink. Anything not vanilla when it comes to sex could in some way fit under the kinky umbrella.”
“Okay, now I’m confused. Earlier you said sex isn’t a part of it for some people.”
“Right. Let me clarify. Not just not-vanilla sex, but you could substitute ‘relationship dynamic’ for ‘sex.’ Does that help?”
“Maybe.”
Loren smiled and sat back as the waitress approached with their tray of food. “Don’t worry. It’ll start making sense soon.”
They sat and talked for over three hours. By the time they parted ways in the parking lot, Shayla was both enlightened and more confused than ever. Not because she didn’t understand what the couple was saying, but because of the huge amount of information she’d attempted to digest in such a short amount of time.
One thing was for certain, she knew she couldn’t just slough off and write something based on the talk she’d just had.
She needed to go on-site to the club Ross and Loren were members of, and she needed to attend classes and talk to other people in the lifestyle.
* * * *
Loren settled into the passenger seat. “I like her,” she said.
Ross nodded. “She seems very nice.”
She glanced at her husband out of the corner of her eye. “I think we should set Tilly up to talk with her. And Leah.” A thought struck her. “Ooh!”
“No,” Ross said.
“What?”
“I know that sound. You want to hand her off to Leah to fix her up with Tony. No. Talk, yes. Matchmaking, no.”
Loren fought the urge to pout, knowing if she did that it would earn her at least five swats when they got home. “Just to talk, Sir.”
They stopped at a red light. He looked at her, eyebrow arched.
“Hey,” she said. “I just said I want to see if Leah and Seth want to talk to her.”
“That’s not exactly what you said. And it wasn’t the tone in which you said it. You guys need to leave poor Tony alone. He’s going to quit coming around if all of you don’t stop trying to fix him up.”
“Well, is he not someone who usually helps mentor newbies? He teaches. He’s a DM. Are you saying we can’t put her in contact with him at all?”
Ross let out an aggravated grunt she knew meant he was trying to figure out a way to admit she was right without admitting she was right.
She let the subject drop and sat back in her seat while hoping he didn’t spot the smug smile on her face.
Back home, Shayla grabbed a shower, a cup of hot herbal tea, and her notebook and pen. With her headphones plugged into the voice recorder, she played back their dinner conversation while jotting down information and making notes on points she wanted to hit for both further research and including in the article.
Despite what she’d hoped, she wouldn’t be able to get away with only writing two or three articles on the topic. No way could she do it justice without shortchanging either the subject or the people kind enough to speak to her about it.
Already she spotted several different potential topics. The dynamics and differences between Dominants and submissives, or submissives versus slaves versus bottoms, Tops and sadists and masochists and rope bunnies and…
She hit
pause
on the recorder, pulled off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. Just those topics alone could easily take up a couple of articles each to truly do them justice.
Then there were the different types of play. No way
that
could be covered in one article without glossing over everything and basically regurgitating what showed up on Wikipedia.
She thought for a moment.
Profile a person or couple and discuss salient topics?
was added to her growing list of bullet points.
Still, nothing she’d discovered gave her an answer to her own burning question.
Maybe I’ll never really know why.
Hell, when she’d angrily confronted him the second time, even James couldn’t give her a satisfactory answer. He’d begged for forgiveness, begged her not to leave him.
She’d waited to confront him until after she’d spent the afternoon alternating between throwing up in the bathroom, following his online trail through the different websites, and on the phone with various credit card companies after pulling an online credit report on herself and discovering the full extent of his treachery.
Until after she’d been armed with the truth.
Until after there was no way he could gaslight or sweet-talk his way out of it.
Okay, yes, so mailing copies of everything to his parents had been a tad on the over-the-line side of crazy, but after the shit James put her through, he should count himself lucky she hadn’t mailed copies, along with a report of the criminal fraud he perpetrated, to his boss as well.
It would have cost him his job. Had she decided to press charges, he’d be looking at jail time.
She’d been able to reclaim most of the deposits for the wedding, which gave her nearly three thousand dollars she applied to paying for her move. James promised to one day reimburse her in full.
Not that she would hold her breath. Although before she departed for Florida, he had left her a check for five hundred at the apartment.
No note enclosed.
Asshat.
With a sigh, she hit
play
and resumed listening.
* * * *
Thursday morning didn’t start well. Shayla startled awake on the couch at six o’clock, with a crick in her neck and the headphones still on after having fallen asleep listening to the interview.