PickUp

Chapter Two-2

Dinner went well, considering that we were two total strangers checking each other out. She wore a very becoming, sleeveless knit top, again in black, which fit her like a second skin. I notice things like that, but if she had arrived in a beat up pair of jeans and a sweat shirt, she would still have looked ravishing. Her long black skirt was form-fitting, from waist to mid calf and had a side slit that reached high enough to show the stocking tops and garters again when she moved. On anyone else it would have looked risqué and perhaps in poor taste, but on her it was stunning. Certainly the manager thought so. I thought he’d injure his neck as he seated us, keeping his eyes on the skirt slit.

As he bowed and scraped his way down the stair at the entry and swooped us towards a quiet corner table with a reserved card on it, I wondered what Ellen did to keep this guy on a leash, getting the best table in the house and the royal treatment. As he walked way after seating us, I said quietly, “This guy, the maître’d, seems to know you.”

“He thinks he does,” Ellen replied, taking a sip of water. “He’s a leach and not a very nice one. I tip him well on occasion to keep him in line. When I’m in a generous mood, and on certain special occasions, I give him a good look at my t**s when he’s hovering too close. Wardrobe malfunctions can be very useful, you know.”

“Interesting perspective,” I said. “Everyone has their way of dealing with overly obsequious people.”

The menus came and we both took a few moments to deal with the usual awkward silence. I studied the menu and then my companion carefully.

Her jewelry was unstated, simple silver with little decoration. Probably early Georg Jensen, I thought, and worth more today than a lot of gemstone jewelry.

She said that she’d married young and divorced twice. Quickly the first time, when it became clear that the marriage was not going to work and there was no point in prolonging mutual agony. She said that the second time she thought it was going to work because they went into business together and were both into it for the s*x and the money.

“s*x and money? What sort of business, if I might ask?”

“Let’s leave that for the time being. I’ll just say that I’m not a hooker and he wasn’t and isn’t a pimp. It’s a long story and I want to know a bit more about you before I share my twisted tale. Okay?”

“Sure,” I said, now entranced by her candor and anxious to know more.

We ordered dinner while talking about other more mundane things, like wines and people we knew. Before the entre arrived, she confided that her marriage problems stemmed from her finding out that husband number one actually hated the idea of her sleeping with women and husband number two not minding her choices in women, but insisting on f*****g them as well.

“That doesn’t sound like such a terrible arrangement,” I said. “After all, it’s like keeping it in the family.”

“Yes, if incest is your thing,” she responded, picking up her fork and nibbling on a tiny bit of perfectly prepared soft shell crab. “I’m too private a person to want to know or wonder if my husband is banging the same woman as I am. It’s as simple as that.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” I said. “I never tinkered outside my marriage or even when I was just living with someone. I couldn’t handle the complexity of multiple loyalties, I guess.”

“Tinkered?” she questioned, eyebrows raised slightly, as if she wasn’t sure what she heard.

“My term, I guess. Taken from the old English novels where the spouse was boinking the traveling tinker or milkman or whomever she pleased.”

“I understand the reference,” she said quickly. “Nothing wrong with that. Monogamy, I mean. Makes things a lot simpler. You ever tie up your dates?” she asked, all in almost one sentence.

“Tie them?” I asked, hesitating and taking a long sip of my wine while I formulated the rest of my answer carefully. I was quickly gathering my thoughts and wanting to answer honestly, but also wanted to see what she had in mind. The same image I had in the coffee shop, of her chained to the post, sprang into my head, distracting me for a critical moment.

“As in bondage?” I asked, taking another quick swallow of my Australian red. She had begun with tequila, something I never touched. I favored the Islay single malt, so at least we wouldn’t be stealing each other’s drinks at home, I thought. The wine choice had been hers. After all, I thought, she was paying for it and it wasn’t cheap.

“Yes,” she said a bit bluntly. “Like tied with rope or chain or handcuffs.” She spoke to me with a suddenly condescending tone, as one might address an i***t, as though somehow, maybe by living on another planet most of my life, I never heard of anyone having s*x and being into bondage. “As in b**m, D/S, S and M, etcetera, etcetera. You know very well what I mean,” she added still with that hint of annoyance.

It was an interesting response, I thought, because as she spoke, her excellent breasts shook slightly and her eyes got a bit smaller, more focused on my face, as if she was trying to figure out what was going on in my head.

“Ah, yes, I do a bit of this and that with rope or chain, when I find the right person. And yes, I do know what you mean,” I answered.

“Sorry,” she retorted, backing off. “I didn’t mean to sound nasty. I just get tired of all the acting that goes on. The politically correct, cocktail party posturing. Most of the intelligent population knows quite well about The Scene, but acts like they never heard of it.”

“I agree.”

“Not to beat this to death,” she added. “Pardon the pun, but our western society is, I think, one of mostly morons. We treat s*x and porn the same stupid way we treat the government. In both cases we know that there are both good and evil elements, but we pretend we know nothing about such things as S&M or, even worst, we condemn it as some sort of aberrant behavior while we’re doing it at home in the closet.”

“Again, I agree.” I nodded. “The analogy to government is a bit weak, I think, though. I’m pretty much anti-regulatory and an anarchist at heart. Big government and all it entails worries the Hell out of me. Kink and porn are, on the other hand and in my opinion, no threat.”

“Me too,” she said, drinking a bit more of her wine “When was the last time you had a woman to play with?” she pressed, reaching across the table, placing her hand on my opposite wrist, wrapping her long fingers around it as though she was taking my pulse and squeezing with the intensity of a blood pressure cuff. I noticed her nails were well manicured and medium length. The nail enamel was a low key, very dark shade of vermillion; nearly black.

“It’s been a while. A long while,” I answered honestly. “How about you?”

“Regular or occasional?”

“Meaning?” I asked.

“It took me awhile to settle down after the last marriage, which I promise I’ll tell you about in a minute, but now I have regular girl friends that I see and play with a couple of times a month, usually at my place. Then there are the occasional drop-ins who I know, but seldom see. You need to know, Bob, that this is more than something of a hobby for me. I am discriminating and very, very careful who I entertain with. At an earlier time in my life, I would keep my home as open to men as I do now to women, but too many of them abused the privilege (like the b***h who owns the flower shop over in Caines). If it makes sense to you, this is the first date I’ve had with a man in about six months.”

“It makes sense to me,” I said honestly. “Do or did you tie your men up? And what about the b***h in Caines?”

“As I said before, that’s a long story with a range of answers. It’s complicated. The quick answer is yes, I tie and chain and flog when it’s appropriate. I see myself as a top, but the variations on that theme are many and when the opportunity comes, I can willingly accept being the bottom, providing the right person, male or female, is running the show.”

She wasn’t eating much while we talked, moving some of the food around the plate, but not actually eating more than a few mouthfuls as she talked.

She continued, “As far as I can tell from self-analysis and some occasional help from counselors and shrinks, I am more or less fifty-fifty.”

“Uh huh,” I commented.

“And ‘The b***h’ is my competitor, who sooner or later you will probably meet, if you haven’t already.”

“I can take that several ways,” I said after a pause for trying to figure out what she meant. “Do you mean AC/DC, as far as s****l partners are concerned or do you mean you can switch hit from top to bottom when you want or do you mean both, sometimes?”

“All of the above,” she said quickly, grinning widely and showing her fine, white teeth.

“Well, Ellen,” I said thoughtfully, “I guess that’s about the way I understood it, based on what you told me earlier. Sounds and looks like you know a Hell of a lot more about it than I do. I started out with a girlfriend who wanted to tie me up and graduated from there to light bondage. May I assume that the marks on your wrists are from some recent activity?”

“Yes. Some are very old and won’t ever go away unless I have plastic surgery, which I won’t, and some are from last night in fact.”

“Can I also assume that it was you who were tied up and that someone else was doing the tying?”

“You may assume that,” she said, taking her hand away from my wrist. “But a more correct observation might be that it was a mutual thing.”

“Mutual?”

She sighed. “This goes back to the original question. I really like being both dom and sub. It doesn’t confuse me, but it sure as Hell baffles other people. The man or woman who ventures into a session with me has got to be smart, sober, alert and ready to adjust, if you know what I mean.”

“Can you expand on that a bit? I don’t want to draw the wrong conclusions,” I said, wondering what she would be like in a situation, top or bottom.

“Sure. Better now than in the cellar,” she said, laughing and sipping her drink. “My friend, Duet, and I were playing, as we often do. We got into a situation where we both wanted the same thing, so we tied ourselves together, sixty-nine style, belly to belly and spent the night making each other come. The game was to see who would have the most numerous orgasms and whose would be the most intense. I think that I won on both scores as I had the presence to keep score with a piece of chalk on the floor beside me. I’d mark one for her and one for me, and so forth until we both napped out. However, Duet, being younger, is more resilient, so I left her tied up and went out, eventually shopping where I saw you.”

“Wow,” was all I could say. Then, “I’m at a loss for words. I like your directness and candor. It’s quite unique and your words live up to your looks, if I may say so. I’m still a bit stunned by the combination you present.”

“Crap,” she said, smiling and looking me in the eye. “Your pick-up lines are a bit formal and shaky, but your sincerity seems real.”

“Thank you. I hate word games. I seldom go to parties as I dislike the bullshit that’s wrapped around most conversations. Anyway,” I said quickly. “I’m considered by some people as anti-social and if that means avoiding large groups that talk crap and drink too much, they’re correct.”

“I socialize a lot,” Ellen said. “My home is, well, large enough so that a year may pass when I don’t visit half the rooms. But, I do socialize and it’s usually in a party of two or three, not on the i***t-prone ‘social networks’.”

We both stopped talking and ate a little of our dinner, which was getting cold because we were yakking too much.

“We got off the subject there,” I finally said. I was really interested in knowing more about what she did and where this all might be headed, for, despite our candor, we were still, as far as I could see, skirting the main issues. “You were talking about your frequency in S&M. Sounds like it’s a major part of your life.”