Submit (Songs of Submission #3)(15)

“Does he have a dungeon?”

I buried my face in my hands and gave a muffled “No” from behind my palms. I opened them. “I don’t think so.”

He paused, rubbing his chin, then leaned even farther across the table. “And he wants you to be his official f**k toy?”

“Oh God, Darren!”

“I haven’t heard you say that in years.”

I got up so fast the chair dropped behind me. “I’m really upset, Darren, and all you want to do is make jokes.” I turned off the burner and set about making tea. “He thinks I’m a natural submissive, which is code for like, doormat and beneath him, and yeah, it’s code for Jonathan’s little f**king f**k toy. And I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say I’m no man’s whore. And you’re right. I’m not. I’m not some submissive little kitten or his god damn punching bag. What the f**k is he thinking? And you know what I’m thinking.”

“I have no idea what you’re thinking.”

I held up the teapot. “Do you want some?”

“Sure.”

“Sugar?”

“Monica?”

“What?”

“You were saying something about what you were thinking.”

I poured the tea. Darren didn’t take sugar and neither did I, but I’d needed a second to avoid saying something stupid. “I can’t say it.”

“You’re no man’s whore.”

I stared at the tea as it steeped. “I know.”

“But you’re falling for him.”

The strength went out of my spine. I hated Darren for bringing it up and for seeing through me, yet I was grateful he’d said what I couldn’t. “He’s witty,” I said. “And confident and affectionate. And he looks at me like I’m the only woman in the world. And you can make fun but… the sex is…” I searched for the right word and came up with nothing adequate. “I’m a f**k toy whore, aren’t I?”

Darren got up for his tea, since I was falling down on the job. “I’ll tell you the truth. I don’t like hearing someone is treating you like that. It upsets me. I’d actually like to punch him in the face a little.” He poured the hot water. “You’ve been alone too long. You’re vulnerable. You’re doing things you wouldn’t normally do.”

“Yeah.”

“If you want to date again, you should have tried dating, you know?”

“I want to rib you for not dating forever, then turning up g*y. But I can’t. It’s right for you. This… I don’t think this is right for me.” I pulled the bag out of my cup and pressed it until it was a sack of damp leaves. “Too bad.”

“Gabby was triangulating him against every other person in Los Angeles, and she said she came up with something she wanted to show you. It didn’t sound good.”

“Great. Secrets. Love those.”

“Come on,” Darren rubbed my shoulders. “Let’s go watch a stupid movie and talk about Kevin’s thing. I’m bored, and I’ve decided I’d love to make that guy crazy.”

We never did speak about Kevin’s thing. We never even watched a movie. We lay on the couch and watched a string of shows about rock stars with debilitating drug addictions who redeemed themselves in their fifties. I fell asleep on Darren’s chest, where I felt as safe and comfortable as when I was with with Jonathan.

I dreamed of some nether desert where the sky spoke in narrators, laugh tracks, and commercials, and I kneeled in the sand and put my hands in my pants to relieve the ache that had become water to me.

I woke up to the sound of Darren on the phone. Morning Stretch was muted. Darren’s voice squeaked, but I thought nothing of it. The fullness of my bladder pushed against some sexual part of my insides, making me feel engorged and ready. I wanted to f**k.

I went to my room, crawled into bed, and pulled the legal pad I used for middle-of-the-night ideas from the nightstand. I wrote:

What if he collars me? Slaps me? Spanks me? Bites me? Fucks me in the ass? Whips me? Hurts me? Displays me? Gags me? Blindfolds me? Shares me? Humiliates me? Ties me down? Makes me bleed? Fucks me up?

I couldn’t write any more. My imagination kept coming up with new things to do, and they got more and more horrible as I dug deeper.

I went to the bathroom and sat on the bowl, in the dark, trying not to wake up too much. I’d defined something about Jonathan during my conversation with Darren, and though I was comforted at having come to a conclusion, I was saddened at the decision.

There was a tap on the door.

“Mon?” Darren whispered.

“Use the other bathroom.”

“They found Gabrielle.” He sounded so calm I thought he meant something innocuous. “I have to identify the body.”

I stood up, my pants around my knees. “What?”

He asked softly, “Can you come with me?”

CHAPTER 10

In my life, I’d experienced grief like I experienced love. Deeply and with very few people.

My father had been taken from me when I was nineteen. I didn’t see much of him, even when he wasn’t deployed. My mother owned him, up in buttf*ck Castaic, two hours north of the den of sin and temptation I called home. The news came through her, icily framed as a happier existence with a benevolent God. I didn’t want to talk to her about how it happened. I ended up on the phone with his supervisor at Tomrock, who told me he’d taken mortar fire while escorting a Saudi prince to the central mosque in Kabul. I had told Dad he should have stayed in the military, that privatizing himself would leave him unprotected, but he was tired of listening to politically motivated orders dressed up as patriotism. If he was walking into death, he wanted it called that, and he wanted to be paid to take those risks. No fanfare. No dressing up in the flag. Dad was real. He wanted life so real it hurt. He’d been shot twice, stabbed once, and had his bell rung more than a few times in neighborhood brawls. He still held the door open for my mother after twenty years of marriage and loved her like a queen, even though she didn’t deserve it.