Donna Has Left the Building Page 6

  Joey assured me the store owners were discreet “and totally cool.” They ran a weekly Bondage-Discipline/Sado-Masochism support group and would even give me private dominatrix training, if I was interested.

  “Yeah. Right. With all my free time.” I snorted.

  “Zsa-Zsa!” a voice sang across the aisles. “How you doin’? Long time, no see!”

  A stocky, middle-aged woman threw her roast-beefy arms around my husband. She had spiky, electric-pink, cactus-needle hair and funky geometric glasses on a chain around her neck. Otherwise, she was dressed head-to-toe in black—some sort of asymmetrical smock, black leggings, black Converse high-tops. Releasing Joey, she turned to me. “Hi. I’m Vicki. So, you’re the adoring wife, I hear, yes?” Her Long Island accent was so heavy, for a moment I assumed she was putting me on. She said “yawh” instead of “you’re”; “adaw-ring” instead of “adoring.” The entire town of Syosset lived in her voice.

  “Uh, yeah. I guess. That’s me,” I said, smiling haplessly. “Miss Vanilla.”

  “Well, not to worry,” Vicki said, unfolding her glasses, sliding them on, motioning for us to follow. “Joey’s told us all about you, and we’re going to get you a nice outfit and make sure you’re comfortable. Show you the ropes, as we like to say, ha ha—no pun intended. You’re going to have fun here, okay?”

  “Sure, okay,” I said gamely, though I just could not get past her voice: My God, it was like a sex shop run by Fran Drescher. Yet, more than anything else, it was the pink hair that threw me; it was the very same shade I myself had had when I was sixteen. Pink hair on a middle-aged woman, I’d always told myself, was grasping and pathetic. But Vicki managed to pull it off. I felt a great callowness—a sudden need to prove and endear myself to her. I wanted her to understand that I was actually “cool” and not all that vanilla, either.

  “So,” I said, trying to sound casual as I followed her back through the clothing, “Joey said you used to do porn?”

  “Oh, sure, a long, long time and about fifty pounds ago,” Vicki said breezily, leading us past circular racks of lingerie. “Back in the ’70s, you know, before AIDS, before digital. I did a few titles. Starsky and Crotch was the big one. But then I had my kid, of course. And let’s face it: Gravity is nobody’s friend.” She stopped at a section where rows of various riding crops, whips, and cat-o’-nine-tails hung from display racks like umbrellas and handbags. “Do I wanna start you off here?” she said aloud to herself. “Nah, let’s get you outfitted first.” She waved at us to keep following her as she changed direction. “You keep walking, I’ll keep talking. I tend to talk a lot,” she said. Joey shot me an encouraging look and mouthed: Isn’t she great?

  “The thing with porn is,” Vicki continued, “you can only do that stuff for so long. I’m really a people person, you know? Like, I did Myers-Briggs, and I was way out on the extrovert scale. EMIT, EMIS—something—I forget exactly. You’d think porn would be very social, but actually, not so much. On the set, it’s you and five, maybe six people, tops. And then you do the shoot, and that’s it. Maybe a zillion guys jerk off to you, but me? Most of the time, I was just going home to eat KFC and watch Love Boat. It was depressing.”

  I felt my handbag vibrate. A message from Colleen Lundstedt appeared on my phone: Is everything all right? When you get a chance, please check in. We’ve gotten several sales queries for you regarding the “Via Vecchio” earthenware.

  Vicki was leading us through a section now devoted to blow-up dolls. “So when my kid got into U-M, Diane and I moved up here and opened the store instead. Detroit, Flint—already they were a mess. But as I’ve learned, basically anything to do with sex is recession-proof.”

  Not a good time, I messaged back to Colleen. Still dealing w family emergency.

  Vicki looked me up and down. “For a bustier, I’m thinking you’re what? A size eight?”

  “Uh, sometimes. Sometimes ten, depending on the cut.”

  “Anyway, I get to meet tons of people now. Plenty of vanillas come in. Bachelorette parties, couples looking to spice it up. Though most of our regulars are hard-core. The BDSM community is a very lovely, very down-to-earth bunch. Really, you’ll see. You should come to our workshops. I told Joey, if you’re going to be doing this regularly, you should get some training so that all your play is safe and aboveboard. We so-called ‘perverts’ look out for each other. Let me tell you, my sister? She lives over in Peoria, where she does the Junior League?” Vicki gave a low, disbelieving whistle. “Those women are nasty with a capital N. The backstabbing? The viciousness? That’s real abuse. That’s the not-okay type of sadism you’ve got going on over there. But for some reason, we’re the ‘deviants.’ Go figure.”

  Vicki stopped at a case full of nipple clamps: not much different from the Privileged Kitchen’s assortment of clips for potato chip bags. “Here, we’re all consenting adults. Oh, I love selling sex toys. It’s so much easier than doing porn. Let’s face it, nobody gets a bladder infection from showing customers how to use restraints properly, am I right? As I always say, ‘There’s no VD in the word ‘retail.’” Vicky checked back to see if I agreed. I must have looked a little stunned because she said, “TMI? Whoops. Sorry. I never know. My therapist says I ‘overshare.’”

  We’d reached a section full of shiny bustiers now, fire-engine red, black, faux patent leather, real leather, satin, some with intricate boning and ties, some with aggressive stitching, some with lace, others with spikes. For some of my gigs with Toxic Shock Syndrome, I’d actually worn a black lace bra, a leather dog collar, studded cuffs. It sounds so clichéd now, but at sixteen, I’d really thought I was being edgy.

  Vicki sized me up, then whipped out a tape measure and motioned for me to raise my arms so she could measure my bust. “Yep. Thirty-two. Zsa-Zsa,” she said to Joey. It was the first time she’d addressed him since we met. “You got a price range?”

  Joey had a broad, happy smile plastered across his face. Shaking his head, he flicked his hand at the ceiling as if to suggest that money was no object: The sky was the limit. It occurred to me that so far, this was actually the most shocking thing I’d witnessed all day.

  “Hey! Zsa-Zsa, how are you?” another woman said as she emerged from amid the clothing racks. She was pixieish with sheared gray hair and a crinkly-eyed smile behind small, rectangular glasses. She wore strawberry-colored dungarees and—what charmed me immediately—a vintage Runaways T-shirt. She gave Joey a brittle, bird-like hug, then pushed her glasses farther up her nose with her finger. “Vicki said you’d be coming in today.”

  “Diane,” Vicki said, steering her over to me.

  Diane’s head bobbed up and down as she shook my hand vigorously. “Oh my God. You must be Donna, yes? Hi, hi, so pleased to meet you. Really. Truly.”

  “Pleased to meet you, too,” I said. This was the former stripper?

  “Can I just say?” Diane’s face shone with an almost evangelical enthusiasm. “We are so thrilled to have you here. Zsa-Zsa is one of our favorite customers—if I’m allowed to say that—if we’re allowed to have favorites. And what you’re doing here? I need to say this: It is really, really brave. And kind. I wish more spouses could be as open-minded as you are. A lot of wives, frankly, they find out about their husbands’ lifestyle, and they just get all judgy and freaked out—”

  “Yeah, well—” I said.

  “Though we have gotten a lot more vanillas in here since Fifty Shades of Grey,” she said. Reaching over, she pulled a black vinyl bustier off the rack and handed it to Vicki. “I think this one’ll work well on her.” She turned to me. “Have you read it?”

  “What? Fifty Shades?” I said. “Not really.” My book club had chosen it one month, and I’d gone so far as to download it. But the truth was, I wasn’t much for fiction—or books in general. Oddly, even though I’d ended up majoring in English Literature at U-M, these days I just had no patience for reading. Mostly, I’d joined the book club for the socializing. My first sponsor had invite
d me, and I was desperate to spend time with people who didn’t spend all their time talking about not drinking.

  “Well, good. Don’t,” Vicki said with surprisingly vehemence. “That idiotic book totally misrepresents the lifestyle.”

  Diane looked like she was about to disagree, but Vicki shot her a look. Clearly, this was an ongoing point of contention between them.

  “So, Donna, is there anything you like?” Joey said quickly, motioning to a rack of bullet bras. Put him in as many crinolines and bloomers as he wanted, but my husband was still a guy. Stop chitchatting, ladies, his tone said. Move it along here.

  Vicki and Diane helped me into fishnet stockings. A snakey-tight Spandex miniskirt that retracted like a bungee cord and shone like dark syrup. A spiked collar. A black patent-leather corset that jutted and curved like a piece of architecture. It was heavily boned, bolstered with struts, a dozen hook-and-eye closures running down the back, crisscrossed by intricate stays. As Diane yanked the laces tighter and tighter behind me, I felt like Scarlett O’Hara. My waist went from twenty-three inches to nineteen. My breasts rose two inches, mashed together; for the first time in my life, I had serious cleavage. I had to admit, I felt creature-like, exalted, eroticized—utterly transformed. I had not felt this unabashedly sexy in ages—if ever—though how I was going to manage to put on this outfit again at home, by myself, was another story.

  “That’s exactly what slaves are for, Donna,” Vicki said. “Zsa-Zsa will dress you, bathe you, do anything you tell her to.” I had to say, I was warming more and more to this dominatrix idea. I hadn’t been this fussed-over since my wedding day.

  Diane knelt before me and scooped one of my feet, then the other, into stilty, lipstick-red stiletto pumps. She handed me a riding crop.

  “Whoa,” she said as she and Vicki stepped back to assess my finished look. “Va-va-voom.”

  “Come.” Diane offered her hand. “Let’s introduce you, shall we?” She parted the curtain. “Zsa-Zsa?” she called to Joey. “Come and meet your new mistress.”

  I posed in the doorway, hands on my hips, trying to look as fierce as possible.

  Joey rose from the stool, dumbstruck.

  “Donna,” he said. “You look—”

  “She’s a natural, isn’t she?” Diane said with satisfaction.

  “Killer,” Vicki agreed.

  “Donna,” Joey said again.

  “I gotta say,” said Vicki, shaking her head. “We get alotta doms in here. But you? You really got the look. You got the attitude.”

  I stood planted there, smiling, basking in their admiration. Slowly, I raised my riding crop once and sliced the air with it.

  “Oh, baby.” Joey laughed.

  In the mirror across from the dressing room, I could see myself. I didn’t look ridiculous at all. I didn’t look like a woman just about to turn forty-five. Vicki and Diane knew exactly what they were doing. I looked like an Amazon, a superhero, muscled and glossy and indomitable. I could bestride the globe, force men to kneel before me. Serve me. Love me, motherfucker. I am Donna, the Dom.

  There was only one problem.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  Or walk.

  The corset was crushing my ribs; it seemed to cut off the blood from my waist down. And those luscious, pornographic-red heels were so high, I’d keel like a felled tree if I took a single step. Everything felt like an iron lung.

  “Mistress Donna,” Joey said encouragingly, curtsying a little before me, “what can I do for you?”

  “Go on, command him,” Vicki instructed. “Order him to do something. Make him serve you.”

  All I could do was stand there, immobilized in my costume; all the muscles in my face suddenly felt paralyzed, too. I may have looked powerful, but I felt as if I’d contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome.

  “You want to serve me?” I said. “Then please. Get me out of these fucking shoes.”

  On the way home, Joey and I stopped for lunch at Applebee’s. My feet and ribs no longer ached, and as we ate our burgers, we smiled at each other as impishly as teenagers. In the middle of the meal, my phone vibrated once, then twice. I was tempted to ignore it, but it was Ashley, tweeting from London: Merkel 2-faced? Rumor that Germany might close Austria & Hungary borders! Croatia overwhelmed! ☹ ☹

  Then: EU calls for hotspot in Lesvos & Chios. Refugees now must register? Camp will be detention facility? Horrible!!! ☹ #refugeecrisis

  I passed it to Joey. “What the hell is she talking about?”

  He glanced at the screen. “I have absolutely no idea.”

  It was the first time in a long while that our kids were not center stage in our lives. Joey leaned across the table until his face was just a few inches from mine. “Hey mistress,” he said, tipping his head in the direction of the Subaru parked beyond the window, its trunk full of brand-new fetish-wear. “Wanna go home and play?” Austin had hockey practice; we’d have at least four hours to ourselves in the middle of the day. The next evening was my birthday dinner—at our regular Italian place—and then I had PK demos scheduled for the rest of the week. It was now or, well, a long time from now.

  I reached for the check. “Okay. Let’s do this.” By now, I admit, I was eager. I was primed. Like anybody with a brand-new purchase, I wanted to try it out.

  Nothing in a marriage will ever be as nakedly intimate as childbirth. But watching your husband dress up in his Sissy Maid uniform while he, in turn, laces up your dominatrix corset, was, at least for me, a close second. Joey was unnervingly adept at donning his bra, girdle, bloomers, et cetera. To be so up close and personal as he effected his transformation—the makeup, the wig, the frilly cap and bits of pearl jewelry—even perfume (Fantasy by Britney Spears? Really?)—well, it was something.

  Then it was my turn. Of course, putting on any outfit at home is always anticlimactic compared to trying it on in the store—and as Joey struggled to fasten all the hooks and eyes of my corset (first he needed his reading glasses, then he claimed his fingers were too fat, then we started bickering over how the laces were supposed to tie. It was likely the least sexy transformation in all of erotic history), my apprehension began to return, and I began to think that what we were doing was pure folly—that in agreeing to be Joey’s dominatrix, I was just aiding and abetting a mutual descent into insanity.

  In the end, though, we got there. Joey became Zsa-Zsa, and I—because I’d been told it was best to have a special “dom name” to help further delineate the role-playing from reality—was now Mistress Moyet, a moniker I’d chosen after the lead singer from the ’80s New Wave group Yaz.

  Joey and I regarded each other with the same dawning astonishment we’d had on our wedding day. In my bustier and rubber skirt and fishnets, I looked cocksure and fearsome. And Joey? He looked surprisingly vulnerable. All the grizzly lines of him had been softened by the flounces and lace of his pink dress, and in his great desire to climb out of his muscle-bound, hairy man’s body, well, he was almost poignant.

  “Okay. Now what?” I said. Just getting dressed was a massive undertaking. Already, I felt exhausted. I wondered if, as a dominatrix, I could just order both of us to take a nice afternoon nap. “You’re going to have to give me instructions until I get the hang of this myself.”

  “Well, sure, sure. Of course. Yes, mistress,” Joey said. His voice, suddenly, was no longer Joey’s but a high, puppety falsetto—the kind men always seem to adopt whenever they’re trying to mimic women. “Why don’t you snap your riding crop and order me to tell you what to do?”

  I frowned in my leather collar. “What riding crop?”

  A look passed over his powdered face. “The riding crop we just bought at the Pleasure Chest, mistress.”

  “We didn’t buy a riding crop.”

  “Yeah we did. Vicki wrapped it up with your collar and shoes.”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Are you sure? I thought we got the riding crop. And the paddle.”

  “No. Remember? You said they w
ere too pricey.”

  “What? No. I said they were too expensive together, so I said to just get the riding crop.”

  We rummaged through the bags from the Pleasure Chest. Just to be sure, Joey checked the credit card receipt in his wallet. It seemed we had, in fact, forgotten to purchase any riding crops or paddles. “Shit, I can’t believe this,” Joey said, in his regular voice now. “Mistress Tanya always brought her own.”

  Just hearing that name got my back up. “Hang on,” I said. Twisting my feet out of the stilettos (How was it, I suddenly wondered, that I was supposed to be the powerful one here, but Joey, in his Mary Janes, still got to wear the comfortable shoes?). Rifling through the closet in our home office, I emerged with the new Privileged Kitchen “nonstick, slotted, flexible fish spatula” ($16.95, if you care); a red silicone batter-scraper ($8.95); one of our beechwood long-handled kitchen spoons ($5.85); and the new PK stainless burger-flipper ($18.95 on sale). “Will any of these work?”

  Joey picked them up one by one, assessing their weight, slapping them each a couple of times against his opened palm as if to test them. “Wow. You could have a whole new side business here.” He laughed. He placed the fish spatula in my hand, angled my wrist, and guided me though a swing like a tennis instructor. “Straight through, like that, with a flick at the end. Not too soft. You don’t have to hold back.”

  Bending over, he pulled down his ruffled bloomers and tights to expose his pinkish, gelatinous buttocks to me. “Give it a shot, mistress,” he said.

  I remained motionless. “You’ve got to be kidding me, Joey.”