Tors Lake

I have a business I call the English Department. Downstairs I have thirteen thousand volumes. They’re part of the business, as are the exams, the papers, research theses, a raised stage for oral reports, the refresher courses. I assign homework. I do not grade on a curve. Another twenty-three hundred volumes are upstairs in the corridor running past the pain parlors. There are English Departments all over the Bay Area. I am paid to mix theirs up with mine. I sell illusions. It’s a variable package. It consists mainly of rewards and punishments. I talk in both instances as well as listen. I am a tall blonde. As such, I provide a confusion that I am a tall blonde a guy can have a beer with while he’s waiting to be whipped. There is a market for services such as I describe, as for so much else. This is complicated, more than mixed-up conveys. How complicated it is I couldn’t tell you. As time passes I am asked out--to the opera, the symphony, a museum. They will pick up the tab. It would be a date. They go from there. I don’t. I am not that kind of tall blonde. That is their illusion, not mine.

I use a cane, a switch, a whip, and so forth, as asked, within reason. I do not mix instruments. I follow instructions within reason. I do it if it’s in the curriculum. In exchange they tell me how they got to be who they are. I don’t say who they is. I don’t use names.

I sell, strict. This has a shared meaning, what we call in my neighborhood old-fashioned discipline. This need not be physical. When it is we go upstairs. This is a long walk. There is plenty of time to back out. I am not the People’s Pro Domme. I am a specialist. I have divided a row of apartments into three chambers. For each there is a setting. A domina’s salon in Pompeii flows into a throne, a step to receive, to atone, to set the soul soaring in the House of Weals and Squeals. The one you really want to visit is in Venice. Next door is a monk’s cloister in the Abbey of XX. At the end is a reproduction of a sitting room in Belgravia. I don’t hide it. This is my favorite. A client soaks in it a while, restoring that luscious feel of, well, a preparation. On the walls are images of what we do. The figures of history have all done it before--kings, grand dukes, plain naughty dukes, bronzed Greek slaves, the legions of the Swinburnian damned, the sinners of the sin of false quantities.

My regulars are smart. They are mostly men, prominent in some field, perpetual seekers after a newness in experience immune to repetition. I put that remark in quotes. Good luck. It keeps me on my toes. For example, some clients translate dead languages. Latin taps an erotic core of punishable offenses. Urdu does not. I’m just quoting here. At the English Department, I don’t forget it’s an art, the vividness of some first experience. I mean, I try to keep up. I will spice a spanking with Latin phrases, within reason. I will listen to tapes and practice. It’s not an expertise I’ve developed, but I run a business. Latin is à la carte. I dress up smart, usually including leather. It keeps me up to speed with smart people. Solids are popular, in particular black and red. I am not asked for swirls and polka dots. I guess I could. I follow the prevailing guidelines. What goes on around here doesn’t look like fun, but on average we laugh quite a lot. Subservience on a schedule serves its purposes. It’s childish, but who wants to feel old?

I will not countenance certain practices. There’s no directory on the wall. In this instance I’m the boss. It comes down to no means no. I try not to be too dull about it. I watch for shifts in behavior patterns. Insolence is the element most conspicuously present when a client is not taking a no cheerfully. He’s taking his needs somewhere else. I get told that I think I’m pretty hot. It’s a free country. The breakups keep me from forgetting it’s a free country.

It’s their money.