It began unsought and without warning. I met him not in a leather bar or out on some dark street beside the river after midnight, but in a well-appointed ballroom at the Hilton Hotel in mid-town Manhattan. It was the afternoon of the third day of the mid-winter meeting of the Modern Language Association. He was chairing a panel on Shakespeare's Last Plays, and because I had written about some of those plays in my doctoral thesis -- even though since I had become an adjunct at CUNY I had only taught freshman composition -- I thought I'd go hear what the people who had the luck actually to be teaching Shakespeare had to say.
As usual, I was disappointed, and I may have been a bit belligerent when, during the question period I pushed one of the panelists to find a connection between Lear and Prospero that seemed obvious to me, about how Shakespeare had transformed Lear, a hero who was destroyed by tragic forces, into Prospero, a hero who triumphed because of his mastery of magic forces.
You oughtn't be so hard, Ben said to me without preamble as I found him walking beside me as everyone was leaving the room.
I'm sorry, I said. I forget where I am sometimes when something is important to me.
You can't let things get to be that important, he said with a generous smile.
That's easy for you to say, I responded.
Do you feel like explaining that? he said, but without belligerence.
Well, you've got tenure, I said before I could think, a professor at Columbia. Everyone in the field knows your name.
And in my voice -- even I could hear it -- there was an edge.
Oops, I said. I'm sorry, I said. I think I did it again.
It's okay, he said, placing a strong hand on my back. I understand.
No hard feelings? I said.
None whatsoever, he said. And to prove it, let me buy you a drink. Have you been to the place across the street yet?
No, I said.
Well, what say we go? he said. I wonder, he added, holding the door on to Seventh Avenue open for me, if they didn't deliberately choose a hotel that would have a gay bar across the street from it.
Are you! I said.
Isn't it obvious? He responded with a laugh.
Nothing is obvious to me, I said.
Well, he said, his palm still pressed against my back, we'll have to do something about that.
I must confess that during the panel, and especially when I was speaking from the floor, I hardly saw Ben -- or anything else, for that matter -- and would be at a loss had I been asked to describe him, but now, standing with our sides pressed against the bar and as I was taking it slower with a second vodka martini than I had with the first, I got to look at him and register what I saw.
Unlike me -- I was wearing jeans, brown loafers, a black turtle-neck and a three-button grey, blue, and brown herringbone jacket -- he was wearing a suit and tie and looked like he had stepped out of a men's fashion magazine -- or was ready to be photographed for an ad in one. It was a charcoal brown suit, pleated trousers and a three-button jacket tapered at the waist. The shirt was a pale plum color; the tie a pale pearl. His eyes, however, were anything but pale. They were of an intense and disconcerting blue that I found myself unable to look at even though he fixed them easily upon me.
Did you intend to go to the plenary session this evening? he asked.
Probably, I answered.
Why don't we skip it," he said. I'm hungry and we can have dinner together instead.
Okay.
You sound reluctant, he said with a smile. Is it me?
Oh, no, I responded. But, I'm afraid we travel in different circles and my budget would not allow me to go to the kind of restaurant I imagine you are accustomed to eat at.
It's on me, he said, touching my cheek.
No way, I said, smiling.
Ok, ok, he said, withdrawing his hand.
Look, I know a great falafel place on Seventy-Second Street, he said, and then we can go over to my place on Central Park West, for coffee and brandy, if you like.
Deal, I said.
It must get frustrating, he said, sitting across from me in a dark brown leather deco club chair the twin of the one I sat on in his study, term in, term out.
I take what I can get, I said with a shrug.
A little more brandy? he said as he handed me the joint we were passing back and forth.
Sure, I said, eager to go where I thought he was taking me but unable to make the first move myself.
So where do you see yourself in five years? he asked with a laugh.
You sound like a job interviewer at the MLA, I said.
I know, he said. Answer the question anyhow.
God, was he handsome.
To tell you the truth, I said, I don't look that far ahead. There's no job security and I live frugally. I try to save as much as I can.
He raised his glass to me in a silent toast.
It was late and when I stood up to leave, he took me in his arms.
I knew when I saw you this afternoon, that I wanted to have you, he said in my ear and then kissed me.
His kiss broke something in me then, and I knew that I had been trying not to see what had been perfectly obvious from the start. He was my heart's desire and I had been afraid to acknowledge that. But now that he held me in his arms and pressed his lips to mine, everything changed. The world was a new world. I was a new man. I gave myself to him because I wanted to, desperately, because he had already taken me. I gave myself to him because I knew I was, in fact, his. He was everything I wanted. He was everything I wanted to be and knew I wasn't.
He had already loosened his tie earlier and taken off his jacket.
Unbutton my shirt, he said, and my fingers obeyed as he probed my soul with his tongue.
My hands held on to him, feeling his smooth chest, his muscled stomach, his hard nipples, his washboard ribs. Had I let go, the earth would have swallowed me. I fell to his feet and kissed his ankles.
He squatted; taking me by the chin with his thumb and index finger, he lifted me back up with him and kissed me gently on the lips as we rose, and brushed them with his tongue. Through my turtle neck he softly tortured my nipples.
Let's shower before we go to bed, he said.
I pulled off my turtle neck and shivered when I saw by how he was looking at me that he liked how I looked shirtless.
I think I'm never going to allow you to wear a shirt again, he said, and gently caressed my nipples, gazing into my eyes. It was exciting to look at him and to get lost in locked eyes.
There's a big difference between the way tenured faculty members with a rank of professor live and the way adjunct lecturers like me live, I said, pulling myself back from the edge. This is all dazzling.
Relax, he said. It's just the beginning.
We climbed a winding marble staircase inside the apartment from his study up to the bathroom.
He caressed the back of my neck.
You don't know how turned on I am by your innocence, he said.
Not as much as I'm turned on by you, I responded. Forgive me, I said.
It's okay, Julian, he said. I like it. I want you to be turned on. I want you to feel that I have a power over you like no one else ever had.
I stayed with him that night and he made love to me. He made love to me. Understand the emphasis. He took me. He accepted me. He brought me to life. He made everything happen.
He overwhelmed me.
As we sat at breakfast, he told me he wanted me to move in with him.
But we just met. We hardly know each other, I said; but as I said it, I felt it was irrelevant.
This has nothing to do with knowing each other, he said. It's about who we are. I know enough to know exactly what you are, and I want you, and I know that you want me the way you've never wanted anyone. And I know, he said, smiling, that you are a submissive.
I repeated the last part of his sentence as if to deny it simply by repeating the words.
A submissive, I said.
But he stopped me.
You don't need to deny it, sweetheart. There is nothing to be ashamed of, and you know it is true.
As he spoke I was fascinated by the strength of his jaw, how it was both square and angular. I wanted his mouth on mine.
You see, he said, that I, he continued, am naturally dominant. I have known it since my childhood. Instinctively, people are drawn to me, and they want to do what I want. I've seen it working all my life. I get what I want. I always do.
If that's the case, I asked, why me?
I never, he said, demand reasons of myself. When I sense I desire something, I do not question why. I simply satisfy my desire. And that is what I am doing now. If you wish to continue teaching a few classes, he added, I have no objection. But it is not at all necessary. As you have yourself noticed, my income is more than adequate to allow me to keep you. If that makes you uncomfortable, you might think of yourself as my assistant. It will be a lot more interesting for you than marking freshman themes. I usually publish one book and half a dozen articles a year. I can use the kind of help I know you can give, from doing library research for me to serving me coffee and brandy.
It was useless for me to resist him; I was flattered; and I did not want to. This is what I had been daydreaming would happen for years. Now it was.
The western sky stretched outside. He stood and came over to me. I stood. He slipped his hand inside the long, thick terry robe he had given me, and cupped my chest and I felt his palm against my nipple.
We kissed with exquisite gentility, slow, largo kisses. Great fields of sky unfolded in my inner vision.
I moved in with him, gave up teaching at the end of the fall term -- a matter of weeks -- and became his assistant.
The importance of ritual, he said as we walked through a snowy Central Park one late Friday afternoon, goes unrecognized in secular society and has been robbed of its vitality and been rendered soporific in ecclesiastical contexts.
It was obvious, too, he said then as he had said more than once, that I was a submissive, eager to serve a master who could reach into my heart and reveal my identity to me.
It was not difficult for me to realize that he was my heart's master, my perfect image, my guiding force, the direction my heart yearned to follow.
But it was difficult for me to contain the overflow of love I felt for him. It was like being on the brink of an explosion, always about to burst. The world was rich and full and the illuminated towers on Central Park West in the twilight all seemed to be mine. The city itself was embracing me.
Through the cold night air of January, I told him that was how I felt.
That is why discipline and ritual are important, he said. That is why I am going to put a leather harness on you. It symbolizes the restraint, the control you require and that I am able to provide.
I was dizzy. This was about power, the love I felt for him; our relationship. It was about the greatness of his power and how it dominates me. I began to feel a vital strength directing me -- his; I knew it -- that I had never experienced before.
It was not marriage, and yet there was a frenzy preceding our new arrangement that must be like that which marks the time leading up to the social ceremony of a marriage and the private encounter of the two beings thus locked together as they confront each other as naked sexual beings traveling through their mutual erotic territory in their first complete embrace.
He bathed and shaved and anointed me, and led me to his bed-chamber. I had to wear a black silken robe loosely tied and showing my naked chest, my vulnerable throat, my well-muscled, lean legs, and the black, skin tight, mini boxer briefs he gave me to wear. The room was illuminated by a dozen wax candles; it was scented with the exhalations of a multitude of cut flowers. As I lay stretched out, my arms above my head upon his bed, naked but for the narrow leather bands that served for a collar round my throat and bracelets for my wrists, slowly he caressed my flesh, at first with the greatest gentleness, gradually increasing the strength of his touch until finger tips became nails and kisses became vampiric bites, and indeed, my lips did bleed, and I screamed in ecstasy when his teeth pierced my nipples. But he muffled my scream with his mouth over mine and penetrated me with his fingers, pulling me upwards towards him and then piercing me deep inside till he was buried all the way in me. I yielded to him with great sobs as he entered me and withdrew and entered me again. I throbbed and pulsed, begged for him with my body, drew him in, released him and then drew him in again, panting in frenzied undulations.
He pushed himself so deeply within me that I was transformed into him. I felt the beginning of becoming as his spirit pulsed within me and drowned me.
Pain is as necessary as pleasure, he said, between kisses, as we lay on the hot soft sand, and he gently brushed my lips with his tongue.
The sun beat down from a cloudless, boundless blue sky. The turquoise Caribbean stretched to an infinite horizon and broke to pieces in white flakes of foam against the beach.
He was dazzling: his long muscular body, bronzed, extended beside mine; his face like the face of a divinity.
Pain, I said.
Pain, he repeated. Agony and suffering. I want to take you to the edge. I want to feel you writhing and suffering, needing to come and not being able to. I want to hear you scream and beg and plead with me to let you come and feel you clawing my skin and biting me in your agony. I want to keep you in that condition for days until you beg me to do anything to you, but to release you from your agony. You want that don't you?
I couldn't breathe. I was painfully hard. I grabbed him by the shoulders with hands that had become claws and kissed him as if I wanted to devour him.
Oh, yes, I said.
No matter how much intellect and sensitivity, he said, holding me away from him and smiling, underneath there's always the greedy whore.
It struck a discordant note. I was taken aback. Did he mean it?
You're only a greedy whore, aren't you?
His tone was changing. He wasn't smiling. It sounded like he was serious. There was a threat in his voice and something frightening.
You're just a greedy whore who needs to be fucked.
I looked at him in confusion.
Say it, damn it. Admit it, he said. The other couples on the sand around us were looking now as he slapped me.
Say it, he said, I'm just a greedy whore who needs to be fucked.
I couldn't believe this was happening. I felt another slap pull me out of the daze.
Say it: I'm just a greedy whore who needs to be fucked.
I began to cry, but I saw in his eyes it would be impossible to defy him.
I'm just a greedy whore, I said, who needs to be fucked.
What right do you have to torture me like this, I spit out in rebellion, that night when we were in our hotel room.
No sooner were the words out of my mouth but I realized my mistake.
The blow was swift and sharp and stung on the cheek. It came from a thin wisp of a reed he played with. I was mortified.
Kiss it now and say thank you, he said. I knew it was more than a game. It had been going on since that afternoon on the beach.
I glared at him unbelieving.
He understood me, but would not explain, and would not tolerate resistance. I felt another whiz of the stick upon my cheek. It burned.
Now, he said, holding it to my lips, kiss the stick; or would you prefer another kiss from the stick?
I could see from the blackness in his eyes that he was serious. The threat was real. I was shivering, although it was hot in the room, and, to my shame, my cock was standing stiff.
I kissed the stick he held to my lips, waiting for him to relent, to end the game. But he didn't.
Say thank you, sir.
The words broke out of me in painful fragments.
Louder, he commanded touching the stick to my shoulder.
Thank you, sir, I said with tears in my eyes.
Scratching the edge of the stick against my bare skin, he dragged it from my shoulder down to my nipple and then pressed my aroused nipple with its rough point. I gasped.
Silence.
I bent my head in submission.
Again he pressed the stick into my nipple and twisted it.
A wave of electricity shot through me. I kept my breathing even; my belly contracted.
Do you like the pain?
I could not speak.
Answer me, he said, with another prod of the stick against my nipple.
No, I said.
Without warning I felt the cut of the stick against my rib cage.
He repeated the question.
Yes, sir, I said, hoping that would prevent another blow.
But one followed immediately.
I understood.
Sir, thank you, sir, I said.
Gently, as if rewarding me, he pushed the stick into my nipple.
And then he touched my penis with its point and slid its length along my shaft as if measuring something. And then I clenched my eyes shut as the swift whip of the stick cracked the hard bone of my cock. And then a second blow.
To stop it, I say, Sir, thank you sir.
Ask for more.
No, I cried.
Another blow.
And another.
With each blow the bone of my cock grows harder; the skin, hotter
This will go on forever until I am cringing on my knees and bent to his will.
More, sir, please, sir, more, I cried as he struck me.
I thought I said that as a ruse, as a way to get him to stop, but as I heard the words coming out of me, they sounded genuine, and I knew, with certainty, that i meant them.
With all your heart, you will see, you will beg me to hurt you, he said, finally stopping, touching the stick to the tip of my chin and raising my head with its point so that I was looking up into his eyes.
Later that night, I lay sobbing in his arms as he kissed me gently and told me how much he loved me. My heart melted and I told him I loved him, too, as I had never loved anyone,and when I kissed him I felt myself evaporating.
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