I asked him how he felt about Motley Crüe and he asked me what that was. I bit my bottom lip to keep mouth shut because I didn’t want to say something mean and ruin the interview — nothing kills the mood like a missed metal joke. Wait, that was a lie; Crüe kills the mood much more violently (unless you’re Pam and it’s 1995, but I’m not and it’s not).
I took a few moments to collect my thoughts; he took the silence as an invitation, and told me that I smell like an arboretum, which I suppose was flattering, but still. Is there a more un-sexy word than ‘arboretum?’ Even ‘syphilis’ is sexier; it’s smooth, and sibilant. I said “Thank you,” as he twirled my hair around his finger and looked up at me with puppy dog eyes. Except you know those little tiny dogs that hump everything they see? It was those kind of puppy dog eyes. I reminded him that this was strictly professional.
“Of course,” he said. His eyes narrowed as his brows raised.
“Um, so, what else do you have in your uh, medical bag there?” I asked, hoping he would stop touching me. He didn’t.
“Do you want to see?”
“Well, yeah. That’s kind of the point, right?”
A moment of hesitation. “Right,” he said, and got off the bed to grab his bag. It even had a red medic sign on the side. I would have laughed if I wasn’t so afraid that his cologne might suffocate me.
“Lie back,” he said. “Trust me.” So I did, and he tied a blindfold around my eyes and bound my wrists to the bedpost. But I wasn’t nervous. “You know, it’s difficult for me to…truly demonstrate what I can do if you won’t remove your clothes.” I got nervous.
“That’s alright. I just need an example to get the idea of it. So I can write about it later.”
“As you…desire,” he said, and by the sound of it, went back to his bag of tricks.
” So women let you do this? Find a stranger on the Craig’s List, and let him tie them up and blindfold them? Really?” He pressed something cold, hard, and smooth against my arms. As much as I hate to admit it, I felt kind of nice, like metallic fingers tracing lines along my skin.
“There’s nothing strange in what I do,” he said, with a lonely trail of reverb in his throat. “I offer them pleasure. Release. An escape from stress. And I ask nothing in return.”
Nothing at all? I pondered this for a moment, but my thoughts were interrupted by the realization that he was using a spoon to turn me on, and that it was actually kind of working. I asked him, with a distinct tone of urgency, to take the blindfold and the handcuffs off. And he did. He wasn’t offended at all; in fact, he was remarkably sweet about the whole thing.
We ended up lying in bed, just talking for a while, about his loneliness, and his search for true intimacy, and how this hasn’t worked but he keeps trying anyway. I couldn’t decide if he was noble, pathetic, or just plain sad. And then I couldn’t tell the difference between them anymore, so I fucked him. What else was I supposed to do?