Chapter 3

I called off my date with Gina. I told her in person.

"Too bad. I was considering buying black fishnets for the occasion."

"On you, they might have turned into a fetish for me."

"Instead, you turned into a shit." Her shaking head underscored disapproval.

"Look. You're only interested in playing, pretending more than participating. I won't get what I need trying it with you.

"I would have made it worth your time and, ahem, effort." Her swallow following her words spoke truer. Gina didn't back down or apologize to anyone. That she would hold out a reconcilement...

"Gina, I-I didn't think." I reached to hug her.

She swatted my hands away. "I've got an engine to overhaul." She left me then. I retreated home.

"Mother?"

"I'm trying to think."

I let her be. She found me in my room half-hour later. "Have you been crying?"

"Yep. But it's not related to what I wanted to ask you."

Mother seated herself on my desk chair. "Ask."

"What does love feel like?"

"I can't tell you, not the love I think you're asking about."

"I feel sad, powerful, stupid, horny-"

"You've taken a big chunk of love already. You'll get there."

"What would you do if you loved me with this kind of love?"

"I'd tear off my clothes and prostrate myself before you." Mom laughed, "What a question!"

"Silly answer noted." I looked at my feet.

"May I leave?"

"Okay." My swirling thoughts missed her clue, and my memory lost the chance to contemplate it later.

Ten days passed. I was looking at colleges again when Bette's email arrived. She said she had peeked into Father's work computer to get my address.

I wrote back, "There are misdemeanors, crimes, and governance in this world. Only the government can get away with illegalities without punishment." I told her I expected her in my room that night for governance.

"Bette, what a pleasant surprise." Mother greeted her at the door. "Did you forget something from the other night?"

"I came to see, Walter."

"Please come right in." Mother's voice lost some of its pleasure. "Walter, Bette Travers is here to see you."

"Thanks, Mom. Tell her to wait."

"Please wait for my son." Mother returned to her laptop in the kitchen.

Without an offer to sit, Bette waited standing.

I chose to meet her a few minutes later. "Hello, Bette."

"Ms. Travers, is more proper, Walter."

"Mom, she came to me. It's Bette."

Father had been sitting in his chair, the entire time, reading a wilderness survival guide. I thought, after dinner he had retired to his den. I thanked the gods that Bette hadn't said hello to him. Then I remembered, she'd worked with him for years. She knew.

"Come on." I told her.

She followed me to my room.

"Close the door." I waited for her to comply. "Did you bring it?"

"N-no, should I have?"

"I didn't specify it. It's not related to what you've done, not much. I left your email on the screen there."

She saw it.

"That is your email?"

"It is."

"You stole into my father's computer to learn my address. That's what it says."

"I did."

"Do you know how unbelievably stupid that is?"

"I'm not stupid!" She flared. I had said the wrong thing.

"W-wisdom and intelligence ... er, two sides of the same coin. Foolish, then." I waited.

She didn't lash back, nor replied.

"I asked you to consider the magnitude of your trespass and to drive slowly getting here. You tell me how many stripes you think you deserve. I tell you how they'll be applied."

"Twenty?"

"That's an intelligent number, a good number but they're going to be a very hard twenty. Espionage is not in the same league as a flirt."

"Fift-"

"You've given your number." I printed the email. I leaned over the printer and unplugged the power cord from it. "Drop down to your knees and unplug this cord from the wall. Stay on your hands and knees."

She handed the cord to me.

I waded the printout and held it before her face. "Open." I placed it between her perfect rows of teeth. "Bite down, and close your eyes. Don't do anything else until I tell you. If you spit that out of your mouth before I'm through, you will leave and never contact me again."

I stood tall and weighed the power cord in my hand. It was a nasty tool. I had received it very sparingly from my father. There was a trick to using it as safely as possible, but it could never be considered a safe tool. Twenty were going to cause some damage, no matter how carefully applied.

I had told her to wear a skirt. I reached for it, pulled it over her ass, revealing nakedness.

She concentrated on the empty wall socket.

I heard Father and Mother passing my closed door. He took her into the master. I looked at the weapon in my hand. My cock stiffened. I needed this. I set down the cord and retrieved a belt from my closet.

I wailed twenty strokes against Bette's darkening ass. I was furious with myself and horny beyond belief. I wanted to plunge my cock into this willing hole and hit her with my fists. Instead, I hurled every stroke with all my pent up anguish and desire.

I feared my parents would hear Bette's cries barely muted by the wad of wet paper in her jaws. I shouted, "LEFT! RIGHT! RIGHT-RIGHT! LEFT-LEFT-LEFT!" and so on, to mask Bette's wailing.

Twenty strokes later found us emotionally exhausted. I helped her to lay face down on my bed. I sat on the edge beside her. My plan was to sit there until our tears had dried. Hers were far more and wetter.

Despite her pain, she reached to my trousers and felt for my erection. It seemed to reassure her, that some good had come out of her suffering. I opened my fly to her gentle knocks. "Go ahead." I said.

She took my cock into her soft hand and stroked me. "Left. Right. Left-Left-", and so on. Her humor surprised me.

I came upon her hand and my pant legs. I finished more exhausted and more alive. I sought to her needs.

"Pull your skirt up. I want to see your sorry behind."

Bette whimpered. "Mercy, please, Sir."

Damn if her submissiveness didn't make my satisfied prick harden a bit. I reached under my bed for some lube.

"Raise your ass. I don't want to get this stuff on my bed."

She obeyed and I spread the cool gel over her blushing patches. She had a wonderfully plump ass. When my hand reached between the back of her thighs, Bette cooed.

I was groping my toy's wet pussy when father knocked at my door. "Walt, what's going on in there?"

"I'm engaged in a private matter with Bette, Father."

"Finish up and tell her to see me in the living room."

That finished us, right then. I withdrew my hand from Bette's wet hole. I wiped with a tissue while she adjusted her skirt. We met Father a minute after his knock.

My worst fears were realized when I witnessed Father urge Bette to transfer to another department in their employer's company. He didn't want to see her around ever again.

I yelled at Father after Bette had driven away. He tore up my temporary driver's license. It was conditional on a parent's signature.

"You did nothing wrong until your outburst, Son. Ms. Travers was using you to coerce me into an act of infidelity." He handed the shreds of paper to me for disposing.

Something wasn't right. He'd had no problem with Bette going into my room. I clenched the paper bits in my hand. There was only one person who could have influenced Father. Had he been topped by his bottom?

I didn't seek out Mother until the next day. She sat in a posture more relaxed than I'd seen before. Her fingers seemed to dance upon the keyboard easily with few errors. Her cute little bulge of a few extra pounds wasn't thick enough to support the breadth of her chest. Her flowing auburn hair bent slightly from ends stuck in the middle-back of her wool sweater. Father kept the house at a cool 68F.

"I thought you didn't place conditions on Father's fidelity."

Mother stopped typing and sighed. "Father instructed you to not interrupt when I'm working." She pulled out the heavy firepower.

"It seems, Father's decrees aren't absolute in his house. What exception did you use to stop Bette from coming here again?"

"Your father has his own definitions for pride and honor. I asked him if he thought they were synonymous."

"Your saying that his honor to be faithful to you was endangered by his pride of me becoming a responsible adult."

"You're inferring a lot from a simple question. You're more wrong than I could convince you." Therefore it wasn't worth trying to convince me.

Mother's sly evasion was fuel for my passions. I remembered recent times when I yearned for this woman who had created me. She was strong and beautiful and a spirit few had the ability to own. I didn't, yet.

I put my hand on her shoulder. My grip startled her for a second. "You'll see Bette again, just not as often." She said.

"Did Father bring her here for me the first time?"

"That's not the sort of thing he tells me."

I released her shoulder when I saw her hand reach for mine. Its warmth would have melted my coldness, my feeble technique to resist falling completely for her. "Thank you, Mother."

In only a few weeks, I would be graduating from high school with honors, but my grades were not the best. A girl, Tamary Benton, enlisted me and a few others from our honors writing class, to critique her valedictorian speech. I agreed half-heartedly. I'd never really paid her much attention. I knew she was one of the smartest girls in school, but like most boys I concentrated my gaze on more attractive girls.

Tamary was not obese. She was fat, but because she was short, it belied her athletic interior. She was second string on the softball team, and she had handed my ass to me when our PE class covered tennis. Her typical student smiling mask, shaded by a clean and brushed mop of un-styled hair, no doubt hid some sadness. Her clothes were nice enough but again without style. I think she dated but not often nor for long with the same guy. I did hear that she had dated a girl on the softball team. Funny how most guys who considered themselves tolerant of homosexuals thought that most girls who dated other girls were "just experimenting".

We met in the school's smaller theater which doubled as the drama classroom. I was lost in thought. I nearly forgot to show up. My ex-boss from the car dealership had called to ask if I would consider a salesman's job for the summer. Did I really want to deal with Gina again? Seeing Cheryl regularly would be a plus - I'd been thinking seriously of starting up with her again, but my pride didn't like that I would backpedal on a decision that had affected others.

I looked up, when Tamary said, " ... affects the nations of a school's community." She was talking about sub cultures, and she was carefully maintaining a very dignified posture. My imagination brought me to erection in the next sixty seconds.

She called on me third, after concluding. "Walter, how did it sound to you?"

"I'm still thinking about my notes." I hadn't taken any. I knew what I wanted to say. "I'll tell you after we're done here." I heard a few obvious hums intended to embarrass. Tamary paused, couldn't see if she blushed. That hair! To be kind, it wasn't that mopish, and she'd already said she'd made a salon appointment before graduation. She even showed the dress she planned to wear. The other girls loved it, mostly because no matter what she wore Tamary wasn't in their league of sexual competition.

I would find out that no other girl in the school was able to be in her league.

"Okay, Wally dearest." She winked. I laughed with the rest of her critics. That made it easy to approach her later.

"Wally? Even joking, if a guy called me that I'd have to punch him out just to prevent anyone from taking it seriously." I grinned.

She looked serious. "Do you really have something to say? I saw you spacing out. It's not as if the lights were off in the seats and on in my eyes."

"First of all, you shouldn't start your speech with a joke." I returned. "I know that seems counter to convention, but in your case humor will distract the students from what you say next."

"How could that be? That's a good joke and everyone else said it came off well. Did you even hear it?"

"You wanted a critique, and I say this without malice. A joke won't work for you because you're not beautiful." Her reaction would be critical to what happened between us later.

My words angered her, visibly, but she spoke carefully. "How does that even matter?"

"Because a joke from a fat girl is not respected in this world, especially not by social-status shitheads like high school students. You need to start with something vicious. You need to sound like a threat. They'll pay attention, and when you do make a joke, they'll relax without dismissing what you say." I stepped closer.

"You're, th-the shithead." She stepped back.

I nodded and stood straight. "I'm sorry to be rude. I do respect you, Tamary. You've got a lot of pluck and resilience and smarts. But am I wrong?"

"Maybe. I don't know, right now. I have to weigh what the others said."

"Do you want to talk about something else?"

"Is that your whole critique, not to start with a joke?"

"There's a lot more of the same rudeness, but I sincerely want you give a great speech."

She stood her ground. "Okay."

I called her "fat" a few more times and said "ugly" but not about her looks, and few other rude things carefully wrapped in genuine, helpful suggestions. I didn't look at her much, trying not to emphasize the insults. I just wanted her to hear me say them. I discovered a good word when I said, "Poser."

"I've heard enough." She stopped me. "Do you think I'm stupid enough to let your insults bound around the auditorium?"

"I thought you'd stop me before I said five sentences."

"Why are you doing this? A last make fun of the fat chick before graduation? Here we are on stage, and yet you wasted a brilliant dissing before empty seats." She snorted. "Shithead".

"I've been called worse." I grinned.

"Yeah, what?"

"Creep, for one thing. It really hurt. I have a lot of pride in my respect for people. Tamary, I'm not here to make fun of you. I'm here because I'd like to make myself available to you."

"What, to hear you call me 'fat?'"

"Or 'impostor', or whatever you-"

Tears flooded her eyes, and she ran off the stage.

I knew I'd made the wrong call. Tamary could handle insults, but that's not how she wanted to submit. I took a different tack the next day. It was a last chance effort.

I waited for her outside our writing class. When she saw me she turned her head away. I stepped between her and the door. "I just want to say, next time I'll tie you up so you can't run away." I turned and walked to my seat.

She didn't look at me again the next day, except for two very curious peeks. I didn't confront her. I'd said what I had to say. After the weekend, I went to class with my writing assignment, confident in its prose. We always read our work aloud. Mine was short and everyone hated it, even though it got some laughs. Tamary didn't laugh. Instead, I saw her suddenly look down at the floor after the opening paragraph.

"Macy T got caught by a carbon fiber ribbon painted red. It cut into her arms and sucked at her wounds. It tore her dance outfit and wrenched her arms together behind her back. It wrapped her ankles and pulled her to her knees. And all the while the stage manager's eyeballs rolled along the ribbon, peeking into skin crevices and sneaking between ripped sequins. She dreamt of the contract she had willingly signed."

My two page 'work' used bondage imagery to tell of a woman rapper's shame for having to sign a one-sided contract with a gatekeeper, not for fame but just a steady job.

Problem was, I don't know shit about rap music, I just thought rap was transgressive, admired by the youths of today. Apparently it's old hat. I didn't account for my class of mostly rich, workaholic, white shitheads. Rap ignorance was the first thing my classmates pounced on. The second was about blatant (and therefore base) eroticism. At one point I said aloud, "Yeah, I don't know crap about rap. I admit it. I just wanted to write something that turned me on. If more of us revealed our desires, more of us might get them satisfied." School was nearing its end, and I didn't give a shit about my reputation.