Chapter 4: Nora’s Domination Problem

When Nora and I started our final year at City College, we were both still on the student newspaper The Salient. In the two years since our break-up, we talked to each other at times, but we didn’t have a lot of interactions elsewhere. Mostly we saw each other in the office on the third floor, and that was about it.

One day in early October she came up to me and said, “Paul, I’d like to talk to you about something. Let’s go down to the snack bar if that’s okay with you.”

We knew the food there was mediocre at best, so we both got sodas and sat at a table facing each other. In recent years, Nora managed to look dressed up even when she was trying to be casual. On that day, she was wearing a short-sleeved, button-up pink shirt and tight gray trousers.

Nora got right into her topic, “So I talked to you a little about my new career, I suppose.”

She had told me a bit about her meeting with Gilda Wasserman. “You said something about working as a dominatrix, I believe.”

“That’s right, and I started about a month ago.”

I called her out about that, “I thought you were out of that life two years ago.”

She launched into an explanation that sounded like a justification to me. “But this is completely different. It’s professionally run and I don’t have to do, you know, what I used to do. And the money, it’s just amazing.”

I think I knew what she meant, but I asked her anyway. “What is it you used to do?”

“I mean, they can pay to masturbate while I watch, but I don’t have to, ah, deal with their splooge in any way.”

I remembered her own rules when she was a freelance hooker in her freshman year. She wouldn’t do vaginal sex for any price, although oddly enough she would do anal. But I make them pay through the nose, she had said about that, which seemed an amusing way to put it.

Also, she wouldn’t be submissive herself; in other words, she wouldn’t allow clients to spank her. Of course, as her boyfriend, I got to do that to her, and she seemed to like it a lot. And, to be fair, she had done it to me a couple of times.

I decided to fill in her blanks, “So you don’t have to blow them or jerk them. So what is it that you do then?”

“You know what dominatrices do. I usually spank them or paddle them while chiding them for their mostly imaginary misdeeds. The scolding part is probably the most important aspect of it all.”

I hadn’t been her boyfriend in nearly two years, but she was still willing to talk to me about this in great detail. This chick is fascinating as well as being a great lay; I’ll never meet another one quite like her.

“So do you restrain them?”

“It depends; it’s negotiable.”

“And do you have any female clients?”

“Not yet, but it is possible.”

I decided to give her a hard time again. “You know, Nora, it was your interest in money that you regretted the first time around.”

She immediately had to justify herself again. “But it’s only until I graduate in June, and I can save up something by then. It’s hard to get anywhere as an office temp.”

“Or as a fast food girl.” I remembered her stint at Burger King.

“And I needed to get a new car.”

“So, no more green Mustang convertible?”

“No, I’m keeping that one, but I’m putting it into lighter duty. I already bought a two-door 1974 BMW. And, I’ve rented an apartment on the Upper West Side. Nothing special, but it’s all mine.”

“Thus no more Uncle Tony in Maspeth.”

“Yes, but the weird thing is, I feel kind of lonely in this new place.” Was that what she had brought me here to discuss?

“Don’t you have some guy going now?”

“No, actually I don’t.” That was news to me.

“So that guy, the one after Mister Triumph Stag, he’s gone too?” The Triumph dude was the one she had abruptly dumped me for back in the fall of 1974. At that time, I didn’t have a car and I still didn’t have one.

“That next one, we broke up over the summer.”

Oh, poor Nora; she never seemed to know exactly what she wanted. I tried joshing with her. “So take me on, I’m still willing.”

“You just met a girl, that Donna Azzato person.” I had met Donna over the Labor Day weekend at a party. “And I’ve seen her. She’s really nice, and I think she’s a good one for you.”

“So, you could be my side girl.”

Nora didn’t realize I was kidding her. “I’m not a side girl for anybody. Either you are with me or you are not. And frankly, you were gone a long time ago.”

I tried another joke. “So I’ll get rid of Donna for you.”

Surprisingly, she still didn’t get it. “Oh please, that’s ridiculous.” Then she shook a finger at me. “I’ve seen the way you look at me at times. You’d still like to get into my pants, wouldn’t you?”

“And what nice pants they are, indeed.”

“And you’ve had, what, three girlfriends after me and before Donna showed up?”

“Yes, but they all dumped me.”

“That’s not my problem.”

“Nora, I’m not serious; don’t you get that? So is this what you brought me here to talk about, I mean your lack of a boyfriend?”

“No, that’s not actually it. I wanted to talk about my reaction to the dominatrix job.”

If she had been anyone else, I don’t know if I would have cared that much. But I knew Nora would have an interesting take on it and that I wanted to hear.

“Okay, tell me about it. You do this in your apartment now?”

“No, listen to me, Gilda handles all of the arrangements, including most of the financial ones. She, or rather somebody with her, has rented space in a loft building in Chelsea.”

“You mean like a dungeon set-up?”

“Only part of it is like that; the rest of it looks like a club or bar, I’d say.”

“If I may digress a bit, who is this Gilda representing? I mean, who are you actually working for?”

“I don’t need to know that, so I’ve never asked. I get an envelope with cash in it each week, which is what is important to me.”

“It sounds like it could be the Mafia or something like that.”

“I’ve considered that, but I’ll never meet them so I don’t care.”

I hoped Nora never did meet them because that would mean she’d be in some kind of trouble. I fretted a bit that she’d just disappear one day and no one would know what happened to her.

But the same kind of thing could have happened to her during her freelancing days when she was alone with clients. She was very wary of going to a client’s residence, but she was sometimes in their cars. Even her uncle’s house in Maspeth was not that safe because she’d be alone there with men during the day.

“So, you were also going to tell me about your first client which was, what, a month ago?”

“He was this fairly young guy, about thirty I’d guess, and well-dressed. His hang-up – who knows if he made this up or not? – was that he was cheating on his girlfriend and he needed to be punished for that.”

“As if that would make a difference.”

“I just said, I don’t know. Maybe getting a spanking simply added to the frisson of his cheating. So he had worked this out with Gilda; I’d beat him on his bare ass with a tawse.”

“What is a tawse? I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s this leather belt that was invented in Scotland or England or some such place. It usually is divided on the business end into two or three ‘tongues,’ I’d call them. It delivers quite a good wallop.”

“Sounds like it definitely would.”

“So, on my own initiative, I tied him to a wooden trestle. He didn’t protest, however.”

“It was just a routine gig, then.”

“That’s the thing, it wasn’t. I felt – well, I felt sorry for him, and that was connected to the fact that I felt lust for him, I mean intense, instantaneous lust.”

“You told me you’d often get horny doing dominance gigs back in the old days.”

“That was different. That came from wielding power over those pathetic twerps; it made me feel like a bitch-goddess to make them squirm. But this guy – I actually wanted him, for some reason. It was even worse because he got a huge erection during the session. It was all I could do not to grab him and throw him down the couch.”

“So why not just do that?”

“Because there is sort of a code against it – well, really I was worried that Gilda would somehow find out.”

“Yeah, her Mafia bosses might have had you whacked.”

“I highly doubt that. More likely I’d be fired. So, anyway, I’ve been getting increasingly ambivalent about doing this job.”

“Then just quit.”

“I can’t, I sort of made a commitment to Gilda that I’d stick it out until I graduated next June.”

“Why are you so concerned about this Gilda person? Is she really some Mob girlfriend?”

“I already told you about the money I need, especially with the major I’ll have when I graduate.” Nora was studying history, just like I was. “There’s been some other manifestations. You want to hear about those?”

“Sure, of course I do.”

“All right, I’ve been having these weird fantasies recently. It may be connected to feelings of guilt, but I think this job must be messing with my head. I wonder too if I’m becoming a sadist.”

“Hey, don’t worry, you’re in good company.” I had done just about every possible sexual act with Nora during those five months I was with her, so I had no hesitation in asking her, “Are these masturbatory fantasies?”

“Yes, they are. One of them is that, back in the old days – I mean 1974 – I got arrested on the City College campus, you know for solicitation. And my fantasy was that they’d collect all the busted whores each day and take them down to Central Booking.”

“Don’t they really do something like that?”

“But in my fantasy, the next morning, the girls were punished and then, if it was one of their first three offenses, they were let go.”

I got the gist of where she was going, but I had to confirm it. “What do you mean by ‘punished?’”

“The way I pictured it, I was taken to this room, right there in 100 Centre Street. Then these burly female guards held me down, lowered my jeans, and gave me a severe caning on my bare little heinie.”

“Sounds very British. And you get off on this weird idea?”

“Oh God, yes. When I use that scenario, I’m lying all over the apartment, sticking my fingers into my cunt, plus whatever else is handy, and I keep climaxing until I’m completely drained.”

I remembered hearing Nora once brag about her dildo collection. I also knew that despite her rule about not being submissive for pay, she had a pronounced masochistic side. It’s a long story, but that played a big part in landing her as my girlfriend in the first place.

I offered some opinions. “You’re missing your calling. You should be writing scripts for porno films. This one could be called, ‘Young Hookers in Big Trouble.’ And, frankly, Nora, it sounds like you need to get laid more often.”

“It’s not that easy to go out and just land some guy.”

“The campus is full of horny guys. And it’s a lot easier for a woman than it is for a man.”

“Easy for you. After I broke up with you, you went pussy-crazy for a while.”

I was glad to get the opportunity to talk a little about myself. “That’s not quite true. My attitude was actually, ‘I don’t care if this works or not.’ And surprisingly, it did work pretty well – I mean projecting the air that I was not trying that hard with any particular girl.”

“You must have been right because you picked up two of them on the campus in like, ten or twelve days.”

“With the second one, I just wanted to see if my theory was correct. And damn, it certainly was. This chick was just sitting on a wall on Convent Avenue, reading The Naked Ape of all things, and I just sat next to her and started talking about the book. I assumed she’d think I was a pervert perhaps but, no, she had her own rather unusual take on the book and she quoted some stuff from it.”

“That was Andrea, I met her once. The most notable thing about her was her beautiful ass. That, plus she was a Queens girl like I am.”

“Yes, she was living in Astoria. Actually, the memorable thing for me was, well, on one of our first dates she took me in her car and gave me a handjob. In fact, she masturbated in front of me first. That was at night, parked somewhere in your Maspeth I remember.”

“You have a knack for finding women with their own cars, and yet you don’t own one yourself. Anyway, the first one – Michelle Hanley – she lasted a long time with you.”

“Yet another Queens girl; the Princess of Bayside. It actually occurred to me that I might marry her, or at least I’d consider the possibility.”

“But the way she got rid of you, that was pretty cold. I mean, at least I had some discretion, but she just picked up somebody right in front of you.”

“Did I ever tell you that story?”

“A little of it. It was in a bar, right?”

My tale was a bit complicated, but I knew Nora would like it. It was actually a role play that Michelle and I tried one evening in an East Village bar. We would walk in separately, pretend to be strangers, and I would then try to pick her up. The Pick-up Game; I’ve heard of others who did it.

Nora said, “But with Michelle, it was a sure thing already, correct?”

“Not really; I’d have to put some effort into convincing her. She could elect to turn me down if she choose to do that.”