Chapter 3: Dawning

Here I was with this woman, whom I thought I knew very well (and to be honest desired as much as a drowning man does a breath of air) and she was kneeling in front of me waiting for me to instruct her as to how to prepare my tea. As I looked into her beautiful questioning eyes, things from my studies, interests and "hobbies", and our talks seemed to click into place in my mind. I smiled warmly and said, "Two scoops of tea steeped for five minutes served with two sugars and a dash of cream. If you get it right I will reward you, otherwise I will punish you." I then waited for her reaction.

She watched me intently as I spoke then nodded her head and said, "Yes, Sir," and then a tremor passed from her head to her toes and she nearly dropped the cup she had started picking up when the realization of what I said about punishing her brought her up short. Fortunately, she managed to catch the cup. She then lowered her eyes and in the meekest voice I could ever imagine coming from this woman said, "Yes, Sir. I understand."

I sort of expected this, but for her to actually respond as she did was still quite the shock. From all the information I had at my disposal I'd come to the initial conclusion (or perhaps it was nothing more than a personal belief or desire of mine) this evening that the reason she was not happy in any of her previous relationships was not because the men were not worth her time or that they were bad, they were quite simply wrong for her. They were "too good".

Apparently, what she really needed was somebody to take control, to give her direction, to bring order into her life for her. We just had not realized it at the time, at least not consciously. Now, here she was, in my place, serving me tea as if she were my servant. She knew I had an interesting background. She's been with me when I've essentially seduced women in bars, waitresses in various restaurants, and seen how they responded to the wicked things I'd say to them. I am, and always have been, a nice guy, but I wasn't a goody two shoes. Did that have anything to do with how she was acting tonight? I wasn't sure, but I could not discount it.

In the workplace she expected to be given orders and do her job, and that was all fine and dandy; however, you never wanted to be on her wrong side because she would never put up with it. The same applied in school. She did not put up with anybody's bullshit. You never wanted to find out just how scathing she could be. Her tongue was razor sharp and she knew just how to bring someone down without uttering a single curse word. I've seen a few idiots turn tail and run when they'd pissed her off. This was a truly different side of her. One I had not previously even guessed at.

Now, the question was whether or not I believed that our standing relationship could survive such a major upheaval and whether or not I had it in me to be what she needed me to be, to give her what she seemed to be indicating she wanted from me if this relationship were to continue in the direction that it appeared to be. It was surreal and nearly unimaginable. It was very much like finding ourselves, together, in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" with each of us shoved down the rabbit hole with no idea of which way was up, nor which way was down. We were falling out of our elements and into a new, and very different world. Honestly I was scared; I did not want to lose my friend, but how do you stop free-falling without anything to grab onto to slow the descent?