Suspension

I met James through CollarMe.com. He was getting back out there after having lost his long-term submissive to cancer, I was getting back out there after getting sober & losing a hundred pounds. We traded e-mails until I decided he wasn't likely to rob and/or rape me, and then I agreed to meet him at a family-style restaurant. Well, he was a perfect gentleman. Originally from the West Coast, but he'd been living here in New York for ten years. He'd never been with an Italian-American before, his deceased submissive having been Native American...he said he'd been with her for over ten years. He was Jewish, of French descent. I'd known Jews before, of course, having lived my whole life here, but never really met a man of French descent before, unless you count French-Canadian, which I don't. But whatever, he had beautiful old-world manners, ordering for me at the restaurant without having to be told to do so. He talked of his childhood in Arizona, his family, his late partner. For my part, I spoke honestly about why I was not drinking wine at dinner, why I would never drink wine at dinner again in my life (sobriety, it means never being able to drink wine, or anything else for that matter, ever again) and he didn't scream and run the other way about that. He asked me why, why I had been an alcoholic, so I took a deep breath and I told him the whole story...the beatings my mother gave me, how my grandfather had raped me, how fucked up I really am.

When I finished telling, I looked across the table and was surprised to see him still there. I asked him to say something. He told me he didn't know what to say. That was fair enough. He was still there and that was good enough for me. That meeting ended in an open-mouth kiss and a promise to see each other again. And see each other again we did. We met for a stroll in Central Park, during which we alternately made out like teenagers and discussed our kinks. I have Little tendencies, he enjoyed being Daddy. I liked a spanking (flogging, whipping, caning), he loved to wield floggers, crops, whips, and canes. I don't like scat, underage children, knife play, gun play, or fire play, and he didn't either. He wanted to give me golden showers, and I was OK with that. He was into suspension bondage, which I'd never tried.

"It's ok," he said, "I'll e-mail you some pictures later so you have an idea what I mean."

After that "date" I got an e-mail with a picture attached. A picture of a woman in fierce red boots suspended high above the floor in sort of a doubled-over position, her legs spread wide. "Oh hell no," I told my laptop, upon seeing that. If James were to suspend me like that and whatever he suspends me FROM were to, uh, NOT HOLD MY WEIGHT, it'd be a long way down. And, I guessed, there'd be no walking away from it like it hadn't happened. No, most likely there'd be a resultant trip to an emergency room and people asking questions about what in the hell happened. And I never did like to answer those kind of questions. So I e-mailed him back, telling him I wasn't up for his suspension challenge.

He sent another e-mail. The position depicted in that photo was not for amateurs, I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to. He attached another picture, this one of a woman hogtied with leather restraints, suspended from the ceiling by a leash, her body horizontal, and she was mere inches from the floor. That position, he claimed, was more one to start with. He asked that I THINK ABOUT it. I agreed, as it never hurts to think.

He invited me to his home, out in Elmhurst Queens. He lived near the Belmont race track (where the Belmont Stakes take place every year, for those of you who watch the races). I don't drive, and Elmhurst is a fucking trek by subway, so I hired a town car and went out there in style. Being the gentleman he is, he gave me the grand tour. The kitchen, which was done in "country French" decor...not my taste, but then again, it wasn't my house. The dining room was done in brown and gold, visually gorgeous. The living room was white walls with black leather couches and a giant flat screen TV, very much a man's living room. The half-bath on the first floor was more of that "country French". Upstairs, the guest bedroom had been turned into a home office, very businesslike and boring. The master bedroom was decadent as all hell...all four walls were blood red, the ceiling was mirrored. "Who are you, the Marquis de Sade?" I asked him. "I mean, I read about Christian Grey's red room of pain, but this takes the cake."

"I love the color red," he said, grinning. "And I have one more room to show you," he said, "downstairs."

By "downstairs" he meant the basement. He took my hand and led me all the way down.

"Very subterranean gothic," I said, as we descended the concrete staircase.

"The house's original owners used it as a fallout shelter," he said, "y'know, in the '50s when people still thought the Russians were gonna drop the big one on us. It's scream-proof......err, I mean soundproof, bombproof, pretty much everything proof."

"Do you expect the Russians to drop the big one on us?" I asked, laughing.

"Fuck no," he said, "but you gotta admit a soundproof basement with no windows makes for the ultimate playroom." He flicked on a light switch and the overheads came on, illuminating his toy collection. A row of canes, crops, and floggers were neatly hung like pool cues along one wall. An array of silver butt plugs gleamed on a table.

"Can I smoke down here?" I asked.

"I wish you wouldn't smoke AT ALL," he said, "but yeah, I'd rather you smoke here than in the main house. Smoke, take a look around," he smiled. I lit a cigarette, kicked off my shoes, and proceeded to have a look-see. Next to the butt plugs were a couple of dildos, a Warburton pinwheel.

"You have some nice toys, Daddy," I announced. Then I saw a black leather collar. "For me?" I picked it up. "Could be for you," he came and stood behind me, rubbing up against me. "But it doesn't go with your dress." The dress I wore was brown with white polka-dots, something a secretary might have worn to the office in the 1930s, complete with Charles Jourdan round-toe pumps.

"I could take off my dress," I said.

"Then do that," he instructed, "take it off for Daddy." He backed up off me so I could.I stepped out of my shoes, stripped off the dress, and stood there in my slip. "The slip too, Baby, bra and panties have to go too." I pulled off the slip to reveal only a bra, to which he said ""No panties, you're full of surprises." The bra came off and he said, "OK, Babygirl, look UP," pointing at the ceiling.

I looked up...way up, that ceiling must've been eight feet high, and saw three large O-shaped rings had been drilled into one of the ceiling's beams.

"What're those for, Daddy? You gonna hang some big ridiculous houseplant down here, because I can tell you this is so not the place for that."

He laughed. "I'm gonna hang YOU, Babygirl." He moved behind me again and made to put the collar round my throat. "It's time to put out that cigarette and be a good girl, do exactly as Daddy says."

"What?"

By now he'd got the collar around my throat. My cigarette was gone from my hand, put out in an ashtray

"It's OK, Baby, Daddy's gonna take care of you." He got a ladder I hadn't noticed before, along with a chain. I noticed my collar had two big O-rings on the front of it. He moved the ladder into place under the ceiling rings. "You're not afraid of heights, are you?"

I stood there and tried not to wet myself. "Come on," he said, "up the ladder for Daddy."

"What? You want me to go up there on that thing?" I made no move. "What you think I am, a flying Wallenda? In case you have not noticed, I have hips, thighs, and an ample ass, Daddy."

"Don't worry, these hooks can hold up to 400 lbs, and you weigh nowhere NEAR that. My late partner, she weighed 400 lbs and it held her, EVERY TIME."

"Point taken. But I said I'd THINK ABOUT SUSPENSION, I never said I'd do it. And anyway, what happened to vertically an inch from the floor?"

"I'm no amateur," he insisted, "I know what I'm doing."

"Well I don't, how does this even work?"

He sighed, "We climb the ladder and I rig you up to hang by the neck from the rings on your collar, sort of like a pinata. Then I come down, I move the ladder out of the way, and I hit you with the flogger, the crop, and/or the cane for my pleasure while you can't do a thing about it."

"Daddy, you can hit me with those things and more while I'm on the ground and I won't do a thing about it...except squeal with pleasure."

"It's not the same."

"Well I can't do this," I said. "This is a hard limit for me."

"Daddy needs this," he said, his erection nearly busting out of his jeans, "all you have to do is TRUST ME."

Without a word, I took off his collar and placed it on the table. I put on my bra, my slip, my 1930s-style secretary dress, stepped back into my Charles Jourdans. I reached into my purse for my iphone. "I'm gonna call the town car," I said, "it's been nice knowing you, James, and I'm sorry if I wasted your time, but I just can't. I'll show myself out."

I walked back up the stairs, out the door, and out front to await the car. There were some tears on the way home. He'd been a gentleman for the most part. And there was a part of me that wanted to trust him...well, a part of me that wanted to not have trust issues. Of course, there were no more e-mails or phone calls from him after that night. Not that I expected there to be, but, well, there was a part of me that had been hoping he would say "It's all my fault, I was wrong for asking you to do something you didn't want to do, please come back." But that's too much of a Hollywood ending, and my life is no movie.