Chapter 8 #3
And there’s that warmth again. It feels good, but I have to ignore it for the minute. I have to compartmentalize to even tell this damn story. I just shrug and go on.
“Eh, but I do. I take responsibility for what I let happen,” I say, my chest going tight.
I guess it’s difficult to actually compartmentalize while saying the words out loud.
“So, there I was in Hoxton having a good time, going to London proper to visit the raves, then the kink clubs. Gregory had left Dad’s house and was living in what was honestly an old abandoned building, shooting speed.
I’d hear from him now and then. And at some point I stopped giving him money, because he’d only spend it on drugs, and it pissed him right off.
I’d go to see him now and again, and he looked like shit.
Like a fucking skeleton of himself, and he was always fucking angry at the world.
Can’t say I blame him, not one bit. I wasn’t in much better shape m’self.
I kept telling m’self he’d grow out of the drugs, but even I knew that was a goddamn lie.
The one time I spoke to him about getting him into rehab, he fucking disappeared for almost a year.
I only found him again when he overdosed and someone at the hospital called me.
But he wouldn’t come home with me, said he had friends he was staying with.
And then, when he was twenty-two, still just a fucking kid, I got another call from hospital. But this time he was dead.”
“Gilby…”
There are tears in her voice and a fucking knot in my stomach, pulling tighter and tighter, until it’s hard to breathe.
She squeezes my arm, then moves closer and lays her warm hand on my cheek, and I turn my face into her palm, breathing her in, needing that closeness.
I haven’t needed to be close to anyone most of my goddamn life, but now, here we are, and I fucking need her. Need her.
“You don’t have to say anything else,” she tells me, her voice gentle.
“No, I do. I need to tell you more about kink, the clubs I was going to. How they saved me. No, seriously. Fucking cathartic, this shit is, kink. Fucking saved my life, I’ll tell you that much.
Those people who think kink is sick? Who don’t believe there’s anything useful to it?
Yeah, they don’t fucking know. I wouldn’t still be on this planet without it.
So much guilt. So much anger—about Gregory, my mum, even my arsehole of a dad.
I live with it every damn day, but it’s tucked away in the background, faded now.
The life I’ve chosen helps. It gives me an outlet, a way to escape. We all do that a bit, don’t we?”
“Yes, of course we do. It’s more than pleasure for so many of us, I think. More than that craving to be used, to be made into a being of pure sensation. I don’t believe it’s unhealthy, though. It’s simply one way to deal with trauma, for a lot of people. For me. And, it seems, for you.”
“I tried going to therapy for a bit, when I was still in London. Got a lot of psychobabble, but it didn’t help. The shit he was suggesting to ‘channel my feelings’, as he put it—all this meditation and journaling and shit—that was not for me.”
“Nor for me, although Sandrine and I both went for a bit when Madame Alice insisted.”
“Yeah, you two didn’t have an easy life either, from what little I know. Your mum died young, too, didn’t she?” I ask, glad to shift the focus off me.
“She did, yes. She was an addict, you know.”
“You never told me that.”
She nods, bites her lip for a moment, then releases it as she turns to place her empty mug on the nightstand before turning back to me.
“Her drug was heroine. I was sixteen when she died, and Sandrine was fifteen. We made our way to Paris, as so many young girls do when they’re out of options.
We ended up in Pigalle, where I tried stripping to support us, but I was caught for being underage a year later.
I had Sandrine in school—I wanted her to be able to finish.
When I couldn’t dance anymore—I was too afraid if I tried to work at another strip club I’d get found out—I had to take a job as a waitress.
There were some things I missed about dancing—of course, I loved the exhibitionism.
But I hated the way the men would touch me, manhandle me.
It’s different than the rough handling I get in the kink world, because kink is what I choose.
It’s the consent that changes everything.
“Oddly, I didn’t discover kink until I was twenty.
Sandrine met a man named Gaspard at a dance club.
He was gay, and quite thoroughly uninterested in us sexually, but he took us to these parties where he had friends who he knew would appreciate us.
He was very kind to us. And his friends were fun.
We would go dancing with them at the gay clubs, and they loved to dress us up for a night out, as if we were their pretty little dolls.
I suppose we were. At some point Gaspard told us about a different kind of club.
He had us read some books before we went to the BDSM clubs, and the moment I began reading those books, I wanted to try it.
Sandrine felt the same. I was nervous, but Sandrine, of course, dove in headfirst, as Americans say.
As she does everything. She’s always been braver than I.
Gaspard’s friends treated us with respect, and it was a good experience for us as we learned.
Then Sandrine met a man who took her to London for a weekend, to the Torture Gardens.
She came home and she was absolutely glowing.
I had never seen her like that. She never stopped talking about that experience, and I was a little concerned for her.
But then she convinced me to go, and of course, I took to it all immediately.
There was never any question about us both being utterly submissive.
We had finally found our place in the world.
Or so we thought. And then we met Madame Alice.
“You already know about our lives from that point on. She trained us, doted on us even as she disciplined us. She gave us a luxurious life—luxurious in the way a slave craves luxury, in the way we require in order to be properly looked after and cared for. All the massages and medical care and house staff… It takes a lot of money. I know you already know this. But also things like being made to sleep on a dog bed on the floor, but with fur blankets and golden collars. She loved us being her pets, and we loved it just as much. And those rare times when she would call one of us to sit in her lap and be cuddled and punished and shown off to her guests… For girls like us, it was spectacular. A rare life. It fulfilled us in ways that are difficult to describe. We came to love her so much. And then, she brought you to us. And while we both adored you instantly, you know, Gilby, that I…” She stops, and when she tries to speak again, her breath catches, and there are several false starts.
Then she says, her voice so quiet I can barely hear the words. “You know I fell in love with you.”