I turned away, embarrassed. His act of submission had brought back so many uneasy memories. A moment later, I felt a brush of contact on my shoulder.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m sorry if I was staring.”
“I don’t care if you stare.” He grinned at me. “I like when people stare. I’m an exhibitionist. Well, I’m a lot of things, but ‘exhibitionist’ is near the top of the list.”
I ran my eyes over his very impressive physique. Since he was an exhibitionist, he probably didn’t mind.
“I think I know you,” he said.
“I go to Norton.”
“That’s it.” He snapped his fingers. “Digital art?”
“No. Commercial design. Metals. But I think we shared a drawing class first year.”
“Yeah, we did. I remember now.”
The sub tinkered with his harness again. He seemed nice, maybe a little shy for all his bold subservience. I thought he would leave, even though I kind of wanted him to stay. It had been so long since I felt anything in common with someone. “Are you in digital art?” I asked, to keep the conversation going.
“Fine Arts,” he said. “Painting.”
Painting, like my ex-boyfriend Simon. I wondered if he was moody and precious in the studio, the way Simon used to be. I wondered if he used drugs.
“I had a boyfriend once who was a painter,” I said. “Things didn’t end well.”
“Painters make shitty boyfriends,” he joked.
“I agree. Let’s not talk about it.” I was trying to joke back. Probably failing. My lips wobbled and my voice wobbled and all I really wanted to know was how he could be so happy when his Master had just finished with him and walked away.
“Are you okay, really?” he asked.
“I’m okay. It’s just that…things get intense here sometimes.”
“Yeah. When I’m here I like to let my hair down, in more ways than one. But it’s good, don’t you think? I like that dude,” he said, gesturing in the direction the bear had gone. “He really gets into it. We hook up now and again.”
“Oh. And you like that?”
He shrugged. The chains on his harness tinkled with the movement. “I don’t dislike it. I’m looking for The One like everyone else, but in the meantime, I might as well have a little fun. Stay in practice and all that,” he added with a wink.
“When you were with him… The intensity…it reminded me of someone I used to know.”
“Really?” His eyes were dark like mine, and he had straight, white teeth. “And did you sub to this ‘someone you used to know’?”
“Yeah. I was the sub in our relationship, I guess.”
“If you’re guessing, honey, he wasn’t doing it right.”
I sucked in a breath. “He definitely wasn’t doing it right, but I was for sure the sub within our…thing.”
“Your thing?” He put a hand on my arm and gave me a sympathetic look. “I love a girl who’ll refer to a relationship as a ‘thing.’ I’ve had a few ‘things’ myself. That sounds like the beginning of a painful and fucked-up story.”
“You have no idea.”
He threw a look around the room, at laughter and perversity and lust. Like everyone else, he knew I didn’t belong here. Unlike everyone else, he was friendly to me anyway.
“You want to go get some coffee somewhere, and tell me your painful, fucked-up story?”
I looked around too, everywhere but his dark, earnest gaze. “I don’t know. It’s possibly too painful and fucked-up to tell.”
“Then I’ll tell you some painful, fucked-up stories instead. Most of them are good for a laugh.”
I hesitated. I’d been living as a closed-off, emotionally unavailable hermit for so long, rejecting even the kindest advances of my classmates. But here was someone who might understand my dark inner world.
But…
“Will you tell me your name?” I asked.
He laughed. “Of course I will. I should have before. It’s Andrew.” He held up a hand just out of reach. “I’d shake, but you know where this hand has been. Let me clean up and put on some real clothes…” He trailed off, expectantly waiting for my name.
“Chere,” I said. “Like the French word for dear.’”
“Okay, Chere, my dear. Wait here, all right? And we’ll go get some coffee and something to eat. We Norton artistes have to stick together, especially when one of us looks so fucking bleak.”
That was me, the bleak one, and him? He seemed kind and bright, so different from Simon’s tortured level of painter-artiste. “I’ll wait here, Andrew,” I promised.
And silently, to myself I added, Thank you for telling me your name.
Price
There’s a difference between being private and being an asshole. I never told Chere my name because I was an asshole.
For the record, my name is Price Thomas Eriksen. I’m forty years old and I live on Bleecker Street, across from the apartment I gave her. Never been married, no kids. I work a lot, more than anyone should, and I travel a lot, to China, the Middle East, Europe, Russia, more places than I can remember.