Flummoxed: that's the word I’m looking for.
“Fucking say something, will you?”
I open my mouth, but can’t find any words to adequately describe my surprise or my terror in this moment, so I do the only thing that my body will allow.
I laugh.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her as soon as I can catch my breath. “Really, I am. I’m not laughing at you. I just have no idea how to even begin to approach this conversation.”
Her eyes start going wide again.
“No, no, no,” I say. “It’s all right. We can figure this thing out. Now, there are some things you want to do, some of which make me uncomfortable, some of which I’m okay with. What would be the ideal situation for you? Let’s start there, and I’ll tell you what will work and what won’t work for me. I’m sure we can find a consensus somewhere here.”
“I don’t know,” she says in a creepily normal tone. “I guess, when I saw your tattoos, I just kind of figured that you were into some freaky shit. Maybe I went overboard without seeing if you were cool with everything.”
“That’s okay,” I tell her. “Now, what would be ideal for you?”
“What I really want to do is tie you to the bed, ride you like a bull and, I don’t know…”
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Just tell me what you want. That’s how we’re going to find a compromise here.”
My goal for the evening is to find some way to sleep with her and not end up with a black eye.
“I just want to make you my bitch, you know? I want to have you do what I tell you to do and maybe smack you around a little if you don’t do it right. Is that so much to ask?”
“Wow,” I chuckle. “You know, that’s a bit much for me,” I tell her. “Not that it’s weird or anything, it’s just not my particular cup of tea.”
I wonder what Yoga Chick is up to.
“Well, what do you want?”
“Me? I don’t know, I guess I’m a bit more old-fashioned when it comes to the bedroom. I like a nice, pleasant evening where we fuck like bunnies, maybe take a few pages out of the Kama Sutra and see if we can get your neighbors to file a noise complaint.”
“Okay,” she says, giving the situation the kind of thought one would put toward what college to attend or whether or not space-time is a fixed or mutable concept. “Well, I like what you’re saying, but I’m going to need a little more than that.”
“I can offer you light spanking.”
“Who’s spanking whom?” she asks, surprisingly articulately.
“I guess that’s really up to you,” I tell her.
“Oh, I’d definitely be spanking you,” she says.
I’m starting to get the feeling that we may be trying a bit too hard to make this work, but I’ve already put so much into it, I don’t want to just give up.
“I can live with some spanking—some light spanking,” I tell her. “But I’m talking with your hands. No paddles or whips. A riding crop might be acceptable, but that’s really going to come back to the force of the blow.”
“Okay,” she says. “I think I can live with that, but that’s still not quite enough for me. I mean, you’ve really taken me out of the mood here.”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that she’s enjoying this more than she was enjoying the sex.
Actually, I don’t know any better.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Well,” she says, “you seemed to be okay with the handcuffs, but you weren’t okay with me slapping you.”
“Yeah,”